Coronavirus COVID-19 - Global Health Pandemic #62

[squareandrabbet]

Years ago, I was in Long Island for business and we went into Manhattan for the evening. The Manhattan you're talking about isn't Brooklyn, is it? Jmo

haha, no, Manhattan is not Brooklyn - but Long Island bleeds into Queens as a land mass and vice versa, to get even more confusing. I’ve taken the MetroNorth train into Westchester many a time, but the LIRR only once, when I had friends who lived in Woodside, a neighborhood in Queens where the subway is above ground, in the middle of January (brr). I keep meaning to go to the easternmost point of the LIRR and gaze out at the Atlantic, maybe once restrictions are lifted.

 

[SoCalDavidS]

MSNBC is showing the holding area for today's rally in Phoenix, AZ. A few hundred people crammed together, and NOT A SINGLE PERSON WEARING A MASK. I kid you not. There was literally Nobody. The reporter mentioned the temperature would be 109 degrees today, the rally doesn't start for several more hours. He was standing beside a rotating fan blowing onto the crowd, and pointing out that fact, saying "hopefully this is not blowing the virus around."

Then he made the mistake of interviewing some of the people. OH MY GOD! They cut to a commentator who said, "It's like talking to my 15 Month old."

 

[CSIDreamer]

haha, no, Manhattan is not Brooklyn - but Long Island bleeds into Queens as a land mass and vice versa, to get even more confusing. I’ve taken the MetroNorth train into Westchester many a time, but the LIRR only once, when I had friends who lived in Woodside, a neighborhood in Queens where the subway is above ground, in the middle of January (brr). I keep meaning to go to the easternmost point of the LIRR and gaze out at the Atlantic, maybe once restrictions are lifted.

Thank you. I was getting confused. I thought they were like 10 miles apart. Lol.

 

[MrX]

MSNBC is showing the holding area for today's rally in Phoenix, AZ. A few hundred people crammed together, and NOT A SINGLE PERSON WEARING A MASK. I kid you not. There was literally Nobody. The reporter mentioned the temperature would be 109 degrees today, the rally doesn't start for several more hours. He was standing beside a rotating fan blowing onto the crowd, and pointing out that fact, saying "hopefully this is not blowing the virus around."

Then he made the mistake of interviewing some of the people. OH MY GOD! They cut to a commentator who said, "It's like talking to my 15 Month old."

This is just down the street from my house - may need to take a ride by and check out the scene. Helicopters have been flying over all morning.

AZ has an active FB group that was supposed to be geared toward local business support, but it went off on a "no mask" tangent, so I can see where masks would be in the distinct minority.

 

[COSCitizen]

The scientific reality is that:

Deaths from COVID-19 have fallen off a cliff. Daily COVID-19 deaths are now getting close to falling down to a level comparable to the average number of daily off-season influenza deaths.

You got a link for that?

 

[gngr~snap]

Not gonna get political, but this meeting of the "minds" at the White House that I am watching is being brutally honest!
-That is all-
MOO

 

[weepingangel]

Link?

Not gonna get political, but this meeting of the "minds" at the White House that I am watching is being brutally honest!
-That is all-
MOO

 

[JerseyGirl]

Hundreds line up hours ahead of President Trump's rally in north Phoenix

The church holding the rally claims that they have an air unit that eliminates 99% of coronavirus. However, an emergency room doctor, Murtaza Akhter, who has been working with COVID-19 patients since the start of the pandemic, said the filtration system doesn't work when people are close to each other.

"The thing with rallies, for example, is that people are really close to each other so even if they have a filtration system, if this person coughs on this person, that person is clearly going to get sick; there’s no way for that particle or whatever you call it to be filtered,” Dr. Akhter said.

 

[JerseyGirl]

Link?

Dr. Anthony Fauci, CDC Director Robert Redfield and other top health officials testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic

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[SoCalDavidS]

PHOENIX – The Arizona health department reported 3,591 new coronavirus cases, a single-day high, and 42 additional deaths Tuesday morning.

That increased Arizona’s totals to 58,179 COVID-19 cases and 1,384 deaths on the day President Donald Trump was visiting the state. The previous single-day high for cases was 3,246 reported on June 19.

