Thursday, May 07, 2020

Coronavirus News (82)



The economic cost of COVID19 is bigger than the great depression Whereas the Great Depression mostly had an impact on Europe and the USA, COVID-19 has hardly spared any country of the world. ....... The US’s growth is projected to be negative to -5.9 percent; while it is -5.2 percent for Japan. Germany’s growth would be -7.0 per cent and it will be -7.2 percent for France, -9.1 percent for Italy and -8.0 percent for Spain and -5.5 per cent for Russia. In Latin America, the economic growth is likely to slow down to -5.2 per cent. The economy of Brazil will be -5.3 percent; while or Mexico it will be -6.6 percent. ........ The UK economy is likely to decelerate to 35 percent with job losses of 2 million people. .......... The economic growth of South Asia is likely to fall to 1.8 and 2.8 percent in 2020, which earlier was forecasted to remain closer to 6 percent. Supply chains in the region are disrupted. Tourism is in shambles. Inflows of remittances are disrupted. Industries are the most affected. Investment sentiments have almost dried. Inequality of income and resources in this region has impacted the poor people most as they are more infected with COVID-19 as compared to other classes of people. Conditions are such that it is most difficult for poor people to implement social distancing. Access to health facilities, including the soap, is inadequate for them. They are also the unfortunate lots who suffer most due to the job loss and at the same time get affected by the soaring price of essentials. ....... Economic growth in India is projected as 1.9 per cent this year, which is the worst growth performance since 1991. For China, economic growth is projected at 1.2 per cent. ............

Estimates are that many of the airlines in different countries will go bankrupt by the end of May. ILO has estimated that 81 percent of the global workforce of 3.3 billion are directly or indirectly affected by workplace closures. In India itself where almost 90 per cent of the people are working in the informal sector, nearly 400 million workers are likely to fall deeper into poverty.

........... the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has threatened to suspend bilateral labour agreements with countries that refuse to repatriate workers to take them back to their home. There are 275,000 Nepali workers in the UAE. Even if a part of them are laid off or their work visas are expired, Nepal does not seem to be prepared to take them back to home through flights and to put them in quarantine.



Fauci: No scientific evidence the coronavirus was made in a Chinese lab In an exclusive interview, the face of America’s COVID-19 response cautions against the rush for states to reopen, and offers his tips for handling the pandemic's information deluge. ........... Anthony Fauci has been the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for almost 40 years, where he has tackled dozens of outbreaks, including HIV/AIDS. To him, the coronavirus is "extraordinary." ........... the best evidence shows the virus behind the pandemic was not made in a lab in China. ......... “a circular argument” ........... Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species .......... he also doesn’t entertain an alternate theory—that someone found the coronavirus in the wild, brought it to a lab, and then it accidentally escaped. ...........

Fauci is most concerned that the United States will be put to the test this fall and winter by a second wave of COVID-19 if the country does not blunt the infection rate by the summer.

............ “Shame on us if we don't have enough tests by the time this so-called return might occur in the fall and winter” ......... “I don't think there's a chance that this virus is just going to disappear,” he says. “It's going to be around, and if given the opportunity, it will resurge.” ............. the U.S. should also focus this summer on properly reinforcing the nation’s health care system, ensuring the availability of hospital beds, ventilators, and personal protective equipment for health care workers. ........ The U.S. witnessed about 20,000 to 30,000 new cases every day in the month of April, suggesting the country is stuck in its peak. ........... Fauci has said that he thinks a final vaccine could be available for general use as early as January, which would break records for the speed at which previous vaccines were developed. ............ The candidate is what is known as an mRNA vaccine—a drug that uses snippets of a virus’s genetic material—rather than the dead or weakened virus itself—to build the proteins that trigger the body’s protective immune response. .............

the animal trials so far show that modest doses of the mRNA vaccine for coronavirus have also generated a strong immune response.

....... Fauci told National Geographic he’s concerned about states rushing to reopen before their infection rates fall. ..........

his family and faith keep him going despite his increasingly hectic schedule.

