Coronavirus taking toll on nurses, doctors around the globe two nurses had committed suicide as a result of the emotional trauma ..... “I can understand those who look death in the eye every day, who are on the front lines, who work with someone who maybe is infected, then a few days later you see him in the ICU or die,” he said. “It’s [an] indescribable condition of stress.”
Will coronavirus reverse globalisation? Globalisation has been one of the buzzwords of the past 25 years. ...... the pace of change in the global economy over just the past 17 years has been profound. ...... Globalisation helps to explain while nearly every major car plant in the UK has shut down - they are dependent on sales and components from around the world. When both collapsed, they just stopped making cars. ..... "risks have been allowed to fester, they are the underbelly of globalisation". ..... can be seen not only in this crisis, but also in the credit crunch and banking crisis of 2008, and the vulnerability of the internet to cyber-attacks. ...... While it has helped raise incomes, rapidly develop economies and lift millions out of poverty; that has come at the increased risk of contagion, be it financial or medical. ...... Western manufacturing industry will start bringing work back home, or re-shoring it as it is called. ....... A great deal of globalisation is not about moving manufactured goods around the world, but moving people, ideas and information ...... The idea that globalisation is just about moving manufacturing or supply chains to cheaper Asian countries is too simple. It has also led to massive increases in foreign students willing to pay to study at our colleges and universities, and a huge influx of wealthy tourists who want to spend money here, to name just two service sector businesses. ............ We could, like after 1918, get weak or weaker international organisations, the rise of nationalism, protectionism and economic depression. Or, as followed 1945, more cooperation and internationalism, like Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, the UN and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade...... "We can be optimistic, but we are not seeing leadership out of the White House certainly," he says. "China can't step up to the plate, and Great Britain cannot lead in Europe." ...... "The London G20 Summit of 2009 agreed a $1tn (£800bn) package of international cooperation, even Germany joined in. But now there is no leadership in the G20, and the USA is absent from the international scene." ...... Will we learn to spot, control and regulate the risks that seem to be an integral part of globalisation? Because the cooperation and leadership necessary to make that happen seem to be in short supply.
Much of the suffering and death coming was preventable. The president has blood on his hands.
......... “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” wrote W.B. Yeats in 1919. A century later, it’s clear: The epicenter cannot hold. Catastrophic decisions in the White House have doomed the world’s richest country to a season of untold suffering. ...... As the American public braces itself for the worst of this crisis, it’s worth remembering that the reach of the virus here is not attributable to an act of God or a foreign invasion, but a colossal failure of leadership. ....... And it demanded a leader who would put the country’s well-being first, above near-term stock market returns and his own reelection prospects, and who would work with other nations to stem the tide of COVID-19 cases around the world. ...... a president epically outmatched by a global pandemic. ...... A president who spent a good chunk of a recent press conference complaining about how hard it is for a rich man to serve in the White House even as Americans had already begun to lose their jobs, their health care, and their lives. ......... Timing is everything in pandemic response: It can make the difference between a contained local outbreak that endures a few weeks and an uncontrollable contagion that afflicts millions. ....... the president, in his near-daily addresses to the nation, embodies callousness, self-concern, and a lack of compass. Dangling unverified cures and possible quarantines in front of the public like reality TV cliffhangers, he unsettles rather than reassures.
You may be able to spread coronavirus just by breathing, new report finds
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Coronavirus lockdowns have caused the Earth to effectively stop shaking With travel effectively ground to a halt, seismologists around the globe have reported a drop in seismic noise....... Researchers say the drop in activity, usually only seen to this magnitude around Christmas, could help experts find smaller earthquakes and monitor volcanic activity more effectively. ...... As of Sunday morning, more than 1.22 million coronavirus cases have been diagnosed worldwide, more than 312,000 of which are in the U.S., the most impacted country.
