Trumpvirus "Being Handled"

[Professor Pigworth 339]

 

Contrary to Donald's bald-faced lie the other day that the virus is "being handled," cases are skyrocketing. Meanwhile, in most of the rest of the world-- especially in other First World countries-- cases have been declining and life is beginning to get back to normal.  Based just on the graph below, which shows the stunning difference between new cases in the US versus these other countries, can even the most dedicated of MAGA supporters say that Donald has not failed miserably?

 

At this point, why should it be called anything other than the Trumpvirus?

.

With a population of 21 million, Florida announced 10,109 new covid cases today. With a combined population of 2.6 billion, China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, and the European Union are averaging 6,760 new cases.

 

 

[Meathead 72,142]

Make America Sick Again

[foster 8,389]

We are going to be very late to the party the rest of the world is throwing. 
 

This wasn’t a difficult task. Just follow the original guidelines the CDC/Administration put forward, support and embrace them Nationally and we’d be in step with the rest of the world. 
 

The POTUS’ lack of patience and encouragement of states to buck his own administration’s guidelines is front and center with the issues we have today controlling and mitigating the impact of COVID-19. 
 

 

[Thebowflexbody 2,377]

Didn't realize the President controlled the Governors.  Tell me more.

[Professor Pigworth 339]

Remember when Donald was in a hurry to "open up" the country prematurely before the CDC guidelines for reopening were met and wrote these retarded-person's words?

 LIBERATE MINNESOTA!   

 LIBERATE MICHIGAN! 

 LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!

That certainly aged well. 

'

 

[JoeFerguson 388]

I noticed Miss Piggy didn't mention the idiots protesting & looting without masks that spiked the virus infections. No surprise there.

[foster 8,389]

1 hour ago, JoeFerguson said:

I noticed Miss Piggy didn't mention the idiots protesting & looting without masks that spiked the virus infections. No surprise there.

Precisely why we see the new leaders in Covid cases: FL,TX,AZ,GA. What do they all have in common?  I don’t think it was mass protests. (GA probably had the most of the 4). 

[jc856 9,712]

2 hours ago, JoeFerguson said:

I noticed Miss Piggy didn't mention the idiots protesting & looting without masks that spiked the virus infections. No surprise there.

I won’t wish death on the looters and agitators, but I hope they get sicker than a fucking dog, puking their guts out.

[Angry Byrds 18,864]

22 hours ago, Meathead said:

Make America Sick Again

MASA? I see what you did there. Racist!!

[Kelly's Heroes 531]

On 7/4/2020 at 1:30 PM, Thebowflexbody said:

Didn't realize the President controlled the Governors.  Tell me more.

Senator Ernst said that Obama was a failure during the Ebola crisis, where one person in the U.S. died.

Over 130K dead and rising.

PS-He controls Desantis. FOR SURE.

[Thebowflexbody 2,377]

4 minutes ago, Kelly's Heroes said:

Senator Ernst said that Obama was a failure during the Ebola crisis, where one person in the U.S. died.

Over 130K dead and rising.

PS-He controls Desantis. FOR SURE.

NO ONE would have died under a President Biden!!!!!  LOL

Glad the death total makes you happy.

[Professor Pigworth 339]

Donald fans, why do you think that leaders of other developed countries have managed to deal with the virus so much more effectively than Donald?  It is not a subjective opinion to state that they have. The evidence shows that this is an incontrovertible fact. People protesting out on the streets without masks does not explain the discrepancy.  Why do you think there is this great difference?  Isn't it directly attributable to the quality of leadership in the White House?

 

Do Americans Understand How Badly They’re Doing?

In France, where I live, the virus is under control. I can hardly believe the news coming out of the United States.

JULY 2, 2020

 

 

I returned to Paris with my family three months after President Emmanuel Macron had ordered one of the world’s most aggressive national quarantines, and one month after France had begun to ease itself out of it. When we exited the Gare Montparnasse into the late-spring glare, after a season tucked away in a rural village with more cows than people as neighbors, it was jarring to be thrust back into the world as we’d previously known it, to see those café terraces overflowing again with smiling faces.

My first reaction was one of confused frustration as we drove north across the river to our apartment. The city had been culled of its tourists, though it was bustling with inhabitants basking in their reclaimed freedom. Half at most wore masks; the other half evinced indifference. We were in the midst of a crisis, I complained to my wife. Why were so many people unable to maintain even minimal discipline?

Glued as I am to the news from the U.S.—where I was born and grew up and travel frequently— I couldn’t shake the feeling that France was also opening up recklessly early. But I was wrong to worry. As Donald Trump’s America continues to shatter records for daily infections, France, like most other developed nations and even some undeveloped ones, seems to have beat back the virus.

The numbers are not ambiguous. From a peak of 7,581 new cases across the country on March 31, and with a death toll now just below 30,000—at one point the world’s fourth highest—there were just 526 new cases on June 13, the day we masked ourselves and took the train back to Paris. The caseload continues to be small and manageable.

America, however, is an utter disaster. Texas, Florida, and Arizona are the newest hubs of contagion, having apparently learned nothing from the other countries and states that previously experienced surges in cases. I stared at my phone in disbelief when the musician Rosanne Cash wrote on Twitter that her daughter had been called a “liberal pussy!” in Nashville for wearing a mask to buy groceries.

That insult succinctly conveys the crux of the problem. American leadership has politicized the pandemic instead of trying to fight it. I see no preparedness, no coordinated top-down leadership of the sort we’ve enjoyed in Europe. I see only empty posturing, the sad spectacle of the president refusing to wear a mask, just to own the libs. What an astonishing self-inflicted wound.