The Arizona Department of Health Services has been providing case and testing updates on its website each morning. The dashboard includes, among other information, testing trends, updated hospital capacity and a ZIP Code map of cases.

Arizona reports daily high mark of 3,591 new coronavirus cases

 

[gngr~snap]

Link?

Live on CNN now.
MOO
Thank you @JerseyGirl !

 

[MrX]

PHOENIX – The Arizona health department reported 3,591 new coronavirus cases, a single-day high, and 42 additional deaths Tuesday morning.

That increased Arizona’s totals to 58,179 COVID-19 cases and 1,384 deaths on the day President Donald Trump was visiting the state. The previous single-day high for cases was 3,246 reported on June 19.

The Arizona Department of Health Services has been providing case and testing updates on its website each morning. The dashboard includes, among other information, testing trends, updated hospital capacity and a ZIP Code map of cases.

Arizona reports daily high mark of 3,591 new coronavirus cases

With this site it is important to look at the COVID-19 Deaths graph. They "report" deaths as they come in, from multiple sources, which are essentially summary reports for a given time period. These are then broken out by actual date of death and graphed. So 42 didn't die on one day, just as the previous day's reported number of three wasn't a reflection of the actual count for that day.

It may seem like a small distinction, but "42 daily deaths" is a significant distortion when the daily high for AZ remains 26 (on April 30 and May 7).

 

[margarita25]

Today starting at about 11:00 a.m. Eastern. Here is a link:

Watch Live: Fauci, Redfield To Testify On Trump Administration's COVID-19 Response

The committee's Democrats will likely press the witnesses for details on why the federal response has not been more effective, and whether Trump prevented health experts from taking action sooner.

At his campaign rally on Saturday in Tulsa, Okla., Trump said that he told his administration to "slow the testing down" for the coronavirus. McEnany praised the president's response. "We could have lost 3 million lives but we lost far fewer because Trump took action early," she told reporters.

The witnesses' prepared testimony suggests they may seek to highlight the expanded availability of testing, the numerous briefings between White House officials and state governors to coordinate a response, and the ongoing efforts to develop tests and treatments and vaccines for the coronavirus.

Bump

 

[JerseyGirl]

So far this morning:

Fauci responded to controversial comments from President Trump at a rally on Saturday, where Trump called increased testing a "double-edge sword" and told the crowd, "I said to my people, slow the testing down please." Trump doubled down on these remarks and replied, "I don't kid." Fauci said that he had never been directed to slow down testing.

Fauci said that the country's response to the pandemic was a "mixed bag." He praised the New York metropolitan area for seeing a decrease in cases, but expressed concern about an increase of cases in other regions.

"The next couple of weeks are going to be critical in addressing those surges we're seeing in Florida, in Texas, in Arizona," and other states, Fauci said. He also said that the country needed to "establish a system" to respond to future outbreaks.

Fauci told the panel that the National Institutes of Health was "mounting a major effort" in collaborating with public and private partners to conduct vaccine trials "that harmonize with each other." He said multiple vaccines are being developed, and that one vaccine would enter phase three of testing in July. "Although you can never guarantee, at all, the safety and efficacy of a vaccine until you actually test it in the field, we feel cautiously optimistic," Fauci said.

Giroir said that the the U.S. was conducting around 500,000 tests per day, with the expectation that 40 to 50 million tests will be conducted per month by the Fall.

Giroir also announced that Morehouse School of Medicine would be granted $40 million to investigate and address the racial disparities in the spread of the pandemic.

Redfield said in his opening statement that the most effective methods of combating the pandemic are social distancing, wearing face coverings and hand washing.

Redfield also said that CDC is investigating why and how the pandemic is overwhelmingly affecting Black Americans.

Fauci said that Black Americans had been hit with a "double whammy," in that they were more likely to work essential jobs which expose them to the virus and more likely to have underlying health conditions which make them more vulnerable. When asked if institutional racism was a factor, Fauci replied that it was.