........... the majority of people actually either get well without any symptoms—they're called asymptomatic—or they have minimal symptoms, where they get a fever, some aches, and then they recover. .............. The two most widely discussed vaccine candidates are an mRNA vaccine from Moderna, which reached human trials in a record 42 days, and Oxford University’s candidate, based on what’s known as a nonreplicating viral vector. ...........

The mRNA one is already well into phase one of clinical trials, and we're getting ready to go into phase two and three sometime in the early summer.

........ infections must go down for 14 days before you can enter into phase one for reopening. If you fulfill the requirements of phase one, you move to phase two. If you do it there, you go to phase three. .......... What’s impressed me the most—but clearly in a disturbing way—is the extraordinary efficiency of how the virus spreads. It spreads so much more efficiently than influenza does. You see situations where people at home try and physically separate; they have no contact except they've touched the plate or a doorknob, and they wind up getting infected. ................

it’s a very, very transmissible virus.

............ We're going to be put to the test as we move toward the fall and winter of this year. ...........

We now will have a few months—May June, July, August—to prepare, by making sure our health system is adequately supplied

with ventilators, ICU beds, personal protective equipment, etcetera.............. So that by the time we get to September, we don't have the dialogue continually fixating on do you have enough tests? Shame on us if we don't have enough tests by the time this so-called return might occur in the fall and winter. ............ the best way to prevent spread is to maintain the physical distance of six feet. ......... when all of these studies come across my desk, I read the title and the abstract. If it looks feasible, I'll put it aside and try and read it. When it's something that they think I should read, they make sure I read it. ........... getting a quick breakfast, and looking at a thousand emails—literally a thousand. ........ The whole day is punctuated by everybody needing to talk to you: every governor in the states, every congressional leader, every leader in the White House. It's constant conference calls. It's an almost impossible situation—and that's seven days a week. ..........

I have to wake up in the morning and literally, without being facetious, ask my wife, what day is it?

.......... You got to remember to eat, and you've got to remember to sleep. ......



Potentially historic May snowstorm headed for Northeast and New England In addition to snow, 75 million people will wake up to below freezing temperatures Saturday. For many cities it will be colder than it was on Christmas Day. ........ On Friday, a storm system moving into the Northeast will clash with bitter cold Arctic air courtesy of the polar vortex, bringing the potential for heavy, wet snow across the interior Northeast and New England. ....... Widespread snowfall totals will range from a dusting to 6-8 inches in some spots, while isolated areas in extreme northern New England could see up to a foot. If this happens,

it will shatter May snowfall records

. Some cities that could see snow include Syracuse, Rochester, Binghamton, Albany in New York; Scranton, Pennsylvania; and Burlington, Vermont. ......... The cold air that will be responsible for the snow in the Northeast and New England will be record-shattering. ......... Wind chills in the Northeast will be in the 20s and 30s, and

for many cities, it will be colder on Saturday than it was on Christmas Day



PENNSYLVANIA MAN PLOUGHS SUV THROUGH CROWD OF FIRST RESPONDERS AT 'SALUTE TO NURSES' PARADE AMID PANDEMIC
One of Trump's personal valets has tested positive for coronavirus Trump was upset when he was informed Wednesday that the valet had tested positive, a source told CNN, and the President was subsequently tested again by the White House physician. .... "The President and the Vice President have since tested negative for the virus and they remain in great health." ........ the news that someone close to Trump had tested positive for coronavirus was "hitting the fan" in the West Wing. .......... Trump, who is a self-described germophobe, has chastised aides before who coughed or sneezed in his presence. He has claimed to rarely get sick himself. ........ Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and the senior staffers who regularly interact with them are still being tested weekly for coronavirus .......... The White House is continuing to use the rapid Abbott Labs test, which provide results in about 15 minutes. .......

the White House has not enforced strict social distancing guidelines for staffers and few people inside the building wear masks during the day, including valets

. ............ a negative test and lack of symptoms isn't a sure sign that someone can't spread the virus.

