COVID-19 ongoing thread part 2

[loomer]

Have at it. To start us off,

Navajo Nation reports 172 more coronavirus cases, 13 more deaths


Window Rock, Ariz. • Health officials have reported 13 more deaths from the coronavirus on the Navajo Nation along with 172 new cases of COVID-19.

According to the Navajo Department of Health, the number of positive coronavirus cases on the vast reservation has reached 3,912 with 140 known deaths as of Saturday.

Tribal health officials said about 544 people have recovered from COVID-19 with more reports still pending as of Sunday.

They said that of 23,791 coronavirus tests have been administered with 17,409 negative results.

In March, health care experts projected that the Navajo Nation would see its peak in new cases in mid-May.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks.

But for some — especially older adults and people with existing health problems — it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.

The Navajo Nation has daily nighttime curfews and requires people to wear masks when out in public. Government offices are closed or have limited services.

Source

[The Romulan Republic]

Coronavirus and the arts (specifically in Britain, but a lot of this will be applicable to other countries):

https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2 ... magination

The arts in Britain are in a dire situation. Mighty household names, such as London’s Old Vic and the Royal Albert Hall, have warned that they are close to collapse. The overwhelming majority of British cultural workers – freelance artists, musicians, composers, directors, actors, technicians – saw their livelihoods destroyed in a matter of hours this March. They are hanging on by a thread, notwithstanding government support for the self-employed.

In England, every available penny of Arts Council money has been directed into emergency funds to keep arts organisations alive until September, and the furlough scheme is a lifeline; but some are already disintegrating. Nuffield Southampton Theatre called in the administrators on 6 May. After a decade of austerity, there is absolutely no fat in the British system.

The twist is that the organisations that have been most successful in following a neoliberal-perfumed model – easing themselves away from “dependence” on the state, earning most of their income from bars, venue hire and the like – are the most vulnerable. Yet all organisations are on the brink. Losing them would mean not only losing an extraordinary arts infrastructure, in which so much of British national identity is bound up, but the network of education, social care and community work that the organisations provide.

The situation is especially serious in the performing arts. Music, dance, opera and theatre are in the mass-gathering business, and they will be among the last areas of public life to reopen. Gradually it is being accepted that this is unlikely to occur fully before next spring.

Socially distant theatre is a financial nonstarter. An auditorium with audiences spaced at two metres means playing to a house about 10-15% full; but most theatres need 60-90% to survive. As for the performers, it is hard to imagine socially distant ballet, or an orchestra spread thinly enough to make players safe.

Public museums and galleries are in a slightly better place: there may be a gradual reopening in late summer. Lending libraries and bookshops could reopen even sooner. Museums such as Tate Modern are modelling for 70% fewer visitors than before the pandemic distanced through queues, timed tickets and longer opening hours. Since we have become used to queuing for supermarkets, negotiating such spaces will feel broadly familiar.

In fact, for some museums the experience of visiting could be considerably enhanced for those who actually get in – though the extra hurdles may deter the tentative or first-time visitor, and those in fragile health are likely to stay away altogether. But this kind of model will be financially crippling, especially for museums that depend on being busy, extracting as much spend from each visitor as possible. Income from shops and cafes will plummet.

British artists and arts administrators are nothing if not inventive and resilient. They have had to be, to survive post-2010 cuts. They are fizzing with ideas, plans and schemes, some of them more practical than others, some a more direct response to the crisis than others. The Royal Opera House costume department is running up scrubs; Slung Low, in Leeds, has transferred the kind of organisational skills required to put on a play into delivering meals to vulnerable people.

And how about keeping the show on the road? People are modelling every variation: take it outside, downsize it, spread it out, stream it. Could you stage a drive-through opera? Could a composer write a work for a socially distant ensemble? Can you make an online literary festival attractive to audiences when they can’t be in the same room as the authors?

In Perthshire, Elizabeth Newman, who runs Pitlochry Festival theatre – only 15% of whose funding comes from public sources – tells me she has modelled everything from a socially distant petting farm (without the actual petting) to a Christmas Lapland as potential sources of revenue. But the truth is, none of these ideas will balance the books. What theatres are meant to be is places where people sit together at close quarters, breathing the same air, sharing the same experience. And that’s how they make their money.

Baldly, it is going to take imagination, boldness and serious intervention from the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, and the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, along with the devolved governments, to tide the British arts over. The kind of sums required will be, relatively speaking, modest compared with eventual rewards – both economic and societal – of protecting the delicate but precious structure from toppling. It will be easier and cheaper to keep it going now than to attempt to rebuild it from the ashes.

Preventing collapse, though, is only the most basic step. There has been a lot of reflection during the pandemic, not all of it concluding that the arts should pick up exactly where they left off. This may be the moment for structural change. Should orchestras really be packing 90 people and their instruments on to planes for gruelling multi-city tours each year, at great cost to individuals’ wellbeing as well as to their carbon footprints? Should the contemporary art world really be predicated on a globalised system that air-freights sculpture and people around the world on an endless merry-go-round of fairs and biennials? The British arts after the pandemic may need to be rawer, more basic, more plugged into their communities than ever. And that might not be a bad thing.

Comparing the Covid-19 pandemic with the second world war is a perilous and largely ridiculous game. Yet in purely practical terms, the war was the last time cultural organisations ground entirely to a halt. Robert Skidelsky’s biography of John Maynard Keynes notes that the economist liked to say he used the calm of war to reflect on the turmoil of peace. That reflection led to an entirely new settlement for the arts in Britain – the foundation of the Arts Council of Great Britain, forged from a sense that arts and culture were a way of providing healing and comfort to all of society after a national trauma. This was done in the same political breath as the foundation of the NHS.

