An Over-reaction?

[ATLANTIC CENTRAL]

Miningman

There will be permanent changes in business, transportation and society as a whole.

Movie theatres may be done for. They should be done for anyway,  Maybe Drive In's  make a huge comeback.  That works.

Cruise Ships are finito. Every time someone coughs all hell will break loose. They are prisons. You got to be nuts to ever take a cruise ship again, ever. 

Euclid pointed out a bigger problem and he is correct--- public transportation, especially subways. Maybe the beginning of the end of large cities. Complete redesign. Trains like Amtrak could go to high platform individual compartments. Why not? 

Education will be transformative too. 

All of this will be demanded by the public going forward from here on. 

 

Well. It all depends on where and how you lived before all this.........

Never went on a cruise, never wanted to...........

We don't use public transportation, don't really have much of that out here with the dairy cows and corn fields.......

Theaters, I can take them or leave them. I designed some of the first cutting edge surround sound speaker systems in the 80's, my home theater sounds and looks great, with no goof balls talking during the movie.

Only 34 confirmed cases in our county as of this morning.........

I agree this will change the world, the real question is exactly how? I'm not so sure ALL the public will demand the same things, a fact many supposedly educated and informed people don't seem to get. 

Sheldon

[York1]

ATLANTIC CENTRAL

But, I don't know where you live, or how close the grocery store is, but my wife would never want to go to the store every other day, which is about 10 minutes away for us.

 

We live in a small town, and there is a local grocery store on the way home from my school.  I got in the habit of stopping there nearly every day to buy what we needed for that evening.

 

[Miningman]

Low platform or high platform, design it all ahead of time. New cars, new platforms or old platforms, whatever.

Each compartment has its own intake and exhaust, nothing is passed thru. It's like each compartment was its own little train. Pressurize the cabin so the door is stable. Pump in oxygen, separate again each car, to make the trip a bit brighter and enjoyable, like the casinos do!  Explosive bolts if need be. 

Washrooms like on an airliner, attendant outside the doors. Small, but functional, make it not so welcoming and folks get the message beforehand. If you must you must but better before you board. 2 Male, 2 Female, 1 whatever self identified gender non specific. Attendant cleans up after each use. Here's a good novel idea... 'sneak a smoke' switch sucks out the air with powerful exhaust. 

I said 'maybe' about movie theatres. I think they will die on their own. There will always be film festivals and such for the big screen aficionados.

Higher education will go on line in the future. You will have to go 'in' for labs, field schools, mid terms and finals so as invigulated and no Google. 

 

[York1]

Miningman

Higher education will go on line in the future. You will have to go 'in' for labs, field schools, mid terms and finals

 

I've been amazed how much college is already done online.  For many university students in my small town, this is no big deal academically.  They were already doing this a lot at the physical university.

[zugmann]

Miningman

I said 'maybe' about movie theatres. I think they will die on their own. There will always be film festivals and such for the big screen aficionados.

 

 

I don't watch a lot of movies - but there's still something about being in a theater with the huge screen and surround sound that being at home just doesn't capture.

 

[n012944]

Miningman

There will be permanent changes in business, transportation and society as a whole.

Movie theatres may be done for. They should be done for anyway,  Maybe Drive In's  make a huge comeback.  That works.

That sounds like it is something you WANT to happen, not something that is really going to happen.

Miningman

Cruise Ships are finito. Every time someone coughs all hell will break loose. They are prisons. You got to be nuts to ever take a cruise ship again, ever. 

 

 

People have short memories.  I remember right after 9/11 many people said that they would never fly again.  The airlines posted record passenger counts last year.  I am a member of a cruise line Facebook group, that I joined last year before my first cruise to learn more about the cruising process.   It is currently filled with questions about when they will start cruising again, because the members of the group can't wait to get back out cruising.  

 

Using a term like "prison" when describing a cruise ship tells me two things.  One, you have never been on a cruise, as a normal cruise is far from confining.  Two, for some odd reason, you WANT cruise ships to go away.  I don't see that in the future.

[York1]

zugmann

but there's still something about being in a theater with the huge screen and surround sound that being at home just doesn't capture.

Agreed.  We don't go see a lot of movies at theaters, but we still enjoy the experience.

Even with Netflix and other streaming services, our local theaters seemed to still be holding their own.

[zugmann]

n012944

Using a term like "prison" when describing a cruise ship tells me two things.  One, you have never been on a cruise, as a normal cruise is far from confining.  Two, for some odd reason, you WANT cruise ships to go away.  I don't see that in the future.

I don't care if they survive or not (I have no interest in cruises), but I also don't want bailout money going to the companies that have their ships flagged in other countries.

 

If they can make it after this on their own - good for them. 

[Miningman]

I think you will see a significant permanent drop off in movie theatre goers and that may make it unprofitable to continue with that format.

Same with cruise ships. It's just specualtion. Perhaps the smaller operations will be fine. The big ones employ a lot people, maybe a lot of political support. 

[zugmann]

Miningman

I think you will see a significant permanent drop off in movie theatre goers and that may make it unprofitable to continue with that format.

I don't know.  People need escape, and once this thing turns the bend, peole will need escape more than ever. 

[Flintlock76]

zugmann

 

 

n012944

Using a term like "prison" when describing a cruise ship tells me two things.  One, you have never been on a cruise, as a normal cruise is far from confining.  Two, for some odd reason, you WANT cruise ships to go away.  I don't see that in the future.

 

 

I don't care if they survive or not (I have no interest in cruises), but I also don't want bailout money going to the companies that have their ships flagged in other countries.

 

If they can make it after this on their own - good for them. 

 

From the last I've heard foreign-flagged or "flag of convenience" cruise lines aren't getting any bailout money or loans.   Nor should they.  Aside from harbor or other port-associated fees they don't pay taxes here.

[GERALD L MCFARLANE JR]

Convicted One

 

Euclid

So the new way of travel will be not to travel.  We are leaving the service economy and entering the brave new, "Stay home economy." 

 Hey, if this thing takes some of the wind out of the sails of the hucksters trying to promote HSR, it will be seen as a good thing in my book. Wonder how California is thinking about their little experiment right about now? 

