Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Coronavirus News (14)

Covid-19 hits doctors, nurses and EMTs, threatening health system
New York, New Jersey coronavirus ‘attack rate’ is 5 times higher than rest of US, top official says “The New York metro area of New Jersey, New York City, and parts of Long Island have an attack rate close to one in 1,000” ..... roughly 28% of the specimens submitted in that region have tested positive for COVID-19 ...... “Clearly, the virus had been there for a number of weeks.”...... New York is currently the hardest-hit state in the country, ahead of New Jersey, California and Washington state. New York City, alone, accounts for 12,305 of the 20,875 confirmed infections in the state as of Monday morning ...... Cuomo estimated up to 80% of the state’s more than 19.4 million residents will get the coronavirus. Last week, Cuomo estimated there are likely “tens of thousands” of COVID-19 cases in the state among residents who didn’t know they had it.











Japanese PM and IOC chief agree to postpone 2020 Olympics until 2021
Coronavirus stayed on surfaces for up to 17 days on Diamond Princess cruise, CDC says
Arizona man dies, wife ill after taking drug touted as virus treatment: "Trump kept saying it was basically pretty much a cure"
Amid coronavirus crisis, Hollywood writers and major studios can’t agree on contract extension
NY Democratic leader floats nixing state’s presidential primary
Trump predicts 'this is going to be bad' but vows to reopen America In his zeal to fire up American prosperity after helping to trigger an unprecedented self-inflicted economic meltdown, Trump is already losing patience -- weeks before the virus may peak. ....... "Our country was not built to be shut down," the President warned on Monday. "We are going to be opening up our country for business because our country was meant to be open." ....... His comments came on day when the number of confirmed cases soared past 40,000 and 100 people died in a single day for the first time. Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of Trump's coronavirus task force, warned that the "attack rate" of the disease in New York, America's dominant economic and financial powerhouse, was five times that of elsewhere. ....... he argued that "if it were up to the doctors, they may say let's keep it shut down -- let's shut down the entire world." ....... attempts to reverse a shutdown to alleviate a horrific unemployment picture that has devastated the economy are premature at a moment when the pandemic is still exploding. ............

The President's upbeat prediction of a return to full speed ahead directly contradicted the actions of state governors nationwide -- who are imposing stay-at-home orders, closing businesses and ordering schools out for summer in March.

....... Trump's course change -- after warning last week the shutdown could last until July or August -- was consistent with the scattershot way in which he has managed the coronavirus pandemic. ....... He spent weeks denying it was a serious problem, predicting it could simply go away and was not much worse than the flu....... Then, with the crisis building last week, he turned himself into a wartime leader -- vowing to battle an "invisible enemy" and warning normal life may not resume until July or August......... It was noticeable Monday that Trump was talking about the virus in the past tense.........

he went back to comparing Covid-19 to the seasonal flu even though it is far more virulent, has a far higher death rate and has no vaccine.

........ There is no mistaking the severity of the nightmare that has turned one of the strongest economies in American history into a disaster area that might rival the Great Depression. ........ Trump's apparent impatience, only days after declaring war on the virus, raises questions about the depth of his thinking and his own motivations given the importance of a strong economy to his reelection campaign. ......... There was a strong sense in Trump's press conference on Monday that he was engaging in wishful thinking that the pandemic would get better in order to allow his preferred reality -- unleashing what he hopes will be a post-crisis boom. ......... Apart from questions about Trump's motivation, there are deep practical questions about his desire for a swift reopening of the economy. First up, he doesn't have the power to do it....... Many of the shutdowns imposed on US cities and states have been ordered by governors fearful that their hospitals could be overrun.

This cure is killing economy, crushing dreams — we need to figure out a better way Countries have experienced economic depressions before, but not usually as a matter of choice....... The nation-wide coronavirus shutdowns over the last two weeks have ground parts of the American country to a halt. We have probably never before in our history seen so much economic activity vaporize so quickly — within days or even hours. The Great Depression and the panics of the 19th century are the only possible analogues. ...... These are the top-line numbers of a devastation that will throw millions out of work, stress families and blight personal lives, destroy the dreams of small-business owners and bankrupt industries. This is a tale of human misery, not just of declines in the stock market and in GDP. ..........

even the biggest, best-designed stimulus bill is no fix for shuttered store-fronts and factories. And how many times can Washington pass $2 trillion bills?

......... Would New York City restaurants really be full if it weren’t for the Gov. Andrew Cuomo-ordered lockdown? Would people be eager to get on airplanes? To book a cruise? To see a Broadway show? To go to Disneyland? ........ No matter how bad ­today’s lockdowns are, imagine if we decided to undertake them at a time when America already had a million cases and the health-care system was in deep crisis. ........ Our aim should be to shift from the blunderbuss solution of mass shutdowns to rifle-shot remedies, on the model of what South Korea has done with its widespread testing ...... We should focus on the production of tests, ventilators, masks and other protective gear on an industrial scale. Whatever the federal government has to spend or do to get it done should happen — just as if we were on a wartime footing. ....... population-wide testing ...... Whatever path we take will be costly and have its downsides. All we can know with certainty is that the current path is untenable.

Cuomo: Coronavirus spreading like ‘bullet train’ in NY as cases top 25,000 Cuomo tore into President Trump and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s vow to send 400 ventilators to New York — a sliver of the 30,000 it’s anticipated the state will need. ........ a continuing flood of cases that now stands at 25,665 in the state and 14,904 in the city. The death toll reached 210. .....

“The president said it’s a war,” continued Cuomo. “Well then act like it’s a war!”