In a BBC address, Keynes said that, having started with the idea of replacing what the war had snatched away, “we soon found that we were providing what had never existed even in peacetime”. On the heels of the Arts Council in 1946 came the great arts festivals – Edinburgh in 1947, Aldeburgh in 1948. Then came the Festival of Britain and the Royal Festival Hall in 1951. Inventing something undreamed of, something even better than what existed before: that might be the true arts recovery plan, and a political legacy worth having.

• Charlotte Higgins is a Guardian columnist

I don't particularly like the implied advocacy of purely local arts organizations and possibly cultural isolationism. What I would like to see is the infrastructure the arts are developing now to survive covid, taking advantage of modern technology for things like free live streaming of workshops and performances (something I'm personally involved with to an extent through my work in local theatre) and use that to make local productions available to actors and audiences on a global stage.

[The Romulan Republic]

Trump claims he's taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative measure:

https://globalnews.ca/news/6956812/coro ... ine-covid/

U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that he is taking a malaria drug to lessen symptoms should he get the new coronavirus, even though the drug is unproven for fighting COVID-19.

Trump told reporters he has been taking the drug, hydroxychloroquine, and a zinc supplement daily “for about a week and a half now.” Trump spent weeks pushing the drug as a potential cure for COVID-19 against the cautionary advice of many of his administration’s top medical professionals. The drug has the potential to cause significant side effects in some patients and has not been shown to combat the new coronavirus.

Trump said his doctor did not recommend the drug to him, but he requested it from the White House physician.

“I started taking it, because I think it’s good,” Trump said. “I’ve heard a lot of good stories.”

The Food and Drug Administration warned health professionals last month that the drug should not be used outside of hospital or research settings, due to sometimes fatal side effects. Regulators issued the alert after receiving reports of heart-rhythm problems, including deaths, from poison control centres and other health providers.

Trump dismissed reports of side effects, saying, “All I can tell you is, so far I seem to be OK.”

Trump has repeatedly pushed the use of the drug with or without the antibiotic azithromycin, but no large, rigorous studies have found them safe or effective for preventing or treating COVID-19.

Two large observational studies, each involving around 1,400 patients in New York, recently found no benefit from hydroxychloroquine. Two new ones published Thursday in the medical journal BMJ reached the same conclusion.

One, by French researchers, gave 84 hospitalized patients the drug and 97 others the usual care. There were no differences in the odds of death, need for intensive care or developing severe illness.

The other study from China was a stricter test: 150 adults hospitalized with mild or moderate illness were randomly assigned to get hydroxychloroquine or usual care. The drug made no difference in rates of clearing the virus or time to relief of symptoms, and they brought more side effects.

In April, the National Institutes of Health launched a study testing hydroxychloroquine versus a placebo drug in 500 hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Last week, NIH announced another study to see if hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin can prevent hospitalization or death in people with mild to moderate illness. About 2,000 U.S. adults with confirmed coronavirus infections and symptoms such as fever, cough or shortness of breath will get the drugs or placebo pills.

I'm not sure what's more likely, that he's cynically lying to convince his followers to take it, or that he's actually stupid enough to take his own snake oil.

[Mr Bean]

I'm not sure what's more likely, that he's cynically lying to convince his followers to take it, or that he's actually stupid enough to take his own snake oil.

You forgot he thinks he's taking it but the White House physician is giving him sugar pills and telling him it's his snake oil. This is the same President who the previous White House Chef had to sneak vegetables into his food by disguising it.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon- ... s-is-bogus

Busted: Pentagon Contractors’ Report on ‘Wuhan Lab’ Origins of Virus Is Bogus

shocking report suggesting that the coronavirus was “release[d from] the Wuhan Institute of Virology” in China is now circulating in U.S. military and intelligence circles and on Capitol Hill. But there’s a critical flaw in the report, a Daily Beast analysis reveals: Some of its most seemingly persuasive evidence is false—provably false.

Multiple congressional committees have obtained and are scrutinizing the 30-page report, produced by the Multi-Agency Collaboration Environment (MACE), a part of Sierra Nevada, a major Department of Defense contractor. The report claims to rely on social media postings, commercial satellite imagery, and cellphone location data to draw the conclusion that some sort of “hazardous event” occurred at the Wuhan virology lab in October 2019—an event that allowed COVID-19 to escape. It’s a theory that has gained currency on the political right and in the upper tiers of the Trump administration.

But the report’s claim centers around missing location data for up to seven phones — and in many cases, less than that. It’s too small a sample size to prove much of anything, especially when the same devices showed similar absences in the spring of 2019. The MACE document claims a November 2019 conference was canceled because of some calamity; in fact, there are selfies from the event.

What’s more, imagery collected by DigitalGlobe’s Maxar Technologies satellites and provided to The Daily Beast reveals a simpler, less exotic reason for why analysts believed “roadblocks” went into place around the lab after the supposed accident: road construction. The Maxar images also show typical workdays, with normal traffic patterns around the lab, after the supposedly cataclysmic event.


Satellite image ©2020 Maxar Technologies
“This is an illustrated guide on how not to do open source analysis,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, who analyzed the MACE report for The Daily Beast. “It is filled with apples-to-oranges comparisons, motivated reasoning, and a complete refusal to consider mundane explanations or place the data in any sort of context.”

A Department of Defense spokesperson told The Daily Beast that MACE did not produce the report “in coordination with the DoD.” Sierra Nevada did not respond to a request for comment.

The document, which NBC News first published and reported on May 8, made its way to Capitol Hill just days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed in an interview that there was “enormous evidence” to suggest that the virus came from the lab in Wuhan.

