Coronavirus Freakout 38: The First Horseman

Who do we blame for the Pandemic? There's no question. It's a fact: China.

I agree, R1 - but the Trump obsessed will blame him for sure.

Great idea, let's cause even more polarization by laying all the blame onto one entity. It's all China's fault! BoJo and Dolt45 are paragons of virtue and have handled Corona impeccably!

Oh, it's a fact, R1?

Trump has Covid-19 laced blood on his hands.

It's a fact!

The rate of possible pandemic level viruses seems to be accelerating from China and the Middle East and, I assume, eventually India. The problem is overpopulation. We are the ultimate virus. Until we cure the human infestation, nature will take advantage.

Use Ignore-dar, and you will see that the Corona Poll Troll slipped up and used three different account to post his cutting & pasting of stats. So, he's using different accounts to bash Biden, praise Trump, mock flattening the curve and all sorts of dissent.

His "stats" are posted on three different accounts.

You guys are being played and falling for it.

ElderLez, the Corona Poll Troll is the one who was fighting with you. Did you know that? Not so nice, is he?

He is a dissent troll.

Also, the OP is also attacking Democrats, propping up Trump and slamming Biden, hoping to make Democrats despair and feel worthless.

But, you want to fall for it, go ahead.

Before I get too attached, who is behind this thread?

R7, the OP is one of the Corona Poll Troll's sock puppet accounts. He accidentally slipped up and posted one of his cut & paste things with that account rather than his CPT one. He has at least three accounts, all spreading negativity and dissent, like this in the last thread:

[quote]The virus is natural selection in operation. Obese and elderly or already diseased, gone. Nothing can stop the cull.

The OP IS the Corona Poll Troll using a different account.

I don't know why anyone wants to be played by this guy. He is attacking other posters with his three accounts and praising Trump.

Your choice.

The OP of this thread is also the OP of thread #37, and several others.

He pretends to be a loyal All-American Democrat, but in reality he's just a Limey British Imposter who can be easily located by his trail of toast, baked beans, biscuits & bangers.

Isn't that right, matey ?

Where the hell is the Vivian Vance option? You just know that cunt did it from beyond the grave.

Thread closed.

The OP here and the Corona Poll Troll are the same poster using sock puppets. Same guy.

The CPT posted one of his cut & pastes in the last thread under the OP's account, exposing them to be the same poster. And there is at least one more poster on the previous thread who was also CPT/OP.

He uses the thread to post negative things about Democrats and to spread dissension.

Who wants to be a guinea pig and participate in a Covid trial?

Liar, Liar, OP.....

Although you copied and pasted one of my stat postings on one of your threads, you left out my trademark "😘 CORONA POLL TROLL" signature. Remember that for the next time, Miss England.

Like I said before, if you wanna beat me, you've gotta be at least ½ as smart as I am.

Keep tryin' babe !

Just 13K until the 1 Million CV mark for USA🇺🇸

[quote]Great idea, let's cause even more polarization by laying all the blame onto one entity. It's all China's fault! BoJo and Dolt45 are paragons of virtue and have handled Corona impeccably!

Why don't you mention the greatest Covid19 shitshows of all, those under the "leadership" of Macron, Sanchez and Conte?

But even so: the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of China.

Muriel knows whose really posting the threads, OP.

You can try as hard as you like to convince your fellow DataLoungers otherwise, but you can't fool Muriel. Stop trying to insult her intelligence. SHE KNOWS ALL !

Kasie DC just reported that 10% of beef and 25% of pork production in the US has been paused nationwide. It sounds like it was because of infected employees.

There is a separate problem with over-supple at some farms because their usual restaurant customers have stopped purchasing food from them.

Fun fact: Did you know that many of the flowers you buy at your local florist are actually grown in Chile in South America? That amazes me.

R18: I have a bad feeling that this is just the beginning of food shortages...I hope my gut is wrong for once.

I don’t care who created this post or adds to it. As long as this thread stays on topic. Charles Manson can post his idiocy on the other threads all he wants,

R19 It is. There will be shortages of specific products possibly but nothing that could.be described as a food shortage.

So is this the official continuation thread or no?

Study: 96% of prisoners who tested positive for Covid-19 were asymptomatic.

Meat in particular is going to be an issue. It’s expensive to feed animals for meat, and if you can’t sell them you can’t feed them. So people will quit growing animals for meat for a while. They’ll kill the ones they have and try to sell them locally.

The real concern is what if farmers quit growing food because their usual commercial restaurant buyers aren’t buying. Andrew Cuomo mentioned today that some dairy farmers were pouring milk down the drain in upstate New York, while food pantries in the city badly needed food of all kinds to distribute. He said if he’d known they were going to do that, he would have bought it.

My family had a farm during the Depression. They slaughtered the hogs, because no one could afford to buy them and they couldn’t afford to feed them without a buyer.

They ended up growing food for themselves and their local neighbors only. They couldn’t pay to ship it to market if there was no market. Prices also went way down because there was no demand. Restaurants were going broke and people only bought the absolute necessities. The cost of growing it was more than the price they could get, and they couldn’t operate at a loss, so they only grew for the immediate area, with no shipping costs.

I think this might be what’s happening with the dairy farmers in upstate New York. No commercial market, they can’t afford to ship it at a loss, so they throw it away. Dairy and meat farmers run on a very small margin due to loss from spoilage.

The end result of this could be food shortages. Especially fresh foods that can’t be canned. Chickens are a little different. They don’t take much land, and people with a little property can grow their own. So eggs might be available after bacon and beef is short. But it might be much more local.

Because, R16, only Johnson and Trump are listed in the poll, the premise of which seems designed to create dissension. Trump, Johnson, Macron, Sanchez and Conte all did a poor job of containing the pandemic. However, Macron at least gave a full mea culpa and acknowledged that he could have done a better job. Trump will continue to pat himself on the back as King of the Hill while he's standing on an ever-increasing pile of corpses.

R24 That's a very out-of-date conception of how the food supply chain operates. The biggest sources of meat are agra-businesses that deal in seasonal contracts with distributors. Small, local farms may be suffering but they aren't going to slaughter their pigs and grow beans to feed themselves. We're nowhere close to a crisis of that magnitude.

Fuck, I meant agribusinesses.

R26, dairy farmers in upstate New York are throwing milk away now. Think about it. There are people in New York City that would buy it. The school district could use it for children that need food. They normally provide free meals for a lot of students, and they still are trying to. That part doesn’t change really.

So why throw it away? Milk has a very short shelf life. It has to be carried everywhere in refrigerated trucks. That costs money. You can’t do it unless you’ve got a buyer. So why didn’t they contact Cuomo or the school district or food pantries? Maybe they could write it off as a charitable deduction.

I did wonder if they were throwing it away to drive the price up, because it will drop if there’s a glut on the market. But maybe the milk just went bad so fast they didn’t have time to set up another buyer.

Don’t assume because there’s a large agri business they’re making tons of money on foodstuffs. They aren’t. The margin is pretty small. They make their money on volume. Which is down. They can go broke too

"Rates of new confirmed COVID-19 cases didn’t increase in Wisconsin compared with the rest of the country after the April 7 election, though some individual cases could be tied to voting, a new study says." -------------------

"At least 23 people who voted in person or served as poll workers have tested positive for COVID-19, but many of them reported other potential exposures to the coronavirus, state Department of Health Services spokeswoman Jennifer Miller said Friday.

In the new study, researchers looked at rates of COVID-19 in Wisconsin — and in Dane, Milwaukee and Waukesha counties — for a 10-day period before the election and in the 10 days afterward in which cases would likely arise, comparing the rates to the rest of the country."

Humanity is the virus and Covid19 are the antibodies Mother Earth has released to protect herself.

If mother nature is employed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Another issue that’s really going to kill agri-business is collections. Let’s say you’re Joe’s Italian Restaurant. You closed for Coronavirus, or maybe you’re doing takeout only. Business is way down. You laid off a bunch of employees and you’re struggling to pay the ones that are left.

Are you going to have money to pay for foodstuffs a month or two after you lose your eat-in diners? No. So the supplier has to wait and wait. Not just for Joe’s but for everyone.

The supplier cuts back on production because he can’t afford to give it away for free. Ninety days down the road he can’t pay anybody either. He probably can’t go on without bankruptcy, but after his restructure, is there going to be a better market? No.

When you go to bankruptcy court to restructure, you have to prove you can recover if your debt is forgiven. How? Everybody is in the same boat. You might be forced by the court to dissolve your assets. Then you’re gone. That’s what these businesses have to look forward to in a couple of months.

Now Joe is in the same situation. After a couple months of non-payment, his credit is cut off. He has no foodstuffs to cook. So he closes and lays off everybody. The food manufacturer has now lost Joe as a customer, so there’s a reliable customer gone. Times a hundred. His other customers are just like Joe.

This is what is called a “normalcy bias.” People assume it can’t happen. But how can it not? This is why small businesses were applying for loans. Even the ones that got loans are only delaying the inevitable a couple of months. Then it’s either back at the trough, or go out of business. And the Turtle isn’t going to approve one business loan bill after another.

We have to get rid of Trump or we won’t have a country.

What do people think of this article about Covid-19 lasting only 70 days no matter how we handle it?

New clinical trial involving blood pressure med.

(PS: OP is a fucking lunatic.)

Sylvia, OP is the Corona Poll Troll.

OP, aka #BritBoy, clearly doesn't possess the high intelligence factor required to be the 😘 AUTHENTIC AMERICAN CORONA POLL TROLL !

⏳ CORONA TIME - APRIL 26 - 10:35 PM EST

👽 NATIONAL ALIEN DAY

🐎 HELP A HORSE DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 2,994,761

DEATHS: 206,992

CRITICAL: 57,603

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES

CASES: 987,160

DEATHS: 55,413

CRITICAL: 15,144

🤠 CHEERIO, Y'ALL !

I do not support you now, Corona Guy.

No WWs for you.

[quote] What do people think of this article about Covid-19 lasting only 70 days no matter how we handle it?

Well, considering it's been around since December and shows no signs of abatement anywhere (except maybe Australia), I'd say he's full of shit.

[quote]over-supple at some farms

Pics please.

[quote]96% of prisoners who tested positive for Covid-19 were asymptomatic.

That's pretty astonishing.

R41, I wonder if there are some strains of Coronavirus that are much milder or more likely to be asymptomatic. Maybe the Coronavirus got into the prison from one person that had a mild case, or maybe all the prisoners got a small viral load because they got it from fomites.

Somebody ought to study that prison.

Older, but I didn't see it mentioned in a previous thread:

"Antibody surveys suggesting vast undercount of coronavirus infections may be unreliable"

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

R44 DL saves the day once again! I'm lucky that my dog takes Pepcid regularly, so I have a stockpile and bought extra when that first post came around months ago. Here's another link to the studies:

[quote]Maybe the Coronavirus got into the prison from one person that had a mild case, or maybe all the prisoners got a small viral load because they got it from fomites.

This study covers more than one prison: "In four state prison systems — Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia — 96% of 3,277 inmates who tested positive for the coronavirus were asymptomatic." Very odd.

CNN: New Zealand claimed Monday it had "eliminated" the coronavirus as the country announced the easing of restrictions from "level four" to "level three," with new cases in single figures.

At a news conference, New Zealand reported one new case, four "probable cases" and one new death.

Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand's Director General of Health, said the low number "does give us confidence that we've achieved our goal of elimination, which -- that never meant zero but it does mean we know where our cases are coming from."

He added: "Our goal is elimination. And again, that doesn't mean eradication but it means we get down to a small number of cases so that we are able to stamp out any cases and any outbreak that might come out."

According to Johns Hopkins University, New Zealand has a total of 1,469 confirmed novel coronavirus cases and 19 deaths.

Tyson Foods is saying there’s going to be a shortfall of meat. They had to close a bunch of factories because of workers getting Coronavirus.

Yesterday they were saying that it’s really hard to keep Coronavirus out of meat processing plants. Because of the way they’re set up, people all have to handle the same meat products, sit next to each other, etc.

Tyson says: “the nation’s supply chain is breaking down.”

A poster upthread mentioned that food manufacturers have contracts they have to fulfill. I know, I worked for one for years. But if you get closed because of a pandemic, which is not your fault, that contract is out the window. All contracts have exceptions for emergencies, and this is it.

If you file for bankruptcy and you can’t fulfill orders, the judge can protect you from lawsuit. That’s why people file. If the judge says you don’t have to honor the contract, you don’t have to. And I don’t think any judge is going to allow wholesale suing of every food supplier by every food distributor. There will be legal precedents set, or states will pass laws protecting suppliers.

CNN has a mayor on right now. They’re talking about the federal government not giving money to the states. They quoted someone saying, we can’t choose between garbage pickup and police, fire department, etc.

So if the states all go broke next, no garbage pickup? No cops? If they can’t get money it will come to that, and Trump doesn’t want to give money to states for some reason. It’s like he’s determined to make it as bad as possible. His friend Putin must be throwing a party.

This is normalcy bias again. No, if you don’t pay anyone, the trains don’t keep running on time anyway. Things really can grind to a halt.

R46 Prisoners have the tendency to be in better shape than the general population (heh.) People without underlying conditions like obesity or high blood pressure seem to be largely unaffected by the virus.

R44 Now the conspiracy theorist in me wants to know why there were already famotidine shortages way back in Feb when I bought my little stash. Generic was all gone, I had to buy name brand Pepcid and there wasn't much of that or Zantac on the shelf at the Costco. Checking around online today, it's sold out everywhere even though the news of the trial just broke. What gives? There aren't THAT many DLers.

Use Ignore-dar, and you will see that the Corona Poll Troll slipped up and used three different account to post his cutting & pasting of stats. So, he's using different accounts to bash Biden, praise Trump, mock flattening the curve and all sorts of dissent.

His "stats" are posted on three different accounts.

You guys are being played and falling for it.

ElderLez, the Corona Poll Troll is the one who was fighting with you. Did you know that? Not so nice, is he?

He is a dissent troll.

Also, the OP is also attacking Democrats, propping up Trump and slamming Biden, hoping to make Democrats despair and feel worthless.

But, you want to fall for it, go ahead.

OP is one of the Corona Poll Troll's sock puppet accounts. He accidentally slipped up and posted one of his cut & paste things with that account rather than his CPT one. He has at least three accounts, all spreading negativity and dissent, like this in the last thread:

[quote]The virus is natural selection in operation. Obese and elderly or already diseased, gone. Nothing can stop the cull.

The OP IS the Corona Poll Troll using a different account.

I don't know why anyone wants to be played by this guy. He is attacking other posters with his three accounts and praising Trump.

Your choice.

Zantac causes cancer and was taken off the market this winter which caused shortages of all the -itidine drugs. I was unable to refill my nizatidine starting in early January. I tried otc Tagamet which was the only thing I could find in the pharmacy, but it wasn’t strong enough.

Damnit ElderLez, there goes my entertainment for the morning.

😍 Who is the nutball at r51 who has a massive hard on for the poll troll?

R54: Blocked it.

Sorry Sylvia!

Sylvia should start a rival #38 thread

Let market forces choose between good or evil

R57 But then the lunatic would use all of her sock puppet accounts to get my thread greyed out as well.

Even Boris Johnson is acting like an adult this morning and taking CV seriously, finally.

Lazy queens who can't click on a link and read the stats and updates are the ones helping the trolls spread dissension and worry.

Boris this morning

R58 Try clicking the ignore button on R51/ R55.

