The Walls Come Down: No Travel Betwen US and Europe for 30 Days

[Zaune]

And it's not like leaving whatever percentage of New Yorkers haven't yet been exposed confined within the city limits with everyone who has been infected is exactly an ideal situation either. Social distancing is nigh-impossible with that level of population density.

Not that there are many places to evacuate the uninfected to, even if there was a screening method that could be done in five minutes at a roadblock.

[The Romulan Republic]

Dr. Fauci, who must surely have blackmail material on the Donald not to have been fired at this point, is currently estimating between 100,000 and 200,000 US deaths, with cases running into the millions:

https://globalnews.ca/news/6747721/coro ... ci-deaths/

The U.S. government’s foremost infection disease expert says the United States could experience more than 100,000 deaths and millions of infections from the coronavirus pandemic.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, offered his prognosis as the federal government weighs rolling back guidelines on social distancing in areas that have not been hard-hit by the outbreak at the conclusion of the nationwide 15-day effort to slow the spread of the virus.

“I would say between 100,000 and 200,000 cases,” he said, correcting himself to say he meant deaths. “We’re going to have millions of cases.” But he added “I don’t want to be held to that” because the pandemic is “such a moving target.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the President downplaying the severity of coronavirus is “deadly."

“As the President fiddles, people are dying. We just have to take every precaution.” #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/EAnhwW0QKi

— CNN (@CNN) March 29, 2020

STORY CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that Trump’s downplaying of the severity of the novel coronavirus outbreak is “deadly.”

“As the president fiddles, people are dying,” Pelosi said. “We just have to take every precaution.”

Pelosi said the government needs to work in a “unifying way” to “get the job done,” but that they “cannot continue to allow [Trump] to continue to make these underestimates of what is actually happening here.”
“This is such a tragedy, but we don’t know the magnitude of it because we do not have the adequate testing,” she said.

[ Sign up for our Health IQ newsletter for the latest coronavirus updates ]

-With files from Global News

In some bright news, Western Canada seems to be looking at a curve closer to South Korea's:

https://theglobeandmail.com/canada/brit ... gets-some/

It is a measure of the extremely serious circumstances Canada faces in fighting the coronavirus that British Columbians were given what was cast as good news Friday: that provincial health officials expect we are facing a South Korea-type pandemic curve.

In the grim world of forecasting what devastation COVID-19 will deliver, having a graph that looks more like that suffered in South Korea – where 139 people have died – is infinitely better than having a graph that looks like Italy, where 8,165 people have died, 660 on Friday alone.

Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry released detailed modelling Friday of how the virus is spreading in British Columbia. The predictive information is crucial to aiding health officials in their efforts to prepare for what is expected to be an onslaught of cases and to offer a window into whether we have –- or can – “flatten the curve.”

Dr. Henry cautiously noted that we already have bent it a little.

``I’m trying not to over-call it but I do believe we’ve seen a flattening, a falling off of that curve,'' Dr. Henry told a news conference.

As a result of sweeping restrictions on movement, the closure of schools and many retailers, the cessation of almost all travel and the repeated urging of social distancing, British Columbia’s rate of increase in daily cases changed from 24 per cent from before the measures to an average daily increase of 12 per cent later this week.

Currently, B.C.'s reported cases amount to about 130 per one million population, Dr. Henry said. Had the province continued on the same trajectory it was on as of March 14, British Columbia today would likely be sitting at about 215 cases per million.

The data crunchers at the health ministry modelled whether British Columbia’s resources – ventilators, intensive-care beds, personal protective gear – would be enough to carry the province through three scenarios: The one experienced by South Korea, the one experienced by Hubei province in China where the virus first broke out, and the especially devastated situation faced in Italy.

The modelling concluded that even in the worst-case scenario, British Columbia would be likely to make it through the worst of the pandemic, but extra capacity would have to be quickly added if the province found itself in the Italy situation.

Based on projections of a Hubei-like epidemic, the province would likely have enough hospital capacity; if cases followed the pattern of the Northern Italy outbreak, the province would likely have to move some patients to alternate facilities to make room.

Health Minister Adrian Dix said regional health authorities had been working to identify sites, and air ambulances are being readied to juggle patients as needed.

“And what that reflects is that we are absolutely determined to prepare for the worst, even as we work, and everyone works their guts out, to ensure that the best scenarios emerge,” Mr. Dix said.

Dr. Henry and Mr. Dix said the province is working on getting more ventilators and personal protective equipment.

But Dr. Henry said there are “glimmers of hope” in the numbers, provided everyone continues with the massive lifestyle changes that have caused so much upheaval to every facet of Canadian life.

This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief James Keller. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here. This is a new project and we’ll be experimenting as we go, so let us know what you think.

So, we're at a little over half the number of cases we would have had if we'd followed our trajectory two weeks ago. Well done, British Columbia.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, looks like Dickless has folded, for the moment at least:

https://globalnews.ca/news/6746345/coro ... p-new-york

U.S. President Donald Trump backed away from calling for a quarantine for coronavirus hotspots in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, instead directing Saturday night that a “strong Travel Advisory” be issued to stem the spread of the outbreak.

