Coronavirus COVID-19 - Global Health Pandemic #53

[nhmemorymaker]

I think staggered school hours would be a great first step. That would be one way to reduce the number of kids in the building at one time.

Businesses could do that too. Work in shifts.

jmo

my daughter works for a firm in Manhatten...they are planning/developing a fully staggered plan of "hours" and in-office/remote days. But it is her responsibility on getting there!! So to avoid the subways and buses ...her boyfriend is going to drive her to one point and then she is going to bike a half hour. Sounds like a good plan, even though I continue to try to convince her to move out!!

 

[raysgirl1126]

You need to read all the notes in the report to understand the differences. There is also another column including CV19 plus pneumonia.

This is one of the notes in the report.

" It is important to note that it can take several weeks for death records to be submitted to National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), processed, coded, and tabulated. Therefore, the data shown on this page may be incomplete, and will likely not include all deaths that occurred during a given time period, especially for the more recent time periods. Death counts for earlier weeks are continually revised and may increase or decrease as new and updated death certificate data are received from the states by NCHS. COVID-19 death counts shown here may differ from other published sources, as data currently are lagged by an average of 1–2 weeks."

HTH

I read all the notes. What i'm confused about is the number they are reporting. Where does 67,456 come from? Is that a guess?

 

[nhmemorymaker]

"About half of states have eased restrictions on businesses, but Americans’ unease about patronizing them represents a major hurdle to restarting the economy. Many Americans have been making trips to grocery stores and 56 percent say they are comfortable doing so. But 67 percent say they would be uncomfortable shopping at a retail clothing store, and 78 percent would be uncomfortable eating at a sit-down restaurant. People in states with looser restrictions report similar levels of discomfort as those in states with stricter rules."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...5ddc3a-8e36-11ea-9e23-6914ee410a5f_story.html
bbm

So, to me, the question is - what would make Americans feel more comfortable about returning to stores, restaurants, etc? Or, is that comfort something we can't return to and we need to find a new way?
jmo

I heard some expert for the clothing retail industry say they are really so nervous about the future. Who is going to want to try on clothes that who knows who has been in? Make-up counters? I think people will be willing to do makeup stuff even before trying on clothes. Can you imagine the returns today as people buy online, try-on but need to return. I imagine that will show up in the prices.

 

[nhmemorymaker]

oh

I'm not excusing but suggesting. I think a lot of countries were not represented by the look of it.

..oh..i wasn't really talking to you! Just an expression into the atmosphere!

 

[raysgirl1126]

I won't be as concerned about the business or wait staff as about the other customers. As long as employees have masks, etc. I'd be ok. The problem usually is with other customers who are rude and ignore safe rules. Clustering around doorways and entrances, crowding others in line, walking around other customers, going to the restroom (it will be a very long time before I use a public restroom).

In my area, there seem to be a lot of people who want to make a public show of flaunting the safety guidelines, like they have to prove a point. Some like to laugh and point at people who are wearing a mask or trying to keep a safe distance. Assume that will happen in restaurants that re-open. Sad if it does, and unfair to the owners and employees.

That's horrible! IMO Stay safe!!

 

[nhmemorymaker]

Our in store bakery has everything in paper bags now. No self service anymore.

One of our groceries also had gorgeous buffets... Fabulous "by the pound" gourmet meals!! And the extremely popular $9.99 prime beef meals on Thursdays (huge lines!!), and omelette Saturdays and Sundays. My mouth waters just thinking about "those ol days". I don't think the buffets will be back. But I am hoping the prime rib will be. Robert always wore gloves anyway!!

 

[ilovewings]

Scientists say a now-dominant strain of the coronavirus appears to be more contagious than original

uh-oh- Mutant coronavirus emerges-- even more contagious than the original

This is not good

 

[cody22]

Trump says Fauci was blocked from coronavirus testimony because of 'haters' in the House

National Virus News....moo

 

[otto]

Trump OK if Aust wins virus vaccine race

Peter Mitchell, AAP US Correspondent
3 hrs ago
...
US President Donald Trump is "very confident" there will be a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year and he is OK if Australia or another nation beats the US to the breakthrough.

Trump said American and Australian scientists were working together on a vaccine.
...

That isn't quite accurate. In fact, all countries are working together to find a vaccine.

"World leaders came together in a virtual summit Monday to pledge billions of dollars to quickly develop vaccines and drugs to fight the coronavirus.

Missing from the roster was the Trump administration, which declined to participate but highlighted from Washington what one official called its “whole-of-America” efforts in the United States and its generosity to global health efforts."​

May 4, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...5b6754-8a5c-11ea-80df-d24b35a568ae_story.html

 

[otto]

Sweden says coronavirus cases likely in country as early as November 2019

In Sweden in November 2019. Is this possible?

These new discoveries should put an end to the "Wuhan" and "China" virus. Hopefully this helps to identify the actual origin of the virus. Russia has always been rather aggressive with bio weapons - perhaps it's time to look in that direction, especially since Russia used the initial weeks of the virus spread to wreak havoc with oil industry and global economy.