You'll be in for a real epiphany.

Everyone else, feel free to join the party.

😍Who is the nutball at r60 who has a massive hard on for the poll troll?

And why is he calling us lazy queens?

I have nothing to do with R51 - look at my history.

CNN-Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization Director-General said, the coronavirus pandemic isn't over. “The pandemic is far from over,” he said at a news conference. He said the World Health Organization "continues to be concerned about the increasing trends in Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and some Asian countries." “As in all regions, cases and deaths are underreported in many countries in these regions, because of low testing capacity,” Tedros said.

Facebook-Facebook-I am a Covid ICU nurse in New York City, and yesterday, like many other days lately, I couldn’t fix my patient. Sure, that happens all the time in the ICU. It definitely wasn’t the first time. It certainly won’t be the last. What makes this patient noteworthy? A few things, actually. He was infected with Covid 19, and he will lose his battle with Covid 19. He is only 23 years old. I was destroyed by his clinical course in a way that has only happened a few times in my nursing career. It wasn’t his presentation. I’ve seen that before. It wasn’t his complications. I’ve seen that too. It was the grief. It was his parents. The grief I witnessed yesterday, was grief that I haven’t allowed myself to recognize since this runaway train got rolling here in early March. I could sense it. It was lingering in the periphery of my mind, but yesterday something in me gave way, and that grief rushed in....Yesterday, I was preparing for a bedside endoscopy procedure to secure a catastrophic GI bleed in this 23-year-old patient. It was a bleed that required a massive transfusion protocol where the blood bank releases coolers of uncrossmatched O negative blood in an emergency, an overhead page that, ironically, I heard as I was getting into the elevator to head to the fourth floor for my shift yesterday morning; a massive transfusion protocol that I found out I would own as a primary nurse, as I desperately squeezed liters of IV fluids into this patient until we got the cooler full of blood products, and then pumped this patient full of units of blood until we could intervene with endoscopy.

Continued- Before the procedure, I stopped everything I was doing that wasn’t life-sustaining. I stopped gathering supplies to start and assist with the procedure. I told the doctors that I would not do a required “time-out” procedure until I got my phone out, and I facetimed this kid’s mom because I didn’t think he would survive the bedside procedure. She cried. She wailed. She begged her son to open his eyes, to breathe. She begged me to help her. Ayudame. Ayudame. She begged me to help him. She sang to him. She told him he was strong. She told him how much she loved him. I listened to her heart breaking in real time while she talked to her son, while she saw his swollen face, her baby boy, dying before her eyes through a phone. Later in the day, after the procedure, his mom and dad came to the hospital. He survived the securement of the bleed, but he was still getting worse no matter what we did. He’s going to die. And against policy, we fought to get them up to see their son. We found them masks and gowns that we’re still rationing in the hospital, and we let his parents see him, hold him. We let them be with their son. Like every other nurse would do in the ICU here, I bounced around the room, moving mom from one side of the bed to the other and back again, so I could do what I needed to do, setting up my continuous dialysis machine, with the ONE filter that supply sent up for my use to initiate dialysis therapy. This spaceship-like machine, finicky as all hell, and I had one shot to prime this machine successfully to start dialysis therapy to try to slowly correct the metabolic acidosis that was just ONE of the problems that was killing him as his blood pressure lingered in the 70s. Continuous dialysis started. You press start and hold your breath. You’re not removing any fluid, just filtering the blood, but even the tiniest of fluid shifts in this patient could kill him. But you have no choice. His vital signs started to look concerning. I could feel the dread in the pit of my stomach, this was going south very quickly. Another nurse and the patient’s father had to physically drag this mother out of the room so we could fill the room with the brains and eyes and hands that would keep this boy alive for another hour. She wailed in the hallway. Nurses in the next unit down the hall heard her cries through two sets of closed fire doors. We worked furiously to stabilize him for the next four hours. Twenty minutes before the end of my shift last night, I sat with the attending physician and the parents in a quiet and deserted family waiting room outside the unit. I told his mother that no matter what I do, I cannot fix this. I have maximized everything I have, every tool and medicine at my disposal to save her son. I can’t save her son. The doctor explained that no matter what we do, his body is failing him. No matter what we do, her son will die. They realized that no matter how hard they pray, no matter how much they want to tear down walls, no matter how many times his mother begs and pleads, “take me instead, I would rather die myself than lose my son”, we cannot save him. We stayed while she screamed. We stayed until she finally let go of her vice grip on my hands, her body tremblin uncontrollably, as she dissolved into her grief, in the arms of her husband.

A Virginia preacher believed "God can heal anything." Then he caught coronavirus.

Orange Butthole's press conference is back on for this afternoon

R51 is the paranoid schizophrenic who started the Madonna & Mistress of Evil threads, and has never recovered from people defecting to other threads instead.

I am the OP of this one and the last two. I hold my hands up to copying and pasting one of the Corona Poll Troll's excellent updates to my thread once but this doesn't mean I am CPT 'on a sock puppet account'.

I am a Brit and have little interest in US politics beyond despising the orange fucktard. I've never posted about Biden or the Democrats. I've never attacked people who hate Trump.

Anyway, good news! I've run out of ideas for thread and poll titles so this will be my last one. Don't let R51 jump in with the most irrelevant title possible for thread 39, though! You know he's going to try!

Daily death toll in the UK is the lowest since March.

Monday 27/4/20 = 157,149 cases + 4,310

Deaths 21,092 + 360

USA just passed 1 million

USA! USA!

NYT: Women, whether from China, Italy or the U.S., have been less likely to become acutely ill from covid-19 — and far more likely to survive.

Which has made doctors wonder: Could hormones produced in greater quantities by women be at work?

Now scientists on two coasts, acting quickly on their hunches in an effort to save men’s lives, are testing the hypothesis.

Last week, doctors on Long Island in New York started treating Covid-19 patients with estrogen in an effort to increase their immune systems, and next week, physicians in Los Angeles will start treating male patients with another hormone that is predominantly found in women, progesterone, which has anti-inflammatory properties and can potentially prevent harmful overreactions of the immune system.

Some experts who study sex differences in immunity, however, warned that hormones may fail to be the magic bullet that some are hoping for; even elderly women with Covid-19 are outliving their male peers, and there is a drastic reduction in levels of hormones for women after menopause.

[quote]The CDC has added six more symptoms that may come with the disease: chills, repeated shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat and new loss of taste or smell.

Also: Many CV patients sick enough to be hospitalized did not have fevers.

This virus continues to confound!

Did someone start a new thread about the press conferences? He's back to silver hair, by the way.

Colorado and Nevada have finally joined the Western States Pact.

Press conference thread

Trump is still saying there will be 60-70,000 deaths from CoronaVirus. Isn’t that obviously a low estimate?

Well, I guess it's an improvement over his claim that there would be zero deaths

R79: Yes - especially since we're at 56,760 now. We will be at 60,000 by Wednesday. Then Trump will move the goalpost again or say the numbers are wrong, fake news.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that Friday, May 1, the state opens the gate part way, allowing many retail establishments to open. Still closed will be barbers, salons, bars and a few other close contact businesses. While people are being advised that masks are recommended, there are no laws or penalties in place for not wearing them. While this is being called a measured loosening of previous orders, I think most people, tired of quarantine frustration, will set their own limits, if any are still considered.

I'm watching Rachel and there's a Houston ICU nurse speaking and it's absolutely heart wrenching. Those nurses are going to have PTSD.

I went out to the supermarket in north London today and only about 50% of people were wearing masks. Lots of shops opening up again.

He was piss yellow blonde last week and then champagne blonde, followed by piss yellow blonde again. Now back to champagne blonde?

Is this how he blondes it up? Something like Streaks and Tips? His hair looks dry and sprayed and caked together some days. He could also be juicing up the blonde for the camera.

🤣 Somebody shoot this thread and put it out of it's misery.

r76, he's not 'back' to anything. There are Two Donald Trumps.

Heads of state always have security doubles. In his case, they have to use the the double for actual Presidenting, sometimes.

I start 39 now

'In his case, they have to use the the double for actual Presidenting, sometimes.'

Conspiracy troll, get thee gone.

A psychologist who helped write The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump writes that trump is a sexual sadist. Good article.

NBC Nightly News had a story about a NYC ER doctor who had survived COVID, but couldn’t deal with the psychological stress of fighting the disease on behalf of her patients; she killed herself. How exceptionally sad. I can’t imagine what the doctors, nurses, and health care workers are dealing with.

R91 That story is bullshit. The woman killed herself and this writer has no idea why. He (or she) made up the story that it was “because of the stress of caring for Covid patients.”

Why is this thread moving so slowly? Another asshole OP who most people have blocked?

r92 = full of bullshit, accusing others of being full of bullshit

R92 is a prime example why people are exiting these threads.

R95 It’s a valid point. Nowhere in the story is there anything factual that proves why the woman killed herself. The author based the whole story on ‘She took care of Covid patients therefore that must have been why she killed herself.’ It’s speculation presented as fact.

R92 = Donald Trump

Exactly, we don't know what was going on with her personal life. Might have broken up with a partner.

Guardian-The Covid-19 death toll in England and Wales was 52.9% higher than the daily figures for deaths in hospitals released by the government as of 17 April, according to official data that include deaths in the community. The Office for National Statistics said it had recorded 21,284 fatalities that mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate as of 17 April, compared with 13,917 in the daily hospital death stats published by the government.

R92 They're grasping at straws to try to gin up a panic.

Dr. Breen had contracted Covid-19 and was home sick for a week and a half. Then she returned to her job, but she was struggling and the hospital sent her home. Her father is also a physician and he brought her to the family home in Virginia because he was concerned about her mental health.

Those facts are out there. That she died by her own hand is not in dispute. That she was struggling from her experience in the Emergency Room treating an onslaught of patients with Covid-19 is not in dispute.

She is also reported to have been a devout Christian. Maybe she had a terminal crisis of faith from seeing that her beloved Jesus was so entirely asleep at the wheel and absolutely powerless as this virus was sweeping the world.

Confirmed sightings of a black bear within the city limits of Michigan's second largest city Grand Rapids. Maybe it's looking for Betsy DeVos.

A rookie EMT also committed suicide.

Compounding the tragedy, he was hot.

R101 Yes, maybe her life was a very satisfying soap opera that justifies your political views. Probably not, though.

This is the pandemic now? Medical workers having mental health issues?

Where's the viral disease?

Thanks, R102. your random comment made me laugh for the first time today.

[quote]Confirmed sightings of a black bear within the city limits of Michigan's second largest city Grand Rapids. Maybe it's looking for Betsy DeVos.

Sad news: the black bear was hit by a car this morning and killed. There is speculation that there is more than one in the neighborhood, though.

R107, were there sightings of Betsy Devos in a Hummer, cackling?

A timeline of Trump's cover up of the burgeoning pandemic. It is damning of most everyone involved in Trump's lying to the American public and it does not spare Fauci.

It warms my heart to know that Fauci's entire career is now smeared with the hot steaming shit of Donald Trump. Sorry, but history will not forget, Tony. And you did it to yourself, you little worm.

[quote] That she was struggling from her experience in the Emergency Room treating an onslaught of patients with Covid-19 is not in dispute.

What is your source for this? Her mental illness could have preceded COVID19. Maybe her experience in the ED had nothing to do with her decision to end her life. Perhaps that’s what kept her going, and not being able to work is what did her in.

I would walk out on a stressful job before I’d kill myself over one, and I have.

r90 That article explains a LOT but is also very terrifying. Trump is one MF'ing sick bastard

A woman works among the sick and dying, trying desperately to save them, and endangering her own life in the process. She's so depressed for reasons we don't know, and can't save herself. And, as always, those select few Dataloungers delight in the news of a stranger's demise, as they dance around the Maypole.

Your mother's must be so proud.

MSNBC is so far behind with their stats! They are still reporting 995,000 CV cases when there is well over a million since yesterday: current - 1,013,290. I guess they will update their stats in time for Rachel's show tonight.

The IHME Covid-19 model for the US has adjusted projections to account for more actual data.

Total projected deaths are now about 74,000. In earlier versions, total deaths ranged from 60,000 to 67,000.

You can filter by state to see your state's projected data.

Tremendous, tremendous deaths. The most deaths ever.

We're going to have so many deaths you're going to be sick of death.

Guy skyping into GMA in his undies.

R113 Nobody’s “dancing around a maypole,” doofus. Just questioning a bullshit made-up news “story” that is exploiting fear for ratings/views. Sad that so many of the gullible are eating it up with a spoon.

🕺R118 = Donald Trump, dancing around the Maypole like everybody's watching.

Reuters:

U.S. coronavirus cases top 1 million as projected death toll rises

"Her mental illness could have preceded COVID19. Maybe her experience in the ED had nothing to do with her decision to end her life. Perhaps that’s what kept her going, and not being able to work is what did her in."

She wasn't mentally ill.

And r118 is repeating freeper talking points while accusing others of being gullible.

Bloomberg News: Trump plans to order meat processing plants to STAY OPEN, declaring them critical infrastructure under Defense Production Act. Order meant to stave off shortage of beef, chicken, eggs, pork. Plant closures could have shut down as much as 80% of capacity, source says.

US Coronavirus Update 28/4/20 🇺🇸

Cases: 1,019,823 + 9,467

Deaths: 57,601+ 804

First known US coronavirus victim suffered ‘burst’ heart: pathologist

The California woman who was the first known COVID-19 victim in the US died from a “burst” heart — when her own body turned against her as it tried to rid itself of the bug, according to a report.

Patricia Dowd, 57, was under such assault from the virus that a valve in her heart ruptured, causing her to die Feb. 6 at her San Jose home, the Mercury News reported.

“The immune system was attacking the virus and in attacking the virus it damaged the heart and then the heart basically burst,” said Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist who reviewed the autopsy report, according to the report.

Melinek said the autopsy showed that Dowd’s heart “muscle was infected, that’s what caused her heart to rupture.”

Dowd, a manager for a semiconductor company, was seemingly healthy before she came down in late January with flu-like symptoms, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Her family said she appeared to be on the mend and was corresponding from home with a colleague Feb. 6 before she was found dead, according to the newspaper.

Her death was initially believed to be a heart attack, but her husband was suspicious, citing her good exercise habits and health, the Mercury News reported.

He requested the autopsy, which revealed that the coronavirus had reached the state far earlier than previously known, according to reports.

Dowd was among three early deaths in Santa Clara County — the second on Feb. 17, and a third March 6 — believed to be from community transmission.

“None of these cases had a significant travel history,” Santa Clara County health officer Dr. Sara Cody said. “We presume that each of them represent community transmission and that there was some significant level of virus circulating in our community in early February … and who knows how much earlier.”

R124, that sounds like she got a virulent strain, or a heavy exposure to the virus.

I wonder if she was exposed to a Chinese person who brought it from Wuhan. They said she worked for a semiconductor company. Maybe visiting guests from China at work?

Over 700 in Iran dead from false belief that poison cures coronavirus

TEHRAN, Iran — The false belief that toxic methanol cures the coronavirus has seen over 700 people killed in Iran, an official said Monday.

Brief study of some young stroke victims with COVID-19 in NYC.

British Airways could lay off 12,000 workers with proposed restructuring plan From CNN's Robert North

British Airways has announced a restructuring and redundancy plan that could lead to thousands of permanent layoffs.

The airline says it is formally notifying its trade unions about the plan, which “will affect most of British Airways’ employees and may result in the redundancy of up to 12,000 of them.”

