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

[ray245]

When people are talking about Chinese lockdown, they are talking about the Wuhan lockdown as opposed to the Chinese nationwide lockdown. Most Chinese cities and provinces outside of Hubei were never locked down as severely because they were able to track and trace the few cases.

[Jub]

Some of the steps BC has taken to ensure we're one of the least infected areas in the world.

Virus Fight
Behind North America’s Lowest Death Rate: A Doctor Who Fought Ebola

The outbreak came early to British Columbia, in January, and public health officials braced for the worst. Now the Canadian province has one of the lowest death rates in North America.

“I thought we were going to be dealing with something unprecedented in that region specifically, but then it didn’t happen,” said Jason Kindrachuk, a virologist at the University of Manitoba.

British Columbia’s success story shows how tried-and-true methods -- when paired with strong public health agencies -- can have sweeping impact, according to Kindrachuk and other scientists. Many governments embraced technology, with the U.K. using drones to help police enforce lockdowns and South Korea tapping location data from mobile carriers and credit-card transactions to track infections.

B.C. stuck to old-fashioned basics, alerting primary care doctors by fax about how to be on the lookout for the novel pathogen and tracing potential transmissions through interviews. Data compiled on May 13 show the province’s Covid-19 death rate was 3 per 100,000 residents, better than almost anywhere in North America and much of Europe.

Local officials would be the first to say that luck surely played a role. But British Columbia also had stockpiles of equipment along with the benefit of a public-health system making communication and coordination smoother than in U.S. states. And it had a provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, with the power to order doctors and hospitals to take certain steps, such as canceling elective surgeries, which she did early on to free up beds.

Henry’s soft-spoken authority -- she’s on TV every day, often repeating her mantra, “Be kind, be calm, be safe” -- won over British Columbians. When her favorite local shoe designer offered a limited edition Dr. Bonnie Henry Mary Jane heel ($240 a pair with all profits going to food banks), the website crashed.

“She was able to galvanize the public across British Columbia to understand that this was something new and very different,” Kindrachuk said.

Like other countries, Canada has an uneven history with infectious diseases. In 2003, the country’s first SARS cases appeared at hospitals in Vancouver and Toronto on the same day. Vancouver quickly contained transmission, while Toronto would suffer the worst outbreak outside Asia.

An independent commission later noted that Vancouver’s public health system had swiftly put emergency rooms and physicians on the lookout for unexplained fevers and immediately scaled up protective gear for health workers.

In Toronto, Henry, then that city’s associate medical officer of health, tried to issue warning of the emerging SARS epidemic in Hong Kong, but her office’s email-distribution list wasn’t extensive enough and many doctors missed the alerts.

In British Columbia, she became the top health official in 2018 and has been in charge of the province’s rapid mobilization to contain the virus. Within days of Chinese researchers releasing the genetic sequence of the virus on on Jan. 10, the province became one of the first in the world to develop a test. A week later, before Case One in B.C. emerged on Jan. 26, it had the chemical reagents necessary to carry tests out, said Reka Gustafson, deputy provincial health officer.

Early testing helped the province pounce on transmissions before they spiraled, crucially at long-term care facilities. Canada has the highest share of Covid-19 deaths in care homes, according to an international study of 13 countries published on May 3, a disturbing distinction fueled by facilities in Ontario and Quebec that have been ravaged by the virus.

British Columbia commandeered nursing homes at the first sign of infection, barring visitors. Employees were forbidden from working at more than one facility, a move other Ontario and Quebec didn’t make until later in the crisis.

The ability to manage nursing-home outbreaks played a key role in limiting deaths in B.C., said Patricia Daly, chief medical health officer for Vancouver Coast Health, one of the regional public-health authorities. “We could get in and get in front of it.”

Some steps defied the prevailing wisdom at the time. The province didn’t attempt the mass testing South Korea did and, unlike the government in Wuhan, China, didn’t aggressively hospitalize those confirmed positive, sending 80% of cases home to recover.

Henry has become the public face of the crisis. A former military doctor who helped track down Ebola infections in Uganda earlier in her career, she also personally handled the contact tracing of Patient Zero’s family in Toronto’s SARS outbreak.

“She’s really been trained for this,” says Perry Kendall, her predecessor. “She’s not scared of giving orders.”

British Columbia’s top politician, Premier John Horgan, has taken a back seat in the public eye; it’s Henry who presides over daily briefings.

That has been key, said Peter Berman, a public-health expert at the University of British Columbia. “The same scientist who was empowered to lead this effort also has the authority to issue instructions.”

Henry is the first to caution against complacency. “We don’t know what is going to happen with this virus,” she said at a recent briefing, where she underscored how the province could quickly lose all the gains it’d made by easing restrictions too far. “We need to hold the line.”

It's almost like taking early aggressive action was key or something.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN22T0L8

UK police quiz man over death of rail worker spat at by 'COVID carrier'
2 MIN READ

LONDON (Reuters) - British police said on Sunday officers had questioned a suspect over an incident where a rail worker died of COVID-19 after being spat at by a man who said he had the novel coronavirus.

Belly Mujinga, 47, who worked in the ticket office at Victoria station, one of London’s busiest rail hubs, was on the concourse in March when a man who claimed to have the virus spat at and coughed over her and a female colleague, her union said on Tuesday.