Redfield also raised concerns that a second wave of the coronavirus could coincide with flu season. "I encourage the American people to be prepared and to embrace flu vaccinations with confidence," Redfield said.

Giroir also said it was important for people to get flu vaccines, saying it could prevent tens of thousands of death and co-infections with coronavirus.

Watch live: Fauci and top health officials testify before House committee

 

[10ofRods]

President clarifies about coronavirus testing: "I don't kid."

While this is the DailyMail, it appears they're using C-SPAN and other US media as their sources. Anyway, I guess that clears that up. He wasn't joking (although to whom he directed his testing comment is still hazy in my mind).

 

[JerseyGirl]

As of Monday, the U.S. seven-day average of new infections increased more than 30% compared with a week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data.

Cases are growing by 5% or more in 26 states, including Arizona, Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. Coronavirus hospitalizations are on the rise as well.

U.S. cases had risen to about an average of 30,000 infections per day at the peak of the outbreak before plateauing to around 20,000 infectious per day, Fauci said. “Now we’re going up [again]. A couple of days ago, there were 30,000 new infections.”

“That’s very troublesome to me,” he said. Fauci told lawmakers “we need to be careful” that scientists prove a potential vaccine is safe and effective before its distributed to the public.

“I would be very disappointed if we jumped to a conclusion before we knew that a vaccine was truly safe and truly effective, because I wouldn’t want the perpetual ambiguity of not knowing whether it is truly safe and truly effective,” he said.

Fauci reiterated that scientists don’t know how long people are protected after a coronavirus infection. “It’s likely you are protected, but we don’t know how long you are protected,” he said.

During the hearing, Fauci was asked by Rep. Bobby Rush from Illinois whether institutional racism contributed to the disproportionate impact the virus has had on Black Americans. The infectious disease expert said, “yes.” “The African-American community has suffered from racism for a very, very long period of time,” he said. “And I cannot imagine that that has not contributed to the conditions that they find themselves in economically and otherwise, so the answer, congressman, is yes.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci tells Congress parts of U.S. are seeing a 'disturbing surge' of coronavirus infections

 

[10ofRods]

On a bright side, malaria is in second place. Considering we have purchased millions of doses of hydroxychlroquine that doesn't work for covid, maybe we can done them to countries that need to fight malaria.

Malaria used to be endemic in parts of the US.

It took time and attention to public works to keep it out. Within my own lifetime, there have been a couple of cases in the area denoted in the map above. But one fear that epidemiologists have had is that with a warming planet, malaria might return to North America (it's still endemic in parts of Mexico), although it's relatively rare.

Malaria takes specific suppression actions and if Coronavirus demolishes Mexico's healthcare system and public health initiatives against malaria, it will rise. And if we have bad hurricane seasons in addition to Mexico failing to contain malaria, we'll be happy to have SOME of our HCQ (if by then anyone remembers where it's stockpiled).

 

[10ofRods]

I care about our restaurants too, even though I’m not comfortable eating out. As you describe, it’s a ripple effect. Our small city of 22,000 is very dependent on tourists. The main attraction won’t be open this year. The city already projects an over $6 million budget shortfall this year in restaurant and hotel taxes lost. Budget cuts will affect everyone because every department in the city government will have to lay off employees...police, fire, street repair, etc. Most businesses are individually owned rather than large chains. I expect many to close, even if the four chain stores manage to stay open with layoffs. This will affect many individual families and the character of the town will be seriously altered. Even though we’re retired and are able to stay home, we will certainly feel the effects of economic losses in our town. Sadly, there are no good solutions that balance the economy and public health IMO.

Well, cities can renegotiate new wages for their various departments, although it would help if all citizens were on the same page about CoVid. Our economy is rolling back to levels seen years ago. Economy is already back to 2016, all gains wiped out, and the predictions are we're going back to 2000. That means all workers are going to have to work for wages that are lower than they expect.

Americans have the highest standard of living in the world, and it's not as if the year 2000 was so bad, in terms of what we could afford and buy.