On June 26, a day when the U.S. notched some 45,000 new cases—how’s that for “American carnage”?—the European Union announced that it would loosen some travel restrictions but extend its ban on visitors from the United States and other hot-spot nations. On Tuesday, it confirmed that remarkable and deeply humiliating decision, a clear message that in pandemic management, the EU believes that the United States is no better than Russia and Brazil—autocrat-run public-health disasters—and that American tourists would pose a dire threat to the hard-won stability our lockdown has earned us. So much for the myth that the American political system and way of life are a model for the world.

We didn’t stay long in the city. Although the chance of contagion in Paris is minimal, the thought of unnecessary risk unnerved me, and so we left again for another round of self-imposed confinement. But this was a choice. I think of my mother and father trapped in New Jersey, in their 70s and 80s, respectively, and at the mercy of a society that is failing extravagantly to protect them. And it is failing to protect them not from some omnipotent enemy—as we believed in March and perhaps even as late as April—but from a tough and dangerous foe that many other societies have wrestled into submission.

I think of my father, whom I realize I may not see this calendar year or possibly even the next, and I picture him housebound indefinitely, unable to experience a pleasure so anodyne as bookstore browsing. I think of my mother, who is missing her grandchildren’s birthdays and watching them grow tall through FaceTime, and I imagine her leaving the house at dawn to arrive at the grocery store during its early hours for seniors. I am infuriated. I am also reminded once again of the degree to which so many other countries deliver what is, in real terms, a palpably higher quality of life by any number of self-evident measures.

America is my home, and I have not emigrated. I have always found the truest expression of my situation in James Baldwin’s label of “transatlantic commuter.” I have lived in France off and on since the early 2000s, and it has been instructive over the decades to glimpse America’s stature reflected back to me through the eyes of a quasi-foreigner. If the country sparked fear and intense resentment under George W. Bush and mild resentment mixed with vicarious pride under Barack Obama, what it provokes under Trump has been something entirely new: pity and indifference. We are the pariah state now, but do we even see it?

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/america-land-pathetic/613747/

 

[Professor Pigworth 339]

A weak, fickle, incompetent leader when a strong, decisive, competent national leader is needed = coronavirus mess. Excuse me: Trumpvirus mess.

 

 

Coronavirus: Things US Has Got Wrong -- and Right

 

8 July 2020

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So much for a summer lull in the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the US has seen a resurgence of the disease in numerous states, particularly across the south and west.

The US nation as a whole has topped 60,000 recorded daily new cases this week.

Did it have to be this way, though?

Other industrialised nations, in Europe and Asia, pursued more rigorous mitigation plans, ramped up testing and contact tracing earlier, and eased restrictions in a slower and more co-ordinated fashion.

They have not, at least so far, seen a resurgence of the virus similar to the one the US is currently experiencing.

The US state of Arizona, for instance, is currently registering as many new cases of coronavirus as the entire European Union, which has a population 60 times greater.

It makes for a gloomy review of what's gone right and (mostly) wrong, as the US enters its fifth full month of a pandemic that has no end in sight.

WHAT'S GONE WRONG

States opened too quickly

A month ago, the coronavirus numbers in the US appeared, at the very least, stable. The spread of the disease had been slowed, as the daily tally of new cases plateaued.

That prompted a number of states - including Texas, California, Florida and Arizona - to move forward with plans to ease off public shelter-in-place and business closure orders.

Many of these states moved ahead despite not hitting the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended benchmarks for doing so, such as a 14-day drop in cases and less than 5% of tests coming back positive for the virus.

It turns out, the overall national numbers were misleading, as states that were hit hard early, such as New York and New Jersey, were experiencing declines, while numbers in other states were beginning to inch up.

They're not inching up anymore, they're surging - and the worst, as far as hospitalisations and fatalities, could be yet to come.

Now Texas, California and Arizona, among others, have re-imposed business closure orders and mandated mask-wearing, which has been determined to reduce the spread of the virus. It may be too little to avoid another public-health crisis, however.

"We opened way too early in Arizona," Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, a Democrat, said in recent television interview. "We were one of the last states to go to stay-at-home and one of the first to re-emerge."

The 8,181 Covid-19 hospitalisations in Texas on Sunday were yet another record high. In Arizona, 14% of coronavirus tests are positive for the virus.

California, an early success story in limiting the spread of the virus, has seen a 90% increase in cases over the past two weeks, after the state in May allowed local authorities more discretion in businesses re-openings.The surge in cases is also again leading to delays and shortages in testing - an area that had appeared to be a strength for the US after a halting start.

Without adequate testing, it will be significantly more difficult to identify and isolate new cases and locations where the virus is spreading unchecked.

"We're right back where we were at the peak of the epidemic during the New York outbreak," former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb said during a television interview on Sunday.

At least for the moment, the rate of daily deaths has not reached New York levels -- but that may only be a matter of time, as the current cases progress.

"It is already too late," says Luiza Petre, a New York City physician and professor of cardiology at the Mt Sinai School of Medicine. "We're at a point of no return where it will be very, very difficult to restrain this pandemic."

Mask-wearing became partisan

Compounding the decision by some states to prioritise reopening in spite of warnings from public-health officials, one of the best methods of limiting the spread of the virus - wearing a face covering - has become mired in partisan acrimony.

A June survey by Pew Research Center found that only 49% of conservative Republicans said they wore a mask most of the time in the past month, while that number is 83% among liberal Democrats.

Conservative opposition becomes even more entrenched at the prospect of government-enforced mask mandates.