Vice President Mike Pence tweeted that the CDC was urging residents of the three states “to refrain from non-essential travel for the next 14 days.”

The notion of a quarantine had been advocated by governors, including Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who sought to halt travelers from the heavily affected areas to their states. But it drew swift criticism from the leaders of the states in question, who warned it would spark panic in a populace already suffering under the virus.

Trump announced he reached the decision after consulting with the White House task force leading the federal response and the governors of the three states. He said he had directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “to issue a strong Travel Advisory, to be administered by the Governors, in consultation with the Federal Government.”

He added: “A quarantine will not be necessary.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has criticized the federal government’s response as his state became the country’s virus epicenter, said roping off states would amount to “a federal declaration of war.”

Cuomo said the prospect of a quarantine didn’t come up when he spoke with Trump earlier Saturday, adding that he believed it would be illegal, economically catastrophic, “preposterous” and shortsighted when other parts of the U.S. are seeing cases rise, too.

“If you start walling off areas all across the country, it would be totally bizarre, counterproductive, anti-American, anti-social,” Cuomo told CNN.

He added that locking down the nation’s financial capital would shock the stock market and “paralyze the economy” at a time when Trump has indicated he’s itching to get the economy back on track.

Trump made his initial remarks while on a trip to Norfolk, Virginia, to see off a U.S. Navy hospital ship heading to New York City to help with the pandemic.

At the event, he spoke to a sparse crowd at the naval base and cautioned Americans to take virus protections, even though he himself, at 73, is in a high-risk category and among those who have been advised to refrain from all non-essential travel.

The federal government is empowered to take measures to prevent the spread of communicable diseases between states, but it’s not clear that means Trump can ban people from leaving their state.

It has never been tested in the modern era — and in rare cases when any quarantine was challenged, the courts generally sided with public health officials.

Courts have ruled consistently for years that the authority to order quarantines inside states rests almost entirely with the states, under provisions in the Constitution ceding power not explicitly delegated to the federal government to states.

The federal government, though, would have power under constitutional clauses regulating commerce to quarantine international travelers or those traveling state to state who might be carriers of deadly diseases.

Still, “it is entirely unprecedented that governors or the president would prevent people from traveling from one state to another during an infectious disease outbreak,” said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University law professor and public health specialist who questioned Trump’s ability to order a quarantine on states.

But as Trump traveled to Norfolk, he tweeted: “I am giving consideration to a QUARANTINE of developing “hot spots”, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. A decision will be made, one way or another, shortly.”

“A lot of the states that are infected but don’t have a big problem, they’ve asked me if I’ll look at it, so we’re going to look at it,” Trump said.

When asked about legal authority for quarantine, the incoming White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said officials are “evaluating all the options right now.”

Administration officials were discussing less-stringent measures as well. One idea under consideration would be to tell residents of the hard-hit areas to isolate themselves and not travel for two weeks, just as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has instructed anyone who recently left New York to self-quarantine for 14 days, according to one person familiar with the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations.

The measure wouldn’t necessarily come with any legal force or penalty, just the hope that people would comply in an effort to try to contain the virus spread.

The governors of Florida, Maryland, South Carolina and Texas already have ordered people arriving from the New York area to self-quarantine for at least 14 days upon arrival.

In a more dramatic step, Rhode Island police have begun pulling over drivers with New York plates so that the National Guard can collect contact information and inform them of a mandatory, 14-day quarantine.

Trump said the idea of isolating many in the trio of Democratic strongholds in the Northeast was pushed by DeSantis, one of the president’s most outspoken supporters. It came a day after Trump made clear he wanted governors to be grateful when asking for federal support for the pandemic.

Trump said people “go to Florida and a lot of people don’t want that. So we’ll see what happens.” He later clarified it would not affect truckers or people transiting through, and would not affect trade.

Florida is a perennial swing state, and one Trump must win come November — plus he recently moved his residence from New York to Florida. It also has a population of 21 million with a large percentage of old people, who are particularly vulnerable to the virus.

DeSantis confirmed he had spoken with the president about the possibility of a quarantine for the New York City area. Speaking Saturday to reporters, DeSantis said Florida will soon set up a checkpoint along Interstate 95 to screen travelers from that area, similar to one already in place along Interstate 10 to screen people from Louisiana. Many airports in Florida also are screening travelers from certain areas, requiring them to self-isolate for 14 days.

The U.S. leads the world in reported cases with more than 121,000. There were roughly 2,000 deaths recorded by Saturday night, according to John Hopkins University.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said he did not talk about quarantining the tri-state area in his recent conversation with Trump, and learned of the president’s comments as he walked into Saturday’s daily briefing.

“Until further notified we’re going to keep doing exactly what we’re doing, because we believe the data and the facts are on our side in terms of this aggressive, as aggressive as any American state right now, in terms of social distancing and flattening the curve,” he said.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, also a Democrat, said at a news conference that Trump’s words about a quarantine have created a “certain amount of confusion” and that “confusion can lead to panic.” He said such a quarantine order would be “impossible to enforce given the spider web of roads” and that he hoped the White House would clarify what it wants.