Three Russian doctors fall from hospital windows, raising questions amid coronavirus pandemic
Italian court rules food theft 'not a crime' if hungry
Black communities account for disproportionate number of Covid-19 deaths in the US, study finds



Trump Is About to Go Full Coronavirus Death Denier During the initial stages of the coronavirus outbreak, the Trump administration believed the media was exaggerating the virus in order to scare people and hurt Trump’s polling. ........ The news source he trusts, Fox News, has been running hours of programming questioning the death totals. .........

the official recorded death count is lower, not higher, than the actual coronavirus death toll.



There Is Still No Plan Trump seems content to have an excuse for losing the election, rather than trying to beat coronavirus and have a chance at winning it. ........ the lockdowns were designed to slow the spread of the disease to give us time to catch up and prepare for what would happen when restrictions were relaxed. In the month since, we’ve had a lot more action at the state and local level, though that action has moved in different directions at once — Los Angeles rolling out free universal testing and Massachusetts building out a contact-tracing army while Texas reopens dangerously close to its own peak and Georgia leans into its own coronavirus surge.

That disarray is because, in the White House and throughout the federal government, there is still nothing like a vision or concerted effort to coordinate a national response.

......... guidelines prepared by the CDC to inform state and local officials in managing their own re-openings were abruptly shelved, with agency scientists told the plan “would never see the light of day.” .......... the country has accomplished essentially none of the necessary preparatory work required to safely begin to reopen and return to some semblance of normal life. ............ Testing capacity had only doubled during a month of lockdown designed, presumably, to buy time to mount a sufficient response. ....... calls for 5 million tests daily by June and 20 million every day before proceeding to full reopening. Five million is 25 times what we are doing now; 20 million is nearly a hundred times more. ........ the death totals were likely to get considerably worse very fast — with an average of about 3,000 deaths (and 200,000 new cases) a day as soon as June 1. ........... The median projection — 3,000 deaths a day, as soon as the end of this month — is quite horrific, a 50 percent increase above our current peak. ..........

For June 1, that projection is for 15,000 deaths every day. If that rate held for a month, it would produce 750,000 deaths just in June.

.......... though the leaked projections end June 1, the model shows no sign of flattening then, which means, as far as the CDC is concerned,

not only could the totals grow as the summer goes on but they could accelerate

..........

South Korea, which had its first confirmed case on the same day as the U.S.

.......... In April, 85 South Koreans died from the disease; in the U.S., that month, 62,000 Americans died — 85 every single hour ............. much more recently, with many fewer resources, the state of Kerala, in India, has managed to drive all the way to zero its number of cases through an aggressive regime of testing and tracing. ......... Every country in the world has seen steep declines in new cases but the U.S., U.K., and Sweden, which has chosen to skip shelter-in-place guidelines and experience a more severe outbreak by design, in the hopes that the epidemic will pass through the population more quickly. .....

the American response is functionally indistinguishable from Sweden’s: “Trump is pursuing a herd immunity strategy,” as he put it, “whether intentionally or not.” ..... would result in millions of American deaths. That’s millions plural.

........ it is increasingly hard to hang our failures on anything but the president’s refusal to lead, and the total vacuum that has opened up at the heart of what should have been the country’s disease response. .......... No clear federal clinical guidelines, no comprehensive national strategy of social distancing or shelter in place, no clearinghouse of best practices about how to avoid spreading the disease. No rapid mass production of PPE or other necessary equipment. And above all no use of federal powers to build out testing or contact-tracing capacity. ......... All of this could have been kick-started in January ........ But it also could’ve been kick-started in February, or March, or April. ........... doubling down on a policy of indifference ........ “essential” workers are being treated as “sacrificial.” ...... “I cannot underscore enough that the plan is to make the working class into human sacrifices on the altar of capitalism” ........

