The Walls Come Down: No Travel Betwen US and Europe for 30 Days

[LaCroix]

Simple- file charges to the top management and owners for breaking the shelter at home, times the number of employees they forced to break quarantine and the customers they have.

[MKSheppard]

1 April 2020 Evening Update.

We're tracking so closely with Spain now that 20 times 320 million = 6,400 deaths a DAY is possible.

[MKSheppard]

Fox News just reported that the Samaritan's Purse field hospital setup in Central Park just took in its first patient.

They're setup across the street from Mount Sinai Medical Center. That's a pretty strong indicator that Mount Sinai is full.

Things are starting to get sporty in New York.

[ray245]

This is what you need to do once you've brought down the infection rate:


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... navirus-uk

That ship sailed a while back, we don't have the testing capacity to do that nor will we have it for the foreseeable future. I'm looking at my province's updates and we have a testing capacity of around 4000/day for a population of 14.5 million spread out over an area the size that's the size of France & Germany put together. Also, we ain't Singapore, Taiwan, or South Korea, we do not have the capability to back-trace contacts as fast or effectively. We also have a bigger distrust of authority in general, especially in America which is gonna make things really fucking fun.

It is possible to expand testing capabilities. It's not easy, but not impossible.

You can rely on data-tracking. Your intelligence agencies are already tracking people anyway, so you might as well use it for some actual benefit this time round.

[ray245]

'Absolutely wrong': how UK's coronavirus test strategy unravelled

On 11 March, the day before Boris Johnson told the nation that the coronavirus sweeping the UK could no longer be contained and that testing for Covid-19 would stop except for the seriously ill in hospital, the head of No 10’s “nudge unit” gave a brief interview to the BBC.

At the time it was barely noticed – it was budget day, after all. With hindsight, it seems astonishing.

“There’s going to be a point, assuming the epidemic flows and grows as it will do, where you want to cocoon, to protect those at-risk groups so they don’t catch the disease,” said Dr David Halpern. “By the time they come out of their cocooning, herd immunity has been achieved in the rest of the population.”

It was a window into the thinking of the political strategists directing the UK response to Covid-19, who claimed to base what they were doing on scientific evidence. We would let the disease spread among the healthy. So no need to test.

If there was a moment when the UK turned its back on the traditional public health approach to fighting an epidemic, this was it.

Ebola, Sars, Mers – in previous epidemics, nobody had questioned the need to hunt down and eliminate the virus by testing everyone with symptoms, tracking their contacts and isolating and testing those people in turn. But not this time.

“You can’t fight a fire blindfold,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, just five days after the UK switched course in what sounded like an urgent appeal to Johnson, Halpern and any fellow travellers.

“You can’t stop this pandemic if you don’t know who is infected. We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test. Test every suspected case. If they test positive, isolate them and find out who they have been in close contact with up to two days before they developed symptoms and test those people too.”

But his warnings were shrugged off by government ministers in the UK – public health experts had been sidelined and a newer breed of scientist was in favour at No 10.

According to Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the Lancet medical journal, the dominant voices in the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), the scientific expert group advising the government, were mathematical modellers and behavioural scientists, including Halpern.

On 25 March, Horton told MPs on the science and technology select committee that Sage appeared to have little input from public health experts and doctors, despite being chaired by the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and the chief scientific officer, Sir Patrick Vallance.

The clue for Horton was in the main papers it considered in advising the government of the strategy.

“There is evidence on modelling and on behavioural science, but I don’t see the evidence from the public health community or from the clinical community,” he explained.

Testing, isolation and quarantine – basic public health interventions – were barely on the agenda. Warnings from Chinese scientists of the severity of Covid-19 had not been understood.

“We thought we could have a controlled epidemic. We thought we could manage that epidemic over the course of March and April, push the curve to the right, build up herd immunity and that way we could protect people,” said Horton. “The reason why that strategy was wrong is it didn’t recognise that 20% of people infected would end up with severe critical illness. The evidence was there at the end of January.”