After speaking in Norfolk, Trump watched as the USS Comfort slowly made its way out of port. The 1,000-bed hospital ship had been undergoing planned maintenance, but was rushed back into service to aid the city.

It is scheduled to arrive Monday at a Manhattan pier days after its sister ship, the USNS Mercy, arrived in Los Angeles to perform a similar duty on the West Coast.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, or death. The vast majority of people recover.

Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz in New York City, Matt Perrone, Jill Colvin and Michael Balsamo in Washington, Michael Tarm in Chicago, Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, Curt Anderson in Miami and Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.

Thank God that Trump is such a gutless little chickenhawk, or we'd already be a dictatorship. If Trump has one saving grace, its that he is so comprehensively a failure as a person that sometimes his various faults clash and prevent him from being as effectively evil as he might otherwise be.

Edit: While decisions to quarantine or not quarantine should NOT be made with Wall Street profits in mind, I can't help but think Cuomo was being very clever when he argued that quarantining New York would shock the Stock Market. He's got Trump's number, and knows what Donald actually cares about.

[ray245]

And it's not like leaving whatever percentage of New Yorkers haven't yet been exposed confined within the city limits with everyone who has been infected is exactly an ideal situation either. Social distancing is nigh-impossible with that level of population density.

Not that there are many places to evacuate the uninfected to, even if there was a screening method that could be done in five minutes at a roadblock.

The issue is tracking. The only way to defeat the virus to aggressive tracing and tracking of the virus. The less people move about, the easier it is to locate hot-spots and contain it.

[Captain Seafort]

Thank God that Trump is such a gutless little chickenhawk, or we'd already be a dictatorship. If Trump has one saving grace, its that he is so comprehensively a failure as a person that sometimes his various faults clash and prevent him from being as effectively evil as he might otherwise be.

You talk as though "evil" for it's own end is, or should be, his objective. No human being in history has ever has ever been evil for evils own sake - only because those methods achieved that individual's specific objectives (which, in some circumstances, were evil in and of themselves). If any individual can achieve those objectives without being "as effectively evil as he might otherwise be", then they will, if only because it's more efficient.

Edit: While decisions to quarantine or not quarantine should NOT be made with Wall Street profits in mind

Given that "Wall Street profits" can never be entirely disassociated from the economy as a whole, and therefore the ability of your bog-standard Joe Bloggs to keep feeding himself and his own, keeping Wall Street profits up is a decent objective in and of itself.

[MKSheppard]

uh, I'm not certain on this, but I don't think comparing cities to NYC and New Orleans to entire countries like Spain or continent sized places China or USE on a per million pop basis is going to do much more than give you a heart attack.

It shows how bad those places are gonna get in approximately ten days as they enter the peak killing area; which is what the Chinese line data is good for.

Basically:

The chinese data in the same graph shows the effect - the disease is assumed to be centered in the dense city and the hosptials there

The chinese data is taken from wikipedia's tabulation of daily deaths each day that the Chinese have admitted to officially.

For the "Deaths Per Million" graph, I have two assumptions:

1.) China (Hubei Population) -- the Deaths are divided against the population of Hubei Province (58.5 million)

2.) China (Wuhan Population) the deaths are divided against the population of Wuhan city (11 million)

Since that's where the overwhelming majority of cases are from.

'Deaths per day' probably is meaningful, because it automatically takes into account pop density and network effects, as virus works it way through group A and spreads to B and C and then onto D E F G ect.

You actually need both graphs to help you understand.

If you're looking at the total deaths per day graph, the US looks not too bad -- then you realize in the deaths per million, the USA is following closely along spain's trajectory and... extrapolating a couple days ahead in the deaths per million part; we'll hit 3.5 deaths per million and that basically means 1,140~ deaths a DAY.

[chimericoncogene]

The scientific consensus is that China has not been badly cooking its books. I suspect that the numbers cannot be off by more than a factor of five - and mostly due to social distancing and "can't find them all" effects rather than malice. Anything much greater would be un-hideable. Plus, why the heck would they bother with malicious secrecy (as opposed to simple incompetence or limitations to data gathering, which should not markedly differ among industrialized nations)? It's not like it would benefit China at all if it got out, and would quickly be deemed an unacceptably risky course of action.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03 ... -countries

[mr friendly guy]

The scientific consensus is that China has not been badly cooking its books. I suspect that the numbers cannot be off by more than a factor of five - and mostly due to social distancing and "can't find them all" effects rather than malice. Anything much greater would be un-hideable. Plus, why the heck would they bother with malicious secrecy (as opposed to simple incompetence or limitations to data gathering, which should not markedly differ among industrialized nations)? It's not like it would benefit China at all if it got out, and would quickly be deemed an unacceptably risky course of action.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03 ... -countries

A much easier way to hide it is to simply do what some Western nations are doing, eg Sweden, Denmark, Australia etc. Only test "serious" cases and blame it on a shortage of facilities / kits or like Australia, have a set of criteria which excludes low risk cases. As opposed to testing people with mild symptoms or having a more wider test criteria.

They would also not adjust diagnostic criteria to add in people diagnosed by CT scans (as opposed to PCR) which boosts their numbers (see that big spike in the Chinese graph). It totally makes sense to western conspiracy theorists to change diagnostic criteria to cause a spike in the numbers when you're supposedly trying to hide it.