Trump calls on India to release potential Covid-19 drug
'This is going to be our Pearl Harbor': Surgeon general warns USA faces worst week of coronavirus outbreak
Surgeon General: This week will be like a 'Pearl Harbor' and '9/11' moment
Surgeon General, Trump sound alarm as U.S. cases top 300,000
Health officials: Worst days ahead
Stretching the International Order to Its Breaking Point The greatest error that geopolitical analysts can make may be believing that the crisis will be over in three to four months. ........ COVID-19 could be with us in one way or another until a vaccine comes on the market or herd immunity is achieved—either of which could take 12 to 18 months ....... Even after a vaccine is available, life will not go back to normal. COVID-19 was not a black swan and will not be the last pandemic. A nervous world will be permanently changed. ........ American policy makers also underestimated the financial crisis of 2007–09, when they opted to let Lehman Brothers fail in September 2008 on the mistaken assumption that the decision would not trigger the collapse of other companies. European officials thought that the crisis had been made in the United States and would not affect global financial markets, and dismissed any concern that the euro zone may have its own vulnerabilities. ........ in a long crisis, countries will emerge profoundly changed. No one knows how exactly
....... The recession will look more like an L or W shape than a V. ..... COVID-19 could end globalization as we know it, particularly if the pandemic is prolonged. ....... “an assault on globalization” from multiple sources—the financial crisis, U.S.-China competition, climate-change activists pushing for people to buy local. COVID-19 piles on the pressure. Countries will be wary of outsourcing crucial medical supplies and pharmaceuticals to other countries. Supply chains more generally will be disrupted and will be hard to repair. ......... leaders in Israel have empowered Shin Bet, the country’s internal security service, to use cellphone location data to track Israeli citizens during the outbreak.
...... A long crisis will not discriminate and will damage all of the world’s power and regions ......... COVID-19 is likely to be a strategic setback for China, particularly in its efforts to make inroads into Europe and other democracies. ...... The CCP is now trying to limit the damage of its errors by providing assistance to other countries in the form of face masks, respirators, and other supplies. Many see this aid as an act of confidence, but it might be evidence that the regime feels vulnerable and fragile. ........ If the crisis continues for 12 to 18 months, the virus will likely return to China, with all of the risks that poses for the regime. ...... The virus has decimated parts of the Iranian elite and spread from there to ravage much of the region. The Iranian regime appears incredibly fragile, but if the government falls, no one knows what comes next, given the lack of any organized opposition within the country. ...... After a long crisis, much of the Middle East will consist of zombie governments that are widely perceived as ineffective. ......... the crisis will be “transformative.” ........ COVID-19 is a disaster for Americans. ...... President Trump is singularly ill-equipped to handle the pandemic. .......... In a long crisis, many people will die needlessly and the financial cost will be in the many trillions of dollars. The world has lost whatever confidence remained in the ability of Trump’s America to take charge. ....... Leaders have watched in horror as the administration focused the bulk of its diplomatic efforts on renaming the virus. If Trump is reelected—and his polling numbers suggest he has benefited politically from the pandemic so far—substantial international cooperation is unlikely after the crisis ends and the recovery begins. Each country will go its own way. ..... the United States is seen as a warning—an example, along with Brazil, of how a populist government is incapable of handling this crisis.
........ the only countries who have emerged from this crisis with their credibility intact so far are Asian democracies like South Korea and Taiwan. Germany is showing similar signs of competency, particularly in testing. ....... in 2019 the WHO published a plan to respond to a pandemic. Not a single major country followed the guidance.
...... The last global pandemic—the Spanish influenza of 1918–19—is not generally regarded as a driver of domestic and international politics over the 1920s and ’30s, likely because the world was already broken by World War I and less integrated than it is now. Never before has a single event upended everyone’s lives simultaneously and so suddenly.
Absent a nationwide order, which President Donald Trump once again on Friday declined to give
....... "States that we are talking about are not in jeopardy." ....... It's not as though the novel coronavirus hasn't touched each of their states in some way. ....... In South Dakota, a Republican state lawmaker was among the first in the state to test positive, followed soon after by his wife, brother and sister-in-law. His 51-year-old niece has died of Covid-19, family members told reporters, with several others experiencing symptoms. ...... "The people themselves are primarily responsible for their safety." She also pointed to the state and national constitutions that "prevent us from taking draconian measures much like the Chinese government has done." ....... In Iowa on Friday, a statewide board of medicine voted unanimously to recommend a so-called shelter-in-place order to limit the movements of residents to essential work and travel. ....... She pushed back on Fauci's remark that questioned why all states have not issued stay-at-home orders. .... "I would say that maybe he doesn't have all the information," Reynolds told reporters. "You can't just look at a map and assume no action has been taken." ....... He pointed to Dr. James Lawler, co-director of the University of Nebraska Medical Center's Global Center for Health Security, who said people should spend more time heeding the warnings of social distancing and handwashing, rather than focusing on semantics of a statewide order. ........ if Nebraskans do "what we've already implemented and we do it well, I think we'll get much more bang for our buck than we would from going to a much more draconian posture." ....... Aides to several of the Republican governors said the only persuasion that was likely to move their positions was specific guidance from the President.
