Economy
Putting the Risk of Covid-19 in Perspective (tmn)
A useful way to understand risks is by comparing them with what is called a “micromort,” which measures a one-in-a-million chance of dying. Note that we are considering only fatality risks here, not the risk of growing sick from coronavirus, or morbidity. The micromort allows one to easily compare the risk of dying from skydiving, for example (7 micromorts per jump), or going under general anesthesia in the United States (5 micromorts), to that of giving birth in the United States (210 micromorts).
South America a new COVID epicenter, Africa reaches 100,000 cases (Sparky1)
Brazil is the “most affected,” and authorities there have approved broad use of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine for treatment of COVID-19, he said. He reiterated that clinical evidence does not support the drug’s widespread use against the disease, given its risks.
Nine African countries had 50% rises in cases in the past week, while others have seen a decline or have stable rates, Ryan said.
Police see uptick in speeding, fatal crashes amid pandemic (thc0655)
“When you’re going in excess of 100 miles an hour, these crashes are inevitably going to be fatal or near fatal,” Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety President Cathy Chase told ABC News.
In Massachusetts, the fatality rate for car crashes is rising. In Minnesota, motor vehicle crashes and fatalities have more than doubled compared to the same time period in previous years.
Trump bets the farm on Huawei equipment ban (Roger B.)
Ericsson is presently worth about $28 billion; add an acquisition premium and a $15 billion shot to its R&D budget, and for $50 billion the US would have had a national champion to take on Huawei. The tech war might cost the US many times that amount.
If China retaliates by shutting US tech companies out of the Chinese market, the outcome will be a collapse of trans-Pacific technology trade, aggravating what already is the worst economic downturn since the Second World War.
China’s Move In Hong Kong Illustrates The End Of U.S. Superiority (Roger B.)
In the year 2000 Hong Kong’s GDP stood at $171 billion while China’s was just 7 times larger at $1.200 billion. Last year Hong Kong’s GDP had nearly doubled to $365 billion. But China’s GDP had grown more than tenfold to $14,200 billion, nearly 40 times larger than Hong Kong’s. Expressed in purchase power parity the divergence is even bigger. As an economic outlet for China Hong Kong has lost its importance.
Coronavirus may have been a ‘cell-culture experiment’ gone wrong (Nikko)
“The two possibilities which I think are both still open is that it was a chance transmission of a virus from an as yet unidentified animal to human. The other possibility is that it was an accidental release of the virus from a laboratory,” he said.
“Certainly we can’t exclude the possibility that this came from a laboratory experiment rather than from an animal. They are both open possibilities.”
Moderna allowed only exceptionally healthy volunteers to participate in the study. A vaccine with those reaction rates could cause grave injuries in 1.5 billion humans if administered to “every person on earth”.
That is the threshold that Gates has established for ending the global lockdown. Moderna did not explain why it reported positive antibody tests for only eight participants.
The potential lethality of COVID-19 is related, in part, to it easy and rapid transmissibility, leading to wide-spread exposure. Early data suggested that each person would likely transmit the virus to two other people, leading to a quick, logarithmic progression of the infection. Under the theory of herd immunity, having large portions of the population with immunity, dramatically reduces the transmissibility of the disease. It is not necessary in any single population to vaccinate 100% of individuals with MRCV to eliminate nearly all deaths from COVID-19. Instead, one has to only provide enough coverage with MRCV so that the effective reproductive number (R) of the virus through each patient is less than 1, which stops the logarithmic progression. A drop in the R value below 1 likely explains why several populations including those of Madagascar, Hong Kong, and South Korea, which have all had aggressive MRCV vaccination programs, have reported so few deaths from COVID-19.
A systematic review on the efficacy and safety of chloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19 (KKK)
We included six articles (one narrative letter, one in-vitro study, one editorial, expert consensus paper, two national guideline documents) and 23 ongoing clinical trials in China. Chloroquine seems to be effective in limiting the replication of SARS-CoV-2 (virus causing COVID-19) in vitro.
A Cogent Analysis by Dr. Ley (thc0655)
As physicians, when confronted with such, we plan for the worst and walk it back once we learn more. It was obvious early on that this disease is severe in a small fraction of those infected, especially in certain subgroups, and we shouldn’t take it lightly. I’ve not stopped operating through this entire series of events. For a month or so I was at about 40-50% of my capacity…people continue contracting the same illnesses: cancer, heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, appendicitis, etc, that they normally do and for some reason we were told to pretend they didn’t.
The Tax Break Industrial Complex (JM)
Ralph talks about how ending corporate tax giveaways and enacting a stock transfer tax can help the country recover from the recession caused by the Covid-19 pandemic with first Greg LeRoy of Good Jobs First and then New York State Assemblyman, Phil Steck. Plus, we pay tribute to a number of progressive activists and thinkers we’ve lost recently, including one of our favorite and frequent guests, the Green Cowboy, David Freeman.
Dozens of chickens stolen from Feisty Acres Farm in Southold, police say (Eddie Jay)
She said the theft of the chickens, which are five and a half months old — about the age they would have started laying eggs — cost her roughly $2,100. But Morawiec, who has operated the farm with her partner, Chris Pinto, since 2015, said the poultry could have generated thousands more in the eggs they would have laid.
Special Report: In Oklahoma pork-packing town, COVID stirs fear, faith and sorrow (Sparky1)
Seaboard reports that, as of May 21, 641 of its some 2,700 employees tested positive for the virus – roughly a quarter of its workforce. Pilar, Michael and Anthony Jimenez all got sick. So did Felix, 56, who had been mostly homebound as he recovered from heart bypass surgery. He died May 9.
Guymon is part of the coronavirus’ new frontier – mostly rural communities with large meatpacking plants where employees often work inches apart, carpool to their jobs and live in crowded or multi-generational homes.
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