Also the other thing is, why are people not coming to hospitals, or coming in less numbers to be tested. The newer hospitals are closed because less people line up to the clinic. How did the government force all these hidden people not to come and get tested?

The other thing is, the UK according to business insider (remember the country that wanted to infect 60% of its population) is saying China must have fudged the numbers by 15-40 and blaming them for not giving the UK enough warning, because apparently it infects 0.23% of the population instead of 0.0059% of the population the UK would have totally come up with a different strategy of infecting 60% of its population.

[loomer]

I particularly enjoy the argument some of the health communicators have been making that there can't possibly be any significant community-based transmission when our testing criteria have been designed in a way to systematically exclude all but the most serious community transmission cases until very recently.

[aerius]

A much easier way to hide it is to simply do what some Western nations are doing, eg Sweden, Denmark, Australia etc. Only test "serious" cases and blame it on a shortage of facilities / kits or like Australia, have a set of criteria which excludes low risk cases. As opposed to testing people with mild symptoms or having a more wider test criteria.

https://www.ontario.ca/page/2019-novel- ... #section-0

~50,000 people tested out of a population of 14.5 million. Gee, you think we missed a few cases? Nah, that's impossible!
And you wonder why the infections are going exponential.
Fucking morons had 2 months to get their shit together and they failed, and now we're all paying the price.

[mr friendly guy]

Looks like its time for the CCP to do some more smackdowns, of people operating wet markets that is. Some people have tried again despite it being banned after the COVID 19 outbreak.

[ray245]

The other thing is, the UK according to business insider (remember the country that wanted to infect 60% of its population) is saying China must have fudged the numbers by 15-40 and blaming them for not giving the UK enough warning, because apparently it infects 0.23% of the population instead of 0.0059% of the population the UK would have totally come up with a different strategy of infecting 60% of its population.

I think the West's ability to comprehend any news or data from China has been so head-stuck-in-sand, that any data might as well be no data to them. Framing lockdowns as being excessive and anti-liberal western culture has cost time and made it difficult to accept the virus don't care about political and cultural norms.

[mr friendly guy]

The other thing is, the UK according to business insider (remember the country that wanted to infect 60% of its population) is saying China must have fudged the numbers by 15-40 and blaming them for not giving the UK enough warning, because apparently it infects 0.23% of the population instead of 0.0059% of the population the UK would have totally come up with a different strategy of infecting 60% of its population.

I think the West's ability to comprehend any news or data from China has been so head-stuck-in-sand, that any data might as well be no data to them. Framing lockdowns as being excessive and anti-liberal western culture has cost time and made it difficult to accept the virus don't care about political and cultural norms.

People are already blaming the WHO instead of their own inept governments. Never mind the WHO warned people about the lack of ventilators and now we see America and Europe scrambling for more ventilators. And they have the gall of accuse Chinese people of being brainwashed.

[The Romulan Republic]

Fuhrer Donald sends cease and desist letter, threatens the liscences of television stations that air an ad critical of his coronavirus response:

Donald Trump’s reelection campaign has sent a cease-and-desist letter to TV stations that air an ad critical of the way the president has handled the coronavirus crisis.

The ad, “Exponential Threat,” features audio clips of Trump downplaying the virus at different moments while the onscreen graphic shows the rising number of cases.

“This is their new hoax,” Trump can be heard saying in the ad, which was funded by Priorities USA, a pro-Joe Biden PAC.

That quote came from a Trump rally in North Charleston, South Carolina where the president also said “Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus” before describing various Democratic “hoaxes” and assuring the crowd that “our country is doing so great.”

Other Trump quotes that appear in the ad: “We have it totally under control,” “It’s one person coming in from China,” “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” “When you have 15 people, and within a couple of days it’s gonna be down to close to zero.”

At first, attorneys for America First Action, Trump’s official super PAC, were the ones who demanded that TV stations in key battleground states stop airing the anti-Trump commercial, claiming it was deceptive.

However, TV stations refused to pull the ad and Priorities USA pointed out that America First Action didn’t even have standing to make the demand, RawStory reported.

So attorneys for the Donald J. Trump for President campaign sent their own cease-and-desist letter, one that suggested that not removing the ad “could put your station’s license in jeopardy” with the Federal Communications Commission.

In the letter, which can be seen below, the attorneys accuse Priorities USA of stitching together fragments from multiple Trump speeches to “fraudulently and maliciously imply” that he called the coronavirus outbreak a “hoax.”

The attorneys claim Trump “was talking about the Democrat’s politicization of the outbreak when he used the word ‘hoax.’”

The letter claims that because the ad’s central point is “deliberately false and misleading, your station has an obligation to cease and desist from airing it immediately to comply with FCC licensing requirements, to serve the public interest, and to avoid costly and time-consuming litigation.”

The Trump campaign has asked Twitter to tag videos claiming that Trump called the virus a hoax as “manipulated media,” but, so far, the social media network hasn’t complied, according to The Hill.