 

[HongKongPhooey]

I heard a very interesting segment on bbc radio 2 yesterday, where Jeremy Vine was speaking to their regular health contributor, Dr Sarah Jarvis.

I know the UK government stance on masks is controversial, but I did find some of her advice really interesting. Sharing in case it's helpful.

As we probably all pretty much know, only the medically approved type of mask prevent the coronavirus permeating. So wearing most shop bought or home made masks will not stop anyone breathing it in. Their value is more to stop an infected person coughing or sneezing lots of particles out. They will permeate, but it may reduce them going too far. As Dr Jarvis said, anyone coughing or sneezing should be at home anyway, but....

If you wear a scarf, or snood, to cover your nose and face you must leave the house wearing it. The minute you lower it, particles can get onto it and you risk placing them directly into your own nose or mouth.

All masks must fit well to have benefit and you must always remove them at the back. Never bring your hands up to adjust or remove your mask. Masks must only be worn once. Each time you remove it or adjust it, you need to bin it. For a cotton mask to be at all effective, if you hold it up to the light you should not be able to see through it.

The problem with masks (according to the good Doc) is that wearing them alters behaviour patterns. People feel safer and the risk is this may relax social distancing behaviours. Or encourage people to go out more than they really need to.

Certainly gave me something to think about, especially with Mr HKP being a key worker and using trains.

 

[Tbone144]

Don’t know if this article has been posted. Tried searching by his name and got no results so I hope it’s new.
Houston man tests positive for COVID-19 three times over two months


Houston man tests positive for COVID-19 three times over two months

According to the 26-year-old, he tested positive for COVID-19 again on April 13th and May 1st. While he doesn’t feel as sick as he originally did more than 50 days ago, Bermea says he does still have some symptoms.

 

[IceIce9]

Holiday World, an Indiana amusement park announced it will reopen next month:
Holiday World announces 2020 opening day

 

[The Night Watchman]

Sweden watch Day 50.



Coronavirus Update (Live): 3,687,773 Cases and 255,142 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer

 

[dixiegirl1035]

As I've learned in many years of health care advocacy, unfortunately, failure is the only effective teaching tool for some institutions and groups. For some, its only when they personally experience a tragic and catastrophic situation that they realize the importance of prevention and minimizing risk.

Some folks are unable to empathize with others and the community at large and fully understand how their actions can affect others and, most importantly, that other people's lives are just as important as theirs. The latter is the biggest hurdle for many people today. I learned that in church, as a child. I guess they don't teach that in many churches today. It's at the core of many of our problems today.

As I've learned in many years of health care advocacy, unfortunately, failure is the only effective teaching tool for some institutions and groups. For some, its only when they personally experience a tragic and catastrophic situation that they realize the importance of prevention and minimizing risk.

Some folks are unable to empathize with others and the community at large and fully understand how their actions can affect others and, most importantly, that other people's lives are just as important as theirs. The latter is the biggest hurdle for many people today. I learned that in church, as a child. I guess they don't teach that in many churches today. It's at the core of many of our problems today.

Yes, it has been eye-opening. I would have assumed this forum would be the most empathetic group of people in the world because of all the trials and victims that we follow, and this being a victim friendly site.

And yes, in many cases here we have talked about people that do not have empathy, and many on threads call sociopaths. Understood though, 90% of people that are lacking in empathy and might be considered sociopath never commit a crime. We have discussed that many many times on the threads

It's becoming clearer and clearer that many people don't have empathy to others perhaps for this pandemic?

Just an opinion that I'm seeing more and more in personal life and elsewhere.

Yet we see that the majority here are empathetic for not only those that are in their city, and or state, but are concerned about what is going to happen in third world countries.

Moo

ETA typo

 

[10ofRods]

Where The Latest COVID-19 Models Think We're Headed — And Why They Disagree

^538.com combines various scientific models for where the US will be by end of May. I may have posted this before as part of a series of posts, but it's so worth looking at. The models take into account continuation of the kind of social distancing we had a week ago, and then, what will happen with decreased social distancing.

None of these models uses the simplistic statistical methods of the IMHE model, since there's no reason to believe (and in fact, reality now shows) that CoVid isn't going to decline at the same rate that it increased.

In fact, you can see that the IMHE model on May 1 predicted as few as 52,000 deaths when we were almost there already.

Today we stand at around 70,653 in the US.

Good news is that New York only had 230 deaths in the last 24 hour period, which is very good news. Indiana and Pennsylvania went up to 175 deaths each, by comparison.

It's concerning that total US deaths remain above 2000 on May 5. The VA Hospital system doesn't report every day, and its 465 deaths are part of that 2000. The situation throughout the VA system is truly sad and dire.

If we can get to 1000 deaths per day in the US soon, by end of May, we could be at the lower end of the projected total for May.

More later on the "two strains" of CoVid. The differences between the two strains are marked and it's possible the crossover (a new variant) occurred in Italy, as it doesn't seem to be in Wuhan. The new variant has what are essentially two new bits of RNA (mutations) that help it enter certain immune cells and disable them. Also, there are new studies upcoming on the human genomic issues which may show that certain families are more susceptible to severe CoVId. We've never dealt with an issue like that in our society, and I'm sure there will be lots of controversies.