He appeared to back away from that claim this weekend telling Breitbart: “We know it began in Wuhan, but we don't know from where or from whom.”

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee were briefed on the report by MACE earlier this month following Pompeo’s remarks, according to two congressional aides familiar with the matter. The report then made its way to the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Multiple congressional committees have asked MACE to meet and discuss its product. Members have also asked senior officials in the Trump administration to answer questions about whether they trust the report and agree with its claims.

According to Senate aides who have reviewed the document, there appear to be issues with the analysis. One of those sources said the report “doesn’t quite pass the smell test.” Another congressional source told The Daily Beast that the report was “not based on actual intelligence.”



handout
The emergence of the MACE document comes amid a concerted effort to place blame for the coronavirus pandemic squarely on Beijing. And its existence is confirmation that government resources are now being devoted to exploring that proposition, even as the actual intelligence remains far less conclusive. While there’s broad agreement that COVID-19 emerged in China, The New York Times reported that top members of the Trump administration have pushed U.S. intelligence agencies to look for some sort of Chinese government culpability, and to investigate the Wuhan lab theory.

President Trump told reporters earlier this month that the virus had escaped from the Wuhan lab because “somebody was stupid.” Since then, the administration has yet to release any evidence to support that theory. Foreign officials as well as members of Trump’s own coronavirus task force have pushed back. Dr. Anthony Fauci, for one, has said the virus originated “in the wild.”

“Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species,” the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told National Geographic.

The MACE document suggests that Chinese authorities blocked off traffic surrounding the Wuhan lab in mid-October. The authors leave readers with the impression that a purported drop in local traffic shows that Chinese officials recognized a leak had taken place and tried to prevent passers-by from being infected. “It is believed that roadblocks were put in place to prevent traffic from coming near the facility,” the document says.

This is an illustrated guide on how not to do open source analysis. It is filled with apples-to-oranges comparisons, motivated reasoning, and a complete refusal to consider mundane explanations.
— Center for Nonproliferation Studies’ Jeffrey Lewis

In particular, the authors pointed to a decrease in cellphone location data from a highway that passes the lab shortly after the alleged incident. “There was absolutely no traffic” near the facility from Oct. 14-19, the document claims.

But that’s simply not so. That conclusion is disproved by satellite imagery provided to The Daily Beast by DigitalGlobe’s Maxar satellites. Imagery taken on Oct. 17, shows vehicles on the road by the facility, in the lab’s parking lot near the BSL-4 lab where a leak supposedly originated, and at nearby buildings. “The traffic pattern visible on October 17, 2019 is identical to traffic patterns on other days. People are still coming to work,” Lewis said.

The Maxar imagery also shows why MACE analysts may have believed roadblocks were in place around the facility. It shows construction of a highway near the Wuhan lab close to completion in October.

“Those closures and roadblocks are far more likely to relate to construction we know is happening. For what it is worth, there are cars and buses at neighboring businesses on October 17—so I imagine some of the lack of data may relate to collection problems since it appears people were at work,” Lewis observed.

This line - complete refusal to consider mundane explanations or place the data in any sort of context. This is just typical analyst on China. Remember when Shep asked us to discuss the conspiracy theory about China having 21 million dead because that number of mobile accounts were cancelled. Fortunately he didn't believe it, and it generated discussion. The mundane explanation was that with the economy not moving due to shutdowns, businesses closed their accounts. It seems US analysts (snigger) concluded that roadblocks put in place because the Chinese were constructing a highway is due to the virus escaping from a lab even though we don't even have evidence the virus was in the lab in the first place and we plenty of evidence it wasn't.

This is the US government trying to manufacture consent. Its them trying WMDs in Iraq again, only with China. Now who is surprised by all this?

[The_Saint]

I'm not sure what's more likely, that he's cynically lying to convince his followers to take it, or that he's actually stupid enough to take his own snake oil.

You forgot he thinks he's taking it but the White House physician is giving him sugar pills and telling him it's his snake oil. This is the same President who the previous White House Chef had to sneak vegetables into his food by disguising it.

The sad part is that even if the White House physician IS dispensing the drug it'll be in measured 'medically safe' doses ... not whatever random dose Trumps followers might poison themselves with.

The better result (imho) would be if he sourced it himself and dosed to whatever level he thought he could take and ended up publicly poisoning himself from his own stupidity.

[mr friendly guy]

I'm not sure what's more likely, that he's cynically lying to convince his followers to take it, or that he's actually stupid enough to take his own snake oil.

Someone needs to follow the money and see if any of his family members have money in drug manufacturers who make the stuff.

[mr friendly guy]

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... rk-protest

'Hang Fauci, Hang Gates' sign held at Open New York protest

A protester at an Open New York rally last week that was praised by President Trump held up a sign reading “Hang Fauci, Hang Gates.”

The sign seemingly refers to the nation’s top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, and Bill Gates, a billionaire philanthropist donating funds to aid coronavirus research and issuing warnings about the pandemic.

The Huffington Post noted the sign in a story it wrote that was based on reporting at the scene by News 12 Long Island, which captured the images of the sign at the rally held last week on Long Island. It stated “Hang Fauci, Hang Gates, Open up all our states.”

A tweet from the reporter on the criticism he took at the rally also went viral.


Trump shared support for the rally held in Commack, as well as for protesters who confronted News 12 reporter Kevin Vesey.

“FAKE NEWS IS NOT ESSENTIAL,” Trump tweeted on Friday, retweeting Vesey’s tweet and video about the “anger directed at the media.”