Redacted PUSA Letter by David Moye on Scribd

Meanwhile, Priorities USA doesn’t seem too worried about the legal threats ― especially since they’ve helped the video go viral:

The trump campaign sent a cease and desist letter to Priorities USA for this ad. So I’m retweeting it. pic.twitter.com/0Q1QO9TeQT

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) March 26, 2020
CORRECTION: An earlier version of the story incorrectly identified the location of a Trump rally. It was in North Charleston, South Carolina, not North Carolina.

Edit: Huffington post, but I've removed the link because I keep getting warnings that it may not be secure.

[madd0ct0r]

If you're looking at the total deaths per day graph, the US looks not too bad -- then you realize in the deaths per million, the USA is following closely along spain's trajectory and... extrapolating a couple days ahead in the deaths per million part; we'll hit 3.5 deaths per million and that basically means 1,140~ deaths a DAY.

that's what I mean about giving yourself a heart attack. If the only thing you are trying to estimate from the top graph is the number of people dying per day, then you would be better off just doing that from the bottom graph. No need to obfuscate the results with a per million divisor.
The number of deaths is a function of the size of the outbreak in raw cases, not the total available population.

[mr friendly guy]

German minister commits suicide possibly over coronavirus related fears. Been reported on several outlet so I will just link the first one that comes up on searching.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/econom ... s-worries/

German minister commits suicide after ‘virus crisis worries’
EURACTIV.com with AFP

Thomas Schaefer, the finance minister of Germany’s Hesse state, has committed suicide apparently after becoming “deeply worried” over how to cope with the economic fallout from the coronavirus, state premier Volker Bouffier said Sunday (29 March).

Schaefer, 54, was found dead near a railway track on Saturday. The Wiesbaden prosecution’s office said they believe he died by suicide.

“We are in shock, we are in disbelief and above all we are immensely sad,” Bouffier said in a recorded statement.

Hesse is home to Germany’s financial capital Frankfurt, where major lenders like Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank have their headquarters. The European Central Bank is also located in Frankfurt.

A visibly shaken Bouffier recalled that Schaefer, who was Hesse’s finance chief for 10 years, had been working “day and night” to help companies and workers deal with the economic impact of the pandemic.

“Today we have to assume that he was deeply worried,” said Bouffier, a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“It’s precisely during this difficult time that we would have needed someone like him,” he added.

Popular and well-respected, Schaefer had long been touted as a possible successor to Bouffier.

Like Bouffier, Schaefer belonged to Merkel’s centre-right CDU party.

He leaves behind a wife and two children.

[ray245]

Italy needs to shift to mass quarantining of coronavirus patients with mild symptoms instead of letting them isolate at home, according to a group of Chinese experts who traveled to the European nation to advise officials there.

Doctors in Wuhan made the same error early on in the outbreak, said Liang Zong’An, head of the respiratory department at the West China Hospital at Sichuan University. While seriously ill patients were admitted to hospitals, doctors at the time recommended that those with mild symptoms isolate themselves at home, in part to reduce the strain on Wuhan’s overburdened health care system.

Back then, it was not well understood how infectious the virus can be even in those who don’t seem very sick. But researchers now know that those with mild symptoms who are told to stay at home usually risked passing the virus to family members, as well as to others outside their homes as some still moved around freely.

Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported Monday that a Saturday crackdown on people violating lockdown rules included some 50 confirmed cases who were circulating on the streets rather than staying home.

Wuhan began quarantining all mild cases in makeshift hospitals converted from offices, stadiums and gymnasiums in early February, a move that helped dramatically slow the spread of the virus. The city where the virus first emerged last December has successfully contained the outbreak, according to official figures that show few new infections even as the pandemic accelerates in other countries.

Liang said his team advised Italy to follow China’s lead to forcibly isolate patients with mild symptoms from their families. In China, a study of one province showed that 80% of cluster infections originated from people told to rest at home, according to Xiao Ning, a researcher from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention who was part of the team.

Italian families generally live in more spacious apartments than people in Wuhan, Liang said. Still, there’s growing anecdotal evidence that whole families are getting infected from one sick person in their midst, despite attempts to isolate the infected in separate rooms.

“We can’t say if Italy’s home quarantine is right or wrong because each country has its own mechanism, but we found some problems,” said Xiao. The Italian experts they met with could not say how many clusters of infections arose from home isolation, according to Liang.

Milan has started to seize hotels for patients with mild symptoms. The first one with 306 rooms will be ready this week and will be designated to isolate patients from their families during the quarantine.

Mortality Rate
Italy’s coronavirus death toll topped 10,000 over the weekend, the highest in the world. The mortality rate is more than double that in China, where the virus first emerged in late December, though questions have emerged about whether China’s official figures capture the full scale of casualties.

The head of Italy’s emergency committee has said the number of cases in the country could be 10 times the official count, which would bring the mortality rate in the country in line with others.

The high number of deaths is mainly due to Italy’s older population, said Liang. Many also didn’t seek medical care after testing positive for the virus and died at home, he said. Multiple deaths in China went unrecorded as overwhelmed hospitals in Hubei were unable to admit or even test those who displayed symptoms of Covid-19.

Xiao praised Italy’s health care system, saying the hospitals are taking very good care of virus patients but suffer shortages of protective gear. While earlier attempts at locking down the country and getting people to stay home were too lax, Italy’s move to send the military to police the streets from March 22 likely marked a turning point, he said.