...... DeSantis said it was the President's alarm -- not warnings health officials had been making for weeks -- that finally persuaded him.
“There has been talk of a German anomaly”
..... “It started as an epidemic of skiers” ...... Germany has been testing far more people than most nations. That means it catches more people with few or no symptoms, increasing the number of known cases, but not the number of fatalities. ...... early and widespread testing and treatment, plenty of intensive care beds and a trusted government whose social distancing guidelines are widely observed. ...... By the time Germany recorded its first case of Covid-19 in February, laboratories across the country had built up a stock of test kits. ...... By now, Germany is conducting around 350,000 coronavirus tests a week, far more than any other European country. ...... One key to ensuring broad-based testing is that patients pay nothing for it,
...... “A young person with no health insurance and an itchy throat is unlikely to go to the doctor and therefore risks infecting more people”.......... In most countries, including the United States, testing is largely limited to the sickest patients .... “We have so much capacity now we are accepting patients from Italy, Spain and France” ....... Beyond mass testing and the preparedness of the health care system, many also see Chancellor Angela Merkel’s leadership as one reason the fatality rate has been kept low. ..... Ms. Merkel has communicated clearly, calmly and regularly throughout the crisis
....... The chancellor’s approval ratings have soared. ....“Maybe our biggest strength in Germany,” said Professor Kräusslich, “is the rational decision-making at the highest level of government combined with the trust the government enjoys in the population.”
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says state not ready for "high point," as coronavirus death toll rises New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Saturday that more than 3,500 people in the state have died due to the coronavirus. More than 113,000 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in the state, which is the U.S. epicenter of the outbreak. ...... New York has not yet reached its expected peak in the number of cases. "We're not at the apex," Cuomo said, adding that the state is "not yet ready for the high point."
China and Huawei propose reinvention of the internet New architecture would enable cutting-edge technologies but western countries fear more control for state-run internet services ....... China has suggested a radical change to the way the internet works to the UN, in a proposal that claims to enable cutting-edge technologies such as holograms and self-driving cars but which critics say will also bake authoritarianism into the architecture underpinning the web. ....... The proposal has caused concerns among western countries including the UK, Sweden and the US, who believe the system would splinter the global internet and give state-run internet service providers granular control over citizens’ internet use. It has gained the support of Russia, and potentially Saudi Arabia ........ Huawei describes the existing internet infrastructure that underpins global networks — known as TCP/IP — as “unstable” and “vastly insufficient” to meet the requirements of the digital world by 2030, including self-driving cars, the ubiquitous internet of things and “holo-sense teleportation”. ....... “The research and innovation of New IP is open to scientists and engineers worldwide to participate in and contribute to” ...... New IP will enable “fine-grained controls in the foundations of the network” and that the Chinese approach “will lead to more centralised, top-down control of the internet and potentially even its users, with implications on security and human rights”. ...... TCP/IP is to the wired world what DNA is to the biological one ...... a more efficient address system is needed for emerging technologies. ...... New IP would provide this, allowing devices within the same network to communicate directly with each other without having to send information across the internet. ...... New IP would have something described as a “shut up command”, where a central point in the network could effectively cut off communication to or from a particular address, according to a source who was present. He described this feature as a “fundamental departure” from the current network model which acts as an “agnostic postman that simply moves boxes around”............. The quote 'one which is very free and open and . . . government hands-off “ is an invalid statement. We are being monitored by all the devices and by all the intelligence services of the great Empire. We have the largest prison camp in the world. We don't have voting rights for those incarcerated. They have no voice - none at all while, during the court hearings and none during incarceration and none after releasing to the society back to suffer. A large number of eligible voters are 'unregistered' and ineligible to vote . We have 800 or so military bases ruling over the world - the people's lives, their communications, their movements are controlled - in short we regulate the world. We have the exclusive super power tools - the Military and the Monetary powers to conduct Wars. So even now the people are not free; the essential economic freedom is constricted. ....... Internet is a top down structure. Now controlled by the US. In the new proposal a kind of local autonomy is envisaged for local coverage. ........ Don't give sainthood to the Western Democracies, herein ruling elites are far removed from the people. I say in China meritocracy dominates over Democracy, but humanity is not lost. For the common folks in both Nations lives are of the same nature. ......... Yes internet has to evolve but definitely not by the Chinese who have practiced genocide with its people ( famine) and are perfecting the art of citizen control. ...... Oh please, all of this concern for privacy of citizens' internet use was revealed to be a thorough sham by Assange, Snowden et. al. They exposed what the NSA and GCHQ were up to while western governments hid behind this sham of privacy rights and other feel good what not.... At least with the Chinese, its unambiguous that one is being surveilled. I much prefer that to western subterfuge. ........