“People can’t get enough of this. Great people!” Trump tweeted again Saturday, again along with the video and Vesey’s tweet.


The Hill's Coronavirus Report: Dr. Tom Inglesby says society will...
De Blasio: Swimmers at New York City beaches will be 'taken right out...
In addition to signs calling to open up New York, some protesters were seen holding “Trump” flags, as well as wearing T-shirts with the president’s name and hats with the president’s 2016 campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”

New York is the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 350,121 confirmed COVID-19 cases statewide, according to state data.

In Suffolk County, where the protest was held, there are 38,117 confirmed COVID-19 cases, according to state data.

Disgusting shits.

[J]

Someone needs to follow the money and see if any of his family members have money in drug manufacturers who make the stuff.

Trump himself has a small financial stake in one of the companies which makes hydroxychloroquine. Not sure how much I'd read into it though, it's been off-patent for many years and widely available in generic form for well under a dollar per tablet.

[Broomstick]

Trump claims he's taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative measure:

https://globalnews.ca/news/6956812/coro ... ine-covid/

....[snip]....

I'm not sure what's more likely, that he's cynically lying to convince his followers to take it, or that he's actually stupid enough to take his own snake oil.

Trump is, supposedly, a life-long germphone. That's why everyone around him is tested and restested. That's why everyone around him has to wear a mask. That's why he went to Camp David when the West Wing had an outbreak.

Trump is terrified he's going to catch the virus. Getting sick, in his mind, means being a weak loser. Can't have that!

He's taking it (or, depending on what the doctor actually gave him, he thinks he is taking it).

[Broomstick]

I'm not sure what's more likely, that he's cynically lying to convince his followers to take it, or that he's actually stupid enough to take his own snake oil.

Someone needs to follow the money and see if any of his family members have money in drug manufacturers who make the stuff.

It's been done.

The answer is yes, Trump does have a tiny sliver of investment in the company, about $1500 worth, via a mutual fund that has stock for the company among all the other company's stock. It would not seem to be enough to motivate this, given what a small percentage of his net worth is involved, but we're talking about Trump so who knows?

[mr friendly guy]

https://cbs12.com/news/local/woman-who- ... r-position

Woman who designed Florida's COVID-19 dashboard has been removed from her position
by Sabrina LoloTuesday, May 19th 2020

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (CBS12) — As Florida starts to reopen, the architect and manager of Florida's COVID-19 dashboard, announced she'd been removed from her position, Florida Today reported.

Rebekah Jones said in an email to CBS12 News that her removal was "not voluntary" and that she was removed from her position because she was ordered to censor some data, but refused to "manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen."

Jones made the announcement May 5 in a farewell email to researchers and other members of the public who had signed up to receive updates on the data portal, according to Florida Today. She said that for "reasons beyond my division's control," her office is no longer managing the dashboard, involved in its publication, fixing errors or answering any questions.

Florida's COVID-19 dashboard, created by a team of Florida Department of Health data scientists and public health officers led by Jones, was praised by White House officials for its accessibility, the Florida Daily reported. But over the last few weeks, it "crashed and went offline, data disappeared with no explanation and access to the underlying data sheets became difficult."

Jones told CBS12 News that since she's been removed, the dashboard still hasn't been fully repaired.

CBS12 News reached out to the Florida Department of Health for comment and is waiting to hear back.

I guess we can add that to the list which includes Capt. Brett Crozier, Dr. Rick Bright, Adam Witt, Dr. Ming Lin, Dawn Kulach, Kenisa Barkai, Christian Smalls, Amazon workers Bashir Mohamed, Emily Cunningham, Maren Costa) who have been fired for criticising the handling COVID 19.

[ray245]

Five organisations in the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine

Many companies and institutions are in a race to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Here are some of them:

Moderna
Moderna’s mRNA-1273 vaccine candidate was the first to enter clinical trials, just eight weeks after the genetic sequence for Covid-19 was published in January. On Monday, the US biotech company said interim data from a phase one trial involving 45 people found it produced Covid-19 antibodies in all participants, including at low doses, at similar or higher levels to people who had actually contracted the virus. It said it was “generally safe and well tolerated” by the triallists. It also found that mRNA-1273 provided full protection against viral replication in the lungs in a mouse challenge model.

CanSino
The Chinese company CanSino Biologics has become the first contender to move its candidate vaccine – Ad5-nCoV – into a phase two clinical trial, which is taking place in Wuhan. However, CanSino, which is working with the medical sciences arm of the People’s Liberation Army, has not published detailed results of the phase one trial, saying only that it was moving to phase two based on “the preliminary safety data” from phase one, which involved about 500 people.

Oxford University
The university’s ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 is being tested on more than 1,000 volunteers aged between 18 and 55 in a phase one trial which began last month. A pre-print – a research paper which has not yet been peer-reviewed – on the vaccine’s efficacy in rhesus macaques, published on Monday, found that it did prevent them from getting the disease (pneumonia) but did not protect them from the infection, creating concerns that, if replicated in humans, it would mean it would not be able to prevent transmission to others. The results from the human trial could be available this month. AstraZeneca, the Cambridge-based pharmaceutical group, has teamed up with Oxford University to manufacture and distribute the vaccine if the trials show it is effective.

Imperial College London
Imperial is developing a vaccine in a form that has not been tested before in people, leaving it behind some of the other contenders which have skipped animal studies because their technology has been previously used on humans. The team, led by Prof Robin Shattock, has been testing with animals since early February and is due to begin human trials in June. It initially received £22.5m in government funding and on Sunday it was announced that it had been given an additional £18.5m which it hopes will enable it to launch phase three clinical trials later this year. However, Shattock cautioned on Monday that it is highly unlikely a vaccine in the UK will be available for use by September.