"Kansans don't need Laura Kelly and the nanny state making decisions best left to individuals," Bill Clifford, a Republican congressional candidate in Kansas, said in response to a mask order from his state's Democratic governor. "State mask mandates violate the principles of individual liberty and local control upon which America was founded."

Donald Trump himself has contributed to the division, mocking a reporter who refused to remove his mask during a press conference as being "politically correct" and retweeting a Fox News journalist who suggested a photo of Joe Biden in a mask was damaging to the Democrat's image.

   Few Trump supporters wore masks at his Tulsa rally

The president has steadfastly refused to wear a mask in public events - a position that has clearly registered with his supporters. At the president's campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June, few in the crowd chose to use face-coverings, and most disregarded social-distancing suggestions.

Public-health officials aren't free from blame, either. Early on, they declared that face-coverings were only helpful for front-line medical personnel.

While the real motivation for such statements may have been to reserve limited supplies to those most in need, the end result was a message that was muddled and shifted as the pandemic progressed.

Public complacency

While some state governments have eased restrictions on public gatherings and allowed businesses to re-open, they have frequently accompanied such moves with recommendations that individuals make decisions based on medical advice and common sense.

Those recommendations have been, to put it mildly, not always heeded.

Summer holidays led to mask-less crowds in reopened bars and restaurants, public parks and beaches. And while masks were a fairly common sight during the mass anti-discrimination protests that swept the nation in the past month, social-distancing practices were essentially non-existent.

The numbers behind this new coronavirus surge indicates that many of the newly infected are younger Americans, who have been among the quickest to return to in-personal socialising. Some political leaders, including the president, have essentially encouraged this, asserting that the young and healthy have little to fear from the virus.

"Now we have tested over 40 million people," Trump tweeted on Saturday. "But by so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless."

That flies in the face of public-health studies that have shown that a fifth of Covid-19 cases result in severe respiratory distress.

"We have data in the White House task force," US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn on Sunday, refusing to reject Trump's 99% figure as false. "Those data show us that this is a serious problem. People need to take it seriously."

But a president downplaying the severity of the disease can go a long way toward undermining words of warning from his subordinates.

Education approaching crisis

The coronavirus resurgence has also lit the fuse on a bomb that is set to explode in just a few months. September is when American children traditionally head back to classrooms across the nation, and it's becoming clear that nothing close to a normal educational experience is waiting for them.

School administrators are starting to unveil their plans for the coming academic year, and in many cases it's a blend of in-person and distance learning with the hope that it's enough to keep their institutions from becoming staging grounds for spreading the pandemic.

Already some teachers' unions are rebelling at the suggestion that educators - including elderly or those at greater health risk - return to classrooms with what they view as insufficient protection or preparation.

"Our educators are overwhelmingly not comfortable returning to schools," wrote the head of a Washington DC area teachers' union. "They fear for their lives, the lives of students and the lives of their families."

Meanwhile, parents facing the prospect of having to manage more de-facto home-schooling and figuring out how to care for and supervise their children while they, themselves, are being asked to return to their workplaces.

Trump, despite campaigning in 2016 against federal involvement in local education systems, is already pressuring schools to open back up on time. He's called for the CDC to revise its guidance to make it easier to reopen school buildings and threatened to cut off federal funds for those that don't comply.

Florida, a Republican-controlled state currently in the midst of a widespread coronavirus outbreak, already has ordered its schools to open for classes at the end of August.

The president's rhetoric, delivered via Twitter, seems destined to politicise yet another aspect of the coronavirus response, again putting local officials in the unenvious position of balancing community health concerns with demands to return to normal times that seem increasingly out of reach.

WHAT'S GONE RIGHT

New York recovery

Although the coronavirus situation in many US states in the south and west has become increasingly dire, what was once the epicentre of the outbreak -- New York -- has made remarkable improvements.

Daily deaths, which peaked on 8 April at 799, have dropped to single digits. Only 1.38% of the state's coronavirus testing last Friday returned positive results.

 

 

As other areas have re-imposed lockdown restrictions, New York has begun reopening many public facilities and private business such as salons, tattoo shops and youth sport leagues. Indoor restaurants, however, remain closed.

"What happened in New York should have been a cautionary tale for the other states to pay attention and learn to create a more centralised strategy," says Ms Petre, the New York City cardiologist. "New York is a success story."

As the state continues to ease its mitigation restrictions, there is the risk that the virus will return resurgent.

"We've been through hell and back, but this is not over," said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. "This can still rear its ugly head anywhere in this nation and in this state."

Economy stabilised -- for now

A funny thing happened on the way to the next Great Depression. The US economy, expected by many forecasters to be in a devastating tailspin, stabilised and began to improve.

May unemployment figures, predicted to top 20%, registered at 13.3% instead. Then, in June, they ticked down to 11.4% -- an indication that the workplace haemorrhaging had been stopped much earlier than expected.

Meanwhile, key stock indices have bounced back from their late winter beating. By 2 July, the Dow Jones Industrial Index had recovered 66% of its losses from its February record high. The Standards & Poor's 500 Index, a broader measure of stocks, has made up 77% of its losses this year.

Other economic indicators offer similar signs of an economic resurgence.

The strength of the recovery has largely been attributed to the push by states to quickly lift virus mitigation orders and federal action to provide economic support for businesses and individuals hit hardest by the virus.

 

The return of business closures in several states could mean the economic good news will be short-lived.

Meanwhile, most of the stimulus measures passed by Congress have either run their course or are set to expire soon, while there appears little prospect of further action.