Anthony Costello, a UK paediatrician and former director of the WHO, also fiercely criticised the decision to stop tests. “For me and the WHO people I have spoken to, this is absolutely the wrong policy,” he said. “The basic public health approach is playing second fiddle to mathematical modelling.”

Less than two weeks on from the lockdown that Johnson announced on 23 March, the original strategy, the decisions that came before and after it, and the UK’s inability to ramp up testing for NHS staff – let alone anyone else – are under unrelenting scrutiny.

Ministers have been flailing. What has emerged is a picture of confusion and uncertainty at the top, with ministers making promises they cannot keep and apparently with little comprehension of the global tussle for tests that may make it impossible for the UK to buy its way belatedly out of the problem.

The UK is now competing with every other nation to obtain the kits it needs, particularly the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, which tells someone whether they have Covid-19 or not.

The Guardian has been told that presidents and prime ministers are trying to outbid each other to secure these kits and their components, which are in short supply. The US also has woken up to the need to test – and is telling companies that export them that America must come first.

No wonder, perhaps, the UK now finds itself struggling to increase testing to 25,000 a day for hospital patients and health workers, let alone meet its ambition – once stated but now seldom mentioned – to reach 100,000 a day, to include other key workers.

“In all countries we have prime ministers calling the CEOs and diagnostic companies to try to get hold of the stocks. Indonesia and Peru we know have offered to order several million tests and send private planes to pick the tests up. There is more going on behind the scenes to secure supplies,” said Dr Catharina Boehme, chief executive of the non-profit Geneva-based Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, which is a WHO collaborating centre.

The companies are trying to be responsible, she said. “They supply small quantities to each country to give sufficient supplies for a number of days and then ship on a very frequent basis. But there is clearly this move in the US where several companies have openly declared they can’t supply anyone outside the US.”

Three US companies making the PCR tests, Abbott, Hologic and Cepheid, have been told not to export them, leaving Africa – which uses their technology in HIV tests – with a single supplier, Roche in Switzerland.

The WHO, Unicef and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are working on procuring tests for low- and middle-income countries. There are global shortages even of the swabs, which are made by companies in just two countries, the US and Italy.

In the UK, the testing regime has also been hampered by the lack of laboratory capacity to analyse the samples – a warehouse in Milton Keynes has been set up with the laboratory facilities to add capacity.

In the long term, hopes are pinned on blood tests for antibodies produced by the immune system fighting the infection, which will show who has had Covid-19 and is probably therefore immune. These could be a game-changer, allowing key workers out of isolation, for instance to reopen schools.

But another sign of the disconnect between public health experts and Downing Street became evident last Wednesday. Prof Sharon Peacock, director of infections at Public Health England, told MPs that millions of home testing kits would be available, delivered by Amazon or bought in Boots, within days, not weeks.

“Tests are being ordered across Europe and elsewhere and purchased in south-east Asia. This is widespread practice. We are not alone in doing this,” she said.

But within hours, Whitty seemed to quash the idea. He warned that antibody tests needed proper evaluation, which was being undertaken at Oxford University. “The key thing for us to do is evaluate. Are these tests accurate enough to be used by the general public?” he said at the prime minister’s press conference the same day.

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, has said the government had bought 3.5m antibody tests, but the Guardian understands the UK has actually put in orders for 40m more. It is the sort of drastic gamble that governments around the world are taking, afraid that stocks will disappear.

Antibody tests are available right now on the internet to anyone who wants them – but some are unreliable, and could give the wrong verdict. So far, the best are 90% sensitive to Covid-19 and 90% specific.

The perils are all too apparent, and not just for the antibody tests: Spain and the Czech Republic recently had to send back hundreds of thousands of antigen tests to China because they had an accurate detection rate of just 30%.

Antibody tests are being used widely in China and South Korea, where the virus has already been beaten down to lower levels by the traditional PCR testing of those with symptoms and tracing and isolating their contacts.

Mass contact tracing, which can be highly labour-intensive, is made possible through phone apps, which alert people who have been near someone who has tested positive.