Italy “may have reached its peak already” after those strict measures to enforce the lockdown and restrict people’s movements, he said. “If these measures can continue, their new infections will drop markedly. People should be physically isolated from each other. That means no gathering at all.”

Western countries from the U.S. to Spain are now experiencing what Wuhan went through earlier, including shortages of test kits, extreme scarcity of medical supplies and overwhelmed hospitals. In Italy, doctors have fallen ill themselves while struggling to treat patients, and their Spanish colleagues have had to choose who to let die from the disease in the face of a dearth of life-saving equipment like ventilators.

The virus has sickened more than 720,000 globally and killed 34,000. Multiple nations have locked down parts or all of their countries, and many have put in place travel restrictions to keep infections from entering.

“There are optimistic estimates as well as pessimistic ones but the epidemic won’t go indefinitely.” said Xiao. “Now the whole world has recognized this problem and is acting on it, that’s a good sign.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... octors-say

Many countries are still not doing that. The rate of infection will grow as it affects everyone in the household, even if a lockdown is in place.

I am concerned about UK's self-quarantine measures, as it will simply increase the rate of infection to everyone in the family. Even Singapore's original strategy of asking people with mild cases to isolate at home is looking rather unwise in hindsight.

[mr friendly guy]

With all the licking toilet seat challenges on social media going on, I thought this was appropriate. Coughing on food during the age of COVID 19 seems like a nice way to get you charged.

https://thehill.com/homenews/news/48998 ... st-threats

Woman accused of coughing on store's food jailed, charged with terroristic threats
BY KAELAN DEESE - 03/28/20 11:30 AM EDT 589


Police on Thursday charged a Pennsylvania woman with making terroristic threats after she coughed on grocery store food while claiming to be sick.

Margaret Cirko, 35, allegedly "intentionally contaminated" grocery items by coughing and spitting on them, claiming to be sick while attempting to steal a pack of beer, according to the Hanover Township Police Department.


The incident resulted in the store disposing of $35,000 worth of produce, meat and other essential items.

"Today was a very challenging day," Joe Fasula, co-owner of the store, wrote in a Facebook post. "While there is little doubt this woman was doing it as a very twisted prank, we will not take any chances with the health and well-being of our customers."

Local authorities said in a statement that Cirko was charged with two felony counts of terroristic threats using a biological agent, one count of criminal mischief, and misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and attempted retail theft.

Cirko was sent to a mental health hospital to be evaluated after her arrest.

She was placed in Luzerne County Prison on $50,000 bail and is scheduled for a preliminary hearing for April 8.

[Beowulf]

While it may appear like the federal government is playing favorites, federal officials said their decisions were based on their best assessment of relative needs. HHS told states this week that it is giving out 25% of the stockpile to states according to population size, and sending another 25% strategically to states with the most severe outbreaks, which can be used for needs such as testing passengers on cruise ships brought back to shore. The remaining 50% will be held in “strategic reserve,” to be used if there’s a huge spike of critical needs around the country.

[loomer]

While it may appear like the federal government is playing favorites, federal officials said their decisions were based on their best assessment of relative needs. HHS told states this week that it is giving out 25% of the stockpile to states according to population size, and sending another 25% strategically to states with the most severe outbreaks, which can be used for needs such as testing passengers on cruise ships brought back to shore. The remaining 50% will be held in “strategic reserve,” to be used if there’s a huge spike of critical needs around the country.

The bigger question is whether this still holds, given the apparent explicit directions given to HHS to minimize aid to Michigan. I alluded to it earlier when mentioning the disparity with Florida's shipments being fully satisfied while others aren't being initially a consequence of Florida's overall shipment requests being smaller and its population larger, but the situation has evolved since the 26th.

Also, not directed at you but generally, it's important people check some claims. Even with the apparent explicit order to minimize aid to Michigan et al, no state that has made a request has had it outright denied and prior to the 26th those requests - including Michigan's - were being satisfied. So when you see a claim Michigan has received no aid, it's simply untrue - and the fact that it was receiving aid that seems to have suddenly stopped is rather more frightening than if it had received none at all.

[loomer]

Another nation shuts its borders. This time, it's the Thames Oneida.

[The Romulan Republic]

Not content with failing to supply New York and others with sufficient aid, Dickless has tried to cover for his utter incompetence, despotism, and corruption by... blaming the hospital staff risking their lives to protect us in this crisis for stealing masks and selling them on the black market.

https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/30/donald-t ... -12476722/

Donald Trump has suggested hospital staff are stealing medical masks amid the coronavirus crisis.

The president said requests for masks at an unnamed hospital in New York were typically between 10,000 to 20,000, but that now they have jumped to 300,000.

He acknowledged that circumstances during a pandemic are ‘different’ but he told reporters to investigate medical equipment ‘going out the backdoor’ at hospitals.

The president gave no shred of evidence as he also suggested this alleged criminal activity is happening in ‘numerous places’.

Trump said: ‘Something’s going on, and you ought to look into it, as reporters.

‘Where are the masks going, are they going out the backdoor?