British Airways had already placed 22,626 employees on temporary furlough in April as part of the UK government’s retention scheme.

The announcement came as BA’s parent company IAG announced first quarter results. IAG, which also owns Iberia, saw total revenue fall 13% in the first quarter.

The airline warned that losses in the second quarter would be “significantly worse” because of coronavirus. It also said that it expects that “the recovery of passenger demand to 2019 levels will take several years.”

Yahoo News: The arthritis drug tocilizumab has shown early promise in preventing extreme inflammation in gravely ill COVID-19 patients, according to a French clinical study.

The treatment, which suppresses the body's natural immune response, was found to reduce "significantly" the number of deaths or life support interventions compared with a control group of patients.

The study, carried out by the Paris university hospital trust (AP-HP), looked at 129 people hospitalised with moderate or severe viral pneumonia, which occurs in 5-10 percent of COVID-19 patients.

Half received two injections of tocilizumab as well as standard treatment with antibiotics, while the control group received only standard treatment.

While the results are yet to be published, those involved in the research said it showed clear "clinical benefit" of tocilizumab treatment.

AP-HP said it had decided to publicise the study before publishing official results "for public health reasons".

They stressed however that further research was needed on the effectiveness of the drug and the potential for side effects.

Tocilizumab, sold under the brand names Actemra and RoAcemtra, is commonly used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

Italy tops 200,000 coronavirus cases

From CNN's Barbie Nadeau and Mia Alberti

Italy has confirmed 200,000 cases of Covid-19, including deaths and recoveries, according to the Italian Civil Protection Agency.

On Tuesday, the agency said there has been a total of 201,505 cases in the country.

However, Italy saw a drop in cases from Monday, the agency said.

France cancels its 2019-2020 football season

Professional sports will not continue the 2019-2020 season due to the coronavirus pandemic, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Tuesday.

"The 2019-2020 season of professional sports, especially football, will not be able to resume," Philippe told the French National Assembly.

Thank you, JetBlue.

"Starting Monday, all JetBlue Airways passengers will be required to wear a face covering, the strictest policy so far in the U.S. and one that follows the New York-based airline’s requirement that flight attendants wear a mask or face covering while on duty."

It was Chinese eating bats and snakes.

they raised 450k on his go-fund-me page. He's insured, right? how much are his hospital bills? --

Sara Bareilles and Jessie Mueller sing to help pay Nick Cordero’s hospital bills

they raised 450k on his go-fund-me page. He's insured, right? how much are his hospital bills? --

Sara Bareilles and Jessie Mueller sing to help pay Nick Cordero’s hospital bills

Coronavirus could return seasonally, China’s scientists say

Coronavirus will likely be sticking around seasonally — like the common flu largely because of asymptomatic carriers who can unwittingly spread the virus, according to a report.

“This is very likely to be an epidemic that co-exists with humans for a long time, becomes seasonal and is sustained within human bodies,” the director of the Institute of Pathogen Biology Jin Qi said, according to a Bloomberg report.

COVID-19 probably won’t be eradicated like it’s cousin SARS was nearly two decades ago, because some people who have the virus don’t show signs, meaning it can spread silently.

This makes it hard to contain unlike SARS which was successfully eradicated through quarantine, a group of Chinese scientists said Monday.

Meanwhile, dozens of asymptomatic cases keep popping up in China, in China despite the fact that they claim to have gotten the disease under control, the outlet reported.

Governments and researchers are beginning to agree that the virus won’t disappear, regardless of drastic measures many countries have taken, including stay-at-home orders that are playing havoc on the world’s economy, the report said.

And Chinese scientists say they haven’t found evidence that the warmer months of summer would help slow the spread of the virus — something the Trump administration has previously expressed hopes about, the news outlet said.

“The virus is heat sensitive, but that’s when it’s exposed to 56 degrees Celsius [or 132 degrees Fahrenheit] for 30 minutes and the weather is never going to get that hot,” said Wang Guiqiang, the Director of the Infectious Disease Department at Peking University First Hospital.

“So globally, even during the summer, the chance of cases going down significantly is small.”

Monday, the amount of cases globally surpassed 3 million while over 200,000 people have died from coronavirus.

E134 It was sloppy employee at a Chinese research facility working with exotic bat viruses. This has been known for months. There were cases registered for at least a couple of weeks prior to the outbreak at the Wuhan wet market- at which no one sells the species of bat Covid-19 originates in.

The Washington Post @washingtonpost · 12m Analysis: Again and again, Americans give their governors higher marks on coronavirus than their president

FUCK CHINA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I WILL NEVER EVER GO THERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

President Big Mac is ordering meat-packing plants to stay open.

R132, the air temperature never gets to 132 degrees Fahrenheit, but the temperature inside cars in the sun in the summertime can easily get to 150-160 degrees Fahrenheit on a hot day in about half an hour. That’s how all those babies keep dying in cars in the summer. So if you go to the store in the summer, park in the sun. It might help with fomites or any virus you shed in the car on your gloves or mask when you go out.

The guy who invented N95 masks suggested sterilizing masks by putting them in the oven at a low temperature for a half an hour. If it’s really hot where you are, you could probably sterilize your mask pretty well by putting it in the hot car in the sun for a couple of hours. Then there’s also the possibility that hot metal stair rails, hot metal door handles and other hot surfaces people touch will be too hot for the virus to survive. So that might cut down on fomites somewhat. People can still breathe on you, but virus on surfaces is going to have a tough time.

Where I am it’s a hundred degrees most days in the summer. A couple of hours in the parked car in a sunny parking lot will kill anything.

I went to the grocery store this morning in DC and — quite unsurprisingly — they did not have a lot of meat left. No ground turkey, no ground pork, and they haven’t had lamb for the last six weeks. I was able to find some ground beef, but there wasn’t much there. Oh, well.

R140, how? Tyson didn’t want to close. They closed because thousands of employees had Coronavirus and it turned into a Coronavirus factory. Tyson is famous for treating their employees like shit, so they really had no choice.

Is Trump going to dissolve the FDA?

R115: 74K is too low also. They should just go ahead and set it back to 100K+.

R121,

I’m not R118, but you quoted me. The physician clearly had a mental illness, whether PTSD from her experiences in the ED or from God knows what else. My point was that we don’t know why she killed herself. Regardless, she clearly was mentally ill, at least during the final stages of her life.

[quote] Your mother's must be so proud. My mother’s what?

Messed up the quote. Should read: [quote] Your mother's must be so proud.

My mother’s what?

R143, go to the Costco Business Center. I went yesterday and I saw a bunch of ground meat in large sausage shaped packages. Businesses use those by slicing them into hamburgers. At the time, it just went right past me because I never buy anything like that and they were large enough that they look awkward to deal with. But you could buy one of those, cut it into slices and put wax paper in between them, and freeze it. The Costco business Center has large portions of fresh refrigerated meat and cheese that are restaurant sizes. They also have full wheels of Parmesan cheese.

They also had sides of beef in the case. But you better hurry up because I bet they’ll run out soon.

Or pick up some canned meat, because in a month or two when there is none, you’ll be craving it. Even Spam will start looking pretty good. There’s still some around, but if meat isn’t being processed, that will go away too. If you start looking in a couple of months, it will be too late as we burn through what’s in the pipeline.

One good thing about canned meat is it has a long shelf life. It’s years longer than most canned food.

Trump wants to issue an executive order to force plants open. But a lot of those employees are positive. Will they be forced back to work? What if they quit? Will he get the National Guard to run meat packing plants?

He’s talking about passing a law that says manufacturers can’t be sued by their employees for running unsafe plants full of virus. What if you’re a consumer and you get contaminated meat from sick employees? Will he pass a law saying you can’t sue either? Probably.

[quote] He’s talking about passing a law that says manufacturers can’t be sued by their employees for running unsafe plants full of virus. What if you’re a consumer and you get contaminated meat from sick employees? Will he pass a law saying you can’t sue either? Probably.

If you are strongly opposed to those things, and you should be, then write Nancy Pelosi and demand that the House NEVER concede these demands to the GOP. Trump cannot pass a law without the cooperation of the House of Representatives.

I need the meats!!!!!

This article points out the main problem -- how difficult it's going to be for workers to prove they got the virus at work during a pandemic.

Some states like Illinois and Kentucky have taken a different approach, but of course, this is already being challenged in court:

[quote] Meanwhile, a handful of states, including Illinois and Kentucky, have started to shift the burden of proof from the worker to the employer. Under an order from Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, essential workers at businesses such as grocery and hardware stores would have “the presumption that the workers that are essential caught the disease at work.” The company would then have to demonstrate otherwise. Late last week, however, a county judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the rule after business groups filed a lawsuit opposing it.

Time Out!

A severely depressed heath care hero committed suicide and you clowns are arguing over why she did it and who has the snappiest comeback ?

R153 Yes, this is the Datalounge.

[italic] Just Plain Nuts !

That guy at R152 is wearing his mask wrong. I saw two people yesterday wearing masks with their nose uncovered.

People with glasses get their glasses steamed up wearing masks. The reason for this is your breath is going up the top of the mask and steaming up your eyeglasses. This also means the mask is leaking and has a bad seal. My guess is the guy in the picture had steamy glasses, so his answer was to pull the mask down. It’s barely covering the tip of his nose.

The answer is to pull your mask up until it’s right under your eyes. The mask will seal to your face and no more steamy glasses. But it’s not very comfortable.

🤔 HUH ?

Don't all masks have the internal wiring on top to bend it over the bridge of the nose?

The N95’s do, not the one like the guy at R152, I don’t think. Those are surgical masks. They’re really to prevent personnel from sneezing into a patient’s open abdominal cavity. They’re not supposed to protect you so much as the person you breathe on.

The wire thing does help, but look at that guy’s face. He’s smiling and there’s open gaps where his cheeks are smiling. If you pull the mask up high, it covers the cheeks and that won’t happen even if you smile.

🙈 I've worn a mask long before it became a health and fashion statement.

Pence toured a hospital today without a mask!!! He's gonna get the virus just like boris!

With any luck he’ll pass it to Trump with their daily close-in sessions.

Pence has had a secret vaccination. He’s not worried.

Pence has Lysol in his veins

👽 Trump and Pence are Pod People.

Pence spent the night after Trump made that statement about injecting disinfectant and light into the body, with a UV flashlight stuck in his ass. So he’s absolutely sure he’s covered.

R159 He's wearing it upside down, the side with the wire is under his chin, probably to keep the mask from riding up.

Pence has access to more accurate data about the virus than what the networks and national newspapers are putting out.

CNBC Now @CNBCnow

BREAKING: Streaming films will be eligible for the OSCARS this year due to the theater disruptions caused by coronavirus.

R167: Ah, that explains it! If worn correctly with wiring bent over bridge of nose, the mask won't ride up and glasses won't get steamed (breath goes out the sides). I wear glasses and a mask (and a face visor) whenever I go out.

R167, that poor guy. Employers should show people how to wear masks. Most people have no idea, and it’s not helping if you have no idea what you’re doing.

The Hill:

Trump says 'worst days' of coronavirus are 'behind us'

R172: Okay...Trump.

USA today (so far):

New Cases: +19,522

New Deaths: +1,843

R170 We were given these same masks yesterday at work, and I saw people wearing them upside down (not understanding how the masks work.) Good for you and your superior visor, hopefully you're avoiding the poors so they can't infect you.

R171 It's not doing anything other than giving paranoid customers a feeling of security.

The US plans to lend $500 billion to large companies. It won't require them to preserve jobs or limit executive pay.

If they give out masks they should do a brief demonstration of how they work, or direct people to a YouTube video. It’s to everybody’s advantage that people in the workplace know how to use a mask.

R175, N95 masks filter out 97% of viruses, so that’s not nothing. Especially since Coronavirus is carried on droplets, which are relatively large and most masks can screen out droplets.

Even handmade masks will filter out at least some virus and most double walled handmade masks can filter at least some droplets. There are handmade masks with Filtrete furnace filters that can filter out up to 80%+ of viruses.

Since people that get Coronavirus seem to get sicker based on how much virus they are exposed to, it’s better to be exposed to a small amount of virus than a large amount. It might mean the difference between a mild case and dying.

Pence is what bleach would be like in human form.

R177 They just handed them out and told us we couldn't re-use them. There are maybe a handful of people (mostly with major health problems) where I work who still seem worried about the virus. We were all terrified a month ago but whatever danger there was feels like it passed. People were taking the masks off quite a bit because they get in the way while we're working.

Worn properly or improperly, breath goes over the top and out the sides of all surgical masks, which is what the guy in the photo is wearing. There is no seal, nor is there meant to be one.

As for N95 respirators, which do seal, positive pressure causes them to steam with a cough or strong exhalation. Professionally fit-tested (using Bitrex)N95s will still steam glasses. What matters is the negative pressure caused by inhalation forcing the mask to suck in toward the face on inhalation.

Working with immunocompromised patients and wearing N95 respirators for years I’ve had endless fit tests and I’ve yet to wear one that hasn’t steamed a little at times.

The masks we are wearing in public as non-medical professionals in non-medical settings only need to cover your mouth and nostrils in case you are infected and cough or sneeze. They are to protect other people, not you.

All of the above are great reasons to [italic] Stay Home ! ! !

Fucking Trump.

Using the Defense Production Act to order ventilators when this all started? Nope.

Using the DPA to order production of PPE? Nope.

Using the DPA to order production of testing supplies? Nope.

Using the DPA to make sure he gets his hamburgers even if it kills off thousands of meat factory workers? Fuck yes.

Die. Die. Die, motherfucker.

Meat factory workers aren’t slaves. If they’re sick their doctors won't clear them to go back to work. Will Trump pass a law saying essential services workers have to work sick, even if they’re processing raw food?

They could probably bring in the National Guard to run it but they aren’t trained. I bet it’s harder to do than it looks. And if they bring in the National Guard, will they have protective clothing? Can a meat packing plant even get protective clothing now? Are they going to take masks away from nurses so Trump can have a hamburger? Of course they are.

Tyson said thousands of workers were sick. I bet they closed because they didn’t have enough workers for the positions on the assembly line. Maybe they can’t be interchanged easily. And they probably can’t do it with a lot of people missing.

CNN Breaking News @cnnbrk In less than three months, more Americans have died from coronavirus than the number of US service members killed in the Vietnam War, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally.

And the United States didn't have their backs, either.

Both Mother Pence and Mike Pence douche with Lysol every night, so they feel protected.

UK Stats

Cases - 161,145 +3,996

Deaths - 21,678 +586

The UK has almost caught up with France.

R172 Funny how there's a virus right "behind" him in that photo.

NBC News @NBCNews · 2h German doctors have stripped naked in a series of photos to show how vulnerable they feel without adequate PPE on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.

NBC News @NBCNews · 2h German doctors have stripped naked in a series of photos to show how vulnerable they feel without adequate PPE on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.

I'm all there from third-from-the-left on the first row.

Wait - no Trump presser today? I don't see the thread.

Correct, to presser today. The task force didn’t meet either (third day in a row they haven’t met.)

[quote]The coronavirus task force did not meet today for the third day in a row. This is pretty rare given that until this weekend, the task force had met nearly every day since it was formed, except Easter.

^^ *NO presser

Thanks R194!

I don't know where I read it today but he is trying to sideline Fauci and Birx And the task force.

He is going to only bring people who are Corporate Executives to speak. Apparently it is that blond asshole Kayleigh McEnany's idea.

sorry if already posted.