How to get stimulus money direct deposits will begin by April 17 and checks will start being mailed in three weeks. ....... The IRS announced it will create an online portal for people to update or input their direct deposit details. ....... freelancers, sole proprietors and gig workers are all eligible for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. ....... The disaster loans, which are for those in a state that has declared a state of emergency, have a 3.75% interest rate for businesses and 2.75% rate for nonprofits and will have to be paid back. If you apply for these loans, you are eligible to apply for a $10,000 grant that you would receive three days after applying. ...... Business owners and sole proprietors can begin applying for the PPP loans on April 3, and freelancers and individual contractors can apply on April 10 ...... PPP loans can be forgiven if the funds are used for payroll expenses, mortgage payments, or rent and utility costs within eight weeks of receiving the loan. ...... Part-time workers or those who are self-employed, including gig workers, contractors and freelancers, are now eligible to apply for unemployment benefits. ....... The amount each person receives will depend upon which state they live in, but those who apply and receive benefits should expect $600 on top of what their state provides until July 31. ...... Workers can receive payments for up to 39 weeks.
described the Covid-19 pandemic as a “global issue that overrides geopolitics concerns”.
China’s coronavirus ‘victory’ and Britain’s threat of a ‘reckoning’ show two countries out of touch with the post-Covid-19 future the Communist Party has declared “victory” over the virus, and bearing news that the war is not actually won could be a sure path to demotion. ........ a “senior [UK] government source” claiming that after the coronavirus crisis was over, China would face a “reckoning” and might become a “pariah state”. ....... wanted to go “back to the diplomatic drawing board” with Beijing when the crisis was over. ...... Britain is angry with China in a way that would have seemed bizarre just two months ago, when Johnson risked the wrath of Donald Trump by allowing Huawei to bid to provide elements of Britain’s 5G network. ...... both China’s virus “victory” and Britain’s threat of a reckoning suggest something more ominous: a lack of reality about the geopolitical future once the disease really has retreated.
....... The virus has devastated the world economy for the immediate future, and this creates a major issue for Brexit Britain, still due to leave the structures of the EU single market on December 31 with no idea what trading arrangements it will have with the rest of Europe or the rest of the world. ...... The model of “hard Brexit” pursued by the Johnson administration is based on the idea that the UK would be entirely separate from any of the world’s largest trading blocs, but simultaneously part of a network of free-trade agreements policed by the World Trade Organisation. ..... Rage against China is perhaps an understandable reaction in the circumstances. But it is a reaction that is unsupported by strategy. ........ the EU, the international entity with the most interest in raising such issues on the international stage, but with which the British government is still in a form of Cold War, even during the virus crisis. ...... any “reckoning” makes the likelihood of opening China’s markets, one of the prizes hinted at by Brexiteers for the past four years, much harder to achieve. ..... In a strange way, Britain and China find themselves in a geopolitically similar position. Both are countries which are globally admired for aspects of what they do. But they are both a long way from the sweet spot that would give them a globally plausible voice when the virus crisis is over.
Fauci: 'I don't understand why' every state hasn't issued stay-at-home orders
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Understanding the Economic Shock of Coronavirus
What both the left and the right get wrong about the coronavirus economic crisis Financial historian Adam Tooze on the lessons policymakers need to learn, and fast....... This is a very different sort of economic crisis than 2008, and if we can’t see it for what it is —
if we refight the last crisis, rather than this one — we will fail.