Inovio
The US biotech company Inovio has existed for four decades without developing an approved product but its stock soared after it started its trial last month. It says its INO-4800 candidate vaccine resulted in promising immune responses in preclinical models. The company has enrolled 40 healthy people for its phase one trial. It is hoping it could advance to phase two/three efficacy trials this summer. The company has received a total of $17.2m (£14m) in grants from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations for the vaccine.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... us-vaccine

The Moderna vaccine seems to hold the most promise out of them all, although the Oxford vaccine might be used to mitigate the worst impact of the disease.

[The Romulan Republic]

I really would rather it not be a US company that first develops a vaccine- both because US companies tend to overcharge massively for essential drugs and treatments, and because you know Trump might use the Defense Production Act to seize control of it and hoard it exclusively for US use, and/or extort exorbitant fees or concessions from other nations for it.

If a US company gets the vaccine first, Trump gets to hold the whole world hostage.

Edit: Then again, its possible, likely even, that no vaccine will be ready for widespread use before the November elections.

[ray245]

I really would rather it not be a US company that first develops a vaccine- both because US companies tend to overcharge massively for essential drugs and treatments, and because you know Trump might use the Defense Production Act to seize control of it and hoard it exclusively for US use, and/or extort exorbitant fees or concessions from other nations for it.

If a US company gets the vaccine first, Trump gets to hold the whole world hostage.

Edit: Then again, its possible, likely even, that no vaccine will be ready for widespread use before the November elections.

People can use alternative vaccines if they are proven to work as well. It is not as if the US is the only country producing vaccines. The other vaccines aren't exactly that far behind that of the US.

Take the Oxford vaccine for example. It might not stop infections, but if it can reduce the virus to something of a mere cold, people can rely on that until the Moderna vaccine becomes more widespread.

[ray245]

MPs hear why Hong Kong had no Covid-19 care home deaths

Hong Kong has recorded zero deaths in care homes from Covid-19 by employing strict infection control measures that were ignored in the UK, MPs were told on Tuesday as the death toll from the virus in English and Welsh care homes reached almost 15,000.

Despite sharing a border with China, Prof Terry Lum, the head of social care policy at Hong Kong University, told the UK parliament’s health and social care select committee that Hong Kong treated the outbreak like Sars, the killer virus that hit Asia in 2003, and saved lives.

By contrast, the UK’s response to coronavirus was based on planning for a flu pandemic.

Lum said care facilities in Hong Kong had been highly vigilant against spread from hospitals with any confirmed cases quarantined for up to three months.

This contrasted with evidence from Prof Martin Green, the chief executive of Care England, which represents the largest provider networks, who said asymptomatic and symptomatic Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospitals into care homes spreading the virus.

“Most important is stopping the transmission from hospital to nursing home,” Lum said. “We do a very good job on isolation. Once we have any person infected we isolate them in hospital for three months and at the same time we isolate all the close contact people in a separate quarantine centre for 14 days for observation.

“They do tests regularly in that 14 days to make sure they don’t have the virus. We use a supercomputer to trace the close contacts of people being infected particularly for cluster outbreaks.”

He added that all nursing homes had a trained infection controller and underwent emergency drills simulating an infection outbreak four times a year so infection control becomes “a well-worn practice”.

Lum’s account came as the health and social care committee tried to learn lessons from the crisis in care homes, where four in 10 Covid deaths have occurred. Its chairman, Jeremy Hunt, described estimates that 22,000 people may have died from Covid and related issues in care homes as “very, very shocking”.

MPs also heard from Isabell Halletz, the chief executive at the German employers’ association for care homes, who said there had been fewer than 3,000 Covid-19 deaths in care homes in Germany, partly because no one was allowed in from hospitals without a negative test, or had undergone quarantine in designated centres or repurposed hotels for at least 14 days.

Adelina Comas-Herrera, a research fellow at the London School of Economics studying Covid-19 deaths in care homes globally, also praised Singapore and South Korea, which have recorded no care home deaths by quarantining infected residents or moving them to hospitals.

“[Their] infection control policies [were] based not on influenza but on Sars and that has helped them,” she said.

The international comparisons came as figures released by the Office of National Statistics on Tuesday revealed 9,980 deaths were registered in care homes in England and Wales up to 8 May from confirmed or suspected Covid-19. Adding more up-to-date death tolls reported to regulators and deaths of care home residents in hospitals to 1 May, it means 14,835 care residents have died from Covid-19.

UK care homes are demanding a significant increase in testing of staff and residents, up to three times a week, amid fears a lifting of the lockdown could spark new outbreaks.

So far, the UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, has promised only that all care home residents and staff will be tested by 6 June, but no commitment has been made for repeat testing.

“People are often finding their tests aren’t arriving on time or being taken away on time,” said Green. “We are looking at delays of eight to 10 days until people get results.”

The call for routine testing was echoed by Sir David Behan, the chief executive of HC-One, the largest private provider, and Sam Monaghan, the chief executive of MHA, the largest charitable provider.

Vic Rayner, the executive director at the National Care Forum, which represents charitable care operators, said the promise of 30,000 tests a day was enough only for one test each for care residents and staff.

“What that means is you haven’t got the right tools and resources to manage outbreaks within homes and identify when and where infections might have come in,” she said. “It’s incredibly challenging for providers to operate in that climate. It is absolutely critical that we get that repeat testing.”

The committee also heard warnings about the continued risk posed by temporary care workers spreading the virus if they work in more than one home. A Public Health England study, revealed by the Guardian on Monday, found this had happened in early April but instructions to restrict movements were issued by the government only last Thursday.