Scientists, billionaires team up to aid White House in coronavirus battle

Calling themselves “Scientists to Stop COVID-19,” the collection of top researchers, billionaires and industry captains will act as an “ad hoc review board” for the torrent of coronavirus research, “weeding out” flawed data before it reaches policymakers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

They are also acting as a go-between for pharmaceutical companies seeking to build a communication channel with Trump administration officials.

The group — who have likened their effort to the World War II-era “Manhattan Project,” which developed the atomic bomb — has advised Nick Ayers, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, as well as other agency heads, in the past month.

Pence is heading up the White House coronavirus task force.

The brainy bunch is led by Thomas Cahill, a 33-year-old doctor who became a venture capitalist, and includes 2017 Nobel Prize winner Michael Rosbash, a neuroscientist and professor of biology at Brandeis University, and Stuart Schreiber, a Harvard chemistry and chemical biology professor.

Cahill’s clout comes from building connections through his investment firm, Newpath Partners, with Silicon Valley’s Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, and billionaire businessmen Jim Palotta and Michael Milken.

Members of the group say they aren’t in it for financial gain, but are motivated by providing assistance for a fight that has strained federal and state governments, dealt a crucial blow to the economy and ultimately infected more than 3 million worldwide.

“We may fail,” Schreiber told the Journal. “But if it succeeds, it could change the world.”

The group has compiled a 17-page plan that offers “four actionable, non-partisan proposals to produce safe and effective COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines in the shortest possible timeframe, and to reopen our society in a manner that reduces the risk of future COVID-19 outbreaks,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

Steve Pagliuca, the co-owner of the Boston Celtics, who helped copy edit some of the report, passed a copy to the CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., David Solomon, who got it to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Among the proposals are repurposing established drugs on a “greatly accelerated time scale” and developing antibodies that could be used to “protect healthy critical workers, as well as ‘high-risk’ individuals.”

One of the promising drugs is remdesivir, which was developed for use against Ebola. Long-term control of the pandemic would require the “development and implementation of an effective vaccine.”

Three New York children with coronavirus have rare inflammatory syndrome

Three children with the coronavirus in New York are also being treated for a rare inflammatory condition, similar to the one that has sparked concerns in the UK and Italy.

German website where the medical workers are posing "nude"

here is the article

Oh great, exploding hearts, debilitating strokes and rare inflammatory syndromes. And asymptomatic virus spreaders and false negative Corona tests, oh and you may or may not even be immune after you’ve had it. This just gets better all the time.

Remind me why the stock market hasn’t completely crashed yet?

R204 Because the Federal Reserve is pumping trillions (yes TRILLIONS) of dollars a month into the market to prop it up.

Okay, so inflation should be through the roof by July

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump The only reason the U.S. has reported one million cases of CoronaVirus is that our Testing is sooo much better than any other country in the World. Other countries are way behind us in Testing, and therefore show far fewer cases!

R198, Then why should networks even cover it? Average people don’t care about that. They want to know about the virus.

I can just imagine him reeling off names of corporations he wants to thank like he did before. No one’s broadcasting that.

Were we talking about Dr. Scarf Lady Birx earlier? Watch below as she sits by her Master’s side and fends those nasty reporters asking rude questions off like a good little lapdog. Revolting.

He’s had TESTING on his tiny lizard brain lately. MORE and BETTER testing than any other Country! And now he has a new minion by his side to school the Fake News loser press if they dare to imply otherwise.

Will the tweet following his tweet at R207 be about how we have the most deaths because we're super awesome at dying!?

The DM has a story about three kids who got over the virus initially only to be struck by a "second dangerous phase":

[quote] Three U.S. children infected with the coronavirus are being treated for a rare inflammatory syndrome that appears similar to one that has raised concerns by doctors in Britain, Italy and Spain. (Pictured, top and bottom, is the rash-covered body of British two-year-old Bertie Brown who was diagnosed with inflammatory disease Kawasaki after he is suspected to have contracted coronavirus). The mysterious condition is understood to have features of toxic shock syndrome which causes the body's immune system to attack its own organs and has caused fever and inflammation of the heart and the gut. It comes as an expert warns that children may experience two phases of COVID-19: the initial infection and a secondary immune response that kicks in some weeks later. The three children - who range in age from six months to eight years - are the first cases in the United States of the rare inflammatory syndrome feared to be linked to coronavirus.

Well that's upsetting, it sounds like a high-speed HIV.

R209, he had the FDA regulations on test kits completely removed so the tests they’re using have had no controls in them at all. It’s just any quack with something they call a test. No quality control. That’s why the tests are so inaccurate.

Huge percentages are false positives. We’ll never know how many people really got it because of the bad tests.

Is there no tar? Are there no feathers?

R204 Most of what's being reported now is panicky bullshit unrelated to public health. The first wave is over.

R214. Over? There were +2400 deaths in the US yesterday. +15K currently in intensive care.

Well we came out of level 4 lockdown yesterday here in New Zealand. It is like Carnaval. The government thinks we have beaten it and there is no community transmission. 5 Weeks inside with no restaurants or shops open. Supermarkets controlled like the GUM department store in Soviet Russia -one in, one out - grim faced clerks doling out rations to us prisoners.

It was grim as fuck, and I hope the government is right or we'll be right back where we started.

I'm glad my fellow Kiwis have taken this time to reassess their priorities in life, and hopefully realise our conspicuous consumption is what got us here in the first place. Yeah right.

R212, the linked site looks to be an accurate (or as accurate as possible) set of data around testing per capita, and margin of error/obfuscation per country. Of course most of this data, especially to your point about US testing compliance criteria, reaches us obscured through the Orange kaleidoscope.

So far 14 coronavirus patients have undergone transfusions of convalescent plasma at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The plasma is donated by health care workers who have recovered from the virus.

The patients were all very sick, requiring oxygen or a ventilator and now they’re doing well.

“While we can’t say yet that this convalescent plasma is a cure we know that it is certainly not hurting anyone and there is evidence to suggest that we might be moving in the right direction,” said Dr. Scott Kaatz, who took care of some of the first coronavirus patients admitted to the hospital before he became a victim himself. He ended up in the ICU on a ventilator. He was the first to receive convalescent plasma.

All of the patients in the study, including Kaatz, also received other treatments including Remdesivir and Hydroxychloroquine. It’s not possible yet to determine which drug regimen or treatment may have been the most effective.

A government-run study of Gilead’s remdesivir, perhaps the most closely watched experimental drug to treat the novel coronavirus, showed that the medicine is effective against Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.

Gilead made the announcement in a statement Wednesday, stating: “We understand that the trial has met its primary endpoint.” The company said that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is conducting the study, will provide data at an upcoming briefing.

The finding — although difficult to fully characterize without any data for the study — would represent the first treatment shown to improve outcomes in patients infected with the virus that put the global economy in a standstill and killed at least 218,000 people worldwide.

NYT: Adding to growing evidence that the novel coronavirus can spread through air, scientists have identified genetic markers of the virus in airborne droplets, many with diameters smaller than one-ten-thousandth of an inch.

That had been previously demonstrated in laboratory experiments, but now Chinese scientists studying real-world conditions report that they captured tiny droplets containing the genetic markers of the virus from the air in two hospitals in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak started.

It remains unknown if the virus in the samples they collected was infectious, but droplets that small, which are expelled by breathing and talking, can remain aloft and be inhaled by others.

“Those are going to stay in the air floating around for at least two hours,” said Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech who was not involved with the Nature paper. “It strongly suggests that there is potential for airborne transmission.”

Dr. Marr and many other scientists say evidence is mounting that the coronavirus is being spread by tiny droplets known as aerosols.

Even with the new findings, the issue is not settled. Although the coronavirus RNA — the genetic blueprint of the virus — was present in the aerosols, scientists do not know yet whether the viruses remain infectious or whether the tests just detected harmless virus fragments.

R218 and R219: That is great news! If true, there may be an effective treatment before the Fall (until a vaccine is available).

I feel like the word “droplet” has been severely damaged during all of this.

The UK is reporting +765 hospital deaths and +3811 deaths that were previously not counted, mostly outside of hospitals. Still far from the truth but it's a start

Thank you Boris!

WaPo, 4/29/20 : Dogs are being trained to sniff out coronavirus cases

[quote] The dogs (eight Labrador retrievers) are the first trainees in a University of Pennsylvania research project to determine whether canines can detect an odor associated with the virus that causes covid-19. If so, they might eventually be used in a sort of “canine surveillance” corps, the university said — offering a noninvasive, four-legged method to screen people in airports, businesses or hospitals.

[quote] It would not be surprising if the dogs prove adept at detecting SARS-CoV-2. In addition to drugs, explosives and contraband food items, dogs are able to sniff out malaria, cancers and even a bacterium ravaging Florida’s citrus groves. And research has found that viruses have specific odors, said Cynthia M. Otto, director of the Working Dog Center at Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine.

R218 what??? Here's the truth from the Guardian posted just now

Guardian-Treating coronavirus patients with the antiviral drug remdesivir showed no “significant clinical benefits” in the first randomised trial of its kind, according to research released on Wednesday, AFP reports. In a study among more than 200 Covid-19 patients in Wuhan, China, published in The Lancet, doctors found no positive effects of administering the drug compared with a control group of adults. The findings were released after US pharmaceutical giant Gilead, which makes remdesivir, said a separate large-scale trial with the drug had showed positive results. “Unfortunately, our trial found that while safe and adequately tolerated, remdesivir did not provide significant benefits over placebo,” said Bin Cao from China-Japan Friendship Hospital and Capital Medical University in China, who led the research. “This is not the outcome we hoped for.”

Watch out! The trolls are working overtime now! The threat is still present and there is no vaccine or effective treatment that we know of. Hopefully this will change in the future but we are not there yet!

Couple married 73 years say final ‘I love you’ before dying of coronavirus

A Wisconsin couple who had been married 73 years got to hold hands and say a final “I love you” before dying just hours apart from coronavirus, according to their family.

Antibody tests are being rolled out across New York City

The tests, touted by Governor Andrew Cuomo as a major key to restarting the economy, can tell a patient whether their immune system has fought off the bug, even if they never had symptoms.

The Post found nearly two dozen primary care offices across the five boroughs and Long Island that are offering the test for patients who think they may have been exposed, or had a mild case of the bug, but were never able to get tested.

Additionally, CityMD, an urgent care chain with over 100 locations in New York and New Jersey, sent an email out to patients late Monday announcing they have the antibody test available starting Tuesday, according to two copies of the email obtained by The Post.

Just mere weeks ago, New Yorkers seeking to get tested for the coronavirus had to either be a first responder, health care worker or languishing in a hospital bed to receive the coveted test while the antibody exam hadn’t even been developed yet.

Last week, LabCorp announced their own antibody test will now be available at nearly 2,000 testing locations, accessible with a doctor’s note, and tens of thousands of doctor’s offices nationwide, including in New York.

The testing giant currently has the capacity to perform more than 50,000 of the tests each day and hopes to increase that capacity to 200,000 per day by mid-May, a spokesperson told The Post.

When people fight off viruses, they develop antibodies that make them immune to the bug, at least for a short period of time, experts previously told The Post.

The World Health Organization said last week that COVID-19 survivors can expect “some level of protection” after recovering from the virus but more research needs to be done before they can know how long that immunity lasts, how strong it is and if everyone develops it the same way.

Hospitals across the Big Apple have been offering antibody testing for about a month through their plasma donation programs, but had strict requirements. Many had to prove they were positive by showing a doctor or lab note and many had to be re-tested and show they were negative before they could get the test.

Now those requirements are being relaxed at urgent cares and primary care offices.

“Please be aware there is substantial evidence that people may have been infected without ever being symptomatic. Depending on the timing of the infection, the blood test will also detect the IgG antibodies in this population. Patients who believe they were exposed and want to be tested should discuss their situation with a CityMD provider,” the CityMD email reads.

The email advises patients who were symptomatic, but not sick enough to be tested for the coronavirus, to wait 2-4 weeks after the symptoms end to get tested because it takes some time for the antibodies to show up in the blood. They said the test is “nearly 100% accurate” when done more than 14 days after symptoms end.

Patients can expect results within 3-5 days, the email stated.

A similar email went out to patients of the Samuel J. Friedman Health Center in Midtown, Manhattan saying the test was available for recently recovered patients through LabCorp, according to a copy of the message.

It cautioned that the test does not prove immunity and urged patients to “continue to practice an abundance of caution with distancing and self protection” until further testing is done to prove the antibodies bring long-lasting immunity with them.

More than 60K deaths now in the US according to Worldometer and +845 already for today. Trump is full of shit!

The word "troll" has been severely damaged by droplets.

Thanks R229: am going to get the antibody test in Jersey City when available.

R230: Yep! USA will reach the new (too low) benchmark of 74K by Tues of next week.

Correction: +1200 dead now in the US and over19000 critically ill (which is a significant jump from previous days )

Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious diseases expert, said Wednesday in a press conference that a federal trial of the antiviral remdesivir showed the drug blocked an enzyme the virus uses, resulting in a “better” mortality rate and shorter recoveries in coronavirus patients, and that it will be the “standard of care.”

The data shows that remdesivir has a clear cut significant positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery," said Fauci.

It’s a 31% improvement in time to recovery, which Fauci said is “very important, because it has proven that a drug can block this virus.”

Whenever you have clear cut evidence that a drug works, you have an ethical obligation to let the people in the placebo group know,” Fauci said, adding that’s why the announcement was being made.

“This is opening the door to the fact that we now have the capability of treating. I can guarantee you as more people and more companies get involved it's going to get better and better."

Live updates: As ‘quarantine fatigue’ spreads, Fauci says second wave of coronavirus is ‘inevitable’

Corona "Expert" D. Oz needs a haircut STAT !

He's looks like Spanky.

It's all bullshit. Fucking Fauci was quoted yesterday as saying, "If states begin lifting restrictions too early, the country could see a rebound that would get us right back into the same boat we were in a few weeks ago."

What the fuck is he talking about?? When did we ever LEAVE that boat?? He talks as though we've gone through the worst and things have abated. NOTHING has abated. Governor Jackoff of California released his plan to start reopening the state. We just hit a daily high in numbers. Nothing should be reopening. What is going on all of a sudden that everyone has caught the Trump virus of thinking things aren't as serious as they are??

ABC:

How accurate is US COVID-19 death count? Some experts say off by 'tens of thousands'

That's not what Fauci is saying.

A preliminary antibody study done last week showed approx. 20% of NYC residents already carrying Covid-19 antibodies. After a week, I'm assuming that percentage is much higher.

I don't trust all of the sudden remdesivir good news. Trump and cronies must have a financial interest. Besides, how the hell are we supposed to trust a company named Gilead!?

[quote] That's not what Fauci is saying.

I know what Fauci is saying, but it's unbelievably irresponsible to characterize where we are right now as ANY kind of improvement. It's not. We still have no proper treatment. We still have extremely limited PPE for medical staff. We now know that there are at least a dozen other deadly symptoms caused by the virus. Testing is still complete bullshit, and we threw the theory that only the old and infirm will die right out the window weeks ago.

If you tell these idiots who are pushing for reopening the country that things are improving, if you even HINT at it, we're all fucking dead. Fauci is a moron.

Live Updates: F.D.A. Plans to Announce Emergency Use of Coronavirus Drug

Bloomberg News: The Trump admin is quietly organizing a Manhattan Project-style effort to drastically cut the time needed to develop a coronavirus vaccine, with a goal to have 100 million doses ready by year’s end.