The concept was greeted with horror by some in the UK as mass data gathering and an invasion of privacy – yet Oxford University is now developing just such an app.

Looking ahead to the endgame, testing and tracing contacts, figuring out where the virus has been and who is still vulnerable is widely acknowledged among scientists to be the way to stamp out the last pockets of a pandemic.

For now, Italy is doing more testing than any other country, desperate to bring down its cases and fatality rates.

Not far behind is Germany, which has been doing widespread testing of suspects with symptoms and contact tracing in the WHO-recommended fashion from the beginning. Its efforts are being led by the renowned public health body, the Robert Koch Institute.

And while they are the first to say the pandemic is in its early stages and could yet explode in Germany, the rise in cases and deaths has not been not as sharp as in the UK and nowhere near the levels seen in Italy and Spain.

It remains to be seen whether the new UK attention to testing can help bring the numbers down here as well. In a few short weeks, a strategy that rejected old science for new seems to have unravelled – and testing has suddenly become central to the fight against Covid-19.

Testing is being carried out in hospitals, new and old, and in places such as the huge vacant car park of Chessington World of Adventures in Surrey, where every ride stands still.

Under temporary canvas roofs, nurses in wind-blown plastic aprons, gloves and masks lean into open car windows to swab the nose and back of the mouth of healthcare workers, who may have the telltale dry cough, or are isolating because their child or partner has.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... unravelled

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.military.com/daily-news/202 ... surge.html

Pentagon Orders Bases to Stop Reporting Coronavirus Numbers as Cases Surge

31 Mar 2020
Stars and Stripes | By Corey Dickstein
WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department has ordered commanders at all of its installations worldwide to stop announcing publicly new coronavirus cases among their personnel, as the Pentagon said Monday that more than 1,000 U.S. military-linked people had been sickened by the virus.

The order issued by Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday is meant to protect operational security at the Defense Department's global installations, Jonathan Hoffman, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, said in a statement Monday. He said Defense Department leaders worried adversaries could exploit such information, especially if the data showed the outbreak impacted U.S. nuclear forces or other critical units.

"Unit level readiness data for key military forces is information that is classified as a risk to operational security and could jeopardize operations and/or deterrence," Hoffman said in the statement. "If a commander believes that [the coronavirus] could affect the readiness of our strategic deterrent or strategic response forces, we understandably protect that information from public release and falling into the hands of our adversaries -- as we expect they would do the same."

He pledged the Pentagon would continue to release near-daily updates of total cases among troops, DOD civilian workers, military dependents and defense contractors, which officials with Esper's public affairs office have done for nearly three weeks. Those numbers have grown steadily with each release -- eclipsing 1,000 cases in Monday's announcement.

As of Monday morning, the Pentagon reported 633 service members were among 1,087 total cases within the Defense Department community. Among those troops, 64 had recovered by Monday, while 26 were hospitalized. The latest data shows a dramatic increase in cases among troops since Friday, when the Pentagon reported 343 cases among service members.

The individual military services remain authorized to report coronavirus cases within their ranks to the public, Hoffman said.

"While services will not release the numbers of cases at each base, we will continue to work closely with the local communities to ensure the health and well-being of all," he said. "Individual installations [and] commands will continue to work closely with their respective community's health agencies on reporting, as ultimately our bases are part of a larger civilian community."

The mayor of San Antonio, Texas, Ron Nirenberg, objected to Esper's decision.

"I think this is a global pandemic, and the public has a right to know," he said in an interview Monday with the San Antonio Express-News.

"The lack of information is complicating a coordinated pandemic response at the state and federal level," said the mayor, whose city has four major military installations in the area.

He added that "one of the biggest battles that we have is helping people understand the seriousness of the situation."

The policy change came after Esper hinted last week during an interview with the Reuters news agency that he would soon begin withholding "disaggregated numbers" related to the virus. But the defense secretary did not specify what information would be withheld, Reuters reported.