The fastest way to recover from any economic slowdown, especially one caused by natural forces, is to spend money on construction.  Something even the Donald should know well, and someone needs to tell Rep. Kevin McCarthy(R-Bakersfield, CA) this as apparently he's balking at a third recovery measure that would do just that...funnel billions upon billions into construction projects nationwide.  This is the time to fund, Gateway, Portal, the complete CAHSR and any other rail related projects.  If they're talking about another Trillion dollar bill for infrastructure, split it 3 ways between the 3 major forms of land transportaion, rail, air and highway(I'd use all that money to repair the 1000+ bridges across the U.S. highway system myself).  That would be roughly 333 Billion per mode of travel, that would easily kickstart the economy and get us rolling again ASAP.

[daveklepper]

The Israeli humanitarian aid organization IsraAID is providing support to frontline medical professionals and volunteers in the organization’s emergency units responding to the coronavirus crisis in Italy with the launch of webinars on stress management, psychological first aid and community resilience, it was announced on Tuesday.

IsraAID is working in partnership with La Deputazione Ebraica di Roma, the welfare organization of Rome’s Jewish community, to offer ongoing supervision and guidance, and support to locally led relief activities. Its webinars focus on self-care and ways of coping with stress, and are tailored to the specific needs of frontline workers.

Italy is one of the most affected countries by the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 100,000 cases and more than 11,500 deaths.

IsraAID has maintained close ties with partner organizations in Italy, including in the Jewish community, since its work in the country from 2016 to 2019, following the August 2016 earthquake in Central Italy that killed 299 people.

“We’ve been monitoring the situation in Italy as the coronavirus pandemic has worsened,” said IsraAID CEO Yotam Polizer. “By working remotely with our partners in the Rome Jewish community during this difficult time, we will use our expertise in crisis situations to provide guidance and support as they reach the most vulnerable in the community. Italian communities have shown remarkable strength and resilience as they have been hit by the very worst this disease has to offer.

“We hope to bolster that in whatever way we can,” he said.

[daveklepper]

Possibly by the time the plague is over, the entire World population will be immune to the Cononavirus.  Those that have recovered will have their own immunity and the rest of the population will have received a safe and effective innoculation.  This is srill a possibility, and the steps to this have been noted in earlier postings.

[daveklepper]

Coronavirus cases in Israel jump to 6,092 with 95 inserious condition

81 patients on ventilators; death toll hits 25; Bnei Brak remains city with second highest number of cases, as government mulls further restrictions for ultra-Orthodox city

By TOI STAFF1 April 2020, 9:33 pm  0

 

The Health Ministry on Wednesday evening raised the tally of people infected with the coronavirus to 6,092, an increase of 501 since the morning.

There are 95 people in serious condition, including 81 patients on ventilators — an increase of five since the previous night.

Five people have also died between Tuesday night and Wednesday evening, increasing the death toll to 25.

Another 129 people were in moderate condition and the rest had mild symptoms. So far, 241 Israelis have recovered from the virus.

There were five deaths from coronavirus on Wednesday, all in individuals with underlying health issues.

The Health Ministry also announced the number of cases for individual cities, showing that Bnei Brak, a predominantly ultra-Orthodox Tel Aviv suburb with nearly 200,000 residents, has 723 confirmed cases, the second highest infection rate of any Israeli city. That number is despite the fact it is only the ninth largest in the country by population.

Jerusalem, which also has a sizable ultra-Orthodox population, has 807 cases, the most of any city in Israel.

Israel has been implementing increasingly stringent measures to thwart the spread of the virus, with citizens generally required to stay home, and is mulling further restrictions on Bnei Brak.

===

Authorities have upped enforcement in recent days of social distancing regulations in Bnei Brak and other ultra-Orthodox areas, where some have flouted rules against congregating or leaving home for non-essential reasons.

Channel 12 news reported Wednesday that steps being considered for Bnei Brak include a ban on vehicles entering the city, as well as actions to force all those feeling ill to evacuate from the city to receive treatment, to further curb potential infections.

 

[alphas]

[quote user="GERALD L MCFARLANE JR"]

The fastest way to recover from any economic slowdown, especially one caused by natural forces, is to spend money on construction.  Something even the Donald should know well, and someone needs to tell Rep. Kevin McCarthy(R-Bakersfield, CA) this as apparently he's balking at a third recovery measure that would do just that...funnel billions upon billions into construction projects nationwide.  This is the time to fund, Gateway, Portal, the complete CAHSR and any other rail related projects.  If they're talking about another Trillion dollar bill for infrastructure, split it 3 ways between the 3 major forms of land transportaion, rail, air and highway(I'd use all that money to repair the 1000+ bridges across the U.S. highway system myself).  That would be roughly 333 Billion per mode of travel, that would easily kickstart the economy and get us rolling again ASAP.

 

But only if this is handled differently than what Obama did with his which basically wasted much of the money.

1.   Eliminate any chance that it could be used to pay government workers instead of being used for construction and/or repare.     Way too much of it was used for this mainly in the blue states and all it did was delay the inevitable for a few years until the funds ran out and then the government employees were terminated.

2.  Eliminate the Obama requirement that only union labor could be employed.    The majority of states don't have that many union contractors which is why they couldn't take advantage of the Obama stimulus.     The Davis-Bacon Act will still apply to drive the labor costs up (unfortunately as that will result in less projects than if it didn't apply) and if the unions can't successfully compete with that its too bad. 

3.  Make absolutely sure that the Federal Government does not get caught up in any "Big Dig" situations once again.    The best way to do that is the Feds only commit to a certain amount per project and the states are responsible for overruns.    If a state won't agree to that then they don't get the money.

4.  Eliminate or suspend some of the requirements that delay even minor construction projects forever.   Otherwise it could be years before any results occur.

5.  Construction only projects.  If Pelossi tries again to play politics, then tell the country loud and repeatedly you want to do it but she's trying to once attach unrelated items such as Planned Parenthood funding, etc. that have nothing to do with the country recovering from the financial crisis.       

I'm with those that say the major focus should be on highways and bridges, with rail and air getting some but not equal amounts .   The normal highway bridge project (not the large bridges over wide rivers) are fairly easy to start and not that controversial when it comes to the environment.   They can probably get going on them without much delay.    The majority of them now use pre-cast concrete spans so they can be built much faster.    The rail tunnels in the NY area are not something the rest of the country considers a high priority so trying to hold up the bill in order to get too much support for them won't go well.   Get what you can for their construction from the Feds and NY & NJ make up the rest including the inevitable overruns.