I will have the vaccine that will protect you from the invisible enemy in December, provided you reelect me in November.

Of course we don't have proper treatment. Vaccines are a process of trial and error. We've just met this virus, and it's going to take time to to really get to know it well. Being impatient won't help speed up the process. We'd be really, really fortunate to have vaccine by year's end.

R243> I need to see results, over time, for that drug...

Coronavirus Updates UK 29/4/20

Wednesday 29/4/20 = 165,221 cases + 4,076

Deaths: 26,097 + 4,419 (care homes added in)

UK now has third highest death toll in the world.

See how great Brexit was?

Are we getting over 60K dead today?

NYT: The FDA plans to authorize emergency use of the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir for coronavirus treatment as early as Wednesday.

Yashar Ali: Alison Schwartz, who was the director of digital platforms for People Magazine, has died at age 29 due to Coronavirus complications.

Alison was hospitalized and on a ventilator for nearly a month before she passed away.

🎉 Congratulations, OP.

US 29/4

Cases 1,049,43 +13,666

Deaths 60,640 +1,374

r251 see r243

See SylviaFowler's excellent STATNews link at R241.

Yikes.

R244 The difference being, the people involved in the Manhattan project were all actually highly intelligent and qualified.

Who needs anyone else? I have a natural ability.

R258 All the doctors ask him how does he know so much about this? And foreign leaders all congratulate him on the great economy, the greatest economy in the history of the world. It’s the first thing they say when they call him, they say “Sir! How did you do that?”

A 30-year-old teacher died after being denied testing.

That's the thing- they write these articles about people dying at home because they wait too long to go to the hospital- well, they're afraid to go to the hospital. When they get there, they're told to go home and wait it out.

[quote]Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious diseases expert, said Wednesday in a press conference that a federal trial of the antiviral remdesivir showed the drug blocked an enzyme the virus uses, resulting in a “better” mortality rate and shorter recoveries in coronavirus patients, and that it will be the “standard of care.”

This trial was done on people who were already sick enough to be hospitalized. I'd think that its effectiveness would be amplified in people in the early stages of infection. This is good news. This is a known drug that works on ebola, etc. already.

The vaccine being touted out of Oxford is so far along because it has already been studied for over a decade to treat coronaviruses. It's already been through human testing at that level. And, our ability to customize the genetic profile of vaccines will speed up all of the processes concerning vaccine and treatment development.

These are good things.

Ten years and it's still a work in progress?

Very comforting.

A doctor is just now telling Chris Cuomo that remdesivir is only for use with people “in extremis” in the hospital.

R263, that's typical for vaccine development. Maybe you should look things up before you comment unless you're a Repug, in which case, carry on as usual.

^^^ 😍 Somebody still has a massive hard on for the poll troll

Aw, lots of butthurt Debbie Downers sputtering mad about all the recent good news. Even the stock market loves remdesivir.

These Repug states will open up and then stop testing. Watch for a spike in "pneumonia" deaths with no mention of Covid19 starting in about two weeks all over the South.

BBC’s Laura Bicker:

Ok South Korea, here’s some really good news. Only 4 new cases of coronavirus have been reported in last 24 hours and they were all found at the airport.

0 from within the country.

Let me repeat that one more time. ZERO locally transmitted COVID19 cases in last 24 hours.

Fox LA: A bulletin Is being sent out to all California police chiefs notifying them that tomorrow, Governor Newsom will announce the closure of ALL beaches and state parks effective May 1st in response to recent beach crowds in OC

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

r267 = Trumpster

[quote]Ok South Korea, here’s some really good news. Only 4 new cases of coronavirus have been reported in last 24 hours and they were all found at the airport.

How does this fit into that model from that Israeli mathematician that it takes about 70 days for the virus to play itself out with constraints in place? Seems pretty close.

Coronavirus ‘altered the brain’ of NYC ER doc who killed herself, sister says

The sister of top Manhattan ER doctor Lorna Breen — who committed suicide after working on the front lines of the coronavirus battle — said she believes contracting the illness “altered her brain.”

Jennifer Feist told NBC’s “Today” that her 49-year-old sister, who caught COVID-19 herself before returning to work at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, was haunted by the disease and her inability to help more people.

“She had COVID. And I believe that it altered her brain. Then she went back to the most horrific, unimaginable conditions,” Feist said in an interview set to air Thursday.

“For somebody whose life’s calling is helping people, and she just couldn’t help enough people, the combination was just untenable.”

The late doctor kept pulling long hours and was set on saving as many lives as she could.

“She had 12-hour shifts,” said Feist. “When she finished, she said, ‘I can’t leave. Nobody’s leaving. I have to stay and help.'”

Feist said she begged her sister to take better care of herself, but she wouldn’t give up on battling the disease and it eventually “broke” her.

“I kept telling my sister, you know, ‘You can’t — if you can’t function, you can’t help anybody. You have to sleep. You have to rest.’ And she just didn’t want to give up,” said Feist.

“She would not give up. She would not let it break her, which, of course, it did.”

A close pal of the doctor has told The Post that “it broke her” when she returned to work after catching the coronavirus and was told she still wasn’t well enough to return to work and instructed to go back home.

She took her own life Sunday while staying with family in Charlottesville, Va. Her death came two days after rookie Bronx EMT John Mondello fatally shot himself.

Experts have told The Post that their deaths could be just the tip of the iceberg for the mental-health fallout among health care workers battling the virus.

Los Angeles is first major US city to offer free coronavirus tests to all residents

Really sad, R274. Not sure it "altered her brain" as her sister claims. But she clearly had PTSD and should not have been allowed to return until she was well enough.

Here’s the results of that Remdisivir study that had the stock market rallying and all the headlines today:

[quote]Preliminary results indicate that patients who received remdesivir had a 31% faster time to recovery than those who received placebo (p<0.001). Specifically, the median time to recovery was 11 days for patients treated with remdesivir compared with 15 days for those who received placebo. Results also suggested a survival benefit, with a mortality rate of 8.0% for the group receiving remdesivir versus 11.6% for the placebo group (p=0.059).

Remdisivir group had an 8% mortality rate compared to 11.6% in the control group. And they recovered in 11 days vs. 15 days. Not exactly a miracle drug and it probably costs thousands of dollars per dose.

Still it’s better than nothing I guess.

R273, South Korea probably handled this more efficiently than any country on earth.

I read that they had an app people could download on their phones that tells you when a person who tested positive (or their phone, actually) is anywhere near you. This includes in an apartment near you, driving down the street near you, etc. People were able to avoid people that tested positive. And of course in Asian countries it’s very normal to wear a mask if you’re sick, so no one there was going to fight about it or refuse. There were a lot of other things they did that we didn’t or couldn’t, I forget the details. Probably taking people’s temperatures everywhere, Asian countries have been doing that. And they have tested people more than anyone, per capital.

I heard some countries in Europe were working on a similar app, but theirs is somewhat more privacy oriented, so of course it won’t work as well.

We just have not handled this well at all, and the lack of testing is undermining everything we try to do.

Florida is scrubbing their numbers.

CNN-Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said Wednesday a report that Florida officials put a stop to releasing a list of coronavirus deaths to the public “does not make sense.” According to the Tampa Bay Times, the Florida Department of Health intervened to keep a tally of coronavirus deaths kept by Florida’s 22 medical examiners from being released publicly. Dr. Stephen Nelson -- the chairman of the state Medical Examiners Commission, the group that release the list of deaths -- said state officials told him they plan to remove cause of death and case descriptions from death counts, a move he said would render the information “meaningless,” according to the newspaper.

^^its numbers... Sorry

No doubt that FL & GA are scrubbing their numbers. We have less and less reason to believe any of these numbers any more from the laissez-faire states.

Also this tidbit about Remdisivir side effects from an earlier study been conveniently left out: "about 25% of patients receiving it have severe side effects, including multiple-organ dysfunction syndrome, septic shock, acute kidney injury and low blood pressure. Another 23% demonstrated evidence of liver damage on lab test"

Democratic states are inflating their numbers and Republican states are underreporting theirs.

What a dick!

BBC-Brazil registered a record 6,276 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday. It already has the largest number of infections in all of Latin America with 79,685 total confirmed cases and more than 5,500 deaths. President Jair Bolsonaro has downplayed the threat posed by the virus. Asked by reporters for comment after the death toll passed the 5,000 mark on Tuesday, he said: "So what? I'm sorry. What do you want me to do?" One of the worst affected cities has been Manaus in the Amazon. The city's mayor has said that they are preparing to hold more than 4,000 funerals in May - four times the usual number.

Remdisivir is the AZT of SARS-CoV-2. It is barely useful, but it is a first step in getting to the good drugs.

R281 as a former study coordinator (a few decades ago) all adverse events are recorded. whether they are related or not. That list sounds like the clinical outcome of COVID-19. Unless they are statistically higher in Remdisiver group it doesn’t mean anything.

Australia is beginning to relax restrictions. From tomorrow in NSW up to two people can visit another household.

Visualization shows how droplets from one cough can infect an entire airplane

The coronavirus pandemic has brought air travel to an unprecedented standstill — wreaking all sorts of havoc and putting countless jobs at risk — but a new visualization is unlikely to make people eager to fly the friendly skies again soon.

The motion graphic produced by Purdue University researchers shows the aftermath of a single cough on an airplane, with tiny invisible droplets dispersing throughout the cabin, possibly infecting a large number of fellow passengers.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), air travel is down 95 percent from normal levels. As states and countries begin to slowly reopen, will people feel confident enough to get back on airplanes in the wake of COVID-19?

It’s an open question. Passenger cabins have always posed a risk for transmission of all kinds of germs, thanks to the close proximity, many multi-touch surfaces and a lack of fresh air.

Boeing has been experimenting with bathrooms that can sanitize themselves and kill 99.9 percent of germs and pathogens in mere seconds, according to the company. But most airlines were not planning for a major global pandemic.

“When you can easily sell your airplanes, you try to defer the problems to the future,” Qingyan Chen, a Purdue University engineering professor who helped lead a major FAA-funded research project on disease transmission aboard aircraft and has received research funding from Boeing, told The Washington Post. “Today we found that the future is actually 2020.”

Breakthroughs are possible, however.

Ultraviolet lights that promise to destroy viruses without hurting humans are being tested by Columbia University scientists, who say the lights would be effective in airplane cabins, airports, hospitals and schools.

“As we speak, there are 100 hairless mice being exposed for 15 months,” David J. Brenner, director of Columbia’s Center for Radiological Research, explained to The Post. The mice apparently live under the lights for eight hours a day and get eye and skin tests every couple of weeks, and after eight months the researchers have found no damage, “which is encouraging,” he said.

For the study, Chen worked with Boeing engineers to determine whether changing an airplane’s ventilation system would affect the risk of contracting SARS, used as a stand-in for other dangerous viruses that might emerge.

Researchers found that passengers sitting with a SARS patient in a seven-row section of a Boeing 767 would have a one-in-three chance of getting sick from a 5-hour flight. On a shorter 737 flight, the risk was one in five. But they also discovered that changing the ventilation system — for example, by having airflow into the cabin from near the floor rather than from above — would cut the risk by half or more.

It’s worth noting that the Purdue study assumed the virus that caused SARS could stay airborne for long periods, which is different from what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says is typically occurring with the novel coronavirus.

Still, it remains to be seen how far the struggling airline industry — which has received billions in stimulus funds — will go.

Boeing recently announced a plan to lay off 16,000 workers, and a survey from the International Air Transportation Association, which represents carriers worldwide, found that 40 percent of recent passengers said they may wait at least six months after the outbreak is contained to travel again.

“It’s very hard for the industry to change … It’s not like a flip of a switch,” added Chen, pointing to the expense of developing new features and getting them certified by the FAA. But those high costs also underscore the key role for government, he said.

“Regulation is very important. If you regulate that, then they will have to do something.”

Why is this thread moving at a glacial pace? Do people not care about Covid 19 anymore?

Sorry, R287. We've moved on to "Men's obscene penis bulges in the 1970s.

Coronavirus fatigue r287

Like condom fatigue

Wake me up when the 2nd wave hits

R288. Thank you! I needed that laugh so bad! :)

Coronavirus could kill livelihoods of almost half the global workforce: ILO

Some 1.6 billion workers making up nearly half of the global workforce could lose their livelihoods to the coronavirus crisis, international officials warn.

Those at-risk workers have jobs in the “informal economy” that won’t pay them if they get sick or stay home amid widespread lockdowns aimed at controlling the deadly virus, according to the International Labor Organization.

The group known as the ILO expects earnings to plunge 60 percent in the first month of the crisis for the world’s 2 billion informal workers. They have poor access to health care and benefits like sick leave, making them the most vulnerable of the world’s 3.3 billion workers, officials say.

“As the pandemic and the jobs crisis evolve, the need to protect the most vulnerable becomes even more urgent,” ILO director-general Guy Ryder said in a Wednesday statement. “For millions of workers, no income means no food, no security and no future.”

The ILO predicted that the coronavirus will have an even deeper impact on the global labor market than previously thought with roughly two thirds of the world’s workers living in countries where workplaces have been required or recommended to close.

The group expects total working hours to plunge by 10.5 percent in the second quarter of this year, which is equivalent to 305 million full-time jobs. That’s worse than the 6.7 percent drop the ILO previously predicted and more than double the 4.5 percent decline estimated for first quarter.

And about 436 million businesses and self-employed workers in hard-hit industries face “high risks of serious disruption,” including 232 million in wholesale and retail and 111 million in manufacturing, the ILO said in a Wednesday report.

“The eventual increase in global unemployment over 2020 will depend substantially on how the world economy fares in the second half of the year and how effectively policy measures will preserve existing jobs and boost labor demand once the recovery phase begins,” the report reads.

3.8 million more Americans file for unemployment in wake of pandemic

More than 3.8 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, meaning the coronavirus crisis has sidelined more than 30 million workers, new federal data show.

That means 18.6 percent of the nation’s workforce — more people than the entire state of Texas — tried to collect unemployment checks in the last six weeks as the pandemic led to mass layoffs across the country.

The US Department of Labor’s latest seasonally adjusted total of initial jobless claims remained at a level that was unthinkable less than two months ago even as it fell from 4.4 million in the week ending April 18. Economists expected 3.5 million claims last week.

“Record-high filings for unemployment benefits are beginning to abate, but the flood will likely continue,” Bloomberg economists Eliza Winger and Andrew Husby said in a commentary.

Dr. Vin Gupta, re: Remdesivir

"Cautious Optimism"

BBC News (UK) @BBCNews · 18m British Airways tells staff its operation at Gatwick airport may not reopen after the coronavirus pandemic passes

We live in interesting times r294.

Are any of those people actually receiving unemployment? I saw a segment in CNN yesterday where a woman said she had to go to a food pantry in Las Vegas because she had not gotten her unemployment and she was out of food. She had a good job at a casino so her unemployment would have been at a fairly high rate. She had waited for weeks to go to the food pantry because she kept expecting her unemployment check.

I’m wondering if the delay in some places is causing people to take terrible risks in some industries to work, or to reopen businesses that need to stay closed, like hair salons.

If Governors in red states use “unemployment is delayed because of volume,” as an excuse, they can force people to reopen whether they like it or not. They kept saying people in different states had received no benefits.

Thanks for the clarification, EL/R284--I've attached the link that cites the data in the last paragraph.