"Since it is now clear that the effects of this crisis will be felt at least until the end of 2020, that relief package will not be enough," says Jill Gonzales, an analyst with the personal finance website Wallethub.

Science advancing

While the coronavirus afflicts a growing number of US states, the American medical community continues to grind away at treatments and, ultimately, a vaccine.

Remdesivir, an antiviral drug, has shown promise in limiting the severity of the disease in hospitalised patients (prompting the US government to strike a deal with the drug's manufacturer to prioritise American patients).

A new study indicates that the commonly available steroid dexamethasone cut the risk of death for coronavirus patients on ventilators by a third.

There are also "encouraging signs" from experts that the use of blood plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients could help those currently suffering from the disease, although clinical research is ongoing.

"Medicine has evolved at lightning speed," says Ms Petre. "The government has teamed up with pharmaceutical companies and a lot has been done, which is good"

On the vaccine front, there are now several pharmaceutical companies reporting positive results from early tests on drugs to boost immunity to the coronavirus.

The president is promising a vaccine by the end of the year, if not earlier, although medical professionals caution that such a timeline is far from certain.

Anthony Fauci, the chief US immunologist, would only say scientists are "aspirationally hopeful" that a vaccine would be ready by 2021.

Given that a return to normal life in the US appears increasingly contingent on a safe and reliable vaccine, a lot is riding on these hopes.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53337483

 

 

 

CDC press conference on coronavirus: “I like this stuff. I really get it,” Trump said.

“People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors say, ‘How do

you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should’ve

done that instead of running for president.”

 

[Thebowflexbody 2,377]

On 7/4/2020 at 3:02 PM, JoeFerguson said:

I noticed Miss Piggy didn't mention the idiots protesting & looting without masks that spiked the virus infections. No surprise there.

Oh, you'd never hear about that since the press is in the tank.  If it doesn't support or further the narrative, it simply isn't reported.  Disgusting.

[Thebowflexbody 2,377]

Piggy's articles/propaganda was fun to just skip over.  LOL

[FanBack 921]

4 hours ago, Professor Pigworth said:

A weak, fickle, incompetent leader when a strong, decisive, competent national leader is needed = coronavirus mess. Excuse me: Trumpvirus mess.

Coronavirus: Things US Has Got Wrong -- and Right

 

8 July 2020

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So much for a summer lull in the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the US has seen a resurgence of the disease in numerous states, particularly across the south and west.

The US nation as a whole has topped 60,000 recorded daily new cases this week.

Did it have to be this way, though?

Other industrialised nations, in Europe and Asia, pursued more rigorous mitigation plans, ramped up testing and contact tracing earlier, and eased restrictions in a slower and more co-ordinated fashion.

They have not, at least so far, seen a resurgence of the virus similar to the one the US is currently experiencing.

The US state of Arizona, for instance, is currently registering as many new cases of coronavirus as the entire European Union, which has a population 60 times greater.

It makes for a gloomy review of what's gone right and (mostly) wrong, as the US enters its fifth full month of a pandemic that has no end in sight.

WHAT'S GONE WRONG

States opened too quickly

A month ago, the coronavirus numbers in the US appeared, at the very least, stable. The spread of the disease had been slowed, as the daily tally of new cases plateaued.

That prompted a number of states - including Texas, California, Florida and Arizona - to move forward with plans to ease off public shelter-in-place and business closure orders.

Many of these states moved ahead despite not hitting the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended benchmarks for doing so, such as a 14-day drop in cases and less than 5% of tests coming back positive for the virus.

It turns out, the overall national numbers were misleading, as states that were hit hard early, such as New York and New Jersey, were experiencing declines, while numbers in other states were beginning to inch up.

They're not inching up anymore, they're surging - and the worst, as far as hospitalisations and fatalities, could be yet to come.

Now Texas, California and Arizona, among others, have re-imposed business closure orders and mandated mask-wearing, which has been determined to reduce the spread of the virus. It may be too little to avoid another public-health crisis, however.

"We opened way too early in Arizona," Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, a Democrat, said in recent television interview. "We were one of the last states to go to stay-at-home and one of the first to re-emerge."

The 8,181 Covid-19 hospitalisations in Texas on Sunday were yet another record high. In Arizona, 14% of coronavirus tests are positive for the virus.

California, an early success story in limiting the spread of the virus, has seen a 90% increase in cases over the past two weeks, after the state in May allowed local authorities more discretion in businesses re-openings.The surge in cases is also again leading to delays and shortages in testing - an area that had appeared to be a strength for the US after a halting start.

Without adequate testing, it will be significantly more difficult to identify and isolate new cases and locations where the virus is spreading unchecked.

"We're right back where we were at the peak of the epidemic during the New York outbreak," former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb said during a television interview on Sunday.

At least for the moment, the rate of daily deaths has not reached New York levels -- but that may only be a matter of time, as the current cases progress.

"It is already too late," says Luiza Petre, a New York City physician and professor of cardiology at the Mt Sinai School of Medicine. "We're at a point of no return where it will be very, very difficult to restrain this pandemic."

Mask-wearing became partisan

Compounding the decision by some states to prioritise reopening in spite of warnings from public-health officials, one of the best methods of limiting the spread of the virus - wearing a face covering - has become mired in partisan acrimony.

A June survey by Pew Research Center found that only 49% of conservative Republicans said they wore a mask most of the time in the past month, while that number is 83% among liberal Democrats.

Conservative opposition becomes even more entrenched at the prospect of government-enforced mask mandates.

"Kansans don't need Laura Kelly and the nanny state making decisions best left to individuals," Bill Clifford, a Republican congressional candidate in Kansas, said in response to a mask order from his state's Democratic governor. "State mask mandates violate the principles of individual liberty and local control upon which America was founded."