On Sunday, Army officials in Stuttgart, Germany, announced they could no longer provide the public updated information about cases in their local area. At that time, Stuttgart, which houses headquarters for U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command, had reported at least 80 infections among its personnel.

Meanwhile, officials at Camp Humphreys in South Korea on Monday confirmed a fifth case of the virus among personnel assigned to that base, the largest U.S. base in that country. It was not immediately clear why that information was released to the public given the new policy.

Defense officials at several stateside military posts confirmed Monday that they had been issued the order to stop providing data about their cases. Several of these officials raised concerns that the new ban on local data could harm their ability to inform their own force and strain their ability to work with officials in their surrounding civilian communities amid the pandemic. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to speak about the policy.

"We'll have to work through it," one of the officials said. "People are not going to be happy. I don't think they're going to understand this."

Individual installations had been providing the number of cases via official news releases, statements on their websites and largely through social media, including hosting virtual town hall events, in which top commanders provided updates on the conditions on their bases and answered questions from the public.

Hoffman said the Defense Department would not conceal information about coronavirus-related deaths on its installations and would work to keep local officials abreast of any "health threats" coming from military bases.

"We appreciate our citizens understanding as we protect operational security and our nation's readiness," he said.

Insert sarcastic comment here.

[mr friendly guy]

Italian doctor murdered by her boyfriend because "she gave him coronavirus" even though both test negative.
The original source is the Sun, but googling the name of the murdered doctor nets articles in Italian which I used google translator on, and it seems to come up with a similar story.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/healt ... c88b76d7e1

Coronavirus: Nurse allegedly killed girlfriend saying she infected him
An Italian doctor who was strangled to death was allegedly killed by her nurse boyfriend because he believed she had given him coronavirus.

A nurse who strangled his doctor girlfriend told police he did it because she gave him coronavirus.

Newly qualified medic Lorena Quaranta, 27, was found dead by police after her partner Antonio De Pace, 28, apparently called them to say he had murdered her, The Sun reports.

Both had been working in a local hospital in Messina, on the Italian island of Sicily, and were drafted in to help out with the coronavirus pandemic.

Paramedics were called when the police found Mr De Pace on the floor of his apartment bleeding.

Mr De Pace was later taken to local prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia where he told stunned investigators: “I killed her because she gave me coronavirus.”

A police source said: “She was a doctor who was working hard to save others. It’s such a tragedy.”

Tests were last night being carried out on both, but early indications were neither Dr Quaranta or Mr De Pace had the virus.

You can read further, but I just snipped the first few paragraphs.

Coronavirus is taking a toll on people's mental health. Anecdotally I have seen it in my practice.

[mr friendly guy]

Indians dropping dead after walking for miles to avoid their country's lockdown.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qjd5 ... s-lockdown

People In India Are Dropping Dead After Walking Hundreds of Miles During Coronavirus Lockdown
India's sudden lockdown left millions of migrant workers stranded far from their home cities.
By David Gilbert
Mar 30 2020, 9:05pm

Ranveer Singh was working as a delivery driver for a restaurant in the Indian capital of New Delhi when the government gave everyone just four hours’ warning that a nationwide lockdown was about to be enforced.

Singh was left with no option but to head home to his village in the Morena district, almost 200 miles away. With transportation links shut down, he set out on foot.

The 39-year-old father of three made it as far as Agra, 125 miles south of the capital, before he collapsed, and died of a heart attack brought on by exhaustion.

Singh is just one of dozens of people who have died making long journeys home after the Indian government’s decision to impose a blanket lockdown last Tuesday, forcing businesses to shutter and giving citizens no time to prepare. Millions of migrant workers in India were left without food or shelter when Narendra Modi made the announcement, and now people are dying on the journeys back home.

In Haryana, a North Indian state surrounding New Delhi, three workers and two children, heading home on foot were crushed to death by a truck. On the outskirts of the city of Hyderabad, seven migrant workers and an 18-month old baby were killed when the truck they were traveling in was hit from behind by a truck loaded with mangoes.