That last paragraph isn't very informative R281, at least not to me, except insofar as it is clear that it isn't a miracle cure. Hopefully when the full article comes out we'll see the comparison.

There has been controversy over the years on whether to include or exclude expected disease progression in AE reporting. At one point it was excludable as long as the IRB agreed. Then there was a study where the kidney or liver failure rates (forget which one) was way higher than normal disease progression, but it got missed for a long time because it was being excluded from reporting and each site only had a few patients and weird outcomes happen in small samples. There were Congressional hearings in the 1990s and then everything needed to be reported.

US intelligence community rejects conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was "manmade or genetically modified."

r299...

Woman falls to death while posing for cliffside photo to celebrate end of lockdown

A Kazakhstan woman was reportedly killed Sunday after plummeting more than 100 feet off a cliff in Turkey while posing for a photo to commemorate the end of the local coronavirus lockdown.

WIRED @WIRED · 18m Goodbye, open office plan. Hello, plexiglass dividers.

WHy can’t I see or find these threads on the recent? Gah.

Lynphopenia is part of the disease process - isn’t this what happens in AIDS and cancer?

Very concerning

Good info graphic about how SARS-Cov2 infects and the disease made by med students.

WHy can’t I see or find these threads on the recent? Gah.

Lynphopenia is part of the disease process - isn’t this what happens in AIDS and cancer?

Very concerning

Good info graphic about how SARS-Cov2 infects and the disease made by med students.

Macy’s says it plans to have all of its stores reopened in 6 weeks

Macy’s is planning to reopen 68 stores Monday in states including South Carolina and Georgia, where coronavirus restrictions are easing.

It expects to have all of its roughly 775 stores reopened in six weeks, should Covid-19 infection rates taper off and local governments allow retailers to proceed, a spokeswoman confirmed to CNBC.

A second wave of about 50 stores is scheduled to reopen May 11. Macy’s, which also owns Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury, said it has been offering curbside pickup at about 20 Macy’s locations for the past week in a bid to drive some sales.

The 68 Macy’s stores will be operating on reduced hours, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. About a quarter of them are in Simon Property Group’s malls. CNBC first reported 49 of Simon’s malls and outlet centers are set to reopen as soon as this Friday.

Macy’s will take precautions, including enforcing social distancing, to try to make workers and customers feel safe.

Workers will be asked to take their temperatures before they come in and will have to wear masks in stores.

Only a few fitting rooms will be open. Any items tried on by customers will be held for 24 hours before going back to racks. Returned items will also be held for 24 hours.

Enforcing social distancing should be supremely easy at Macy's, given that absolutely no one shops there anyway.

What I've learned so far today. Trump will not extend social distancing guidelines that will soon expire. Many states will at least partially reopen in the coming days or weeks. Florida and Georgia are scrubbing their deaths related to Coronavirus. The UK is only including non hospital deaths for people who officially tested positive and not many thousands of suspected cases where no test was administered. The president of Brazil is a complete jackass. The miracle drug pushed by Fauci is not such a miracle afterall based on the low impact on the mortality rate. Russia continues to report thousands of cases and relatively few deaths. Kushner says everything is fine.

Indeed, Macy's isn't even a store. It's just a name. Federated killed all the stores. It is the coronavirus of shopping experiences.

[quote]Are any of those people actually receiving unemployment?

In LA County, it's taking up to 5-7 weeks for my friends and coworkers to receive their customer numbers and EDD debit cards. The introductory packets and papers to certify have been arriving at their usual glacial pace (3 weeks after opening a case), though. I suspect those will also slow down as 1099 workers started applying this week.

Nobody can certify online until they have their customer numbers, so the lag in receiving them and the cards significately delayed filers from receiving payments.

My friend joked with me that because UI/EDD is still asking if we looked for work every week, they should hire some of us to process claims and get them up to speed.

NYC subways will close overnight for coronavirus cleanings

The transit system that never sleeps is taking a snooze.

New York’s 24/7 subway system will shutter nightly from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. to facilitate coronavirus cleaning, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday in a historic move.

“You never had a challenge of disinfecting every train every 24 hours,” said Cuomo in an Albany press briefing, referring to the challenge he’d put earlier this week to the MTA. “It can best be done by stopping train service from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. every night.”

Cuomo announced the bombshell news in consultation with Mayor Bill de Blasio, and amid a crisis of exploding homelessness and deteriorating conditions in the subway system.

The “massive undertaking” is expected to impact 10,000 riders nightly, according to Cuomo, who said buses, vans and for-hire vehicles will be provided.

Why start now?

U.S. officials crafting retaliatory actions against China over coronavirus as President Trump fumes

Rep. Joe Kennedy III @RepJoeKennedy · 22m Over 60 people have contracted coronavirus directly linked to voting in Wisconsin.

This is a public safety and civil rights issue. We can’t force people to choose between exercising their constitutional right to vote and protecting their health.

We need national vote by mail.

R313, we do not have any kind of national voting program at all. Never have. And getting one would require a constitutional amendment. So save your breath.

[quote]Enforcing social distancing should be supremely easy at Macy's, given that absolutely no one shops there anyway.

True, but since most of the clothing is lying in heaps on the floor, you just might trip over someone all unawares like.

[quote][R313], we do not have any kind of national voting program at all. Never have. And getting one would require a constitutional amendment. So save your breath.

...why? Perhaps you've heard of the Help America Vote Act?

By that logic, any law that Congress passes would require an amendment.

R307 And lets not forget the shit show that is France, Spain and Italy. And as far scrubbed numbers go, they're no slouch.

r282, no one is "inflating" the numbers. It's Reoublicans flogging that conspiracy theory:

Some have said the department’s numbers did not match what coroners were seeing. Those concerns caught the attention of State Sen. Judy Ward (R., Blair), who is advocating for a bill that would give coroners a bigger role in the crisis.

“There’s a discrepancy in the numbers,” Charles E. Kiessling Jr., president of the Pennsylvania Coroners Association and coroner in Lycoming County, said Thursday. “I’m not saying there’s something going on.... I’m not a conspiracy theory guy. But accuracy is important.”

I

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

R42- I’m homeless shelters too..

NONE of the 93 positive cases as MSC shelter in SF showed symptoms.

No, R316. You don't understand the Help America Vote Act, the Constitution, or logic.

The Help America Vote Act is a carrot/stick affair that provides federal funding for certain improvements in the voting process of the various states which voluntarily choose to participate. Participation is entirely voluntary. It does not mandate anything on any state, unless the state voluntarily accepts that mandate in exchange for money to implement certain specified improvements. Even if federal legislation was enacted that required fair and expanded voting by mail (over Mitch McConnell's dead body,) states are free not to participate.

Voting is a state matter. Each state is in charge of its own voting. That cannot change with out a Constitutional amendment which would unleash the full unrestrained fury of the GOP.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

[quote]Even if federal legislation was enacted that required fair and expanded voting by mail (over Mitch McConnell's dead body)

Seems like an equitable trade-off to me.

Trump Hits Biden Over Observing Virus Restrictions | Morning Joe | MSNBC

How are things going for hotels who are harboring the homeless? What about their dogs?

Johnson is back at the helm and is stretching the truth as always. Unfortunately, he hasn't learned anything from his experience. Like Trump, he only knows how to lie. And when that fails, lie some more.

Reuters:

Russian PM Mishustin diagnosed with the new coronavirus

Today I learned a new word! Fomite:

[quote]an object or material which is likely to carry infection, such as clothes, utensils, and furniture.

Armed protesters are intimidating people in Michigan

Those Michigan Militia crazy people have been around for decades. They should have been quietly and away from the cameras eliminated a long, long, time ago.

It’s not just in Michigan, R330. We have these nutcases in VA too. They mobilized to have their counties declared Second Amendment Sanctuaries one after the other and turned out in Richmond to protest the passage of gun control legislation earlier this year. Trump dogwhistles them by vowing to “protect your 2nd amendment!” constantly. They’re part of his base along with White Supremacists and Klan members.

R313 More than 400,000 people voted in that election. Vote by mail is a completely crazy idea. It would be incredibly easy to falsify election results.

r332 = Trump. There is no evidence that mail voting leads to falsified results

This...

Well, thank god, Beverly Hills is reopening the plastic surgery biz, it's been getting pretty ugly out there.

R333 I don't want to hijack the thread, but please see "ballot stuffing," "absentee ballot voter fraud," "votes cast in the names of deceased people" at the link:

r336, "traditional" voting can lead to falsified results but there is no evidence that voter fraud is widespread

R337 There certainly hasn't been the opportunity available that voting by mail would give.

Suggestion for next thread title--Coronavirus Freakout 39: Wild in the Streets

CNN: Sandra Kunz wanted to keep working as a Walmart cashier even as the coronavirus spread.

Despite a lung condition, the 72-year-old in Aurora, Colorado, needed to get her paycheck, according to her sister, Paula Spellman. Her husband, Gus, was injured and out of work, and the couple had bills due.

Kunz died on April 20 from complications related to the coronavirus, her sister said. Gus, who was also sick from the virus, died two days before his wife.

While it is unclear how the couple contracted the virus, Spellman said her sister had expressed concerns about customers at Walmart coughing on her at the cash register.

The cash register has emerged as the most dangerous place in the store, according to public health and worker safety experts. Every item cashiers touch, scan and bag has been handled by customers and other workers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it is possible that a person can get coronavirus by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it.

The job also entails being at arm's length from customers all day rather than the CDC-recommended six feet, making socially distancing nearly impossible, these experts said. The risks for shoppers are heightened as they move toward the register, too. If a cashier is infected, the employee could spread it to customers.

"The cashier spot is still the most dangerous since every customer passes this area and stands there for some time while groceries are moving down the counter," said Brandon Brown, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Riverside.

r338, you are wrong. It's Republicans pushing the narrative that voting by mail is bad, even though Trump voted by mail

Letting States Go Bankrupt An 'Evil Option': Sen. Tim Kaine | Morning Joe | MSNBC

R341 If you want to keep talking about voting by mail, start a thread.

More faulty product. Not sure why vents are still sought after when they have shown to be killing people! Iatrogenic death! 88% of people who go on them die!

Meanwhile, while Florida and Georgia are busy scrubbing their numbers, there are already 1900 more deaths in the US so far today. Sure Jared. Sure.

Lab in Wuhan had dodgy safety standards

The DIA report, however, cites U.S. government and Chinese researchers that found "about 33 percent of the original 41 identified cases did not have direct exposure" to the market. That, along with what's known of the laboratory's work in past few years, raised reasonable suspicion that the pandemic may have been caused by a lab error, not the wet market.

WaPo: Nearly seven weeks into the shutdown, here’s why so many are still getting sick.

The District, Maryland and Virginia have been shut down for weeks, their economies in tatters. Large swaths of the population venture out only rarely, wrapped in masks and gloves.

But hundreds of new cases of covid-19 are still reported each day, as the virus continues its devastating march through nursing homes, jails and other institutional settings. Doctors and public health officials said it increasingly is infecting people who can’t afford to miss work, or telecommute — grocery store employees, delivery drivers and construction workers. Sometimes, they, in turn, infect their families.

On Thursday alone, there were nearly 2,000 new cases, and 92 deaths.

“It is community spread, then taking it home,” said Sonja Bachus, chief executive of Greater Baden Medical Services, which has locations in Charles and Prince George’s counties in Maryland. “It is disheartening.”

Why are countries and politicians acting as if we are over the outbreak in US and UK?

Because they want everybody to go back to work and sacrifice themselves on the altar of capitalism, R349.

Texas reports 1,033 new cases of COVID-19 today. The last time the state broke 1,000 was on April 10.

The state also reported 50 more COVID-19 deaths on Thursday, the most in any one day since the state reported its first deaths in mid-March.

The state is set to begin reopening tomorrow.

Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker just need to go ahead and switch parties.

After the feds confiscated a bunch of masks that MA had purchased, Hogan had test kits that MD had bought from South Korea flown directly into BWI (instead of Dulles) and had the MD state police and the National Guard there just in case.

From my POV living in Texas, people were starting early today. My typical noonish Thursday grocery shopping at Walmart was three times busier today than last week. In fact, it was back to pre-pandemic days. Parking was farther from the store, a good indicator.

About half of the people wore masks. While courteous, the shoppers could not honor the 6-foot distancing, especially at checkout. The meat Dept had several open spots. Recent news reports indicate meat packing plants are closing due to employee cases of Coronavirus and there may be a shortage. I'm not sure if that was causing the problem.

R349 Really. UK has already surpassed France and Spain in total deaths and will probably surpass much-publicized Italy soon. And the new cases just keep coming: 4000+ yesterday, 6000+ today.

Eight weeks in it feels like you're gonna die

But you get used to anything

Sooner or later it just becomes your life

Kitchen floor in the evening tossin' my little babies high

Mary's smiling but she's watching me out of the corner of her eye

Seems you can't get any more than half free

I step out onto the front porch and suck the air deep inside of me

Got a cold mind to go tripping 'cross that thin line

I'm sick of doin' plague time

The UK is in a terrible state because spaztastic Boris took so long to lock the country down.

This time five weeks ago everything was open including huge 60k stadiums. The country has only been on lockdown since 24th March. Prior to that everyone was getting in their last restaurant meal, last movie, last trip to the theatre, last gig, last club night. Activity ramped up hugely in the first three weeks of March, when other countries were closed and the UK wasn't. Now we are paying the price - third worst death toll in a country of only 60 million.

Sure, the worst is behind us. Is that why the 3-day total number of US COVID-19 deaths is at an all-time high? 7,061 deaths 4/28-4/30 in the US, and today's final numbers haven't even been reported (let alone how much under-reporting is going on).

[quote]NASCAR announces it will begin holding races again in mid-May

Macy’s and Nascar!

An article with pictures.

[quote]The stock market had its biggest monthly surge in over 30 years in April, with the S&P 500 gaining 12.7% while the Dow advanced 11.1%. It was the third-biggest monthly gain for the S&P 500 since World War II.

It seems like things are starting to bounce back. If Dump had just kept his mouth shut he probably could have weathered this and come out OK but of course he couldn’t do that. Now his daily meltdowns have probably damaged him beyond repair.

Too bad for Dump. He self-sabotaged and now he may be done.

I have been tracking USA new CV cases daily and they have increased every day: Tues 25,409, Wed 28,429 and Today 30,825. They are lying to the public when they say the worst is behind us, but unfortunately, people who don't track the numbers will believe the lies, put themselves at risk and make things worse. As the numbers fall in NY and NJ, they are steadily creeping up across the rest of the country.

'I have been tracking USA new CV cases daily and they have increased every day: Tues 25,409, Wed 28,429 and Today 30,825.'

Doh! Everyone on this thread has been doing that. But the increase is not exponential, as the doomsday trolls here forecast. It's actually slowing down a lot compared to a week ago.

In 1665, bubonic plague killed 31k in the UK. In less than two months, coronavirus has killed 26k in the UK.

Nascar? Oh, dear lord.

A lot of the cases showing up now are due to increased testing. I'm more worried about the increased deaths. Here in Illinois, everything just keeps going up even though we supposedly hit our peak hospital usage, etc. weeks ago. And now the Repug fuckers are suing the governor to open everything up right away. I hate Repugs an wish they'd all die.

R363, sorry, but you are a fucking idiot. What was the population of the UK in 1665?