Donald Trump himself has contributed to the division, mocking a reporter who refused to remove his mask during a press conference as being "politically correct" and retweeting a Fox News journalist who suggested a photo of Joe Biden in a mask was damaging to the Democrat's image.

   Few Trump supporters wore masks at his Tulsa rally

The president has steadfastly refused to wear a mask in public events - a position that has clearly registered with his supporters. At the president's campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June, few in the crowd chose to use face-coverings, and most disregarded social-distancing suggestions.

Public-health officials aren't free from blame, either. Early on, they declared that face-coverings were only helpful for front-line medical personnel.

While the real motivation for such statements may have been to reserve limited supplies to those most in need, the end result was a message that was muddled and shifted as the pandemic progressed.

Public complacency

While some state governments have eased restrictions on public gatherings and allowed businesses to re-open, they have frequently accompanied such moves with recommendations that individuals make decisions based on medical advice and common sense.

Those recommendations have been, to put it mildly, not always heeded.

Summer holidays led to mask-less crowds in reopened bars and restaurants, public parks and beaches. And while masks were a fairly common sight during the mass anti-discrimination protests that swept the nation in the past month, social-distancing practices were essentially non-existent.

The numbers behind this new coronavirus surge indicates that many of the newly infected are younger Americans, who have been among the quickest to return to in-personal socialising. Some political leaders, including the president, have essentially encouraged this, asserting that the young and healthy have little to fear from the virus.

"Now we have tested over 40 million people," Trump tweeted on Saturday. "But by so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless."

That flies in the face of public-health studies that have shown that a fifth of Covid-19 cases result in severe respiratory distress.

"We have data in the White House task force," US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn on Sunday, refusing to reject Trump's 99% figure as false. "Those data show us that this is a serious problem. People need to take it seriously."

But a president downplaying the severity of the disease can go a long way toward undermining words of warning from his subordinates.

Education approaching crisis

The coronavirus resurgence has also lit the fuse on a bomb that is set to explode in just a few months. September is when American children traditionally head back to classrooms across the nation, and it's becoming clear that nothing close to a normal educational experience is waiting for them.

School administrators are starting to unveil their plans for the coming academic year, and in many cases it's a blend of in-person and distance learning with the hope that it's enough to keep their institutions from becoming staging grounds for spreading the pandemic.

Already some teachers' unions are rebelling at the suggestion that educators - including elderly or those at greater health risk - return to classrooms with what they view as insufficient protection or preparation.

"Our educators are overwhelmingly not comfortable returning to schools," wrote the head of a Washington DC area teachers' union. "They fear for their lives, the lives of students and the lives of their families."

Meanwhile, parents facing the prospect of having to manage more de-facto home-schooling and figuring out how to care for and supervise their children while they, themselves, are being asked to return to their workplaces.

Trump, despite campaigning in 2016 against federal involvement in local education systems, is already pressuring schools to open back up on time. He's called for the CDC to revise its guidance to make it easier to reopen school buildings and threatened to cut off federal funds for those that don't comply.

Florida, a Republican-controlled state currently in the midst of a widespread coronavirus outbreak, already has ordered its schools to open for classes at the end of August.

The president's rhetoric, delivered via Twitter, seems destined to politicise yet another aspect of the coronavirus response, again putting local officials in the unenvious position of balancing community health concerns with demands to return to normal times that seem increasingly out of reach.

WHAT'S GONE RIGHT

New York recovery

Although the coronavirus situation in many US states in the south and west has become increasingly dire, what was once the epicentre of the outbreak -- New York -- has made remarkable improvements.

Daily deaths, which peaked on 8 April at 799, have dropped to single digits. Only 1.38% of the state's coronavirus testing last Friday returned positive results.

 

As other areas have re-imposed lockdown restrictions, New York has begun reopening many public facilities and private business such as salons, tattoo shops and youth sport leagues. Indoor restaurants, however, remain closed.

"What happened in New York should have been a cautionary tale for the other states to pay attention and learn to create a more centralised strategy," says Ms Petre, the New York City cardiologist. "New York is a success story."

As the state continues to ease its mitigation restrictions, there is the risk that the virus will return resurgent.

"We've been through hell and back, but this is not over," said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. "This can still rear its ugly head anywhere in this nation and in this state."

Economy stabilised -- for now

A funny thing happened on the way to the next Great Depression. The US economy, expected by many forecasters to be in a devastating tailspin, stabilised and began to improve.

May unemployment figures, predicted to top 20%, registered at 13.3% instead. Then, in June, they ticked down to 11.4% -- an indication that the workplace haemorrhaging had been stopped much earlier than expected.

Meanwhile, key stock indices have bounced back from their late winter beating. By 2 July, the Dow Jones Industrial Index had recovered 66% of its losses from its February record high. The Standards & Poor's 500 Index, a broader measure of stocks, has made up 77% of its losses this year.

Other economic indicators offer similar signs of an economic resurgence.

The strength of the recovery has largely been attributed to the push by states to quickly lift virus mitigation orders and federal action to provide economic support for businesses and individuals hit hardest by the virus.

 

The return of business closures in several states could mean the economic good news will be short-lived.

Meanwhile, most of the stimulus measures passed by Congress have either run their course or are set to expire soon, while there appears little prospect of further action.

"Since it is now clear that the effects of this crisis will be felt at least until the end of 2020, that relief package will not be enough," says Jill Gonzales, an analyst with the personal finance website Wallethub.