[charlie hebdo]

The trouble with an  infrastructure program is it only benefits the  construction industry now. And it takes months to kick in.  By then,  the normal economic forces will be operating.  And the worst boondoggles and pork are bipartisan. You conveniently omitted Alaska and its GOP senator's "bridge to nowhere"?

[GERALD L MCFARLANE JR]

alphas

GERALD L MCFARLANE JR

The fastest way to recover from any economic slowdown, especially one caused by natural forces, is to spend money on construction.  Something even the Donald should know well, and someone needs to tell Rep. Kevin McCarthy(R-Bakersfield, CA) this as apparently he's balking at a third recovery measure that would do just that...funnel billions upon billions into construction projects nationwide.  This is the time to fund, Gateway, Portal, the complete CAHSR and any other rail related projects.  If they're talking about another Trillion dollar bill for infrastructure, split it 3 ways between the 3 major forms of land transportaion, rail, air and highway(I'd use all that money to repair the 1000+ bridges across the U.S. highway system myself).  That would be roughly 333 Billion per mode of travel, that would easily kickstart the economy and get us rolling again ASAP.

 

But only if this is handled differently than what Obama did with his which basically wasted much of the money.

1.   Eliminate any chance that it could be used to pay government workers instead of being used for construction and/or repare.     Way too much of it was used for this mainly in the blue states and all it did was delay the inevitable for a few years until the funds ran out and then the government employees were terminated.

2.  Eliminate the Obama requirement that only union labor could be employed.    The majority of states don't have that many union contractors which is why they couldn't take advantage of the Obama stimulus.     The Davis-Bacon Act will still apply to drive the labor costs up (unfortunately as that will result in less projects than if it didn't apply) and if the unions can't successfully compete with that its too bad. 

3.  Make absolutely sure that the Federal Government does not get caught up in any "Big Dig" situations once again.    The best way to do that is the Feds only commit to a certain amount per project and the states are responsible for overruns.    If a state won't agree to that then they don't get the money.

4.  Eliminate or suspend some of the requirements that delay even minor construction projects forever.   Otherwise it could be years before any results occur.

5.  Construction only projects.  If Pelossi tries again to play politics, then tell the country loud and repeatedly you want to do it but she's trying to once attach unrelated items such as Planned Parenthood funding, etc. that have nothing to do with the country recovering from the financial crisis.       

I'm with those that say the major focus should be on highways and bridges, with rail and air getting some but not equal amounts .   The normal highway bridge project (not the large bridges over wide rivers) are fairly easy to start and not that controversial when it comes to the environment.   They can probably get going on them without much delay.    The majority of them now use pre-cast concrete spans so they can be built much faster.    The rail tunnels in the NY area are not something the rest of the country considers a high priority so trying to hold up the bill in order to get too much support for them won't go well.   Get what you can for their construction from the Feds and NY & NJ make up the rest including the inevitable overruns.

 

 

Nope, not even considering that, just authorize the money and include waivers for the vast majority of environmental reviews.  The national society of civil engineers(ASCE) has stated numerous times that there's a minimum of 1000 highway bridges in danger of collapsing within the next 20 years and upwards of 10000 nationwide.

 

You don't put any strings on contractors, waive as much red tape in the disbursement as possible.  It seems that the rest of the nation forgets that well over 30% of the U.S. GDP is tied into the NY/NJ/PA region, which is why having the Feds(aka everyone) foot the bill for Gateway and Portal makes complete sense.

 

I'm not going to go into detail like you did because this is rail related forum and I'm being generous even giving any money to air transport.  If it was up to me it would be split 50/50 between highway and rail.  Including new cars for Amtrak that would replace the existing fleets and triple the size at the same time.  Might as well think big if we're going to get this country back on it's feet fast.  Something along the lines of say 1200 new Superliners and 2000 new Viewliner II's, obviously all in various different configurations.  That would allow replacement of all older equipment and introduction of new/expanded services with a reserve fleet as well.

[alphas]

[quote user="charlie hebdo"]

The trouble with an  infrastructure program is it only benefits the  construction industry now. And it takes months to kick in.  By then,  the normal economic forces will be operating.  And the worst boondoggles and pork are bipartisan. You conveniently omitted Alaska and its GOP senator's "bridge to nowhere"?

 

Your example would fall under #3 of my post.   Just like the "Big Dig" was somewhat Bi-partisan since there was a Rep. Gov. in Mass. for part of it's construction.     

[daveklepper]

Treating COVID-19—Off-Label Drug Use, Compassionate Use, and Randomized Clinical Trials During Pandemics

Andre C. Kalil, MD, MPH¹

Author Affiliations Article Information

JAMA. Published online March 24, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.4742

related articles

Audio Interview (35:58)

Coronavirus in New York - Report From the Front Lines

Clinical Review Audio (17:13)

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: Chloroquine/Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin

In the 2014 Ebola outbreak, close to 30 000 individuals developed Ebola viral disease (EVD), and numerous therapies were tested against this virus, including chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, favipiravir, brincidofovir, monoclonal antibodies, antisense RNA, and convalescent plasma, among many others. With such a large number of therapeutic interventions given to affected patients, the goal was to determine which was efficacious against Ebola. Ultimately, none proved to be efficacious or safe.

Why were new therapies not discovered? One reason is because virtually all studies were single-group interventions without concurrent controls, which led to no definitive conclusion related to efficacy or safety. Despite much resistance and controversy regarding asking patients with EVD to participate in a randomized clinical trial (RCT),¹ the National Institutes of Health (NIH) conducted the first and only RCT during that outbreak. It took several months to design the trial, but it was implemented and successfully launched during the outbreak; however, it was too late for the RCT to be completed.² This tragedy of not discovering new therapies during an outbreak cannot be repeated.

The world is now facing a pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, the cause of COVID-19), for which no proven specific therapies are available, other than supportive care. In China, and now Italy, France, and Spain, a large number of patients have received off-label and compassionate use therapies such as chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, lopinavir-ritonavir, favipiravir, remdesivir, ribavirin, interferon, convalescent plasma, steroids, and anti–IL-6 inhibitors, based on either their in vitro antiviral or anti-inflammatory properties. These therapies have been mostly given without controls, except for a few randomized trials started in China, and more recently in the US.³

Although many drugs have in vitro activity against different coronaviruses, no clinical evidence currently supports the efficacy and safety of any drug against any coronavirus in humans, including SARS-CoV-2. Numerous drugs that have been highly promising in vitro for other infectious diseases have failed in clinical studies. If in vitro activity automatically translated into clinical activity, more antimicrobial drugs for all kinds of infectious diseases would be available. Yet, there are published case reports of old and new drugs with in vitro activity against SARS-CoV-2 that have been given to patients but without a comparison control group. The administration of any unproven drug as a “last resort” wrongly assumes that benefit will be more likely than harm. However, when a drug with unknown clinical effects is given to patients who have severe illness from a new disease (like COVID-19), there is no way to know whether the patients had benefited or were harmed if they were not compared to a concurrent control group. A common interpretation of off-label use and compassionate use of drugs is that is that if the patient died, they died from the disease, but if the patient survived, they survived because of the given drug. This is not true.