‘How do you go from 10,000 to 300,000 [masks]? And we have that in a lot of different places.

For all the latest news and updates on Coronavirus, click here. For our Coronavirus live blog click here.

‘Somebody should probably look into that, because I just don’t see from a practical standpoint how that’s possible to go from that to that, and we have that happening in numerous places.’

The comments sparked an immediate outcry from medics and commentators who said the president was accusing health care workers in the US of stealing.

Kenneth Raske, the president of Greater New York Hospital Association, said personal protective equipment (PPE) is the single thing that separates medics from becoming patients themselves.

A medical worker sticks her head outside a COVID-19 testing tent set up outside Elmhurst Hospital Center in New York, Saturday, March 28, 2020. The hospital is caring for a high number of coronavirus patients in the city, and New York leads the nation in the number of cases, according to Johns Hopkins University, which is keeping a running tally. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
A medical worker sticks her head outside a Covid-19 testing tent outside Elmhurst Hospital Center in New York (Picture: AP)
In a statement, he said: ‘New York’s health care workers are treating exploding numbers of Covid-19 patients around the clock – willingly and without complaint.

‘My daughter, an ICU nurse at a New York City hospital, is one of them.

‘They deserve better than their president suggesting that PPE is ‘going out the back door’ of New York hospitals.’

Political activist Kaivan Shroff paid tribute to a nurse, who died from coronavirus, as he slammed the president.

Trump just attacked the nurses putting their lives on the line — accusing them of a conspiracy to steal masks. Truly vile.Meet Kious Kelly, assistant nurse manager in NYC.He risked his life to provide care w/o proper protective gear (Trump’s fault).He just died of COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/pg24AqYoux— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) March 29, 2020
He tweeted: ‘Trump just attacked the nurses putting their lives on the line — accusing them of a conspiracy to steal masks. Truly vile.

‘Meet Kious Kelly, assistant nurse manager in NYC. He risked his life to provide care w/o proper protective gear (Trump’s fault). He just died of COVID-19.’

Kious Kelly, 48, an emergency room nurse at Mount Sinai West hospital, died on Tuesday after fighting the virus on the frontline.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.

[madd0ct0r]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... octors-say

Many countries are still not doing that. The rate of infection will grow as it affects everyone in the household, even if a lockdown is in place.

I am concerned about UK's self-quarantine measures, as it will simply increase the rate of infection to everyone in the family. Even Singapore's original strategy of asking people with mild cases to isolate at home is looking rather unwise in hindsight.

I just went and checked on a hunch. I expected Italy to have a larger number of large households (proxy for multigen). There's not a lot in it.
It might be the Uk birthrate is high enough compared to italy I'm conflating 2 parents + kid vs 2 adults and elderly parent in the same 3 person catergory.

Code: Select all

GEO/N_PERSON	1 person	2 persons	3 persons	4 persons	5 persons	6 persons or more	then two people in the household
European Union 		32.9		31.1		16.2		13.7		4.2		2.0				36.1%
Italy					32.6		27.9		19.4		15.8		3.3		1.0				39.5%
United Kingdom		30.5		34.2		15.9		13.6		4.0		1.7				35.2%

via
https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nu ... eAction.do 2018 data

[ray245]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... octors-say

Many countries are still not doing that. The rate of infection will grow as it affects everyone in the household, even if a lockdown is in place.

I am concerned about UK's self-quarantine measures, as it will simply increase the rate of infection to everyone in the family. Even Singapore's original strategy of asking people with mild cases to isolate at home is looking rather unwise in hindsight.

I just went and checked on a hunch. I expected Italy to have a larger number of large households (proxy for multigen). There's not a lot in it.
It might be the Uk birthrate is high enough compared to italy I'm conflating 2 parents + kid vs 2 adults and elderly parent in the same 3 person catergory.

Code: Select all

GEO/N_PERSON	1 person	2 persons	3 persons	4 persons	5 persons	6 persons or more	then two people in the household
European Union 		32.9		31.1		16.2		13.7		4.2		2.0				36.1%
Italy					32.6		27.9		19.4		15.8		3.3		1.0				39.5%
United Kingdom		30.5		34.2		15.9		13.6		4.0		1.7				35.2%

via
https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nu ... eAction.do 2018 data

It depends on the proximity families are living to each other?

[mr friendly guy]

This is interesting, but one has to find the original science article
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science ... ns-decades

Coronavirus: pathogen could have been spreading in humans for years, study says
Virus may have jumped from animal to humans long before the first detection in Wuhan, according to research by an international team of scientists
Findings significantly reduce the possibility of the virus having a laboratory origin, director of the US National Institute of Health says
Stephen Chen
Stephen Chen in Beijing
Published: 4:30pm, 29 Mar, 2020

The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 might have been quietly spreading among humans for years or even decades before the sudden outbreak that sparked a global health crisis, according to an investigation by some of the world’s top virus hunters.
Researchers from the United States, Britain and Australia looked at piles of data released by scientists around the world for clues about the virus’ evolutionary past, and found it might have made the jump from animal to humans long before the first detection in the central China city of Wuhan.
Though there could be other possibilities, the scientists said the coronavirus carried a unique mutation that was not found in suspected animal hosts, but was likely to occur during repeated, small-cluster infections in humans.