R364, I think they announced yesterday that they were just going to race without an audience in the stands. If that's what they're doing, I don't give a shit. Let the Repug assholes entertain themselves by watching other Repug assholes drive in circles. Maybe they'll stay the fuck home.

R362: Doh yourself! People HERE are tracking the numbers, but like I said, there are many people out there who are NOT tracking the numbers and will believe the LIES. As for exponential growth, we will see about that in a few weeks/months after the bullshit/too early reopenings - IF they report the numbers accurately (unlike FL).

R361 People are looking at what’s happening in Europe because that’s been predictive for what will happen here. Their daily death numbers are way down from what they were at their peaks. France’s daily deaths are 1/4 what they were, Spain’s and Italy’s are 1/3. Even UK’s daily deaths are half what they were at their peak. What happened in Europe happened here a couple of weeks later so looking at those trends things do look brighter here.

I hear you R367, but are we handling things better than Europe (excluding UK) or worse? That has to be factored in also - which is why reopening too early is so upsetting.

R361 New cases are a function of how much testing is being done. Daily deaths is a more meaningful way to track what’s happening.

R369, I feel like I've read that exact thing recently...

R368 Italy and Spain are both starting to open up and their daily deaths are still decreasing (for now anyway.)

OK - I will focus on death rates instead👍Cases are making me upset.

Doomsday trolls here seem to be absent from the thread, now it's becoming clear that the death count isn't doubling every week as they had hopefully predicted.

R372 Actually as the number of new cases increases faster than the number of daily deaths it makes the death rate better, so there’s that too.

R361 You're not very intelligent are you?

And how many countries began reopening while their number of daily deaths was still cresting or at its peak?

It's really not fair to compare USA with Europe. They are so small, our population is huge and over 50 states. It's much harder to manage the virus, just think about the logistics...

I think USA is doing ok, could be better but not that bad. NYC is epicenter and too bad our cunt mayor was telling people to go watch movies in theaters in March and that Dr. Oxi something was telling public Subway is safe during early days. Go to the Chinese new year parade they told New Yorkers!

It's really not fair to compare USA with Europe. They are so small, our population is huge and over 50 states. It's much harder to manage the virus, just think about the logistics...

I think USA is doing ok, could be better but not that bad. NYC is epicenter and too bad our cunt mayor was telling people to go watch movies in theaters in March and that Dr. Oxi something was telling public Subway is safe during early days. Go to the Chinese new year parade they told New Yorkers!

Dead’ coronavirus particles may cause recovered patients to test positive

South Korean health officials said recovered coronavirus patients who later tested positive again only did so because “dead” virus particles remained in their bodies — not because they became reinfected.

A total of 292 people in the country who were cleared of the deadly bug later tested positive for COVID-19 again — a phenomenon that initially puzzled officials, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, according to a report in Newsweek.

But they’ve now determined that residual fragments of the virus are likely responsible.

“RNA fragments still can exist in a cell even if the virus is inactivated,” said Oh Myoung-don, who heads the KCDC’s clinical committee for emerging disease control, Newsweek said.

NASCAR? Well NASCAR fans probably think it's a hoax anyway. Are they going to allow spectators in-person...or will fans be required to watch on TV? If they allow in-person spectators, will they limit the number of seats available? If so, scalpers are going to have a field day, and those with bad seats will sneak into the empty seats up front.

That airplane article is freaking me out. I fly for work and I feel like I'll never get on another airplane again. I guess I'd better figure out something else to do.

🧛 [italic] And I Can Count To Ten !

We are three weeks to a month behind Europe in this. They are starting to open now just like we could probably start to look at opening up at the end of May. It's too early.

[quote]That airplane article is freaking me out.

If everyone on a plane is required to wear a mask (which airlines are starting to do) that viral spread will be much less of a risk. If I absolutely HAD to fly somewhere I’d make sure the airline required masks on all passengers before buying a ticket.

[quote] If everyone on a plane is required to wear a mask (which airlines are starting to do) that viral spread will be much less of a risk. If I absolutely HAD to fly somewhere I’d make sure the airline required masks on all passengers before buying a ticket.

Yeah, but who can wear a mask for 6-10 hours? I'm not worried about eating or drinking on the flight. I can live going without. But I do get up and walk around to stretch my legs. And since none of us has access to masks that actually prevent infection, I wouldn't trust the masks people are wearing. And forget about the bathrooms!

R376. Exactly! Some people here are living in a dreamworld.

Looking forward to the resumption of the Trump rallies. Let them hug and shake hands and sit as close together as they want. The sooner, the better.

With free Clorox and syringes at the refreshment stands!

+190 new cases in the tiny Maldives yesterday. So much for my island escape back up plan

[quote]Yeah, but who can wear a mask for 6-10 hours?

Any doctor or nurse working the COVID floor.

How are you holding up VOTN?

I made it through my redeployment physically unscathed, since I'm about two weeks out without any real symptoms. And I'm honestly surprised by that, I had a few moments where things were so urgent that I forgot pieces of PPE (face shield or gown, not mask) before going into the rooms.

Mentally is another thing entirely. I've noticed I'm a lot more short-tempered than normal, and I'm having rough dreams.

You've been in my thoughts and I am glad to hear you are on the other side of deployment. What you've been through is hard for most of us to understand. There are inadequate words to thank you.

I managed to post the below on the wrong thread like a garden variety idiot. Here it is with slight additions.

It isn't just more available testing that is making the US numbers go up. In my County access to testing continues to increase, but new confirmed infections have gone from 2,000 per day to under a 1,000 per day thanks to stay-at-home orders starting mid-March. The US numbers as a whole now are a mix of responsible states being responsible for the past month and half to two months, areas where the plague is still at the case stage of case-case-case-cluster-cluster - -boom. (looking at you interior Maine) and areas where doubling every six days is happening now (hello rural red states with meat packing plants and Georgia).

Accusing people of being doomsday hysterics or pollyanish is kind of silly. It is just math. And math doesn't care about your ideological viewpoint. And being innumerate doesn't make you own the libs. And despite everything mango Mussolini is doing to kill us all there are hopeful things (far UV, Immunoglobulin created from high antibody plasma) in the R&D pipeline.

On another note, I'd like to see that airplane study replicated on the LIRR/MetroNorth.

And on another, 'nother note, I wore a cloth mask with an N95 filter insert on flights of 5ish hours back in February and it was excruciatingly unpleasant, and I did remove it to chug water at one point on both flights, but it is doable. I am sure a surgical mask would be more comfortable.

And finally, I just got back from my GP where I had an antibody test. Results are expected in 3-5 days.

[quote]I made it through my redeployment physically unscathed, since I'm about two weeks out without any real symptoms.

Very happy to hear that, hope the mental strain eases soon.

[quote]Accusing people of being doomsday hysterics or pollyanish is kind of silly. It is just math. And math doesn't care about your ideological viewpoint. And being innumerate doesn't make you own the libs.

I wonder at the mentality of folks like the protestors who crammed themselves together in the enclosed lobby of the Michigan capitol yesterday, most of them maskless. What do they not get about a contagious virus that can be spread by asymptomatic carriers? Do they just not believe the numbers -- 3,789 Michiganders dead of COVID-19 in two months? Do they somehow think they're immune? Do they not care if they live or die, or if they give a fatal infection to a loved one? It's mystifying to me.

Thank you for your service, VotN.

And thank you, ElderLez. You're a grounding voice of sanity amidst all of this terrifying chaos. How's your pup?

R395, those militia types you saw in Michigan are PROFOUNDLY STUPID. That's the starting point. That's how they drifted into their militias. Stupid people listening to stupid people air their grievances. Grievance. That's what they share with one another. They are aggrieved. And that is Trump's M.O. He is profoundly stupid and eternally aggrieved. He was just born with hundreds of millions of dollars, so he is aggrieved because of mental illness and the Michigan militia types are aggrieved because they live in squalor, are certain they deserve better, and can't understand any of how this happened to them. Like Trump, they are always sure that someone else is to blame. They are self-centered. They are short-sighted. They are just roiling pits of self-pity and grievance.

R395 They think that Whitmer is reporting non-Covid deaths as Covid-19 for access to more federal funding.

R395 They think that Whitmer is reporting non-Covid deaths as Covid-19 for access to more federal funding.

The pup is good Sylvia! He's itching a little more than usual, and I am wondering if that is from the stress of us always being around, but he's just a whirlwind of affection and joy. I hope you and Seamus are well.

Here's some good news on the science front.

R400 Seamus is great. And, since he's prone to allergies and an overly-acidic tummy, I always have a full stockpile of benedryl and pepcid in the house -- if some of the COVID-19 treatment theories floating around out there are true, he may literally save our lives!

Well between my reflux and bee allergy my household is safe too. lol

Adding my thanks to VotN and ElderLez.

Things seem to finally be settling into steady state. We're not getting crushed with patients and they're starting to take fewer and fewer people from other services.

Of course, that also means yahoos are going to start advocating for Cuomo not to extend the deadline, and as we've seen literally everywhere else, that's been a bad idea.

Thanks for the update, VOTN, I have had you in my thoughts.

Did you see this on the IHME model? For certain locations (like Ohio) they now say this:

[quote] Projections unavailable- Long-term projections are unavailable for this location. Our model does not account for easing social distancing or quantify the risk of resurgence.

They actually still do show the projections, but they put this warning/disclaimer up because they can't factor half-assed social distancing into the model

I saw the person in charge of the model last night on MSNBC, and he said they were trying to figure out how to present the projections now that there are so many versions of social distancing in the states. I believe he said that they are waiting for trends in actual data over the next few weeks to figure out how to change the models.

I mean, they'd adjusted the total deaths downward, and now we're about to hit that, probably tomorrow unless there's a surge today.

But, you know, let's get back to normal because Sweden or whatever.

+739 deaths in the UK. Will "officially" pass Italy in a few days, even though the true death count is far above this. There are nearly 50K excess deaths relative to previous years according to some reports. Unfortunately, it is going to be a very long and painful spring/summer followed immediately by the FALL/WINTER when things are expected to pick up again.

First, add my thanks to ElderLez & VOTN for their informed & equanimous posts.

Next, I'm curious how many DLers are getting antibody tests, which tests, and in what circumstances? ElderLez, is your test part of the NYC sampling? I just got approval for a UCSF antibody test here in San Francisco, and will head to the lab for a blood draw later today; I should have results some time next week. Apparently the UCSF test has a high reliability rate. The testing is at my request, but both my PCP and I believe I may have had mild CV symptoms back in March. My PCP agreed after I demonstrated my awareness of the test's inherent uncertainties re: reliability and conferred immunity.

I've seen better informed posts elsewhere.

VOTN and Elderlez 💕 you both!

Trumpsters are just denying the death totals as inflated and back to treating it as an overblown panic that is no worse than the regular flu.

Mitt Romney is introducing legislation that gives frontline workers (including grocery store employees) bonus pay for May, June, and July.

Workers would receive up to an additional $12 an hour during this time period.

3/4 of the cost would be covered by the federal government.

Not a fan of Romney in general, but he has proven to be one of the few Republicans in Congress with even a tiny shred of dignity

R414: I was thinking the same!

Well, the fucktard governor of Indiana is now just going to go ahead and open up the state. No face masks and 250 person gatherings as soon as June. July 4th, anything goes! What a fucker. I hope Pritzker (Illinois's governor) locks our fucking border. I new we couldn't trust the Repug fuckers who supposedly joined the Midwest coalition of states.

65K deaths now in the US. Another threshold crossed. Where will it end? Nobody knows

I've been trying to link a CNN article and it keeps getting rejected. Is this something new?

Is VOTN a real doctor or does he just play one on Datalounge?

Do DOs count? I'll leave it up to you.

I remember when he used to haunt this place a couple years back there was a lot of speculation that he was full of shit. I don't have any evidence one way or another, I just remember there were several people who were not buying it.

R418 DL won’t accept links to CNN for some reason. Just another one of DL’s little glitches.

Gotcha. Thanks, R422. I'll cut and paste.

"Do DO's* count?"

[italic] * Doctors of Outrageousness ?

The new coronavirus is likely to keep spreading for at least another 18 months to two years—until 60% to 70% of the population has been infected, a team of longstanding pandemic experts predicted in a report released Thursday.

They recommended that the US prepare for a worst-case scenario that includes a second big wave of coronavirus infections in the fall and winter. Even in a best-case scenario, people will continue to die from the virus, they predicted. "This thing's not going to stop until it infects 60 to 70 percent of people," Mike Osterholm, who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, told CNN. "The idea that this is going to be done soon defies microbiology." Osterholm has been writing about the risk of pandemics for 20 years and has advised several presidents. He wrote the report along with Harvard School of Public Health epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, who is also a top expert on pandemics; Dr. Kristine Moore, a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist who is now medical director for CIDRAP; and historian John Barry, who wrote the 2004 book "The Great Influenza" about the 1918 flu pandemic. Waiting for herd immunity Because Covid-19 is new, no one has any immunity, they said. "The length of the pandemic will likely be 18 to 24 months, as herd immunity gradually develops in the human population," they wrote. Their predictions are different from models presented by groups such as the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington or the models produced by Imperial College London, whose report predicting millions of deaths in the US and UK helped galvanize responses by both governments. The CIDRAP-led team used those reports, historical data on past pandemics, and published reports about the medical details of Covid-19 to put together their forecast.

"I have said for a long time that when you are trying to understand how infectious disease is going to unfold, you should rely on history as well as models," Lipsitch told CNN. For instance, pandemic infections don't tend to die down in the summer, like seasonal flu does., he said. Covid-19 is most comparable to a pandemic strain of influenza, they said. "Because of a longer incubation period, more asymptomatic spread, and a higher R0, COVID-19 appears to spread more easily than flu," they wrote in the report. R0 is the average number of other people infected by each patient. "A higher R0 means more people will need to get infected and become immune before the pandemic can end," they add. "Based on the most recent flu pandemics, this outbreak will likely last 18 to 24 months." Preparing for the worst They said government officials should stop telling people the pandemic could be ending and instead prepare citizens for a long haul. Three scenarios are possible, they said: Scenario 1: The first wave of Covid-19 in spring 2020 is followed by a series of repetitive smaller waves that occur through the summer and then consistently over a one- to two-year period, gradually diminishing sometime in 2021 Scenario 2: The first wave of Covid-19 is followed by a larger wave in the fall or winter and one or more smaller waves in 2021. "This pattern will require the reinstitution of mitigation measures in the fall in an attempt to drive down spread of infection and prevent healthcare systems from being overwhelmed," they wrote. "This pattern is similar to what was seen with the 1918-19 pandemic."

UK had another terrible day. Now 4th in the world for case numbers and third for deaths.

France, Italy and Spain are well past the peak. All have death totals in the 200s today.

Friday 1/5/20

UK 177,454 cases + 6,201 new cases

27,510 deaths + 739 new deaths

The UK also refuses to disclose how many people have recovered, the only country to do this.

David Icke was kicked off Facebook for spreading coronavirus misinformation

The Reptilians finally got him.

[quote]I remember when he used to haunt this place a couple years back there was a lot of speculation that he was full of shit. I don't have any evidence one way or another, I just remember there were several people who were not buying it.

I assure you, if I was making this up, I would have invented a more impressive resume.

'Will "officially" pass Italy in a few days, even though the true death count is far above this.'

That is the true total in the UK, troll. They have added in 4k backdated care home and community deaths and are now including them in each daily total.

I notice you're not commenting on the three countries which have flattened the curve very well and are now reopening (Italy, France and Spain) because it doesn't fit with your theory that deaths carry on doubling and tripling.