........ locked in past arguments .... The job is maintaining the economy on life support during a period of an artificially induced coma while we address the public health challenge. ...... The ultimate perversity is that their inability to imagine a future will not enable them to return to the pre-crisis situation. If people were to take Trump’s words literally and act on them, the result would be some apocalyptic mess on the scale of Iran, not Italy. ....... You have to move precisely in order to stabilize the situation. If we don’t, what we’re headed toward is unspeakable mass death and huge economic losses. ....... China is the dog that hasn’t barked in this crisis so far because of the success of [its] conservative strategy. There has not been a big movement in the Chinese exchange rate and very little action on the Chinese balance of payments. ......... Rising fury between the two largest economies during a crisis of this scale seems like a very dangerous situation. .......... the Trump administration is such a headless chicken, that there isn’t even a concerted nationalist pushback against the global stabilization efforts being pursued by the Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund. ....... the disarticulation of levels of power in the US government is such that you can have people pursuing security policy in one corner and you can have people pursuing global stabilization of the global financial system in another corner. And then you have the clown car performance in the White House. Sometimes, of course, these things interfere, but by the standards of the great Marshall Plan era, where all of the elements lined up, American power is grotesquely incoherent at this point. .......... in ’07-’08, the truly egregious bailouts were being delivered to the people who engineered the leverage and reaped the rewards that generated the crisis............. Three million people have lost their jobs in a week. And they’re not losing them in the big companies. They’re losing them in the thousands and thousands of small- and medium-size enterprises. We don’t really have a good model for doing stimulus for them. ....... The left wants reformist change and the right wants to allow the market process to operate unencumbered. Both of them, I think, are operating with a kind of unrealistic understanding of the nature of this crisis. If we’re looking at as many as 10 million jobs lost in a matter of months, these arguments go out the window and the argument for preservation of what we can still preserve becomes absolutely overriding. .......
the reality we’re facing, which is a scaled-up version of what we’re seeing in the hospitals of northern Italy.
........ in two weeks’ time, when the hospitals of DC and the hospitals of New York are running over and they are triaging thousands of people every day.
Coronavirus: I'm in lockdown with my abuser "How many days will be like this?" he'd shouted, throwing a bottle of the spirit he'd been drinking against the wall. Geeta's children scrambled behind her for shelter. ...... "Usually he saves his anger for me, but he has begun to yell at them for minor things like leaving a cup on the floor. I then say something to divert his attention so he can be angry at me, but the more time we are together, the less I can think of to distract him." ....
coronavirus has put women in danger.
It was only a few months since Kai had started therapy for the years of physical and sexual abuse she had experienced with her father. She says he had abused her since she was a toddler. She still hadn't confided the full extent of the abuse to her mother and sister. ...... It was early days, but Kai says the therapy was helping her and she felt more in control. She was feeling more hopeful for the future. ....... "He's here the whole time," she whispers, "during the day he watches TV on his computer in the living room. At night I hear him watching porn." ..... She knows he's awake when she hears him making his breakfast smoothie. "I hate it so much, it's so loud, the sound of the blender petrifies me. It's the start of my day, when I have to be vigilant."
Google uses location data to show which places are complying with stay-at-home orders — and which aren’t
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Inside China’s controversial mission to reinvent the internet Whereas today’s internet is owned by everyone and no one, they were in the process of building something very different — a new infrastructure that could put power back in the hands of nation states, instead of individuals. ........ The idea was to illustrate that the current internet is a relic that has reached the limits of its technical prowess. It was time, Huawei proposed, for a new global network with a top-down design, and the Chinese should be the ones to build it....... Governments everywhere seem to agree that today’s model of internet governance — essentially, lawless self-regulation by private, mostly American companies — is broken. ........ Despite the might of today’s internet, it has no regulator; instead, power is largely held by a handful of US corporations — Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook. This lack of central oversight is the very thing that has allowed technologists to transform how we communicate and live but it has also enabled deep fractures in our social order, including the manipulation of public dialogue, the disruption of democracy and the rise of online surveillance....... many experts see the internet as a civic space that requires better public hygiene. Governments — whether democratic or authoritarian — are tired of being shut out and are agitating for more influence online......... The New IP presentation paints a picture of a digital world in 2030 where virtual reality, holographic communication and remote surgery are ubiquitous — and for which our current network is unfit. Traditional IP protocol is described as “unstable” and “vastly insufficient”, with “lots of security, reliability and configuration problems”........ Rather than a unified world wide web, citizens could be forced to connect to a patchwork of national internets, each with its own rules — a concept known in China as cyber sovereignty. ........ The advent of 5G — a much higher bandwidth network which will serve as the digital spine for a more automated world — has led to rising concern that products developed by Huawei will be built with “back doors” for spies in Beijing........ “New IP aims to provide new IP technology solutions that can support . . . future applications such as Internet of Everything, holographic communications, and telemedicine. The research and innovation of New IP is open to scientists and engineers worldwide to participate in and contribute to.” ....... “The internet is dominated by US companies, all data flows there. So, of course, they want to keep that power,” he says. “We are scared of Chinese repression. We are making caricatures of the Chinese in a borderline imperialist-racist way. But the internet governance today is not working. There is room for an alternative.” ....... “The risk is that if we fail to come up with a third model — one that empowers users and increases democracy and transparency online, and reduces the powers both of big tech and government security services — then more and more countries will tilt towards the Chinese model, rather than deal with the fallout of the failing Silicon Valley one.” ........ “The sleeping giant of democracy is finally stirring, lawmakers are waking up, but they need to feel the public at their backs. We need a western web that will offer the kind of vision of a digital future that is compatible with democracy. This is the work of the next decade.”
