Economy
From bartering to begging for relief, struggling Americans confront April rent (Sparky1)
Many Americans have already lost their jobs – last week’s national unemployment claims exceeded 3 million, shattering previous records – and huge swaths of the country have essentially shut down, with more than half of U.S. states now under some version of a stay-at-home order to curb the disease’s spread.
For Autocrats, and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power (thatchmo)
But critics say some governments are using the public health crisis as cover to seize new powers that have little to do with the outbreak, with few safeguards to ensure that their new authority will not be abused.
The poorest will suffer. Safety-net health clinics cut services amid coronavirus epidemic (Sparky1)
“The gaps that pre-existed, they still exist. And they’re getting bigger as this emergency unfolds because we’re having to redirect the resources we have at this new threat,” said Thomas Tighe, CEO of the medical nonprofit Direct Relief.
The Federalist: The Art of the Denial (Adam M.)
Another general problem with the media, not just The Federalist, is how they handle epidemiological models. As Dr. Fauci touched upon, the media fails to understand how models are used. When an epidemiologist looks at an epidemiological model, the first thing they will do is look at the assumptions, change independent variables based on their own assumptions, and see how the changes in assumptions affect the outcomes. The press takes the raw number from the original projection uncritically, despite the fact that the assumptions would have changed from the minute the model was published and reports that number.
CDC: Strategies for Optimizing the Supply of N95 Respirators: Crisis/Alternate Strategies (Judd A.)
Consideration can be made to use N95 respirators beyond the manufacturer-designated shelf life for care of patients with COVID-19, tuberculosis, measles, and varicella. However, respirators beyond the manufacturer-designated shelf life may not perform to the requirements for which they were certified. Over time, components such as the straps and nose bridge material may degrade, which can affect the quality of the fit and seal.
America Has a Shortage of PPE Because Trump Sent Our Stockpile to China (Bobbie S.)
As the number of infected grows exponentially, doctors, nurses, and health care workers find themselves suffering from a dangerous shortage of PPE (personal protective equipment) like masks, respirators, and gloves. America, which claims to be the richest country in the world, is seeing its first line of defense reusing single-use masks and donning trash bags in a desperate effort to stay protected.
NYC Lung Doctor Tells His Family How to Protect Themselves from COVID-19 (Iris R.)
This novel coronavirus has been circulating in humans for about 4 months now. As awareness was building in the first 2–3 months, there was a lot of confusion and misinformation circulating.
In the past month, COVID-19 has grown significantly in the U.S. While that’s scary, the good news is that we are learning more about it every day.
Mask mystery: Why are U.S. officials dismissive of protective covering? (Masha N.)
“Right now, in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, an immunologist and a public face of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, on CBS’ “60 Minutes” earlier this month. He, like the others, suggested that masks could put users at risk by causing them to touch their face more often.
The Four Possible Timelines for Life Returning to Normal (Sparky1)
There are two realistic paths to achieving this “population-level immunity.” One is the development of a vaccine. The other is for the disease to work its way through the population, surely killing many, but also leaving many others—those who contract the disease and then recover—immune. “They’re just Teflon at that point,” meaning they can’t get infected again and they won’t pass on the disease, explains Andrew Noymer, a public-health professor at the UC Irvine. Once enough people reach Teflon status—though we don’t yet know if recovering from the disease confers any immunity at all, let alone lifelong immunity—normalcy will be restored.
AI tool predicts which coronavirus patients get deadly ‘wet lung’ (mstevenhill)
The team applied a machine learning algorithm to data from 53 coronavirus patients across two hospitals in Wenzhou, China, finding that changes in three features — levels of the liver enzyme alanine aminotransferase (ALT), reported body aches, and hemoglobin levels –- were most accurately predictive of subsequent, severe disease.
Germany: Here you will find the latest news from the district administration (djshort64)
Spring has been clearly felt since this week at the latest. Sun and rising temperatures over the weekend will make it increasingly difficult to stay indoors.
Nevertheless, the clear appeal: Even the most beautiful spring weather offers no protection against corona viruses or serves to slow down the spread. We can only ensure protection ourselves. Therefore: Avoid crowds, keep your distance from other people (at least 2 meters) and ensure your own good hand hygiene. Best of all: stay at home.