Green said floating agency staff were a danger and operators may have to ensure agency staff are restricted to a particular care home rather than move between care homes.

James Bullion, the president of the Association of Directors of Social Services, said: “The fact that we have agency staff moving between three or four establishments is a consequence of the structural model we have got. We do need to look at a salaried model and higher level of wages.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... ome-deaths

Basically, the UK screwed up in assuming this is similar to the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic.

[The Romulan Republic]

Confirmed, US/Canada border will remain closed to non-essential traffic until at least June 21st.

https://cbc.ca/news/politics/border-can ... -1.5575214

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.ft.com/content/1a25aeb9-f64 ... b62cf5ebed

US backs away from WHO move on access to Covid-19 treatments
Trump warns US will quit body if it fails to ‘commit to substantive improvements in next 30 days’



David Pilling in London, Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington and Michael Peel in Brussels YESTERDAYPrint this page350
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The US has rejected wording in a World Health Organization resolution that backs the rights of poor countries to ignore patents in order to gain access to a Covid-19 vaccine or treatment.

Washington dissociated itself on Tuesday from elements of a motion passed by WHO members, saying that it sent “the wrong message to innovators who will be essential to the solutions the whole world needs”.

Many governments, particularly in Africa, fear they will be squeezed out by richer countries unless they can force companies that discover anti-Covid-19 therapies to share their intellectual property with manufacturers able to produce them cheaply at scale.

African ambassadors in Geneva, where the WHO is based, said US diplomats had sought to persuade them to support a dilution of language in the resolution, a proposal they had rejected. 

Washington did not vote against the resolution proposed by the EU and others but instead issued a statement that repudiated the wording of several parts of it, including three paragraphs relating to emerging Covid-19 therapies. These included references to the so-called Doha Declaration, in which World Trade Organization ministers said governments could overrule intellectual property in a public health emergency.

“The United States recognises the importance of access to affordable, safe, high-quality, and effective health products and the critical role that intellectual property plays in incentivising the development of new and improved health products,” the US said in an objection note. “However, as currently drafted, [the three paragraphs] send the wrong message to innovators who will be essential to the solutions the whole world needs.”

The move comes as US president Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of the WHO unless it demonstrates its independence from China in an escalation of his efforts to blame Beijing for the virus emergency.

In a letter published late on Monday, Mr Trump warned that the US would permanently end funding to the international body if it failed to “commit to major substantive improvements in the next 30 days”.

The US president castigated the WHO and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, its director-general, for “repeated mis-steps” in its coronavirus pandemic response that had proved “extremely costly for the world”.

Mr Trump accused the WHO of neglecting to share information about the initial Covid-19 outbreak in China, failing to press Beijing sufficiently for answers, and of making “grossly inaccurate or misleading” claims about the disease. The WHO has previously denied the allegations.

The resolution over patents is being discussed at a virtual two-day meeting of the World Health Assembly, the WHO’s governing body, which concludes on Tuesday.

“The US made some input trying to water down the references to Trips and patenting,” said one west African ambassador to Geneva, referring to Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. “The US is certain they will be the first to get the vaccine, but it might not be true.”

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Illustrating the concerns about richer countries getting earlier access to any vaccine, Ellen ‘t Hoen, director of the research group Medicines Law & Policy, said it took a decade for African countries to get affordable Aids medicines, during which time millions of people died.

“What we have seen in the past is that high-income countries rush to the front of the queue and leave the rest of the world to fend for themselves,” she said. 

The US and other nations with strong pharmaceutical sectors, including the UK, Switzerland and Japan, had wanted language explicitly referring to the Doha Declaration removed from the resolution, according to an early draft seen by the Financial Times.

They wanted instead to emphasise the role of intellectual property in promoting innovation and to encourage equitable access to any Covid-19 vaccine or treatment through voluntary mechanisms, including donations and partnerships.

The debate over intellectual property is part of a broader tussle between China and the US over who develops a vaccine first and how it will be distributed.

Xi Jinping, China’s president, on Monday appeared to back the position of developing countries, when he said any vaccine “will be treated as a public good”.

As the source of the outbreak, China has a special responsibility to pay more and to give more

John Ullyot, White House National Security Council
In an address to the World Health Assembly — itself controversial because of US accusations that Beijing covered up the initial Covid-19 outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan — Mr Xi said China would donate $2bn over two years to respond to the crisis, especially in developing countries.

The White House described the Chinese offer as a “token to distract from calls from a growing number of nations demanding accountability for the Chinese government’s failure to meet its obligations . . . to tell the truth and warn the world of what was coming”.

John Ullyot, the White House National Security Council spokesman, added that “as the source of the outbreak, China has a special responsibility to pay more and to give more” to the global health body.

Diplomats said Washington had pushed strongly for language calling for an independent investigation “at the earliest possible opportunity” into the WHO-led response to the outbreak.

In a letter seen by the Financial Times, African ambassadors in Geneva said attacks on the WHO’s Mr Tedros “from some quarters” had an “unfortunate racial overtone”. In the letter, first published in Africa Confidential, a specialist newsletter, the ambassadors said in an apparent dig at Washington that “failures at the national level should not be attributed to the WHO”. 

In April, Mr Trump said the US would suspend funding of the WHO. Some diplomats thought an independent inquiry could be a precondition for Washington to resume contributions. Mr Trump on Monday did not comment on the Chinese announcements but repeated his recent attacks on the WHO, saying it was “a puppet of China”.

Remember, America is the good guy.

[The Romulan Republic]

Trump describes having the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world as "a badge of honour" because it means the US has better testing.