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Coronavirus: Chinese academics’ open letter urges Beijing, Washington to come together to beat Covid-19
Coronavirus: global trade braces for ‘tidal wave’ ahead, as shutdown batters supply chains A series of data points show where world trade is going, and the picture for air and sea freight is not a pretty one .....Supply and demand crises are coalescing on the high seas, as more countries shut their borders
China’s coronavirus ‘victory’ and Britain’s threat of a ‘reckoning’ show two countries out of touch with the post-Covid-19 future
RESEARCHERS ANNOUNCE PROMISING CORONAVIRUS VACCINE CANDIDATE THE DRUG IS DELIVERED THROUGH A BAND-AID-LIKE PATCH — NOT A NEEDLE.
Oops: Elon Musk Donated the Wrong Kind of Ventilator He promised life-saving ventilators. He delivered sleep apnea machines.
BILL GATES: US “MISSED THE OPPORTUNITY” TO PREVENT CATASTROPHE HERE'S HOW GATES WANTS TO STOP THE CORONAVIRUS BEFORE IT KILLS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS.
US weekly jobless claims double to 6.6 million
Pence seeks to blame CDC and China for any delay in US coronavirus response -- not Trump's initial failure to face reality
Lockdowns around the world bring rise in domestic violence Activists say pattern of increasing abuse is repeated in countries from Brazil to Germany, China to Greece
Bailouts for the Rich, the Virus for the Rest of Us
Coronavirus live updates: US braces for 'horrific' weeks as deaths top 5,100; unemployment claims soar; Dr. Fauci gets security
Ex-Obama adviser Plouffe predicts 'historic' turnout for Trump, says Biden now at a disadvantage Whoever wins in November, Plouffe said the next four years would be defined by "the economic ebb" that continues after the pandemic..... "Whether it's Trump who gets reelected or Biden in his first term, [it] is going to be defined ... by ... digging [us] out of a really deep economic hole." .... Looking ahead to this summer's nominating conventions, Plouffe floated the possibility of holding them virtually in the event that social distancing guidelines remain in place through the summer months...... "The same thing's gonna be true for the election," he warned. "You have to prepare to run an election in the fall that may be all mail-in. Will we have presidential debates? We can have them in a studio."
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Muscle aches, extreme fatigue: Coronavirus symptoms go beyond fever and cough Some of the first warning signs can include extreme fatigue, weakness and chills. But other symptoms often follow.
Asia may have been right about coronavirus and face masks, and the rest of the world is coming around
Doctors say it is only a matter of time before Covid sweeps India With its densely packed cities and under-funded medical system, India has little margin for error....... Cases of coronavirus in the world’s second-most populous country have ticked rapidly higher the past week, raising alarm over the ability of India, with its fragile health-care system and battered economy, to handle a virus crisis of the magnitude of China or Italy’s. While India has seen 27 deaths and just over 1,000 cases, experts fear the real tally could be much higher and say the disease is already spreading in the community. Authorities say there’s no evidence for this and have not significantly ramped up testing.
....... a place where the poor live in close quarters and the social distancing measures being advocated in the west are almost impossible...... epidemiologists say the numbers could be staggering. A University of Michigan-run study predicts the country could have 915,000 coronavirus infections by mid-May, more than the case load for the whole world right now
...... India is not looking hard enough for new cases, with one of the lowest testing rates in the world....... The country had tested just 35,000 people for coronavirus as of Sunday.... That’s despite 113 local government laboratories and as many as 47 private labs now authorized to process tests....... “I can’t see why India will be any different.” ..... Mass testing would be an unnecessary strain on resources, they say, with each test costing Rs 4,500 . Officials also say a ramp up in testing risks sparking a panic....... he and colleagues are seeing an influx of cold and flu cases...... the virus spreading to as much as 10% of the population -- some 130 million people. John worries the lockdown came too late.
What 3 month moratorium on repayment of term loans means for borrowers
German minister commits suicide after 'virus crisis worries'
'It is like wartime': Arundhati Bhattarcharya backs strong, radical measures to save economy Former State Bank of IndiaNSE -5.23 % chief Arundhati Bhattacharya has called for very strong, radical reforms to deal with the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.