That's the solution many municipalities are exploring, including my own. It won't be popular, but when unions and employee groups are faced with firings, the communal, unified thing to do is to take the hit together. I've always advocated this, took a pay cut in 2008 (and have not had a raise since, and despite increased COLA, my employer decided to keep the state's COLA allotment for teachers rather than pass it on to us - which in retrospect isn't so bad, because now we have a reserve and can go one more year without further cuts).

Every public employee who is fired impacts business a great deal. Businesses should support the public sector, because we public employees are about half the economy most places - and we buy things. Some of us must buy things (school supplies, gasoline). The resulting losses are too big for local communities to expect their towns to survive if they fire people.

I guess we'll all have to learn to get through this the hard way. Elected officials should have to have education on economic history and especially, what different models of economic decision-making mean in real life - but that's not gonna happen.

I joke that we may role back to 1930, but it is not a funny joke any more, so I have to stop it.

 

[JerseyGirl]

President clarifies about coronavirus testing: "I don't kid."

While this is the DailyMail, it appears they're using C-SPAN and other US media as their sources. Anyway, I guess that clears that up. He wasn't joking (although to whom he directed his testing comment is still hazy in my mind).

Q Mr. President, at that rally, when you said you asked your people to slow down testing, were you just kidding or do you have a plan to slow down testing?

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t kid. Let me just tell you — let me make it clear: We have got the greatest testing program anywhere in the world. We test better than anybody in the world. Our tests are the best in the world, and we have the most of them.

By having more tests, we find more cases. We did 25-plus — 25 million tests. Think of that: 25 million. If you look at other countries, they did 1 million, 2 million, 3 million. Big countries. We did 25 million. Way more by double, triple, quadruple any other country. Therefore, with tests, we’re going to have more cases. By having more cases, it sounds bad, but actually what it is, is we’re finding people. Many of those people aren’t sick or very little. You know, they may be young people.

But what’s happened is, because of all of the cases that we find, we have a very low mortality rate, just about the best in the world. So that’s the advantage to the testing, along with other things. But just remember this: The reason we have more cases than other countries is because our testing is so much. Other countries —

Q So do you want to slow it down?

THE PRESIDENT: Other countries — listen: Other countries do very little testing by comparison. So we’re going to do, this year, right now — up until yesterday, I think they told me, we’re over 25 million tests. Other countries are at 2 million, 3 million.

Here’s what I say: Testing is a double-edged sword. In one way, it tells you you have cases. In another way, you find out where the cases are and you do a good job. We are doing a great job. We have never been credited for it. We’re doing the best testing job anywhere in the world. We’re doing the best ventilator job anywhere in the world. We’re now supplying ventilators to the entire world. Nobody else has done that. Nobody else — people don’t — countries don’t have ventilators. They call the United States. We’ve done a great job. We have not been given credit for it.

The other thing: The Tulsa rally was incredible. Despite all of the horrible, ominous warnings that you people put out over a period of two weeks, the crowd was wonderful. It was a great — they were warriors. It was a great crowd. But many of them stayed home and watched television, and what happened is Fox, on Saturday night, had the biggest ratings in the history of Fox television.

Thank you very much, everyone.

Remarks by President Trump Before Marine One Departure | The White House

 

[weepingangel]

2.5% of Massachusetts protesters who got COVID-19 testing were positive


Massachusetts more at link
More than 17,000 people took advantage of free COVID-19 testing offered last week aimed for people who had attended Black Lives Matter protests. Of those, 2.5% tested positive for the coronavirus, Gov. Charlie Baker said Tuesday morning.

Massachusetts offered free COVID-19 testing at more than 50 sites on Wednesday and Thursday, and a handful offered testing on Friday. In total, 17,617 people got COVID-19 tests under the initiative. Baker said the results are consistent with the statewide public health data.

“We’re obviously pleased to see that the percentage of positive tests was quite low, considering the frequency and the size of those protests and demonstrations, but we also pointed out that the vast majority of the folks who participated in those demonstrations were wearing masks or face coverings of one kind or another,” the Republican governor said Tuesday during a news briefing at the former Boston State Hospital site.


Baker noted other factors may have played a role in keeping the number of positive tests low, including the decisions to hold protests outdoors and the crowds of people moving in lieu of congregating in one place.