....... “We’re not slowing it, and it is accelerating on its own,” said Cuomo, noting that number of cases in New York is now doubling every three days. ...... The rate has led experts to project an eventual peak demand of 140,000 hospital beds — up from the 110,000 that Cuomo had previously predicted. ......... the worst could hit in as little as two weeks. .......“The apex is higher than we thought, and the apex is sooner than we thought.” ...... “But if you ask the American people to choose between public health and the economy, then it’s no contest.

How Trump can win re-election in a pandemic Three weeks ago, President Trump seemed poised for victory in November. The economy was strong. The nation was at peace. That is usually a recipe for re-election ...... But then the coronavirus hit. ....... If we were going by the book, we’d have to conclude that Trump is a goner in November. History tells us that presidents do not win re-election in situations like this.

The last global crisis didn't change the world. But this one could To experience a crisis is to inhabit a world that is temporarily up for grabs. ........ our only guaranteed exit route from enforced “social distancing” is a vaccine, which may not be widely available until the summer of next year. ......... It is now inevitable that we will experience deep global recession, a breakdown of labour markets and the evaporation of consumer spending. The terror that drove government action in the autumn of 2008 was that money would stop coming out of the cash machines, unless the banking system was propped up.

It turns out that if people stop coming out of their homes, then the circulation of money grinds to a halt as well.

Small businesses are shedding employees at a frightening speed ........

There is a grim truth at the centre of the present crisis that makes it feel closer to a war than a recession

....... The degree of devastation it will spread is due to very basic features of global capitalism that almost no economist questions – high levels of international connectivity and the reliance of most people on the labour market. ........ this pandemic does not discriminate on the basis of economic geography. It may end up devaluing urban centres, as it becomes clear how much “knowledge-based work” can be done online after all. ........ a striking feature of the last few weeks has been the universality of human behaviours, concerns and fears. ....... coronavirus is not a spectacle happening somewhere else: it’s going on outside your window, right now, and in that sense it meshes perfectly with the age of ubiquitous social media ....... In the end, government policymakers will ultimately be judged in terms of how many thousands of people die. ......... The immediacy of this visceral, mortal threat makes this moment feel less like 2008 or the 1970s and more like the other iconic crisis in our collective imagination – 1945. ........ Rishi Sunak’s astonishing announcement that the government would cover up to 80% of the salaries of workers if companies kept them on their payroll. ........ Rather than view this as a crisis of capitalism, it might better be understood as the sort of world-making event that allows for new economic and intellectual beginnings. ........ as an authentically global crisis, it is also a global turning point. There is a great deal of emotional, physical and financial pain in the immediate future. But a crisis of this scale will never be truly resolved until many of the fundamentals of our social and economic life have been remade.

Coronavirus: China braced for second economic shock wave as Covid-19 controls kill demand

After riding out a supply shock that closed down most of its factories, China is bracing for a second wave demand shock to its economy

........ The situation in the US, for instance, is deteriorating so quickly that Morgan Stanley economists changed their forecast of a minus 4 per cent contraction in the economy in the second quarter to a record low minus 30.1 per cent, within the space of a week........ the coronavirus could cost China’s migrant workers a combined 800 billion yuan (US$115 billion) in lost wages ....... “Half of Beijing took a salary hit if they did not get fired.” ...... Most economists now expect the Chinese economy to shrink this quarter for the first time since 1976

After Coronavirus the World Will Never Be the Same. But Maybe, It Can Be Better we feel anxious and scared about what’s ahead. ...... we’re never going “back to normal”—and what we should be doing now to make the new normal a good one. .......

“It’s my contention that this isn’t a 2001 moment, this is something much bigger. I think of this as a 1941 moment.”

....... 1941 was the thick of World War II. Nobody knew what the outcome of the war was going to be, everybody was terrified, and the US and its allies were losing the war. “But even in the height of those darkest of times,” Metzl said, “people began imagining what the future world would look.” ....... It was 1941 when President Roosevelt gave his famous Four Freedoms speech, and when American and British leadership issued the Atlantic Charter, which set out their vision for the post-war international order. To this day, our lives exist within that order. .......Institutions intended to foster global cooperation (like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and the World Health Organization) have been starved in the context of this re-nationalization, and as a result we don’t have effective structures in place to address global crises—and not just coronavirus. Think of climate change, protecting the oceans, preparing for a future of automation and AI; no country can independently take on or solve these massive challenges. ........... “The pandemic moves at the speed of globalization, but so does the response,” Metzl said. “The tools we’re bringing to this fight are greater than anything our ancestors could have possibly imagined.” ....... at the same time we’re experiencing this incredible bottom-up energy and connectivity, we’re also experiencing an abysmal failure of our top-down institutions. ......... If the poorer parts of the world get hit hard by the virus, we may see fragile states collapsing, and multi-lateral states like the European Union unable to support the strain. .......... “The world is not going to snap back to being exactly like it was before this crisis happened,” Metzl said. “We’re going to come out of this into a different world.” .............. take the trends that were already in motion and hit the fast-forward button. Virtualization of events, activities, and interactions. Automation of processes and services. Political and economic decentralization. ........ ....What if, three months ago, there’d been a global surveillance system in place, and at the first signs of the outbreak, an international emergency team led by the World Health Organization had immediately gone to Wuhan? ........ this new normal that feels so shocking to us right now will simply be normal for our children and grandchildren. ......... In 1941, the global planning process was top-down: a small group of powerful, smart people decided how things would be then took steps to make their vision a reality. But this time will be different; to succeed, the new global plan will need to have meaningful drive from the bottom up. ........ “We need to recognize a new locus of power,” Metzl said. “And it’s us. Nobody is going to solve this for us. This is our moment to really come together.”

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