G20 FMs, central bank governors decide on joint effort The ministers decided on delivering a joint G20 Action Plan, which will outline the individual and collective actions that G20 has taken and will be taking to respond to the pandemic, while also highlighting the medium-term measures needed to support the global economy during and after this phase.
View: India isn't US, it must get its people back to work as soon as possible Low income countries have a more fragile economic and social fabric than developed countries........ Just outside my home in Delhi, migrant workers flow by all day, their fates unclear. They are walking home to villages near Lucknow, Kanpur and points beyond, jammed together in packs. None knew when their next meal would come or how long it would take to get home. Almost all said they understand why the government locked down the country to contain a deadly disease. If they die of hunger on the road or when they get home jobless, they say, it doesn’t matter....... New Delhi imposed the strictest lockdown measures in the world, designed to keep1.3 billion people at home, on the logic that if the pandemic gets out of control, India’s frail healthcare system won’t be able to cope. It was hard to imagine the exact economic fallout. But harrowing images of migrant workers flooding out of the major cities by the tens of thousands have made the unintended consequences painfully clear...... In India, it is the normally probusiness upper class that wants to keep stringent containment measures in place for as long as it takes to control the virus. Left wing intellectuals call this approach a “socioeconomic purge”, which will save only those who can afford to isolate themselves. The rest risk death by starvation if not the pandemic.
........ In the US and Europe laid off workers can file immediately for unemployment benefits, and some European governments are now funding companies to keep employees on the payroll through the pandemic......... social distancing is impractical in poor, crowded societies, most sub-Saharan nations have not imposed lockdown. ...... Even China’s authoritarian regime, which effectively sealed off Hubei province and its population of 60 million, would have been hard pressed to extend the lockdown nationwide. Now, it is rapidly lifting those restrictions, at the calculated risk of a second wave of infections arising from returning workers...... mass unemployment and poverty also raise mortality rates, and that a lockdown induced economic depression could conceivably prove more deadly than the virus.
...... It is fine to junk pre-crisis deficit targets but not basic economics...... The hope is that the measures the government has already taken and the notion that warm weather slows the spread of coronavirus will prevent the virus from spreading at an exponential rate. If that hope proves mistaken, it will be very difficult to change course. But for now the government should be thinking about ways to ease the nationwide lockdown when it expires on April 15.
View: GoI needs to collect & analyse patient dataset to generate policy insights
Asia's largest slum Dharavi reports first coronavirus casualty The 56-year-old victim with no travel history owned a garment shop in the area...... Over a million people live in the 5 square km maze of dirty lanes of Dharavi, in cramped huts and next to open sewers.
Trump urged to pause H1B visa programme after job loss amidst layoffs A body representing American tech workers has urged Trump to suspend for this year the H-1B visa program.
China starts to report asymptomatic coronavirus cases
Sino-India ties will emerge stronger, scale new heights after COVID-19 pandemic: China Both the counties have finalised an ambitious 70 celebratory activities, a host of cultural, religious and trade promotion activities round the year besides military exchanges to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of their diplomatic relations...... at their second informal meeting in the Indian city of Chennai to properly manage their differences on border issues and maintain peace and tranquility in the region..... "China and India are the only two countries in the world with more than 1 billion people each. As long as one third of the global population can join hands, they can yield more benefits for not only themselves but also the wider world. The ongoing (coronavirus) epidemic fight offers a chance to do exactly that"
25,000 NCC cadets, retired military health professionals, 8,500 army doctors on standby, while 9000 forces’ hospital beds provided for coronavirus pandemic
Six COVID-19 patients die in Maharashtra, toll rises to 16
God goes online as places of worship shut doors to save people All major religious institutions are opening up online channels to stay connected with their devotees........ The muezzin calls out the faithful to prayer five times a day. But nobody comes to the mosque. These days, devotees spread out janamaz in the confines of their homes to pray. This, perhaps, is happening for the first time in 1391 years of Cheraman Juma Masjid
in Kerala, where an azaan has not beckoned believers to the mosque. ..... the oldest mosque in Indian sub-continent...... we’re live streaming the daily rituals on Facebook for our devotees… These bits are getting a lot of view these days – especially from devotees residing abroad .... The Our Lady of Good Health Basilica at Velankanni (Tamil Nadu) attracts over 2 crore visitors every year. The church, which remained open even in the aftermath of 2004 tsunami (which caused the death of over 500 pilgrims), is shut for the first time in 50 years. The authorities have decided to conduct the ‘Mass’ indoors, and stopped ‘baptism’ and ‘confirmation’ rituals. ..... “The priests are conducting Mass two times a day… The morning Mass – at 6AM – is live telecast on the Church website and on Youtube.