 

[cass523]

I see no direct reference to the US being represented in this article. In my opinion, this is one of my biggest fears.... We must be at the table with the world on this. We must. The Gates Foundation is international.
I hope someone can correct me...and that somehow we ARE there....

So today leaders came together at a virtual event, co-hosted by the World Health Organization, the President of France, the President of the European Commission, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The event was joined by the UN Secretary General, the AU Commission Chairperson, the G20 President, heads of state of France, South Africa, Germany, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Italy, Rwanda, Norway, Spain, Malaysia and the UK (represented by the First Secretary of State).

I saw this May 1st, SPHERES

SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing for Public Health Emergency Response, Epidemiology, and Surveillance

The project, announced by the C.D.C., will help trace patterns of transmission, investigate outbreaks and map how the virus is evolving, which can affect a cure.

CDC has kicked off the SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing for Public Health Emergency Response, Epidemiology and Surveillance (SPHERES) consortium, which will greatly expand the use of whole genome sequencing (WGS) of the COVID-19 virus.

SPHERES will provide consistent, real-time sequence data to the public health response teams investigating cases and clusters of COVID-19 across the country. It will help them better understand how the virus is spreading, both nationally and in their local communities. Better data, in turn, will help public health officials interrupt chains of transmission, prevent new cases of illness, and protect and save lives.

SPHERES will establish best practices and consensus data standards, accelerate open data sharing, and establish a pool of resources and expertise to help bring cutting-edge technology to the national COVID-19 response.

• Monitor important changes in the virus as it continues to circulate.
• Gain important insights to support contact tracing.
• Provide crucial information to aid in identifying diagnostic and therapeutic targets.
• Advance public health research in the areas of transmission dynamics, host response, and evolution of the virus

The SPHERES consortium has 8 core objectives:

1. To bring together a network of sequencing laboratories, bioinformatics capacity and subject matter expertise under the umbrella of a massive and coordinated public health sequencing effort.
2. To identify and prioritize capabilities and resource needs across the network and to align sources of federal, non-governmental and private sector funding and support with areas of greatest impact and need.
3. To improve coordination of genomic sequencing between institutions and jurisdictions and to enable more resilience across the network.
4. To champion concepts of openness, standards-based analysis, and rapid data sharing throughout the United States and worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic response.
5. To accelerate data generation and sharing, including the rapid release of high-quality viral sequence data from clinical and public health laboratories into both the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) repositories in near-real time.
6. To provide a common forum for US public, private, and academic institutions to share protocols, methods, bioinformatics tools, standards, and best practices.
7. To establish consistent data and metadata standards, including streamlined repository submission processes, sample prioritization criteria, and a framework for shared, privacy-compliant unique case identifiers.
8. To align with other national sequencing and bioinformatics networks, and to support global efforts to advance the use of standards and open data in public health.

Names of corporations are provided for information purposes only, and their inclusion here does not constitute an endorsement of the corporations or any of their commercial products or services by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Non-profit public health or research institutes

• Association of Public Health Laboratories
• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• Broad Institute
• Chan Zuckerberg BioHub
• J. Craig Venter Institute
• Public Health Alliance for Genomic Epidemiology
• Scripps Research
• The Jackson Laboratory
• Translational Genomics Research Institute – North
• Walder Foundation

Other countries have announced similar efforts. Britain established a sequencing consortium more than a month ago funded at about $25 million, and last week, Canada did the same, pledging about $30 million in government support. A C.D.C. spokeswoman said the U.S. project’s funding was “being worked out.”

Labs Across U.S. Join Federal Initiative to Study Coronavirus Genome

CDC launches national viral genomics consortium to better map SARS-CoV-2 transmission – AZBio

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

 

[10ofRods]

Sweden watch Day 50.

View attachment 245742

Coronavirus Update (Live): 3,687,773 Cases and 255,142 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer

Thank you for posting that. We can see the "waves" so clearly. Sweden now has 600 more deaths than California, with only about 1/4th the population. And yesterday's antibody studies provide the sobering statistic that only about 10% of Swedes have immunity. Norway had just 1 death, Denmark had about 5, IIRC.

Sweden still has a slight upward trend in deaths, but does seem to be flattening. Still, they stand to lose almost 2000 more people by the end of May, given current trends. I wonder which strain they have and why the Ab rates were so low (it's just one study in Stockholm, I believe, so perhaps the next study will show some improvement).

 

[otto]

I heard some expert for the clothing retail industry say they are really so nervous about the future. Who is going to want to try on clothes that who knows who has been in? Make-up counters? I think people will be willing to do makeup stuff even before trying on clothes. Can you imagine the returns today as people buy online, try-on but need to return. I imagine that will show up in the prices.

European shops, even in the 1980s, often did not allow people to try on clothing. Customers were measured, they selected the item style and purchased it. There's nothing wrong with returning to that practice, although it does require a bit more training to be a clothing salesperson, and it does require properly tailored clothing.

 

[cody22]

New York Reports 1,700 More Coronavirus Deaths at Nursing Homes

New York Virus News....moo