A group of four migrant workers who set out from the western city of Vasai for their home villages in Rajasthan was knocked down and killed after officials forced them to go back to Vasai.

Click to read full article.

[Gandalf]

The order issued by Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday is meant to protect operational security at the Defense Department's global installations, Jonathan Hoffman, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, said in a statement Monday. He said Defense Department leaders worried adversaries could exploit such information, especially if the data showed the outbreak impacted U.S. nuclear forces or other critical units.

I wonder how long it took them to come up with that excuse?

[loomer]

It has now reached the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon.

[loomer]

Suspect arrested in that double homicide of two men out hunting for food after being laid off in the COVID-19 outbreak. Meanwhile, some dickhead in Canada threatened to use COVID-19 as a bioweapon against First Nations communities.

Suva is locking down. Fiji is one of the particularly vulnerable nations to the economic impacts of the pandemic - they're expecting a double digit drop in GDP just from the loss of the tourist trade. Most of the Pacific states are also poorly equipped to handle large-scale outbreaks (it's been standard practice for a lot of cases that require ICU support to send them to other countries, so the ICU capacity in pretty much all of them is underdeveloped), so the continuing spread of cases in Fiji is concerning.

Here in Australia, food security for remote communities is becoming a major problem. It's always been bad, but with increased scarcity the costs have skyrocketed further and availability has plummeted, prompting people to violate the border lockdown.

On a non-news note, Dr.s Bond and Whop lay out the difference between health equality and health equity nicely here.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/arti ... 169954.php

As California stops releasing data about health workers’ coronavirus infections, nurses cry foul
Photo of Mallory Moench
Mallory Moench April 1, 2020 Updated: April 1, 2020 12:39 a.m.


The California Department of Public Health drastically curtailed the kind of coronavirus data it is sharing with the public this week — including the number of health care workers who test positive for COVID-19 each day — at a time when the public is hungry for the information.

To the consternation of health care workers who say infection details are crucial to tracking and halting the pandemic, the state health department announced Monday that it will report only the running total number of statewide infections every day, rather than breaking down where they came from. That previously included cases acquired through community spread, from person to person, or by traveling from a hotspot.

The department said it made the change to “better focus public health resources on the changing needs of California communities.”

The number of infected health care workers in California jumped 52% in one day — from 48 to 73 — between Friday and Saturday, the last time the state reported the numbers. Before then, the numbers climbed by roughly six cases a day since March 24, when reporting began.

Asked to explain further, the department issued a statement saying, “We are closely monitoring outbreaks, as well as the impact of COVID-19 on our critical healthcare workforce.”

[mr friendly guy]

https://abc14news.com/2020/04/01/locomo ... s-angeles/

Locomotive Engineer Tried To Ram Train Into Hospital Ship In Los Angeles
NEWS
By Brandon G. Jones On Apr 1, 2020


Regulation enforcement officers say a locomotive engineer tried to ram a educate into the clinic ship in Los Angeles, California, in order to warn other folks about what he explained had been ulterior motives for the ship.

The male labored at the Port of Los Angeles on Tuesday and he derailed the coach at comprehensive pace in an try to crash into the US Navy Clinic Ship Mercy.

The person was determined as 44-yr-outdated Eduardo Moreno of San Pedro in a 10-web site criminal criticism.

Moreno informed officers that he thought the ship was there for a nefarious reason and not simply just to assistance sufferers struggling from the coronavirus.

“You only get this likelihood at the time. The full globe is viewing. I had to,” he reportedly told an formal following he was captured.

“People today don’t know what is likely on listed here. Now they will,’ he additional.

The teach crashed while a series of boundaries but finished its path 250 yards away from the ship. No one was damage in the peculiar incident.

Moreno was billed with a federal statute towards coach wrecking, and faces 20 several years in jail if located guilty.

Conspiracy theorist nutjobs being a bigger danger than they usually are.

[bilateralrope]

Why does that article read like it's been translated by computer ?