“The plan is to have no plan,” he wrote, “to let daily deaths between one and three thousand become a normal thing, and then to create massive confusion about who is responsible

— by telling the governors they’re in charge without doing what only the federal government can do, by fighting with the press when it shows up to be briefed, by fixing blame for the virus on China or some other foreign element, and by ‘flooding the zone with shit,’ Steve Bannon’s phrase for overwhelming the system with disinformation, distraction, and denial, which boosts what economists call ‘search costs’ for reliable intelligence.” ............. he hasn’t even tried, not even bothering to feel out the options made available to him by the crisis ......... for all liberals have worried over the president’s authoritarian tendencies the last few years, he has behaved in office much more like the con man he was in business than all the Mussolinis, Erdogans, and Putins he professed to admire in politics.




CORONAVIRUS SURVIVORS 'PERMANENTLY DISQUALIFIED' FROM JOINING U.S. MILITARY, RECRUITMENT MEMO SUGGESTS "During the medical history interview or examination, a history of COVID-19, confirmed by either a laboratory test or a clinician diagnosis, is permanently disqualifying," the memo reads. ......... over 6,500 coronavirus cases at more than 150 bases in every state in the United States, except Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota and Montana. National Guard forces in at least 20 states have also reported cases.

When Worlds Collide: A Nurse’s Story A surgical mask then covers the N-95; I need to protect this scarce item in order to reuse it again later. ......... My patient is desaturating, which means his oxygen levels are dropping. ........ However, I also knew that we health workers were protected and had been trained for this. We knew that our personal protective equipment (PPE) kept us safe. My colleagues and I worked in two-person teams to watch over each other and alert our partner if any skin got exposed. ......... I remove my N-95 in order to switch to a surgical mask, which allows me to breathe with more ease when I am not caring for a patient. I stare at the N-95, knowing it may now be contaminated and that I will have to reuse it later anyway. ........

Down the hall arrives one of our own: a doctor, who is also our colleague. She looks pale and gray, and is very short of breath. I hear her crying, “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die.”

.......... COVID-19 continues to expose many of the problems that we have turned a blind eye to, not only in wealthy countries like the US but also in countries with much weaker health systems throughout the world. People in countries like DRC and Liberia, which get ravaged by epidemics every year, do not seem so different from us after all. That is because they never were.


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Inside a New York hospital: "The ER I once knew so well has now been converted into closed glass doors with people behind them gasping for air. I notice a change in my coworkers. I recognize their facial expressions with those I’ve seen on the field when working in #Ebola or in #war zones.⁣ ⁣ It’s fear, it’s exhaustion, it’s grief. Most of the people working in this #pandemic never signed up for this. They were not trained for it, not professionally and even less mentally. American #healthcareproviders are not used to making choices due to scarcity, and now, as our #PPE supply dwindles and ventilators are becoming scarce for our patients, we are forced to make decisions that will either end the life of a patient or our own." - Valérie Gruhn, writing on her twitter account⁣ ⁣ Valerie has worked as a @doctorswithoutborders trauma nurse on several assignments, including on the frontlines against Ebola in DRC, and in war-torn Mosul, Iraq. Now she works separately for a New York hospital, where she and her colleagues are showing up on the frontlines against COVID-19.⁣ ⁣ To all the hardworking teams fighting COVID-19 in their hometowns and around the world, thank you. We're all in this together. #stayhome #flattenthecurve #clapforourcarers #savinglives #coronavirus #nyc #frontline #together #nurse #healthcareworkers
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China releases animation mocking US response to coronavirus outbreak In an interview, Mr Trump said he believes China's handling of the coronavirus pandemic is proof that Beijing "will do anything they can" to make him lose his re-election bid in November.



Surgeon General Doubles Down: Masks Increase Virus Risk "There was a study in 2015 looking at medical students. And medical students wearing surgical masks touch their faces on average 23 times. We know a major way that you can get respiratory diseases like coronavirus is by touching a surface and then touching your face." ..... Masks also can give the wearer a "false sense of security" and can encourage people to be too close to each other ....

if healthy people feel better by wearing a mask, "by all means, wear it" but they should not touch their faces.

..... He also insisted the general public should not wear medical-style N95 masks, because they must be fitted properly to avoid infection.