Science advancing

While the coronavirus afflicts a growing number of US states, the American medical community continues to grind away at treatments and, ultimately, a vaccine.

Remdesivir, an antiviral drug, has shown promise in limiting the severity of the disease in hospitalised patients (prompting the US government to strike a deal with the drug's manufacturer to prioritise American patients).

A new study indicates that the commonly available steroid dexamethasone cut the risk of death for coronavirus patients on ventilators by a third.

There are also "encouraging signs" from experts that the use of blood plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients could help those currently suffering from the disease, although clinical research is ongoing.

"Medicine has evolved at lightning speed," says Ms Petre. "The government has teamed up with pharmaceutical companies and a lot has been done, which is good"

On the vaccine front, there are now several pharmaceutical companies reporting positive results from early tests on drugs to boost immunity to the coronavirus.

The president is promising a vaccine by the end of the year, if not earlier, although medical professionals caution that such a timeline is far from certain.

Anthony Fauci, the chief US immunologist, would only say scientists are "aspirationally hopeful" that a vaccine would be ready by 2021.

Given that a return to normal life in the US appears increasingly contingent on a safe and reliable vaccine, a lot is riding on these hopes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53337483

 

CDC press conference on coronavirus: “I like this stuff. I really get it,” Trump said.

“People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors say, ‘How do

you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should’ve

done that instead of running for president.”

Great points on the Trump economy being strong enough to weather this virus.  They didn't really detaiil his brilliant easing of (unnecessary, draconian) regulations to help businesses.  Many of these regulations were designed to help the donor class and hurt small, competing businesses

It's really shocking how much Trump has accomplished.   Especially when seen through the impartial eye. 

Now stop reposting opinions and get some facts.   Or better yet, post facts and formulate your own opinions. 

[SackMan518 5,355]

[Professor Pigworth 339]

The countries that continue to struggle to contain the virus are mainly Third World countries --  or shit countries, as Donald would call them -- and the US.  Again I'll ask Donald's supporters: why is that?  Why do you think the US is the outlier? Is it just bad luck, or is it a case of weak, ineffective, incompetent leadership at the national level? In other words, isn't Donald to blame? 

And if that is so, why in the world would you continue to put your trust in someone who has failed so spectacularly with this crisis, not to mention his other well-documented eff-ups, massive corruption, treasonous sell out to Putin, attack on the rule of law and various instances of outright criminal fraud? 

 

Global Surge in Coronavirus Cases Is Being Fed by the Developing World — and the U.S.

When the United States began shutting down this spring, a virus that emerged months earlier as a mysterious outbreak in a Chinese provincial capital had infected a total of fewer than 200,000 people worldwide.

So far this week, the planet has added an average of more than 200,000 cases every day.

The novel coronavirus — once concentrated in specific cities or countries — has now crept into virtually every corner of the globe and is wreaking havoc in multiple major regions at once.

But the impact is not being felt evenly. Poorer nations throughout Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia and Africa are bearing a growing share of the caseload, even as wealthier countries in Western Europe and East Asia enjoy a relative respite after having beaten back the worst effects through rigorously enforced lockdowns.

And then there’s the United States, which leads the world in new cases and, as with many nations that possess far fewer resources, has shown no sign of being able to regain control.

Nearly all the countries struggling with a surge share something in common: After weeks or months of trying to suppress the virus, they reopened their economies, only to find that the virus came roaring back. Now they are using a more limited arsenal to contain the spread, with little success.

“Let me be blunt: too many countries are headed in the wrong direction,” World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared in Geneva this week. “The virus remains public enemy number one, but the actions of many governments and people do not reflect this.”

The severity of the toll on the United States was evident in new infection figures released Tuesday, with multiple states — including Oklahoma and Nevada — hitting record highs. Florida has now reported more cases in the past week — nearly 78,000 — than most European nations have in their entire struggle with covid-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus.

That sort of explosive growth is mirrored in other nations, though none with the sort of wealth, infrastructure and scientific know-how of the United States. Across much of the developing world, rampant coronavirus outbreaks came relatively late. But now that the virus has taken root, governments are flailing in their attempts to halt it and citizens are resisting changes to their way of life.

“As restrictions have been lifted, we’re going back to a new normal,” said Alain Labrique, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist. “But this virus is still circulating. There are still high rates of susceptibility. We have to continue wearing masks and being smart about crowd activities. The new normal is not the old normal.”

The struggle has been especially fraught in Latin America, where countries have been lashed by covid-19’s ferocity and many have not yet hit their peaks. Brazil has the second-highest number of covid-19 deaths in the world, at more than 74,000, while Mexico has the fourth-highest, with more than 37,000. (The United States, with at least 133,000 deaths, is far and away the global leader.)

With their high levels of poverty and inequality, Latin American countries were more vulnerable to the pandemic than wealthier nations. An estimated one-fifth of people in Latin America and the Caribbean have at least one of the health conditions that put them at higher risk of catching the virus.

Many couldn’t afford to stay home for long periods. In Mexico, for example, more than half of workers are employed in the informal economy — as street vendors, gardeners, construction workers — surviving largely on their daily earnings. And people living in cramped homes and densely packed neighborhoods found it hard to isolate.

Mexico ended its 70-day lockdown May 30 and began to gradually reopen, maintaining a state-by-state system of restrictions depending on conditions.

As with the U.S., though, cases are surging in Mexican states where reopening has moved especially rapidly.

“The risk is that the opening, the end of quarantine, is moving too fast, that it’s not orderly, that people aren’t obeying the health measures, that they’re not social distancing,” the country’s coronavirus czar, Hugo López-Gatell, recently told reporters.

