Economy
Why Did the World Health Organization Wait Until March to Declare a Global Pandemic? (Kirk P.)Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden, as well as a host of other U.S. politicians, made the argument that the WHO did not act fast enough with its declaration. Whatever problems posed to the United States by the virus were not the responsibility of the U.S. government, they suggested; the fault lay with the Chinese government and with the WHO.
Americans are hoarding cash: Savings rate hits its highest level since 1981 (Adam)
The government also said Thursday that personal income fell 2% in March “due to the response to the spread of COVID-19, as governments issued ‘stay-at-home’ orders.” This was led by a staggering $327.6 billion drop in workers’ salaries and bonuses.
Another 3.8 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week, bringing the total to 30 million since mid-March. This is the worst contraction in the US economy since the Great Recession of 2008.
Covid-19 Pandemic Likely to Last Two Years, Report Says (Brian S.)
After locking down billions of people around the world to minimize its spread through countries, governments are now cautiously allowing businesses and public places to reopen. Yet the coronavirus pandemic is likely to continue in waves that could last beyond 2022, the authors said.
How to Protect Yourself When Your State Reopens Way Too Early (tmn)
According to Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist, it’s still way too early to attempt to resume our old daily routines. “Just because these restrictions are being relaxed doesn’t mean there aren’t cases in the community, but rather that cases have dropped below a threshold that allows for public health and healthcare capacity to manage them,” Popescu told VICE. “There are still cases of COVID-19 in the community, and we’re still struggling to respond through testing, tracing, and prevention.”
Texas Still Won’t Say Which Nursing Homes Have COVID-19 Cases. Families Are Demanding Answers. (tmn)
The state’s expansive medical privacy law has made Texas among the most opaque for releasing information about the spread of the coronavirus, even as deaths in these facilities surged nationwide. More than 10,300 elderly people in 23 states have died in long-term care centers, according to the most recent available government data analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a national health policy think tank.
Blood Clotting Patterns in Lungs of COVID-19 Patients May Help Explain Apparent Differences in Mortality (michael_m)
The study is published in the British Journal of Haematology. “Our novel findings demonstrate that COVID-19 is associated with a unique type of blood clotting disorder that is primarily focused within the lungs and which undoubtedly contributes to the high levels of mortality being seen in patients with COVID-19,” said James O’Donnell, MD, director of the Irish Centre for Vascular Biology, RCSI, and consultant hematologist at the National Coagulation Centre in St James’s Hospital, Dublin. O’Donnell and colleagues reported their findings in a paper titled, “COVID-19 Coagulopathy in Caucasian Patients.”
See shocking footage of protesters clashing with police (Sparky1)
Just as the Lebanese government begins to ease coronavirus restrictions, protesters are back on the streets over the country’s financial crisis.
Officials removing bodies from ‘overwhelmed’ Brooklyn funeral home (Sparky1)
The funeral home was overwhelmed and ran out of room for bodies, which were awaiting cremation, and used the trucks for storage, a second law enforcement source said Wednesday.
At least one of the trucks was unrefrigerated, according to one law enforcement official. One source said the bodies were put on ice.
The Future of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons from
Pandemic Influenza (Richard V.)The virus caught the global community off guard, and its future course is still highly unpredictable; there is no crystal ball to tell us what the future holds and what the “end game” for controlling this pandemic will be. The epidemiology of other serious coronaviruses (SARS-CoV-1, the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome [SARS] and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus [MERS-CoV]) is substantially different from that of SARS-CoV-2; therefore, these pathogens do not provide useful models for predicting what to expect with this pandemic.
Coronavirus Mask: West Bengal’s Class 11 student invents mask that kills COVID19 viruses (Anirban P.)
When The Statesman asked Digantika about the mask, she explained, “It’s a two-fold mask equipped with two numbers of one-way valves and filters planted in two directions and the valves are linked to two separate chambers. During inhalation, one of the valves allows filtered air to get access to the lung and the filter kills the virus if it tries to enter through the air.”
Fight against devastating locust swarms hampered by Covid-19 (Sparky1)
East Africa has been fighting a massive locust swarm for weeks but now experts warn it could be made worse due to coronavirus.
It has been hypothesized that SARS-CoV was harbored in its natural reservoir, bats, and was transmitted directly or indirectly from bats to palm civets and then to humans. However, although the genetically related SARS-like coronavirus (SL-CoV) has been identified in horseshoe bats of the genus Rhinolophus, its spike protein was not able to use the human ACE2 (hACE2) protein as a receptor.
Smart lifts, lonely workers, no towers or tourists: architecture after coronavirus (tmn)
Furniture may change too. “Office desks have shrunk over the years, from 1.8m to 1.6m to now 1.4m and less, but I think we’ll see a reversal of that, as people won’t want to sit so close together.” He imagines legislation might be introduced to mandate a minimum area per person in offices, as well as a reduction in maximum occupancy for lifts and larger lobbies to minimise overcrowding.
Struggling to use Face ID with your mask? Apple will soon solve that problem (Sparky1)
In the new version of iOS, Face ID will recognize when someone is wearing a mask, and the iPhone will pull up the passcode entry screen after swiping up from the bottom of the screen — no more constant searching for your face. The Face ID tool still won’t unlock your iPhone unless you take off your mask, but it will make the switch to the passcode-unlock option significantly faster.
Game Over for Oil, The Economy is Next (thc0655)
2020 global liquids demand may average 20 mmb/d less than in 2019 (Figure 1). This estimate is really a thought experiment because it is impossible to know what supply and demand are in the present much less in the next quarter or beyond. This is a time of unimaginable flux and uncertainty because no one knows how long economic activity will be depressed, how long it will take to recover or if it will recover.
Is It Permitted to Flee the City? (tmn)
The rabbis and community leaders at the time knew all too well what they were dealing with, usually from grim past experience. They had mechanisms and systems in place for epidemics, ranging from community rules about alerting local leaders as soon as a household member showed signs of disease, to legal principles about annulling rental agreements and labor contracts in case of a threat. The preferable courses of action in times of plague were weighted, from self-isolating to fleeing.
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