California: New public health recommendation to cover the face (Vincent)
“The numbers don’t lie and we know that coronavirus is spreading and growing. However, these numbers are actual people and protecting the lives of people is all of our responsibility,” said Board Chair V. Manuel Perez, Fourth District Supervisor. “That means that flattening the curve requires another layer of aggressive protection against the virus. Please take the additional steps to cover your face.”
You Shouldn’t Be Wearing Gloves to Go Grocery Shopping (Sparky1)
This novel coronavirus doesn’t enter the body through your hands, so you don’t need any kind of barrier there. If you touch a contaminated surface with gloves, and touch something else, you’re as likely to spread it as you are if you touch things with your bare hands. Maybe even more likely: “The adhesive properties of viruses differ among viruses; it’s possible the coronavirus could adhere to the latex gloves better than it could adhere to your own skin,” says Reynolds. And hands can be effectively washed and used again right away.
Exclusive: Kushner Firm Built the Coronavirus Website Trump Promised (Sparky1)
The full extent of Oscar’s work on the project has not been previously reported. The partnership between the administration and the firm suggests that Kushner may have mingled his family’s business interests with his political interests and his role in the administration’s coronavirus response. Kushner’s younger brother Joshua is a co-founder and major investor in Oscar, and Jared Kushner partially owned or controlled Oscar before he joined the White House. The company’s work on the coronavirus website could violate federal ethics laws, several experts said.
As word spread among the estimated 7,000 residents living in The Belcher’s six tower blocks, households rushed into nearby supermarkets to replenish their stockpiles. By the day’s end, every grocer, pharmacist and supermarket in the neighbourhood had run out of toilet paper, sanitary towels and alcohol wipes, adding to the tally of essential goods and staples that are already in short supply as Hongkongers hunker down for their second month of a global viral outbreak.
The U.S. needs to know what went wrong (tmn)
A review of the Trump administration’s performance would find many negatives but also some pluses. President Trump’s public statements appeared to minimize the virus and its impact until recently. But the National Security Council staff, led by deputy Matthew Pottinger, a Chinese-speaking former Wall Street Journal correspondent in Beijing, was aggressive. The first interagency meeting on the Wuhan outbreak took place Jan. 14, and the first NSC deputies committee meeting on Jan. 27, according to a senior administration official.
French drug watchdog warns of dangerous side effects of coronavirus treatments (Cribbage)
The drug safety agency (ANSM) began boosting its surveillance two weeks ago of trials of drugs against COVID-19, “in particular when they are used outside of clinical trials of chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, lopinavir/ritonavir (Kaletra), tocilizumab (and) colchicine,” Martin said.
“It’s perfectly normal that treatments be tried, given the circumstances, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t observe surveillance… of these substances,” Martin said.
The Contrarian Coronavirus Theory That Informed the Trump Administration (Bryan A.)
Secondly, suppose I should have been wiser in this and said, as I referred to the flu vaccine and later on to the H1N1 situation, if those are your benchmarks, then the number goes up to, say, between fifteen thousand and forty thousand deaths, as opposed to the one million-plus that are projected. [The Times model projected, without interventions by governments or citizens, a million deaths in the U.S.; with such interventions, the model showed that number dramatically decreasing.] And, remember, the one million-plus is on a model which is universal and worldwide, and you should expect to see something like that somewhere else. And there’s no evidence whatsoever that any of the situations, even in Italy, is going to approach the kinds of numbers that you had there.
Most Important Coronavirus Video you will ever see – The Taiwan Success Strategy (Sue C.)
Taiwan was hit hard in January with early cases – but now only ~300 infections and only 5 deaths – versus say Italy with more than 110,000 infections, and nearly 12,000 deaths
‘The floor was moving’: 6.5 earthquake strikes in Idaho, largest in the state since 1983 (Sparky1)
The quake was centered 73 miles northeast of Meridian, near Boise, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and, for some, conjured up memories of the state’s worst such natural disaster, the 6.9 magnitude Borah Peak earthquake nearly four decades ago that killed two people and resulted in millions in damages, according to the Idaho Geological Survey.
Silver And Sanity (GE Christenson)
How much debt have our bankers created? The St. Louis Fed tracks total credit market debt. Current US debt is about $74 trillion, over half a million fiat dollars per US worker. Insanity! The debt will be extinguished via default or hyperinflation.
Fascists Impersonate Climate Group to Say Coronavirus is Good for Earth (tmn)
Some of the propaganda Hundred-Handers espouses centers on the absurd ecofascist principle that overpopulation in countries outside of Europe and North America has caused the brunt of the climate crisis.
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