Both women fell ill within a few days of the incident and Mujinga, who had underlying respiratory problems, was later taken to hospital and put on a ventilator. She died on April 5, 14 days after the assault at Victoria.

British Transport Police said detectives had now identified a 57-year-old man in connection with the incident.

“He was interviewed under caution today (Sunday 17 May) at a London police station,” a spokeswoman said.

“Detectives will continue to collate evidence and investigate the circumstances behind the incident. They are not looking to identify anyone further in relation to the incident.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson told parliament on Wednesday that the death of Mujinga, who had an 11-year-old daughter, was tragic.

“The fact she was abused for doing her job is utterly appalling,” he said.

Someone failed to provide PPE to their workers.

[The Romulan Republic]

Any piece of shit who spreads coronavirus deliberately should be subject to prosecution for use of a bio-weapon of mass destruction/bio-terrorism, and should serve the maximum applicable penalty in their jurisdiction.

In other news, coronavirus kills more men than women around the world- except, for whatever reasons, in Canada, where more women have gotten it and died from it:

https://globalnews.ca/news/6920505/more ... ronavirus/

More men have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, across the world than women — except in Canada.

According to the latest data from the Public Health Agency of Canada, more women have been diagnosed with COVID-19 than men, and more women have died as a result. As of May 15, 55 per cent of confirmed cases of COVID-19 are women, and 45 per cent are men.

Of the total deaths, 53 per cent are women and 47 per cent are men.

The provinces with the highest number of cases and deaths — Quebec and Ontario — also have starker gaps between the genders, according to daily provincial epidemiologic summaries.

In Ontario, currently around 57 per cent of those infected are women, while close to 42 per cent are men. Similarly, in Quebec, close to 60 per cent of confirmed COVID-19 cases are women and around 54 per cent of deaths are also women.

This kind of data stands out from other countries who track coronavirus cases, as the vast majority have had more men than women die of COVID-19 since the emergence of the virus, according to Global Health 50/50, an organization out of the UCL Centre for Gender and Global Health in London, England.

Why more women are possibly dying
It’s difficult to discern why women are being more affected by COVID-19 in Canada, but there are several factors that could impact how the virus impacts different genders, says Colin Furness, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto who specializes in infection control.

One possible reason could be because there are more female residents in Canada’s long-term care homes, where the brunt of the cases and deaths in Canada are concentrated, Furness said.

Eighty-two per cent of Canada’s COVID-19-related deaths have been in nursing homes, according to the National Institute on Aging.

“Because of life expectancy differences, you are going to have more women represented in [long-term care],” Furness said, pointing out that Canadian women have higher life expectancies than men.

Data published in 2018 by Statistics Canada found that women were more likely to be widowed than men, and were more likely to be living in a nursing home or seniors’ residence.

Other countries are not seeing their long-term care homes ravaged by COVID-19 to the extent that Canada has. A study by the International Long-Term Care Policy Network published this month found that compared to 14 other countries, Canada had the most COVID-19-related deaths in long-term care.

Along with a higher representation in nursing homes, women are also more likely to work in “caring” professions that involve a lot of interaction with other people, Furness said.

This includes jobs like personal support workers (PSWs), like those who work in long-term care homes, he said. A recent study on PSWs in Canada found that workers are largely women and people of colour and/or immigrants.

A report published in February by the Ontario Health Coalition found that Ontario is facing a shortage of PSWs as many leave the profession due to being overworked, underpaid or injured on the job.

Last month, after a second PSW in Ontario died due to COVID-19, the union representing health care workers across the province blamed their deaths due to a lack of available personal protective equipment (PPE).

A report by Global News in April also found that long-term care homes across the country are struggling to access PPE.

Intersection of race and gender
It’s also important to assess exactly which women are being impacted by COVID-19, said Suzanne Sicchia, an associate professor at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Health and Society at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

If data on race and socioeconomic status is collected, it’s likely to show women of colour are being disproportionately impacted, she said. More women of colour are employed as personal support workers in Canada, and research has found that people of colour often have worse health outcomes.

Canada should also be collecting data when it comes to the care work women do, personally and professionally, she said.

“Paid or unpaid, women’s care work, for the sick and elderly at home, in their extended family, in their communities, is another possible source of elevated risk of infection,” Sicchia said.

Many often think health is shaped by lifestyle choices or genetics, which are important. But it’s crucial to remember there are a multitude of other factors that shape the health of individuals or populations including income, employment, social status and racism, Sicchia said.

While more women in long-term care along with the number of women working as care providers are factors, it’s difficult to make concrete assessments without consistent data being collected by governments, Sicchia said.

“Undoubtedly there are other determinants at play, and this is why more research and the collection of race-based data and data on other intersecting determinants of health is so important.”

Questions about COVID-19? Here are some things you need to know:

Symptoms can include fever, cough and difficulty breathing — very similar to a cold or flu. Some people can develop a more severe illness. People most at risk of this include older adults and people with severe chronic medical conditions like heart, lung or kidney disease. If you develop symptoms, contact public health authorities.

To prevent the virus from spreading, experts recommend frequent handwashing and coughing into your sleeve. They also recommend minimizing contact with others, staying home as much as possible and maintaining a distance of two metres from other people if you go out.

For full COVID-19 coverage from Global News, click here.

[LadyTevar]

This Thread is over 70 pages long. It's time to shut it down and start another, gentlemen.

Thread Locked.