US testing per capita ranks 16th in the world.

https://bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52733220#_=_

President Donald Trump has argued it is "a badge of honour" that the US has the world's highest number of confirmed Covid-19 infections.

"I look at that as, in a certain respect, as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better," he said at the White House.

The US has 1.5 million coronavirus cases and nearly 92,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

In second place is Russia, with nearly 300,000 confirmed cases.

What did Trump say?
On Monday, Mr Trump was hosting his first cabinet meeting since the US outbreak began.

"By the way," he told reporters, "you know when you say that we lead in cases, that's because we have more testing than anybody else."

"So when we have a lot of cases," he continued, "I don't look at that as a bad thing, I look at that as, in a certain respect, as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better."

He added: "So I view it as a badge of honour. Really, it's a badge of honour.

"It's a great tribute to the testing and all of the work that a lot of professionals have done."

According to the Centers for Disease Control, a federal agency, the US had conducted 12.6m coronavirus tests by Tuesday.

Things the US has got right - and got wrong
Mr Trump was responding to a question about whether he was considering a travel ban on Latin America, Brazil in particular. That country now has the third highest number of confirmed cases, following the US and Russia.

The Democratic National Committee criticised the Republican president's comments, tweeting that the 1.5 million Covid-19 cases in the US represented "a complete failure of leadership".

Is the president right?
While the US has conducted more tests by volume than any other country, it is not first in the world on a per capita basis, according to Our World in Data, a scientific publication based at Oxford University.

Its chart ranks the US as 16th globally in terms of tests per 1,000 people, ahead of South Korea, but behind the likes of Iceland, New Zealand, Russia and Canada.

Media captionWould you wear this mask with an automatic eating hole?
Over the past week, the US has been conducting between 300,000 and 400,000 tests daily, according to the Covid Tracking Project, a volunteer-led effort.

But Harvard Global Health Institute director Ashish Jha last week told a congressional hearing: "The US needs more than 900,000 tests every day to safely open up again. We are doing about a third of that."

The US has also reported the most coronavirus deaths in the world, though on a per capita basis it ranks sixth behind the likes of Belgium, the United Kingdom and France, according to Johns Hopkins University.

US coronavirus testing rates have been criticised on both sides of the aisle.

At a Senate hearing last week, Mitt Romney, a Republican, criticised the country's testing record, saying it was "nothing to celebrate whatsoever" because, he said, "we treaded water in February in March".

I truly do not think I have ever hated another human being more than this worthless waste of flesh, and I hope I never do. I want him to die in prison, humiliated, impoverished and alone, and for his name to be remembered only as a source of mockery and contempt.

Oh, and Russia has the second most cases in the world now. Birds of a feather, I suppose.

[madd0ct0r]

The thing with that statistic pair is they omit efficiency.

Eg USA is ahead of South Korea on tests per capita, but that's because SK seems to have a much clearer idea of what's going on.

[mr friendly guy]

This claim of 5G spreading the coronavirus causing people to attack cell towers is not just confined to the UK, its also spread to the US.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... comments=1

[mr friendly guy]

Remember those Chinese testing kits suck stories?
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science ... ives-dutch

Chinese Covid-19 test kit outstrips alternatives in Dutch study

A Chinese Covid-19 test kit outperformed equivalent products made in South Korea, Germany, Spain and Britain, according to a study by scientists in the Netherlands.
In laboratory tests, the commercially available reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) kit made by Shenzen-based biotech company BGI Group achieved the lowest limit of detection (LOD) score, suggesting it was more sensitive to the presence of the coronavirus than comparable products.
In scientific testing, an LOD is the lowest quantity of a substance that can be distinguished from a total absence of that substance with almost 100 per cent accuracy. In this case, the researchers were looking at test kits that identify the ORF1ab gene, which affects how the coronavirus replicates and how virulent it is.
The research was carried out by a team from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, an independent agency under the Dutch health ministry, led by virologist Dr Adam Meijer.
The results were published last month on bioRxiv, a preprint website for scientific studies that have not been peer-reviewed.

In the test, the Chinese kit returned an LOD of 4.3 copies (of the gene) per millilitre, followed by the South Korean product with 4.8. The German and Spanish kits both scored 18, while the British kit fared worst of all with 23.
When asked about the significance of the results, Meijer told the South China Morning Post that all of the products were of a suitable quality for mass testing for Covid-19, but the ones with a greater degree of sensitivity would be preferable in certain situations.

But... how did we get initial reports of crap testing results initially. Well this might explain it.

However, while products’ sensitivity could be measured in a laboratory, the actual performance of a test kit was affected by many other factors, such as the quality of swab samples, Meijer said.
For instance, while some Chinese nasal and oral swab tests had returned accuracy levels as low as 30 per cent in earlier studies, that was likely a result of the samples not being taken properly. In more typical tests, with larger numbers of patients, the accuracy rate rose to 96 per cent, he said.

So basically I have been saying before about how tests can be affected by operator skill. Who would have thought that? Hint, not western media.

I should also add, previously there were reports that the Dutch purchased antibody testing kits instead of PCR (remember antibodies take a while to form, so they are more useful for determining whether you had COVID 19 in the past), but this particularly kit is clearly a PCR type kit by the description.

[FaxModem1]

Let's divert this away from Mr friendly guy's happy dance over people dying.

NPR

About Half Of U.S. Homes Lost Wages During Pandemic, Census Bureau Finds
May 20, 202012:04 PM ET
Hansi Lo Wang - Square
HANSI LO WANG

Twitter

People wait in a long line to receive a food bank donation at the Barclays Center on May 15 in Brooklyn, N.Y. Across the country, cities and towns are dealing with the highest unemployment rates since the Great Depression.
Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
Updated at 3:49 p.m. ET

The coronavirus pandemic has taken a hit in the paychecks of close to half of U.S. households, the Census Bureau says.