As a practical example, chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and lopinavir-ritonavir have a variety of adverse effects, including QT prolongation, torsades de pointes, hepatitis, acute pancreatitis, neutropenia, and anaphylaxis. Considering that most patients who have died from COVID-19 were elderly and had cardiovascular comorbidities and that affected patients frequently have cardiac arrhythmias,^4,5 chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and lopinavir-ritonavir could potentially increase the risk of cardiac death. Additionally, hepatitis and neutropenia are clinical manifestations of COVID-19, and both hepatic and bone marrow dysfunction could be made worse by the off-label use of these drugs; thus, it would be impossible to differentiate the drug-related adverse effects from the disease manifestations in the absence of a control group.

Compassionate use of drugs that have not been previously approved for clinical use (eg, remdesivir) could cause serious adverse effects that were not previously detected because of the very small number of exposed patients. With respect to anti-inflammatory therapy, the use of intravenous steroids has been associated with delayed coronavirus clearance in both blood and lungs with MERS-CoV⁶ and SARS-CoV,⁷ and steroids were associated with significantly increased risk of mortality and secondary infections in patients with influenza.⁸ Furthermore, even low-dose steroids have shown harm in patients with sepsis, and IL-6 inhibitors may cause even more profound immunosuppression than steroids, increasing the risk of sepsis, bacterial pneumonia, gastrointestinal perforation, and hepatotoxicity.^9,10 Yet, despite substantial evidence of potential harm, steroids and IL-6 inhibitors are now being given to patients with COVID-19 in several countries. Accordingly, even for treatments previously utilized in other diseases, it is critical to evaluate these drugs in studies that have a concurrent control group.

A control group may be defined as the standard of care with or without placebo. One concern during epidemics, for example, during the 2014 Ebola outbreak (and the current COVID-19 pandemic), is whether it is ethical to give patients a placebo. If the disease is not 100% lethal and it is not known whether the experimental drug would help or harm a patient (ie, a situation with true equipoise), then it is ethical to conduct an RCT. Without a control group, it is not possible to accurately determine the harms of any experimental drug. In reality, the placebo group will always be safer (regarding adverse effects) than the experimental group because patients in the placebo group will receive the established standard of care. In contrast, compared with RCTs, the administration of old or new drugs (eg, off-label use, compassionate use, single-group cohorts, case-historical controls, clinical trials without controls) may be less safe, and moreover, will not lead to the discovery of any new therapy.

In addition to the risk of harming patients without the possibility to even detect the magnitude of harm, the administration of off-label drug use, compassionate drug use, and uncontrolled studies during a pandemic also could discourage patients and clinicians from participating in RCTs, hampering any knowledge that could be gained about the effects of the drug being tested. More than 300 000 individuals have been diagnosed with COVID-19; however, just a few hundred have been offered participation in RCTs. Meanwhile, many more patients have been offered uncontrolled drugs.

It is imperative to discover new therapies, otherwise there will be no proven treatments for future coronavirus pandemics. By participating in an RCT, both patients and clinicians can benefit from the unique opportunity to directly contribute to the discovery of new therapies, and also from the safer monitoring process in the conduct of clinical trials compared with uncontrolled drug administration (whereby safety cannot be determined). Optimally, during an outbreak, the type of RCTs that should be prioritized are ones with an adaptive design, which are able to rapidly accept or reject multiple experimental therapies throughout the trial, while being adequately powered for meaningful clinical outcomes.

With the current COVID-19 pandemic, RCTs have been launched around the world, including an adaptive trial sponsored by the NIH.³ This unprecedented speed from concept to implementation in just a few weeks is noteworthy and provides proof that clinical trials can be promptly initiated even in the middle of a pandemic. The rapid and simultaneous combination of supportive care and RCTs is the only way to find effective and safe treatments for COVID-19 and any other future outbreak.

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Article Information

Corresponding Author: Andre C. Kalil, MD, MPH, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Nebraska Medical Center, 95400 Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE 68135 ([e-mail]).

Published Online: March 24, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.4742

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.

References

1.

Burton  TM. Disputes emerge on African Ebola drug trials. Wall Street Journal. Published May 13, 2015. Accessed March 21, 2020. https://www.wsj.com/articles/disputes-emerge-on-african-ebola-drug-trials-1431471041

2.

Davey  RT  Jr, Dodd  L, Proschan  MA,  et al; PREVAIL II Writing Group; Multi-National PREVAIL II Study Team.  A randomized, controlled trial of ZMapp for Ebola virus infection.  N Engl J Med. 2016;375(15):1448-1456. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1604330PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref

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Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04280705. Posted February 21, 2020. Accessed March 19, 2020. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04280705?term=remdesivir&cond=covid-19&draw=2&rank=5

4.

Young  BE, Ong  SWX, Kalimuddin  S,  et al; Singapore 2019 Novel Coronavirus Outbreak Research Team.  Epidemiologic features and clinical course of patients infected With SARS-CoV-2 in Singapore.  JAMA. Published online March 3, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.3204
ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar

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Wu  Z, McGoogan  JM.  Characteristics of and important lessons from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in China: summary of a report of 72 314 cases from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.  JAMA. Published online February 24, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.2648
ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar

6.

Arabi  YM, Mandourah  Y, Al-Hameed  F,  et al; Saudi Critical Care Trial Group.  Corticosteroid therapy for critically ill patients with Middle East respiratory syndrome.  Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2018;197(6):757-767. doi:10.1164/rccm.201706-1172OCPubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref

7.

Lee  N, Allen Chan  KC, ***  DS,  et al.  Effects of early corticosteroid treatment on plasma SARS-associated coronavirus RNA concentrations in adult patients.  J Clin Virol. 2004;31(4):304-309. doi:10.1016/j.jcv.2004.07.006PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref

8.