The study, conducted by Kristian Andersen from the Scripps Research Institute in California, Andrew Rambaut from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Ian Lipkin from Columbia University in New York, Edward Holmes from the University of Sydney, and Robert Garry from Tulane University in New Orleans, was published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine on March 17.
Dr Francis Collins, director of the US National Institute of Health, who was not involved in the research, said the study suggested a possible scenario in which the coronavirus crossed from animals into humans before it became capable of causing disease in people.
“Then, as a result of gradual evolutionary changes over years or perhaps decades, the virus eventually gained the ability to spread from human to human and cause serious, often life-threatening disease,” he said in an article published on the institute’s website on Thursday.

An international team of scientists say the coronavirus may have jumped from animal to humans long before the first detection in China. Photo: APAn international team of scientists say the coronavirus may have jumped from animal to humans long before the first detection in China. Photo: AP
An international team of scientists say the coronavirus may have jumped from animal to humans long before the first detection in China. Photo: AP
The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 might have been quietly spreading among humans for years or even decades before the sudden outbreak that sparked a global health crisis, according to an investigation by some of the world’s top virus hunters.
Researchers from the United States, Britain and Australia looked at piles of data released by scientists around the world for clues about the virus’ evolutionary past, and found it might have made the jump from animal to humans long before the first detection in the central China city of Wuhan.
Though there could be other possibilities, the scientists said the coronavirus carried a unique mutation that was not found in suspected animal hosts, but was likely to occur during repeated, small-cluster infections in humans.

The study, conducted by Kristian Andersen from the Scripps Research Institute in California, Andrew Rambaut from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Ian Lipkin from Columbia University in New York, Edward Holmes from the University of Sydney, and Robert Garry from Tulane University in New Orleans, was published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine on March 17.
Dr Francis Collins, director of the US National Institute of Health, who was not involved in the research, said the study suggested a possible scenario in which the coronavirus crossed from animals into humans before it became capable of causing disease in people.
“Then, as a result of gradual evolutionary changes over years or perhaps decades, the virus eventually gained the ability to spread from human to human and cause serious, often life-threatening disease,” he said in an article published on the institute’s website on Thursday.

In December, doctors in Wuhan began noticing a surge in the number of people suffering from a mysterious pneumonia. Tests for flu and other pathogens returned negative. An unknown strain was isolated, and a team from the Wuhan Institute of Virology led by Shi Zhengli traced its origin to a bat virus found in a mountain cave close to the China-Myanmar border.

The two viruses shared more than 96 per cent of their genes, but the bat virus could not infect humans. It lacked a spike protein to bind with receptors in human cells.
Coronaviruses with a similar spike protein were later discovered in Malayan pangolins by separate teams from Guangzhou and Hong Kong, which led some researchers to believe that a recombination of genomes had occurred between the bat and pangolin viruses.

But the new strain, or SARS-Cov-2, had a mutation in its genes known as a polybasic cleavage site that was unseen in any coronaviruses found in bats or pangolins, according to Andersen and his colleagues.
This mutation, according to separate studies by researchers from China, France and the US, could produce a unique structure in the virus’ spike protein to interact with furin, a widely distributed enzyme in the human body. That could then trigger a fusion of the viral envelope and human cell membrane when they came into contact with one another.
Some human viruses including HIV and Ebola have the same furin-like cleavage site, which makes them contagious.

It is possible that the mutation happened naturally to the virus on animal hosts. Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and Mers (Middle East respiratory syndrome), for instance, were believed to have been direct descendants of species found in masked civets and camels, which had a 99 per cent genetic similarity.
There was, however, no such direct evidence for the novel coronavirus, according to the international team. The gap between human and animal types was too large, they said, so they proposed another alternative.
“It is possible that a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 jumped into humans, acquiring the genomic features described above through adaptation during undetected human-to-human transmission,” they said in the paper.
“Once acquired, these adaptations would enable the pandemic to take off and produce a sufficiently large cluster of cases to trigger the surveillance system that detected it.”
They said also that the most powerful computer models based on current knowledge about the coronavirus could not generate such a strange but highly efficient spike protein structure to bind with host cells.
The study had significantly reduced, if not ruled out, the possibility of a laboratory origin, Collins said.
“In fact, any bioengineer trying to design a coronavirus that threatened human health probably would never have chosen this particular conformation for a spike protein,” he said.

The findings by Western scientists echoed the mainstream opinion among Chinese researchers.
Zhong Nanshan, who advises Beijing on outbreak containment policies, had said on numerous occasions that there was growing scientific evidence to suggest the origin of the virus might not have been in China.
“The occurrence of Covid-19 in Wuhan does not mean it originated in Wuhan,” he said last week.
A doctor working in a public hospital treating Covid-19 patients in Beijing said numerous cases of mysterious pneumonia outbreaks had been reported by health professionals in several countries last year.
Re-examining the records and samples of these patients could reveal more clues about the history of this worsening pandemic, said the doctor, who asked not to be named due to the political sensitivity of the issue.
“There will be a day when the whole thing comes to light.”