We’re witnessing a lot of visitors on our Youtube channel these days,” affirms Fr. A. Anto Jesuraj of the Velankanni church..... “There are 600 hotels here, employing thousands of people; all are shut now… The flower and fruit-sellers are not open anymore; this putting pressure on farmers who are sitting on piles of perishable stock. There are roughly 1000 beggars who live on alms given by devotees who come here… Now they don’t even get food to eat,” says Yadav..... The lockdown to prevent the spread of Coronavirus is almost total in all towns that huddle around important religious centres. Poor locals who earn their livelihood selling flowers, fruits, chaadars and incense sticks are now a worried lot. With no devotees around, only prayers may help them tide over.
Ready to help India to procure ventilators, but scaling-up production a challenge: China A number of countries including the US and India, are trying to procure ventilators needed for hospitals to deal with the demand caused by the coronavirus outbreak. Chinese ventilator producers say it is not easy for them to ramp up production as they also needed imported components.
Five more test positive; COVID-19 count rises to 46 in Punjab
India's response to Covid-19 has been pre-emptive, pro-active: Roderico Ofrin, WHO India's response to Covid-19 has been pre-emptive, pro-active and graded with high-level political commitment. India has shown ‘whole of government’ approach and is adopting ‘whole-of society approach', said WHO regional emergencies director of South-East Asia, Roderico Ofrin
ER doctor on coronavirus: What needs to happen now — a 5 week national quarantine Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, expressed recently that 200,000 Americans could die even “if we do things perfectly." However, the Society of Critical Care Medicine has projected that more than 960,000 people in the United States may require ventilators during the course of this pandemic. ...... we may see over 600,000 deaths in the United States
by the time this pandemic is over, and those numbers may increase if we are unable to produce enough ventilators for our response. .......... Federal officials have plucked the low-hanging fruit of mitigation — and now it’s time to reach deeper and enact a national quarantine. ...... This isn't my first time on the front lines of a war. This isn't my first time on the front lines of a war. I’ve also served on the front lines in Afghanistan. I have seen firsthand — and personally treated — hundreds of combat casualties. What we’re going to experience over the next few weeks will be much worse.. ........ unless this nation’s lawmakers can coordinate a national mass quarantine — for a minimum of five weeks — we will face an enemy that our system is unprepared to fight, and we will lose.
Five weeks is needed to overcome the long incubation period of this virus which can range anywhere from three to 12 days. ....... asymptomatic individuals may be contributing to this pandemic in a very significant way. Social distancing measures fail because we feel comfortable letting our guard down around asymptomatic individuals.
The coronavirus drama, with 180,000 cases, rather than the 15 at the time Trump made his “close to zero” prediction, is still closer to the beginning than the end.
....... he could easily end up keeping company historically with Hoover (who promised that “prosperity is around the corner”) and Lyndon B. Johnson (whose Vietnam generals fantasized about “light at the end of the tunnel”) as presidents who arrived in office with outsized personalities that shriveled as they failed to meet the political, practical, ultimately psychic needs of a nation in crisis.
expert predictions regarding a fall comeback for the virus.
......... a predicted larger peak epidemic later in the year: The more successful a strategy is at temporary suppression, the larger the later epidemic is predicted to be in the absence of vaccination, due to lesser build-up of herd immunity.” ...... The outcome of nationwide fall school shutdown would be disastrous: working parents will lose jobs to non-parents, and of those who do go to work, many will leave their younger children at home with older, more vulnerable adults — the exact opposite of a responsible aim at containing the virus. ........ What makes this such an unprecedented moment is that we are doing this to ourselves. The virus is not turning off the economy — we are turning it off to get ahead of the virus. But a modern capitalist economy cannot afford to turn itself off for 60 days or more at the whims of politicians more afraid of getting criticized by the national media than actually responding to the situation on the ground. ....... unless they are given a clear idea of a path forward by leaders in the public and private sector who chart our way back from potential economic ruin. ...... We must be able to care for the sick and protect the vulnerable without killing our economy. And we must give citizens confidence that as we get past the worst of this pandemic, the economy will reopen and rise toward a level that allows Americans to continue to work and thrive as a nation of free people.