Russell  CD, Millar  JE, Baillie  JK.  Clinical evidence does not support corticosteroid treatment for 2019-nCoV lung injury.  Lancet. 2020;395(10223):473-475. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30317-2PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref

9.

Kalil  AC, Sun  J.  Low-dose steroids for septic shock and severe sepsis: the use of Bayesian statistics to resolve clinical trial controversies.  Intensive Care Med. 2011;37(3):420-429. doi:10.1007/s00134-010-2121-0PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref

10.

Actemra (tocilizumab). Prescribing information. Genentech; 2019. Accessed March 22, 2020. https://www.actemrahcp.com/?_ga=2.137041460.509331555.1584929819-505112783.1584929819

[daveklepper]

In times of trouble, often a bit of humor helps.  So, duplicating from the Classic Trains Journey to Destiny thread, Father Frank Browne SJ's photo inside a new diesel railcar wirh a roof leak:

[daveklepper]

Some postings back on this thread, I was asked about the transfer of medocal supplies to Gaza.  Confirming my reply in greater detail, the following is official:

Coronavirus: Israel must help Hamas without creating a security threat

SECURITY: The Gaza corona conundrum

 

Within weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic has turned two classic Middle

East enemies — Israel and Hamas — into strange and unofficial

partners in a common battle to prevent a serious outbreak of the

disease in the highly populated and impoverished Gaza Strip.

There is no known direct communication between Israel and

Hamas. But Israel’s control of two of the enclave’s three borders

laces it in a crucial position to facilitate the passage of assistance

to Gaza, even as it must ensure that Hamas does not use the

cover of the illness to engage in further attacks.

 

“We are all fighting the same enemy, which is a global enemy...

the corona,” said Col. Iyad Sarhan, the commander of the

Coordination and Liaison

Administration for Gaza, which operates under the Office of

the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories

(COGAT).Sarhan is charged with the implementation of the

government’s civilian policy toward the Palestinians in Gaza,

which since the outbreak of COVID-19 has earned Israel praise

from the most unlikely of places, the United Nations.The Gaza

rocket that fell into an open field in southern Israel and the IDF

retaliatory strike that occurred on the last weekend in March

was a sharp reminder that the pandemic has not erased the

enmity between Israel and Hamas. Even as it helps Gaza

combat corona, Israel must ensure that Hamas is not exploiting

the situation to gain a military advantage against the IDF.At issue

is saving lives and the fear of a potential high death count, given

that the Gaza health system was on the verge of collapse prior to

the outbreak of the disease.For both Hamas and Israel, there are

also secondary issues at stake. A serious COVID-19 outbreak

could threaten Hamas rule. Hamas has been in charge of Gaza

since it overthrew Fatah in a violent coup in 2007. For Israel,

such an outbreak would become a public relations nightmare,

given that the international community holds it responsible for

the fate of the Palestinians in the Strip.

 

 

To date, there are only 12 known cases of coronavirus infections

in Gaza. They are quarantined, and their point of contact with the

disease is known, data that leave Sarhan with hope that contain-

ment is possible.

 

Sarhan said he believes that the data are correct and reflect the

situation within Gaza. It is more difficult to assess the situation

there because the IDF does not operate in Gaza as it does in

the West Bank.

 

The IDF has gone over scenarios of what would happen if the

disease were no longer contained.

 

Such an outbreak “could happen suddenly," Sarhan said. “We

are continually assessing the situation, so we can be prepared,"

he said, but he did not share any of those assessments or

possibilities.

 

“We are working with many partners. We hope that we do not

get to that situation [of an outbreak],” he said.

 

“We see that the 12 who were stricken are not seriously ill and

are being treated,” he said.

 

In the past Israel has linked in some cases restrictions at the

crossings with Hamas actions, but when it comes to the corona

crisis, Sarhan said, there is no linkage, because this is humani-

tarian assistance.

 

There had been an initiative to take steps to improve the

economy prior to corona, including increasing permits for

merchants, he said.

 

Sarhan said that in light of the coronavirus and the accompanying

financial crisis, it is important that the Gaza economy continue

to function.

 

There is a world economic crisis, which has plunged Israel into

a 25% unemployment rate, and Gaza has also been impacted,

Sarhan said.

Israel has taken steps to help the Gaza economy, including assisting

factories manufacturing protective gear, so that it can send that

equipment to markets outside of Gaza.

 

At present, he said, “There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

Every request, economic or medical, that would prevent one has

been considered on its merits, he said.

 

Sarhan explained that in spite of the depth of the crisis and the

dangers it poses, Israel is not considering reassessing its policy

of border restrictions put in place to combat Hamas’s forced rule.

 

"Those who still rule in the Gaza Strip are terrorist organizations

which do not love Israel.

 

Where we can make it easier with regard to civilian issues without

creating a security risk, we have approved requests. We are

making it easier where we can. We have done this in the past,

and we are doing it now.

 

“There are things that for years we have not allowed to enter,”

but which have now been authorized to go in, Sarhan said.

This includes certain raw materials, medical equipment and

products for the fishing industry.

 

“But it is impossible to forget the security situation,” he said,

adding that it is important for that situation to remain stable.

 

He asked the civilians in Gaza to also do their part to ensure

that the virus is contained by staying home.

 

“I call on the population in the Strip to listen to the health edicts.

This event will not last a week or longer, but could last for three

or four months. Patience is needed,” he said.

 

[daveklepper]

Researchers at Al-Quds University in east Jerusalem’s Abu Dis neighborhood have produced a fully computerized model of a respiratory machine for treating coronavirus patients, Prof. Imad Abu Kishek announced Wednesday.

The device was produced by a team of university doctors and engineers who began work on it after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, he said. Its production cost is low, and the device can be carried around easily.

The breakthrough system passed the medical and technical tests supervised by a joint team from the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Engineering, said Kishek, the university’s president. It can be made with locally available components, he added.

The new respirator works in a fully computerized system, provides various types of breathing support and is intended for use in intensive-care units, Kishek said.

The process of producing a device on the basis of the model will begin immediately after it is approved by the Palestinian Authority Health Ministry, he said.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas contacted Kishek and congratulated him and the university on “this great scientific and humanitarian achievement,” the university said.