Mexican authorities have been surprised by the lethal force of the pandemic. The virus appeared to spread slowly during its initial weeks, leading López-Gatell to initially predict there could be as few as 6,000 deaths in total. The country massively expanded its hospital system to receive patients, hiring 45,000 doctors, nurses and other professionals — a crucial step given its lack of beds and medical personnel. It has avoided the kind of disaster that occurred in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where bodies littered the streets in April.

But Mexico has been slow to implement the kind of testing and contact tracing recommended by the WHO to break chains of transmission.

“We don’t have the capacity,” López-Gatell said in a recent interview. “Nor do we have quarantine sites where we can put people into isolation.”

The leftist government has been widely criticized for not being more forthcoming about the scale of the pandemic. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador initially played down the danger of the virus and has provided limited economic support to residents who have lost jobs or customers.

Another regional leader who initially scoffed at the pandemic — Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro — has now tested positive for it, along with 1.9 million of his fellow citizens. And though hospitals in Brazil report that some of the strain is easing, the weekly average of deaths continues to rise, up 7 percent in the past week.

Unlike Bolsonaro and President Trump, the leader of the country with the third-largest number of cases — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — has not played down the gravity of the virus.

Yet his government’s efforts to halt its spread have not succeeded. A strict nationwide lockdown imposed in late March slowed, but did not reverse, the growth in infections. Faced with devastating consequences — more than 100 million people jobless, a historic exodus of migrant workers leaving cities on foot — the government rolled back many restrictions on transport and commerce.

Since then, infections have risen at a brisk pace, hitting more than 906,000. The total is expected to cross the 1 million threshold later this week. Still, the number of deaths in India is comparatively low, at about 24,000.

But it is unlikely that official statistics reflect the full scope of the outbreak: India has conducted about eight tests for every 1,000 people, compared with 127 tests per 100,000 in the United States.

“It is a large country. The numbers will go up,” said Jayaprakash Muliyil, a leading Indian epidemiologist. Muliyil believes that India’s total number of cases will eventually eclipse that of the United States, especially as infections move from cities to the country’s vast hinterland where the health system is even less prepared to cope.

India’s economy remains crippled and life is very far from normal, with local officials reinstating lockdown measures in individual cities.

Bangalore, India’s technology hub, began a week-long lockdown on Tuesday. Bihar, one of India’s poorest states with a population of more than 100 million people, said it would impose a new lockdown for the second half of July.

Health experts say renewed lockdowns would be beneficial in places where numbers are spiraling. But there is little political will.

In the Middle East, most governments were relatively swift to lock down during the earliest days of the pandemic, averting the sudden and deadly surge of infections seen in Europe and the United States. But the restrictions exacted a heavy economic toll, and few countries show any inclination to revert to the stringent measures of a few months ago even though coronavirus rates are rapidly climbing.

The number of cases reported in the region in June alone was higher than during the previous four months combined, WHO Middle East director Ahmed al-Mandhari told reporters this month.

The region, he said, is entering “a critical threshold,” having exceeded 1 million cases and 25,000 deaths. Over half of those are in three of the region’s most populous countries: Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The rate of new infections in both Saudi Arabia and Egypt has begun to slow in recent days. But Iran, with over 262,000 cases, has consistently struggled ever since it became an early global epicenter in March.

On Sunday, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wearing a face mask as he addressed parliamentarians, called the latest resurgence “deeply tragic” and pleaded with citizens to observe preventive measures “to save the country.”

Worse may lie ahead, according to Ali Mokdad, director of Middle Eastern initiatives at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Projections by his institute suggest there may be 160,000 deaths in the Middle East’s worst-affected countries by Nov. 1, including 62,000 in Iran and 50,000 in Saudi Arabia.

The root of the problem, he told an online panel hosted by the Atlantic Council, is simple: “People are letting down their guard.”

Countries where infection rates have jumped in recent weeks are continuing to open up. Egypt is inviting tourists to come back, including to the pyramids. Saudi Arabia has severely restricted travel to the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca but has not reimposed any of the lockdown measures that earlier kept citizens indoors.

Russia, too, has held firm to its decision to lift most of its restrictions in late June, just ahead of a vote on a package of constitutional amendments that will enable President Vladimir Putin to seek two more terms in office. Putin cast his own ballot without wearing a mask.

Russia continues to post more than 6,000 new infections per day, adding to a total of more than 735,000 — the world’s fourth-highest. But those daily figures are well below the country’s peak of more than 11,000 daily in May.

Countries across Western Europe — including Spain, France, Britain, Italy and Germany — have also recorded sustained declines. Not so in some Eastern European countries, however, where experts say outbreaks have been driven by government decisions to hastily drop restrictions — including on mass events such as soccer matches.

Serbia was the first country in Europe to restart soccer matches as it lifted virtually all restrictions from one of the continent’s strictest lockdowns just before elections June 21.

Since then, the country has experienced one of the continent’s most notable spikes. President Aleksandar Vucic last week declared a critical situation in five cities, and nationwide infection numbers returned to levels last seen in April.

While epidemiologists in much of the world are warning about a second wave, countries like Poland, Hungary and Greece, which locked down early, are bracing for their first.

In the next week, Poland plans to resume concerts and reopen stadiums, spawning concerns that it will experience what so many other parts of the world already have.

“Our lockdown intervened very early,” said Pawel Grzesiowski, president of the Warsaw-based Foundation Institute for the Prevention of Infections. “But now we are switching off the lockdown.”