Anyway, it links to a More detailed article:

Prosecutors charged a locomotive engineer who worked at the Port of Los Angeles with intentionally derailing a train at full speed near the US Navy Hospital Ship Mercy because of suspicions over it and activities surrounding COVID-19, according to a federal criminal complaint.

Eduardo Moreno, 44, of San Pedro was charged with one count under a little known federal statute of train wrecking, which carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in the incident which took place Tuesday, according to the 10-page criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

After he was arrested, Moreno was held overnight and subsequently turned over to FBI agents Wednesday morning. Prosecutors allege Moreno ran the train off the end of tracks, and crashed through a series of barriers before coming to rest more than 250 yards from the Mercy in an incident captured on video.

The train leaked fuel oil which required clean up by fire and other hazardous materials personnel, but no one was hurt in the incident. A CHP officer who witnessed the crash and took Moreno into custody told authorities he saw the train smash through a barrier at the end of the tracks before plowing through several obstacles including a steel barrier and chain-link fence. It then slid through a parking lot, across another lot filled with gravel, and smashed into a second chain-link fence, according to the affidavit.

Moreno allegedly told the officer, "You only get this chance once. The whole world is watching. I had to. People don't know what's going on here. Now they will," the complaint alleges.

Moreno, who waived his right to speak to an attorney before being interviewed by investigators, admitted in two post-arrest interviews, that he intentionally ran the train off the track because wanted to bring attention to the government's activities regarding COVID-19, and was suspicious of the U.S.N.S. Mercy.

In his first interview with the Los Angeles Port Police, Moreno acknowledged that he "did it," saying that he was suspicious of the Mercy and believing it had an alternate purpose related to COVID-19 or a government takeover, the affidavit states.

Moreno also told investigators he acted alone and had not pre-planned the attempted attack. While admitting to intentionally derailing and crashing the train, he said he knew it would bring media attention and "people could see for themselves," referring to the Mercy, according to the affidavit.

In a second interview with FBI agents, Moreno stated that, "he did it out of the desire to 'wake people up,'" according to the affidavit. "Moreno stated that he thought that the U.S.N.S. Mercy was suspicious and did not believe 'the ship is what they say it's for.'"

[mr friendly guy]

Why does that article read like it's been translated by computer ?

No idea. The other messageboard that I got this from linked to a newsite I am unfamiliar with, so I googled it and found a few sites like the blaze reporting it, and decided to pick a website that sort of looked like a news station rather than right wing site. Apologies for that, but I had a few things to do shortly after so I kind of rushed things. The story does seem to be legit though.

[Dominus Atheos]

OK, so apparently I've been completely wrong about what "bending the curve" means. I was assuming that it means accepting that most healthy was going to still get the coronavirus, but it would pass through the population slowly enough that it wouldn't overburden hospitals.

Like spreading out the cases over 9 months instead of 2. And making sure that vulnerable populations like the elderly don't get it at all.

But instead leaders are talking like no one should get the coronavirus at all, ever? What's the endgame there? No one seems to have one.

[Eulogy]

Conspiracy theorist nutjobs being a bigger danger than they usually are.

Well, people will now see for themselves what an utter crazy shithead he is, so good job there. There's no telling how many people he could have killed if he managed to hit the ship. Now, he's pretty much going into solitary confinement because he's not going to last long in genpop.

[MKSheppard]

New guidance for EMS in New York City and Long Island says that patients in cardiac arrest should not be transported to the hospital if they cannot be saved in the field.

[loomer]

Shire borders within the Kimberly are being shut to try and control the spread.

[The Romulan Republic]

some dickhead in Canada threatened to use COVID-19 as a bioweapon against First Nations communities.

Not surprising. White supremacists have been pulling the same shit in the US, encouraging each other to deliberately infect minorities and law enforcement.

I'm not sure what the charges would be in Canada, but the US is treating deliberately spreading or threatening to spread it as a potential breach of terrorism laws. I don't think anyone's been charged federally yet, but some people have been charged at the state level for terrorist threats.