Al-Quds University was established in 1995. It has 15 faculties and 29 institutes and centers, among them the first Palestinian medical school and first research center for nanotechnology.Researchers at Al-Quds University in east Jerusalem’s Abu Dis neighborhood have produced a fully computerized model of a respiratory machine for treating coronavirus patients, Prof. Imad Abu Kishek announced Wednesday.

The device was produced by a team of university doctors and engineers who began work on it after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, he said. Its production cost is low, and the device can be carried around easily.

The breakthrough system passed the medical and technical tests supervised by a joint team from the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Engineering, said Kishek, the university’s president. It can be made with locally available components, he added.

The new respirator works in a fully computerized system, provides various types of breathing support and is intended for use in intensive-care units, Kishek said.

The process of producing a device on the basis of the model will begin immediately after it is approved by the Palestinian Authority Health Ministry, he said.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas contacted Kishek and congratulated him and the university on “this great scientific and humanitarian achievement,” the university said.

Al-Quds University was established in 1995. It has 15 faculties and 29 institutes and centers, among them the first Palestinian medical school and first research center for nanotechnology.

[charlie hebdo]

Al Quds is Arabic for the Holy (one) = Jerusalem. 

[daveklepper]

Correct translation above

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF   APRIL 4, 2020 21:00

The number of Israelis with the novel coronavirus is now 7,851 and some 126 people are in serious condition, the Health Ministry reported. Some 108 individuals are currently intubated.

 

How well is the Jewish state battling the novel coronavirus?

“So far, we’re doing well, but the jury is really still out,” said Eyal Leshem, director of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Diseases at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer. “We really need to see in the next several weeks how well we are coping with corona.”

 

But there are a few things we do know.

 

On the one hand, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that “the State of Israel is ahead of the vast majority of countries” in combating SARS-CoV-2. Earlier this week, Israel was ranked the No. 1 safest country to stay free of coronavirus by the Deep Knowledge Group.

On the other hand, a report by Worldometer – one of the leading websites for coronavirus statistics, which takes data from the World Health Organization – shows how the coronavirus is affecting 203 countries and territories around the world. It demonstrates that Israel is not better off than all or even most other countries where people are infected. 

 

If one looks at the total number of cases per one million people, Israel is actually one of the worst. There are only 22 countries that have more cases per million than Israel, which means there are 180 countries that are doing better.   How well is the Jewish state battling the novel coronavirus?

“So far, we’re doing well, but the jury is really still out,” said Eyal Leshem, director of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Diseases at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer. “We really need to see in the next several weeks how well we are coping with corona. ”But Leshem said the ranking really depends on the number of people who have been tested. In Israel, we test about 7,000 people per day and are working toward testing as many as 30,000.

In total, 36 people have died in Israel from coronavirus and 338 have recovered.

Of the sick people, some 108 are in critical condition; 87 are on ventilators.

Worldwide, the global number of confirmed deaths from the coronavirus has surpassed 50,000 and there are more than a million cases. The top five countries with coronavirus are the United States (216,722), Italy (110,574), Spain (110,238), China (82,431) and Germany (77,981), according to data provided by Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University.

DESPITE THE new regulations, a small handful of extremist protesters, reportedly a splinter group from the Jerusalem Faction, which is itself an extremist group, demonstrated in Bnei Brak on Rabbi Akiva Street against the social-distancing orders, describing them as “the awful decrees of destruction of the closure of all Torah study halls and synagogues.”

In addition, radicals from the faction held a prayer service in the Ponovitz Yeshiva, but were soon evicted by the police.

Other members of the same group sought to pray outdoors in several spots in the city, eliciting protests from concerned neighbors who shouted at them from windows and doorways to leave, calling them “heretics” for ignoring the Jewish religious law of protecting one’s own life and that of others.

Coronavirus is plaguing the country financially, too. According to data published by the Israeli Employment Service, the number of unemployment benefit claimants climbed to over 1,036,500 on Thursday, or 24.9% of the workforce.

Since the start of March, almost 880,000 new applications have been received by the Employment Service. Among the new applicants, 89.2% are employees placed on unpaid leave and 6.6% have been made redundant.

In a phone call on Thursday, the government approved an emergency order to provide eligible self-employed workers with a grant worth up to NIS 6,000.  The grant will be paid via the Israel Tax Authority and requires self-employed workers to submit an application form via their personal account on the authority's website. Applications can be submitted within 60 days from April 2.

 

 

 

[BaltACD]

According to the Johns Hopkins reporting

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

 

Timor-Leste (wherever that is) has a single confirmed case.

[daveklepper]

Trying to settle the argument as to how the problem started and without denying that the USA could have done better than it did:

Coronavirus: China's Great Cover-up by Giulio Meotti April 5, 2020 at 5:30 am Share113        Bats were not, it seems, sold at Wuhan's seafood market. The Lancet noted in a January study that the first Covid-19 case in Wuhan had no connection to the market.        One more person has just disappeared. Ai Fen, a Chinese physician, who... claimed her bosses silenced her early warnings about coronavirus, appears to have vanished.... The journalists who saw what happened inside Wuhan have also disappeared.        "No one has been able to study it. How can you say it's not a release from a lab if you can't go to the lab? Indeed, we have seen Beijing do its best to prevent virologists and epidemiologists from actually going to Wuhan." — Gordon Chang, in Die Weltwoche, March 31, 2020.        That is another major problem. The potential major investigator on Wuhan's origin, the World Health Organization, is now accused of being "China's coronavirus' accomplice".        Why is China trafficking in dangerous viruses in the first place?        "Debate may rage over which center it is, but at this point it seems undeniable that a center has been directly involved with research on viruses, although not necessarily on the creation of a virus." — Father Renzo Milanese, AsiaNews.it, March 13, 2020. We have been paying dearly for China's lies. "This is one of the worst cover-ups in human history, and now the world is facing a global pandemic," said Rep. Michael T. McCaul, the ranking Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, before the US intelligence community concluded, in a classified report to the White House, that China has concealed the origin and extent of the catastrophic global coronavirus outbreak. The Chinese Communist Party's "failure has unleashed a global contagion killing thousands", wrote Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, president of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences, on April 1. "As we survey the damage done to lives around the world, we must ask who is responsible?" "... there is one government that has primary responsibility for what it has done and what it has failed to do, and that is the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] regime in Beijing. Let me be clear — it is the CCP that has been responsible, not the people of China... Lies and propaganda have put millions of lives around the world in danger... In recent years, we have seen an intense crackdown on freedom of expression in China. Lawyers, bloggers, dissidents and civil society activists have been rounded up and have disappeared." One more person has just disappeared: Ai Fen, a Chinese physician who was head of the emergency department at Wuhan Central Hospital, had worked with the late Dr. Li Wenliang. Ai, who claimed that her bosses silenced her early warnings about coronavirus, appears to have vanished. Her whereabouts, according to 60 Minutes Australia, are unknown. The journalists who saw what happened inside Wuhan have also disappeared. Caixin Global reported that the laboratories which sequenced the coronavirus in December were ordered by Chinese officials to hand over or destroy the samples and not release their findings. "If I had known what was to happen, I would not have cared about the reprimand, I would have *** talked about it to whoever, where ever I could", Ai Fen said in an interview in March. Those were her last recorded words. There is no record at all, however, about how this pandemic began. Wet market? A cave full of bats? Pangolins? Or a bio-weapons laboratory? No foreign doctors, journalists, analysts or international observers are present in Wuhan. Why, if the virus came out of a wet market or a cave, did China suppress inquiries to such an extent? Why, in December, did Beijing order Chinese scientists to destroy proof about the virus? Why did Chinese officials claim that US soldiers brought the virus to Wuhan? Why should it be scandalous that a US President calls a virus that began in China a "Chinese virus"? Who announced on January 11 that Wuhan's wet market was the origin of this epidemic? The Chinese regime. It was later discovered that the first known case of coronavirus traced back to November 17, 2019. The same Chinese regime later claimed that this coronavirus "may not have originated in China". What respected scientist or institution can now trust anything that comes out of China? Many leading scientists have dismissed the claim that the Covid-19 virus was an engineered pathogen. This conclusion was seemingly based on the fact that Wuhan has two major virus research labs: the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which is apparently less than a mile from the market, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory, handling the world's most deadly pathogens, located just seven miles from the market. The story was immediately and emphatically trashed as a "conspiracy theory". Those scientists claim that the virus likely originated among wildlife before spreading to humans, possibly through a food market in Wuhan. They say that, through genetic sequencing, they have identified the culprit for Covid-19 as a bat coronavirus. End of story? Science, thankfully, begins by asking questions and then seeking answers. Bats were not, it seems, sold at Wuhan's wet market. The Lancet noted in a January study that the first Covid-19 case in Wuhan had no connection to the market. The Lancet's paper, written by Chinese researchers from several institutions, detailed that 13 of the 41 first cases had no link to the market. "That's a big number, 13, with no link," commented Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University. So how did the epidemic start? "Now it seems clear that [the] seafood market is not the only origin of the virus, but to be honest we still do not know where the virus came from now", notes Bin Cao, pulmonary specialist at Capital Medical University, and the corresponding author of the Lancet article. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that China's Communist Party is withholding information about the coronavirus. If we do not know, it is necessary be open to all possibilities. "Less than 300 yards from the seafood market is the Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention" wrote David Ignatius of the Washington Post. "Researchers from that facility and the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology have posted articles about collecting bat coronaviruses from around China, for study to prevent future illness. Did one of those samples leak, or was hazardous waste deposited in a place where it could spread?". "Collecting viruses" presumably does not exclude the possibility of a "leaked virus". Worse, if China is not able to protect its laboratories, it needs to be held accountable and made to pay for the devastating global damage. "Experts know the new coronavirus is not a bioweapon. They disagree on whether it could have leaked from a research lab", stated The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Professor Richard Ebright of Rutgers University's Waksman Institute of Microbiology, and a major biosecurity expert, agreed with the Nature Medicine authors' argument that the coronavirus was not manipulated by humans. But Ebright does think it possible that the Covid-19 started as an accidental leak from a laboratory, such as one of the two in Wuhan, which are known to have been studying bat viruses: "Virus collection or animal infection with a virus having the transmission characteristics of the outbreak virus would pose substantial risk of infection of a lab worker, and from the lab worker, the public." Ebright has also claimed that bat coronaviruses are studied in Wuhan at Biosafety Level 2, "which provides only minimal protection" compared with the top BSL-4. "We don't know what happened, but there are a lot of reasons to believe that this indeed was a release of some sort", China expert Gordon Chang said to Die Weltwoche. "No one has been able to study it. How can you say it's not a release from a lab if you can't go to the lab? Indeed, we have seen Beijing do its best to prevent virologists and epidemiologists from actually going to Wuhan. The World Health Organization team went to Wuhan for like half a day with only part of the team." That is another major problem. The potential major investigator of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic's origin, the World Health Organization (WHO), is now accused of being "China's coronavirus' accomplice". As late as January 14, the WHO quoted Chinese health officials claiming there had been no human transmissions of the coronavirus within the country yet. China poses a biosecurity risks for the entire planet. One year before the first coronavirus case was identified in Wuhan, US Customs and Border Protection agents at Detroit Metro Airport stopped a Chinese biologist with three vials labeled "Antibodies" in his luggage. According to an unclassified FBI tactical intelligence report obtained by Yahoo News: "Inspection of the writing on the vials and the stated recipient led inspection personnel to believe the materials contained within the vials may be viable Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) materials." Why is China trafficking in dangerous viruses in the first place? According to Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations: "A safety breach at a Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab is believed to have caused four suspected SARS cases, including one death, in Beijing in 2004. A similar accident caused 65 lab workers of Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute to be infected with brucellosis in December 2019. In January 2020, a renowned Chinese scientist, Li Ning, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for selling experimental animals to local markets". In February, Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao, from Guangzhou's South China University of Technology, wrote in a research paper: "In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level [sic] may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories". Xiao later told the Wall Street Journal that he had withdrawn the paper because it "was not supported by direct proofs". Chinese laboratory mistakes have happened before. By 2010, researchers published as fact: "The most famous case of a released laboratory strain is the re-emergent H1N1 influenza-A virus which was first observed in China in May of 1977 and in Russia shortly thereafter". The virus may have escaped from a lab attempting to prepare a vaccine in response to the U.S. swine flu pandemic alert. In 1999 the most senior defector in the US from the Soviet biological warfare program, Ken Alibek, revealed that Soviet officials concluded that China had suffered a serious accident at one of its secret biological plants, causing two major epidemics of fever that had swept China in the late 1980s. "Our analysts", Alibek stated in his book, Biohazard, "concluded that they were caused by an accident in a lab where Chinese scientists were weaponizing viral diseases". In 2004, the World Health Organization disclosed that the latest outbreak of "severe acute respiratory syndrome" (SARS) in China involved two researchers who were working with the virus in a Beijing research lab. The WHO denounced Chinese breaches of safety procedures, and director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Li Liming, resigned. Science magazine also stated that "for the third time in less than a year, an outbreak of SARS seems to have originated from a failure in laboratory containment". Moreover, three years ago, when China opened the laboratory in Wuhan, Tim Trevan, a Maryland biosafety specialist, told Nature that he worried about the safety of the building because "structures where everyone feels free to speak up and openness of information are important." Free speech and open information: exactly what Chinese regime fought against in December and January. A Chinese video about a key researcher in Wuhan, Tian Junhua, which was released a few weeks before the outbreak in Wuhan, shows Chinese researchers handling bats that contained viruses. In the video (produced by China Science Communication, run by the China Association for Science and Technology), Tian says: "I am not a doctor, but I work to cure and save people... I am not a soldier, but I work to safeguard an invisible national defense line". Tian is also reported as having said: "I can feel the fear: the fear of infections and the fear of getting lost. Because of the fear, I take every step extremely cautiously. The more scared I feel, the more care I take in executing every detail. Because the process of you finding the viruses is also when you can be exposed to them the easiest. I do hope these virus samples will only be preserved for scientific research and will never be used in real life". For a month, the Chinese Communist Party, instead of fighting the contagion, did everything possible to censor all information about the Covid-19 outbreak. After President Xi Jinping declared "a people's war" on the epidemic on January 20, Chinese security services pursued 5,111 cases of "fabricating and deliberately disseminating false and harmful information". The Chinese Human Rights Defenders documented several types of punishment, including detention, disappearance, fines, interrogations, forced confessions and "educational reprimand". After that, China lied about the real number of deaths. There are photographs of long lines of stacked urns greeting family members of the dead at funeral homes in Wuhan. Outside one funeral home, trucks shipped in 2,500 urns. According to Chinese official figures, 2,548 people in Wuhan have died of the Covid-19. According to an analysis by Radio Free Asia, seven funeral homes in Wuhan were each handing out 500 funeral urns containing remains for 12 days, from March 23 to the traditional tomb-sweeping festival of April 5, a time that would indicate up to 42,000 urns, or ten times higher than the official figure. In February, it was reported that Wuhan crematoriums were working around the clock to cope with the massive influx of infected bodies. Wuhan's officials are apparently pushing relatives of the victims to bury the dead "quickly and quietly". "Natural virus" does not exclude its fallout from a laboratory where pathogens are collected and studied. The Nature Medicine authors "leave us where we were before: with a basis to rule out [a coronavirus from] a lab construct, but no basis to rule out a lab accident", Professor Ebright commented. "Debate may rage over which center it is, but at this point it seems undeniable that a center has been directly involved with research on viruses, although not necessarily on the creation of a virus" wrote Father Renzo Milanese, a longtime Catholic missionary in Hong Kong. "In other words, the virus passed from a research center in Wuhan early on. More importantly there is also no question that the authorities were aware of the dangerousness of the virus, that they did not inform anyone and that they tried to keep the facts hidden". US Senator Josh Hawley has introduced a resolution calling for an international investigation into China's handling of the spread of the virus. According to Hawley: "The Chinese Communist Party was aware of the reality of the virus as early as December but ordered laboratories to destroy samples and forced doctors to keep silent. It is time for an international investigation into the role their cover-up played in the spread of this devastating pandemic". Admitting a fault, as the Japanese did after the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, might be one way for a country to be accepted again by the international community. Censoring, denying and covering up, as China is doing, will not. "China claims that the deadly virus did not escape from its biolab," said a China specialist with the Population Research Institute, Steven W. Mosher. "Fine. Prove it by releasing the research records of the Wuhan lab". Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