Since March 13, 47% of adults say they — or another adult in their home — have lost employment income, while 39% say they're expecting their households to earn less from work over the next four weeks.

With the first of the month coming in less than two weeks, more than a fifth of adults report they have just slight or no confidence in their ability to make their next rent or mortgage payment on time.

"When we saw those numbers, we were very surprised," Victoria Velkoff, associate director of the Census Bureau's demographic programs, said Wednesday during a webinar about early findings from a new weekly survey the bureau rolled out last month to try to gauge how the outbreak is altering lives in the U.S.

The results show that homes in two states with tourism-centered economies have suffered particularly hard financially. More than 58% of adults in Nevada and over 55% of adults in Hawaii report they've seen dips in their households' employment income since mid-March. Nearly half of adults in both states expect that over the next month their households will take home less pay.

More than two months into the pandemic, the first set of results of the Household Pulse Survey released Wednesday also help illustrate how the coronavirus is taking a toll on people's health as most of the country continues to shelter at home.

Over the past four weeks, close to 4 in 10 adults say they have waited to get medical care because of the pandemic.

Nearly 6 in 10 adults reported feeling nervous, anxious or on edge for several days or more in the week they were surveyed, and almost half of respondents said they could not stop or control their worrying for at least several days.

"The mental health questions were disturbing but kind of reassuring at the same time," Velkoff said. "That we're all a little anxious and worried and we are measuring that seems to be consistent with how people's lives are."

The Census Bureau surveyed more than 74,000 households through online questionnaires in English and Spanish between April 23 and May 5 for its first batch of findings. The bureau developed the questions for this $1.2 million experimental survey with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Housing and Urban Development, National Center for Health Statistics and other federal agencies.

The bureau, which is also conducting the ongoing 2020 census, says it's planning to continue sending emails from COVID.survey@census.gov — as well as text messages from 39242 — with links to the Household Pulse Survey through mid-July.

Generally, people are worried, and need help, and aren't getting it. They're losing money, and are going to be in real trouble over the fact that they have no safety net. And this will only continue to get worse.

[Gandalf]

Remember, America is the good guy.

I guess it makes sense for their definition of the problem? Trump et al need a cure/vaccine to exist, preferably patented by a friend of the administration.

Once the cure/vaccine exists the administration can say it's a health care issue between the citizenry and their health providers.

[FaxModem1]

UPI

McDonald's workers striking Wednesday over COVID-19 conditions
McDonald's says the strike is a "publicity stunt" by labor organizers and that the company has provided an "ample supply" of personal protective equipment.
ByDaniel Uria
McDonald's disputes accusations from striking workers and a lawsuit, saying the health of its workers is a top priority. File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI
McDonald's disputes accusations from striking workers and a lawsuit, saying the health of its workers is a top priority. File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

May 20 (UPI) -- Hundreds of McDonald's workers plan to strike on Wednesday, saying the fast-food chain has provided inadequate protection during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Workers in a number of cities are set to take part in the strike organized by the minimum-wage labor campaign "Fight for $15" and supported by the Service Employees International Union ahead of the company's annual shareholders meeting


"This is about choices," union President Mary Kay Henry said. "McDonald's can do the right thing and protect its workers. It is choosing not to."

Organizers say McDonald's workers in at least 16 states have contracted COVID-19. They cite a survey in which 42 percent of a sample of 800 workers said they were told by management not to wear gloves or face coverings and 46 percent said they reported to work despite feeling ill out of fear of discipline.

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"We are aware of scores of cases of COVID-19-positive workers in at least 16 states across the country. Time and time again, McDonald's has failed to swiftly close and disinfect stores following confirmed reports of COVID-19 employees," an open letter to McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski states. "To make matters worse, your restaurants have also failed to promptly inform workers of exposure to the virus and to provide pay during quarantine."

Five McDonald's workers in Chicago and four of their family members have also filed a lawsuit seeking class-action status, alleging that McDonald's hasn't provided enough masks, gloves and hand sanitizer to protect them from the outbreak.

McDonald's says the strike is a strategically timed "publicity stunt" by labor organizers and denies the accusations made by the suit and strike organizers, saying it's provided an "ample supply" of personal protective equipment.

RELATED MTA testing UV lamps to disinfect COVID-19
"We are grateful for the 850,000 individuals who are the heart and soul of every McDonald's restaurant across the U.S. As a people business, providing a safe environment in the restaurants is a top priority," the company said in a statement Tuesday.

"And we're doing our part while keeping employees and customers safe. Since the start of the pandemic, we have made nearly 50 process changes in our restaurants in accordance with guidance from the CDC and state and local health experts.

"These include providing wellness and temperature checks, masks and gloves, social distancing guidelines, increased cleanings and installing protective barriers."

RELATED Federal judge says all Texas voters can apply to vote by mail during pandemic
The strike Wednesday comes as McDonald's prepares to reopen in-restaurant dining at locations nationwide.

"As reopening begins in states across the country, we are implementing a 59-page 'playbook' that outlines the precautions we are requiring before restaurants reopen dining rooms. And we are confident that employees impacted by the virus are receiving sick pay to tend to their healthcare needs."

Workers at Amazon and its Whole Foods subsidiary conducted a worldwide "sick-out" in March to protest conditions and pay provided by the company and were similarly followed by workers at Target, Instacart, FedEx, Walmart and Shipt earlier this month.

I hope they get it.