[MKSheppard]

44 of 70 UT Austin students who went on a spring break trip to Mexico two weeks ago have now tested positive for coronavirus

[The Romulan Republic]

44 of 70 UT Austin students who went on a spring break trip to Mexico two weeks ago have now tested positive for coronavirus

Morons. Who thinks its a good idea to go traveling during a pandemic.

Cue Trump screaming that its coming from Mexico and we need to build the Wall to keep it out.

[Zaune]

Morons. Who thinks its a good idea to go traveling during a pandemic.

Two weeks ago I was still hearing people claim that the virus was only a severe health risk if you were elderly or had some other chronic condition, and that everyone else would recover fully. That makes it slightly more understandable.

[The Romulan Republic]

Morons. Who thinks its a good idea to go traveling during a pandemic.

Two weeks ago I was still hearing people claim that the virus was only a severe health risk if you were elderly or had some other chronic condition, and that everyone else would recover fully. That makes it slightly more understandable.

Well, that just means they were selfish and didn't care about any elderly or chronically ill people they might infect.

So, morons or assholes.

[The Romulan Republic]

10 million Americans have filed for jobless benefits in the last two weeks, exceeding the total for the entire 2009 recession:

https://cbc.ca/news/business/us-jobless-6-6-1.5518711

More than 6.6 million Americans filed for new jobless claims in the week that ended March 28, doubling the record amount seen the previous week, when the COVID-19 crisis was beginning to wallop the U.S. economy.

The 3.3 million Americans who had filed for jobless benefits the previous week was already a record, shattering the 692,000 who did so during one week in 1982.

Official job numbers for Canada will come out April 9, and are likely to be similarly dour, since we already know that almost one million Canadians filed for unemployment insurance claims in a single week in March.

The U.S. figure more than doubled what economists had been expecting, and means that almost 10 million Americans have filed for jobless benefits in the two weeks since quarantines and lockdowns of roughly 80 per cent of the U.S. population began.

For comparison purposes, the worst single week for jobless claims during the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 came in March 2009, when 665,000 Americans did so. For the entire duration of the financial crisis, the U.S. economy lost about 8.7 million jobs.

'There is a backlog'
As bleak as the number is, Bank of Montreal economist Jennifer Lee notes that it could in fact be masking an even worse reality.

"The disturbing fact is ... this may be underestimating the real figures, given reports of how completely overwhelmed the unemployment offices are in processing the requests for [unemployment benefits], so there is a backlog," she said.

If there is a bright spot in the numbers, it is likely that the continuing claims number went down. Initial claims are filed by people who are seeking jobless benefits for the first time. Continuing claims tracks the number of people who were already getting benefits who still qualify for it.

Economists had been expecting the continuing claims number to come in at 4.8 million for the week. In fact, the number fell to three million.

That implies some people have already found work after losing their job the first time, but even that bright spot could be misleading, because the government offices that process jobless benefits "are likely to be overwhelmed by the number of claims," said economist James Knightley, with Dutch bank ING.

"Coupled with having to work from home ... this may also explain why continuing claims significantly undershot expectations."

How do you process a million EI claims? Don't try to make it perfect, say experts
THE LATESTCoronavirus: What's happening in Canada and around the world Thursday
Layoffs coming 'at extraordinary pace'
The jobless claims number is a stark warning of what may come Friday, when official numbers for jobs for the month of March are due.

Those numbers are based on a survey the U.S. government did of businesses and households in the middle of the month, before widespread lockdowns were in place.

David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Funds in New York, said he's expecting those numbers to show the U.S. economy could lose 16 million jobs when all is said and done.

"The loss would be enough to boost the unemployment rate from roughly 3.5 per cent to 12.5 per cent, which would be its highest rate since the Great Depression."

If the jobless claims number stays this high through April, the U.S. jobless rate is likely to jump to something around 20 per cent, TD Bank economist Sri Thanabalasingam said.

"Regrettably, with layoffs coming in at an extraordinary pace, this outcome appears increasingly likely," he said.

With files from Reuters