Quick Reply

[Deggesty]

BaltACD

According to the Johns Hopkins reporting

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

 

Timor-Leste (wherever that is) has a single confirmed case.

 

It's near Indonesia.

[BaltACD]

Some of the Meme's one is tending to see are trumpeting the number 'recovered' instead of deaths.

Most recent Johns Hopkins report - Italy Deaths 15362 - Recovered 20996.  While more have recovered than have died - I am not liking the ratio.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

[Overmod]

BaltACD

Italy Deaths 15362 - Recovered 20996.  While more have recovered than have died - I am not liking the ratio.

But keep in mind that the Australian journalists noted that the Italians log their stats differently; anyone -- in a heavily geriatric population -- who dies while infected with the virus is tabulated as dying FROM infection with the virus.  I suspect this is true for many patients with preexisting conditions and perhaps coinfection with other viruses; you may remember that in the United States the deaths "from" H1N1 influenza are about 100:1 vs. "COVID-19" and I see little operational reason at present either why the spread of influenza in Italy should be more restricted or that COVID-19 either predisposes against H1N1 infection or its symptoms "protect" against that (although both might be 'possible').

That is not to claim that there isn't a dramatic risk of increase in sustained, and not just 'prompt', deaths in any actual outbreak of COVID-19 that follows a failure of social distancing.  We see evidence of this in Israel precisely in the segments of the community that imperfectly practice it.  I expect to see evidence of it repeatedly in the United States anywhere the carefully -- and properly self-enforced -- segregation attempts break down or might 'have to be' suspended.  And it is a very long way, according to our expert sources, before the contemplated methods of actually ending the risk to the actual people 'at risk' will have succeeded well enough, and pervasively enough, to lift the social-distancing precautions.

Long before that I expect to see the more 'correct' response enacted, which is more careful and systematic isolation of the parts of the population at actual risk, and then selective return to more normal societal interaction and operation.  The importance of nonintrusive testing for 'acquired immunity' (e.g. presence of serological evidence or no infectious shed combined with sustained absence of symptoms) will be significant in that, as the current "testing" is laughable when you actually look at its reliability statistics.  Unfortunately there is no particular guarantee ... and this was reinforced by two 'we don't know' scientists as recently as yesterday ... that there will be no repeated 'waves' of repeated ARDS-inducing novel clones, as there memorably were in the 1918-20 H1N1 pandemic.  So institutionalization of correct rapid response actually has to be made on an ongoing basis, not just the expedient buck-passing and cheap-to-fit science that had characterized our response to, say the secret contemporary H1N1 pandemic right up to the snowballing of the COVID-19 reaction.