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/global-surge-in-coronavirus-cases-is-being-fed-by-the-developing-world--and-the-us/2020/07/14/1e9ca48e-c605-11ea-8ffe-372be8d82298_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-banner-main_coronavirus-802pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

 

 

 

 

 

[SackMan518 5,355]

Why Face Masks Don’t Work: A Revealing Review

 

Between 2004 and 2016 at least a dozen research or review articles have been published on the inadequacies of face masks. 5,6,11,17,19,20,21,25,26,27,28,31 All agree that the poor facial fit and limited filtration characteristics of face masks make them unable to prevent the wearer inhaling airborne particles. In their well-referenced 2011 article on respiratory protection for healthcare workers, Drs. Harriman and Brosseau conclude that, “facemasks will not protect against the inhalation of aerosols.” 11 Following their 2015 literature review, Dr. Zhou and colleagues stated, “There is a lack of substantiated evidence to support claims that facemasks protect either patient or surgeon from infectious contamination.” 25 In the same year Dr. R. MacIntyre noted that randomized controlled trials of facemasks failed to prove their efficacy. 5 In August 2016 responding to a question on the protection from facemasks the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety replied:

• The filter material of surgical masks does not retain or filter out submicron particles;
• Surgical masks are not designed to eliminate air leakage around the edges;
• Surgical masks do not protect the wearer from inhaling small particles that can remain airborne for long periods of time. 31

In 2015, Dr. Leonie Walker, Principal Researcher of the New Zealand Nurses Organization succinctly described- within a historical context – the inadequacies of facemasks, “Health care workers have long relied heavily on surgical masks to provide protection against influenza and other infections. Yet there are no convincing scientific data that support the effectiveness of masks for respiratory protection. The masks we use are not designed for such purposes, and when tested, they have proved to vary widely in filtration capability, allowing penetration of aerosol particles ranging from four to 90%.” 35

Face masks do not satisfy the criteria for effectiveness as described by Drs. Landefeld and Shojania in their NEJM article, “The Tension between Needing to Improve Care and Knowing How to Do It. 10 The authors declare that, “…recommending or mandating the widespread adoption of interventions to improve quality or safety requires rigorous testing to determine whether, how, and where the intervention is effective…” They stress the critical nature of this concept because, “…a number of widely promulgated interventions are likely to be wholly ineffective, even if they do not harm patients.” 10 A significant inadequacy of face masks is that they were mandated as an intervention based on an assumption rather than on appropriate testing.

 

[HipKat 80]

Let me update this for you

[Professor Pigworth 339]

The US has less than 5% of the world's population but 25% of the coronavirius cases.  There are now over 142,000 deaths and almost 4,000,000 cases in the US. In the last 24 hours alone, there were 77,000 new cases.  The IHME expects there to be almost a quarter of a million deaths in the US by the first of November:

 

 

The United States actually had more time to prepare than most other countries as the virus first hit Asia and then Europe.

Most experts now say the evidence shows that masks help to control the spread.  They don't help so much when it comes to preventing you from catching it from another non-mask-wearing person, but it helps to keep the mask wearer from spreading it to others. It's been estimated that tens of thousands of lives could be saved if the wearing of masks was required by law. (Specifically, 33,000 lives by October.) Yet Donald, in his infinite wisdom as an anti-science game-show host and obscenely crass money-maker and successful lifelong fraudster,  is against the wearing of masks because it interferes with the freedom of choice of people or something really very stupid like that. (You know, the typical sort of thing that should be insulting to the intelligence of Donald's fan base but is not.)

Donald fans, for some reason you've been surprisingly quiet about this, but what do you think of Donald's handling of this crisis?  Pretty good, right?  Isn't it critical to show your continuing allegiance during a time when your support is needed more than ever, rather than, say, reflect on whether you were sold a lemon from a consummate con artist who laughs at you for being sucker enough to have ever believed in him? 

 

 

[HipKat 80]

4 hours ago, Professor Pigworth said:

The US has less than 5% of the world's population but 25% of the coronavirius cases.  There are now over 142,000 deaths and almost 4,000,000 cases in the US. In the last 24 hours alone, there were 77,000 new cases.  The IHME expects there to be almost a quarter of a million deaths in the US by the first of November

The problem with this is that in most states, while the number of positive cases is climbing - due to more testing (And that may end with mass testing getting to where getting the results are taking up to 10 days and beyond in many cases) the death in most states is going down. 

This is an excellent up to date site that you can really get into to track the numbers down to the state level. IL< for example is up 1.3% in positive cases, but down 2.4% in Deaths over the last 24 hours and that's been the trend for weeks. The death rate in NY is down 19%! Florida on the other hand is up 5%. Arizona over 10% and California over 5%. Iowa is a very curious place where the number of positives has gone way down but the mortality rate is up over 5% in the last day.

State By State Map

 

[SackMan518 5,355]

 

Florida health official says man who died in motorcycle crash listed as coronavirus death

 

Questions are being raised about Florida’s coronavirus death toll reporting after a man who died in a motorcycle accident was listed in the COVID-19 death count.

Dr. Raul Pino, an Orange County health officer, told Fox 35 News that a supposed coronavirus victim in his 20s died in a motorcycle crash and didn't have any underlying conditions.

“I don’t think so. I have to double-check,” Pino said when asked if the fatality had been removed from the death count. “We were arguing, discussing, or trying to argue with the state. Not because of the numbers ⁠— it’s 100 … it doesn’t make any difference if it's 99 ⁠— but the fact that the individual didn’t die from COVID-19 … died in the crash. But you could actually argue that it could have been the COVID-19 that caused him to crash. I don’t know the conclusion of that one.”