Over 70 percent of tested inmates in federal prisons have COVID-19
Cuomo says it’s ‘shocking’ most new coronavirus hospitalizations are people who had been staying home 66% of new admissions related to the virus are people who were at home ........ a majority of the cases in New York City are minorities, with nearly half being African American or Hispanic. ...... 66% of new admissions were from people who had largely been sheltering at home. The next highest source of admissions was from nursing homes, 18%. ..... these people were literally at home ....... 84% of the hospitalized cases were people who were not commuting to work through car services, personal cars, public transit or walking. He said a majority of those people were either retired or unemployed. Overall, some 73% of the admissions were people over age 51. .......... those who are hospitalized are predominantly from the downstate area in or around New York City, are not working or traveling and are not essential employees. .......... the new survey results appear to clash with Cuomo’s prior assurances that isolation can reliably prevent transmission.



Parts of Asia that relaxed restrictions without a resurgence in coronavirus cases did these three things South Korea and Hong Kong successfully relaxed pandemic restrictions without having another rise in cases by

data sharing, using targeted testing and contact tracing

. ......... Public health specialists who spoke with CNBC said they’re not confident U.S. officials are taking note of what’s working and not working in Asia. ........ by testing broadly throughout the population and tracing contacts of infected individuals. ........ While Hong Kong and South Korea have largely succeeded in containing the epidemics in their borders without enforcing the most restrictive policy measures, Singapore, Japan and China have all struggled to do the same. The varying results of efforts across Asia to contain the virus and reopen businesses has taught researchers and public health specialists about the nature of the virus and given policymakers proven methods to fight it. ........... “The only way to control and suppress this virus, this Covid-19, is to actually find [cases], quarantine those contacts, isolate the cases and it will be brought under control.” ...........

They predict the virus will likely bounce back in the U.S. as it has in Singapore and Japan.

....... “All it takes is one infected person and it spreads like wildfire.” ....... Singapore’s hospitals are now mostly full and officials are scrambling to boost capacity. ...... “You cannot overestimate this virus’ ability to find vulnerabilities in society and these are often vulnerabilities that amplify socioeconomic differences” ...... “Every country that’s under lockdown I think has a crux in the outbreak it wishes it could go back to and I guess at the moment, Singapore is wishing it could go back to the early days in those dormitories.” ....... Infections are accelerating rapidly among prisoners in the U.S. ........ Last week, the CDC said about 3% of workers in over 100 meat processing plants have tested positive for the coronavirus. As the virus circulates among prisoners and low-wage factory workers, such groups could become vehicles of transmission even as the outbreak is stamped out elsewhere. ........ South Korea is one of the few countries that has prevented a sustained Covid-19 epidemic without steamrolling its economy. Instead of quarantining entire cities like China and shuttering businesses and factories like Europe and the U.S., it implemented

the world’s biggest testing and tracing program

. ...... South Korea set up hundreds of walk-in and drive-thru testing centers, traced the origin of local outbreaks and isolated people who might have come in contact with the virus. ......... “South Korea successfully flattened the curve on Covid-19 in 20 days without enforcing extreme draconian measures that restrict freedom and movement of people” ........... Government messaging has been clear, consistent and mostly communicated by health officials rather than politicians ....... Watching Americans protest social distancing requirements outside state capitals across the U.S., Kim said he wasn’t confident U.S. citizens could be as disciplined as South Korea. Mixed messaging from the White House and state leaders about economic reopening has not helped the public ....... Hong Kong closed its international border to travelers from most countries on March 23. Those still allowed to enter, are compelled into a mandatory 14-day quarantine. ........

The patchwork policies of states lifting regulations will only encourage interstate transmission and exacerbate infection

...... unsuspecting travelers could be vehicles for the virus and if pockets of infection threaten to overwhelm society so that it has to shut down again, the economic consequences could be even more devastating. ........ “The big lesson is that while the coronavirus pandemic is not under control anywhere in the world, it’s a threat to everywhere else”







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