5G? The Jewwwwwssss? Pedestrian. What happened to the lizard people?

Germ warfare researchers design ‘game-changer’ coronavirus test

Federal germ warfare researchers have designed a “game-changer” coronavirus test that quickly identifies carriers of the deadly bug — before they become infectious, according to a new report.

The test, which emerged from a project set up by the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency aimed at rapid diagnosis of germ or chemical warfare poisoning, was quickly repurposed when the pandemic broke out — and now may be able to detect the virus’ presence as early as 24 hours after infection, the Guardian reported.

That’s several days before a carrier is considered capable of spreading the disease to others, according to the report. It’s also about four days before existing tests can detect COVID-19.

The breakthrough test is expected to be presented to the FDA for emergency use approval within a week.

“The concept fills a diagnostic gap worldwide,” Dr. Brad Ringeisen, the head of DARPA’s biological technologies office, told the Guardian, explaining that it should also fill in testing gaps at later stages of the infection.

With FDA approval, the test has the potential to be “absolutely a game-changer,” he said.

The test uses the same polymerase chain reaction machines currently employed for existing nasal swab tests, according to Dr. Eric Van Gieson, who repurposed the biological warfare program to instead focus on the new epidemic.

“It’s a simple tweak,” Van Gieson told the Guardian. “The infrastructure is already there.”

The new approach looks at the body’s response as it fights the coronavirus, rather than simply the virus itself, which is detected by the nasal swab tests.

He said the testing approach, which looks at the body’s response as it fights COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, should produce earlier results than current nose-swab tests that hunt for the virus itself.

“Because the immune response to infection develops immediately after infection, a COVID signature is expected to provide more sensitive COVID infection diagnosis earlier,” Professor Stuart Sealfon, who leads the research team at NYC’s Mount Sinai Hospital, told the outlet.

If emergency approval is granted, the test is expected to be rolled out in the US in the second half of the month.

Approval is not guaranteed, but scientists told the outlet it could make a huge difference as governments move to loosen lockdowns and consider how to control a possible second wave.

“We are all extremely excited,” Van Gieson told the outlet. “We want to roll this test out as quickly as we can, but at the same time share with others who might want to implement in their own countries.”

More countries join Trump in call for probe of China, WHO over coronavirus

More US allies and other countries are joining the Trump administration’s call for an investigation into China, the World Health Organization and the origins of the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

“There’s a global recognition that China is responsible for this crisis, wasn’t transparent, and that not getting to the bottom of this could lead to future pandemics,” the Atlantic Council’s Matthew Kroenig, author of a new book, “The Return of Great Power Rivalry,” told the Washington Examiner.

“This is a good sign that we’re seeing a number of key democratic allies in Europe and Asia with a pretty unified voice saying, ‘China is a problem, we need more information, and [to not be] intimidated by China’s heavy-handed response,’” Kroenig said, referring to the ruling Communist Party’s economic threats against nations that have been critical of the regime’s handling of the pandemic and lack of transparency.

“You’re seeing a consensus among America’s closest allies that values and national security interests, with regard to the relationship with China, now trumps economics,” former Australian defense ministry adviser Patrick Buchan told the Examiner.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called for an investigation into the emergence of the pandemic as well as the WHO’s response to the crisis. Chinese officials tried to thwart any probe with economic threats, but Australian officials refused to back down.

Chinese officials are furious with Australia, which also called for Taiwan — an autonomous country that China considers a renegade province — to rejoin the WHO several years after Beijing forced its ouster.

“If the mood is going from bad to worse, people would think why we should go to such a country while it’s not so friendly to China,” Chinese Ambassador Cheng Jingye told the Australian Financial Review this week.

And also, maybe the ordinary people will think why they should drink Australian wine or eat Australian beef. Why couldn’t we do it differently?”

Sweden has also called for a probe.

“When the global situation of Covid-19 is under control, it is both reasonable and important that an international, independent investigation be conducted to gain knowledge about the origin and spread of the coronavirus,” Swedish Health Minister Lena Hallengren wrote in a Wednesday message to her parliament, the paper reported.

“It is also important that the entire international community’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, including the World Health Organization, is investigated.”

The president of the European Commission has also backed calls for a probe into the origin of the coronavirus but said China should be involved in the process, CNBC reported.

Lawmakers in countries like Germany, Sweden and Australia have also asked for an investigation into the virus, which has so far infected over 3.2 million people and killed over 230,000.

Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the EU’s executive arm, told CNBC she would like to see China work with her group and others to get to the bottom of how the virus emerged.

“I think this is for all of us important, I mean for the whole world it is important. You never know when the next virus is starting, so we all want for the next time, we have learned our lesson and we’ve established a system of early warning that really functions and the whole world has to contribute to that,” she said, while calling for more transparency in the future.

“For example, at the level of the European Union, we know that we need a more robust data system for such situations as we see it right now with the coronavirus. And for building up a system that is, that you can count on,” she said.

Coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, was first reported in December in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Trump said Thursday that he’s seen evidence linking the coronavirus to a Wuhan lab, but declined to elaborate, saying: “I can’t tell you that. I am not allowed to tell you that.”

The US intelligence community, however, released a statement earlier Thursday indicating that it agreed with the scientific consensus that the virus wasn’t “man-made” or genetically modified.

The WHO, though, is reserving its criticism of China and the ruling Communist Party.

Richard Horton, co-chair of the WHO’s independent Expert Review Group, praised China’s handling of the pandemic in an interview with the China Global Television Network.

“China should be very proud of its medical and scientific community,” Horton said, adding that it was unhelpful, incorrect and factually incorrect to blame a country, like China, for the pandemic.

Horton, who also is editor-in-chief of the British medical journal The Lancet, cast blame on the US for purportedly acting too slowly in response to the threat.

“Most Western countries, and the United States of America, wasted the whole of February and early March before they acted. That is the human tragedy of COVID-19,” he said. Deborah Birx, the State Department immunologist on the White House coronavirus task force, said the Chinese Communist Party’s initial public reporting influenced assumptions elsewhere in the world about the nature of the virus. The Communist Party delayed for six days before warning its citizens that the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan had likely become a pandemic, allowing thousands of people to become infected, according to reports.

Mr. Colbert...

Gilead gets emergency FDA authorization for remdesivir to treat coronavirus, Trump says

R429. I really wish that I was a troll and that I was just making all of this shit up. But sadly this is not the case. The 4K backdated deaths in the UK are only the tip of the iceberg. There are many thousands of other deaths that are not included even though coronavirus is listed as the cause of death on the death certificates due to lack of available testing. Everyone in Europe either already knows or is starting to realise that the situation in the UK is much worse than reported. Regarding the other countries that you mentioned, it is true that deaths and hospitalizations are declining. I never said anything about deaths doubling or trippling as you state. Not sure where you got that shit from. It also worth mentioning that most of these countries, including my own, have been under meaningful lockdowns for weeks and months. Happy 1st of May to you. Hoping that your life returns to "normal " as soon as possible. The sooner, the better

A good thread on plateauing and why opening up states already is stupid.

White House blocks Fauci from testifying before House panel, committee spokesman says

If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

R438, that would be hilarious if it weren't so sad. They don't want to take Fauci away from his important COVID-19 responsibilities, but were fine with him wasting 2 hours a day for weeks listening to Trump prattle at the WH briefings.

Luckily Tom Frieden will testify at the House hearings. He's sure to give them an earful.

It was a standard GP visit and it so happened that they were providing access to commercial antibody tests this week. It is the not particularly specific labcorp test. If it comes back positive I'll get the better Sinai test so I can give plasma.

Kind of shocked about the below.

Wouldn't it be lovely if this stuff works?

Trump moving the goalpost.

CNN-US President Donald Trump has discussed the projected number of deaths from coronavirus, saying that “hopefully we are going to come in below that 100,000 lives lost.”Trump said Friday that thanks to the steps Americans have taken as part of the 30 days to slow the spread guidelines, “we have saved thousands and thousands of lives. I can even make that, if you want, hundreds of thousands of lives.”Trump said the 100,000 figure is a “horrible number nevertheless,” and added that coronavirus “should have been stopped at the source, but it wasn’t.”The 100,000 predicted deaths is a higher number than Trump has used in recent weeks -- previously, he had been predicting up to 70,000 people dying from the virus

The hidden problem in Somalia

Why is this thread so inactive?

I stumbled upon this article last night. It probably won't get the attention it deserves because people want MIRACLE CURES not outbreak mitigation, but this is such a simple yet profound potential game-changer. Detecting spikes in infection by analyzing sewage! In effect, you could have population-level testing that could get cities ahead of the curve and allow them to determine when to enforce quarantines without the time-consuming hassle of testing individual people. Every major metro should start doing this immediately.

Well, at least some of the protestors aren't hiding it.

JB Pritzker is Jewish, but the way.

Guardian-Coronavirus deaths in Italy have risen by 474, after 269 new deaths were recorded on Friday, marking the largest daily toll since 21 April, authorities have announced. The steep increase in deaths followed a gradual declining trend and was driven largely by Lombardy, the country’s worst affected region, where there were 329 deaths in the last 24 hours compared with 88 the day before. The daily tally of new infections nationwide was broadly stable for a third day running at 1,900 against 1,965 on Friday. It brings the total death toll in the Mediterranean country to 28,710, the second highest in the world after the US.

An explanation for the increase in Italy

BBC-Italy has experienced its largest daily death toll since 21 April with 474 fatalities reported, up on 269 the day before. The total death toll now stands at 28,710, the Civil Protection Agency reported - second only to the United States But the increased figure is distorted and might actually mask positive news, La Repubblica newspaper reports, as 282 deaths not reported in April were only just registered and added to the toll. That would put the most recent daily figure at 192 deaths - the first time it has dropped below 200 since 14 March, it says. The news comes just two days before Italy plans to ease the restrictions it imposed seven weeks ago to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Yeah, that'll do.

Trump Moves to Replace Watchdog Who Identified Critical Medical Shortages

Protests spread, fueled by economic woes and Internet subcultures

Politico:

Coronavirus gets a promising drug. MAGA world isn’t buying it.

Democrats Demand To Know What The Hell Jared Kushner Is Doing

Interesting article.

Anyone else scared to eat meat? We’ve long known the extent of meat production and packing, but the level of nasty treatment it workers and animals alike are very amplified during this pandemic. I have a whole chicken in my fridge and I can’t bring myself to cook it. I’m so turned off by all that’s coming out.

I buy organic/humane/grass/wild fed etc for all meat and dairy when I can but I have read that bit is also pretty meaningless. I know our produce is also affected and those workers are also treated like shit.

Victory garden??

I Wish the poster who knew all about meds and foods and preparing would come back! Also the poster who was very knowledgeable about pet meds. Weirdly I have seen ivermectin being spoken about on twitter as a possible tx.

I wonder why more doctors are not doing IV vitamin C for tx of CV? I know there is a clinical trial right now with it, but I do wonder if things like vitamin C/D will ever get it prefffered treatment, even with very cheap and high safety profile given they cannot make gobs of money 💰 like with something such as Remsdivir ?

Also beyond obvious income and racial inequality this virus seems to have a very targeted nature on who it is killing .. :(

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas hit a third straight day of more than 1,000 new coronavirus cases Saturday as the state charged into its first weekend of re-opening the economy with residents allowed to go back to malls, restaurants, movie theaters and retail stores in limited numbers.

State health officials reported 1,293 new cases, the second-highest single-day infection rate, marking the first time that Texas has recorded more than 1,000 three days in a row.

Officials also reported 31 new deaths, the first time Texas has surpassed 30 on four consecutive days, although fatalities declined for a second consecutive day after a peak of 50 deaths on Friday.

[quote] I buy organic/humane/grass/wild fed etc for all meat and dairy when I can but I have read that bit is also pretty meaningless.

Not sure if it is an option for you, but you may want to check out your local farmers market. The ones near me have vendors who sell their own farm-raised meat. Yes, it is a bit pricey, but it’s better than nothing, and I feel that it is handled in safe way.

Or...oh, I don't know...maybe consider this time as an opportunity to go meatless?

BBC-Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says his company Berkshire Hathaway has sold all of its shares in the four largest US airlines.Speaking at the annual shareholders' meeting, Mr Buffett said "the world has changed" because of the coronavirus. He then said he had been wrong to invest in the airline industry. Mr Buffett's comments came just hours after Berkshire Hathaway announced a record $50bn (£40bn) net first quarter loss, Reuters news agency reports. The conglomerate had an 11% stake in Delta Air Lines, 10% of American Airlines, 10% of Southwest Airlines, and 9% of United Airlines, according to its annual report and company. The firm began investing in the four airlines in 2016, after avoiding the aviation industry for years. Mr Buffett told the meeting, which was held virtually: "We made that decision in terms of the airline business. We took money out of the business basically even at a substantial loss. "We will not fund a company that... where we think that it is going to chew up money in the future."

This morning, Spain reported its lowest death toll in nearly 6 weeks. This news arrives just as the country begins to gradually reopen. Germany has also loosened some restrictions including the reopening of churches. Although this is positive news, many countries are only near the point when the lockdowns began. There are still hundreds of new infections every day and many dozens of deaths even with the social distancing measures in place. Although these countries have crossed the first mountain, there are still many left to climb, perhaps some even larger than the first. Sadly, this is going to be a long battle with ups and downs and sickness and death. Despite the euphoria, the danger is ever lurking.

Guardian -Watchdog groups in the US say Donald Trump’s close ties with donors and backers deserve scrutiny as trillions in federal funds are handed out during the Covid-19 crisis. Peter Stone reports from Washington.

Fracking billionaire and Trump donor Harold Hamm was among an elite group of oil and gas executives who met with the president in early April to press for federal help, including access to big loans for businesses hurt by the coronavirus pandemic. It prompted Trump afterwards to promise to “make funds available to these very important companies”.

Major Trump ally Tommy Fisher, who last year landed a $400m Army Corps of Engineers contract to build 31 miles of Trump’s border wall in Arizona, in April received another $7m from the army – despite an active investigation by a Pentagon watchdog into allegations of favouritism after Trump reportedly pushed for Fisher.

Another big Trump donor, Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow and the chair of Trump’s campaign in Minnesota, got red-carpet treatment from Trump at a press briefing in late March. Lindell then praised Trump, hailing him as “chosen by God” as the president touted the firm’s efforts to make thousands of face masks.

Has anyone seen Naked-Beneath-My-Clothes lately?

Something very useful that they are adding to the Worldometers.info data for the United States: they are starting to add hyperlinks for the state names that allow you to click into the state and see detailed data for that state. If you click on the link below, you'll see that right now they've done this for about 7 states. (Yesterday there were just 2 states with hyperlinks.)

The useful part is seeing the "Daily New Cases" graph and "Daily Deaths" graphs for each of the states that can give you a rough idea about whether they are plateauing or declining or increasing on the curve.

I'm looking at the Texas Daily Cases graph and the Texas Daily Deaths graph, and I'm not really seeing support for "Let's open up this motherf*ker."

Day 4 of over 1,000 new cases in Texas. Don't expect that number to go down. I think we are seeing a disconnect, not only here in California, but everywhere. When the lockdown is announced as over, most people go straight to virus all over, take those masks off, and partee. The whole rationale of why we had lockdown is scrubbed from the brain's memory.

People just have virus fatigue. They're over it and willing to take their chances. No one I know has it or even knows anyone who has it, so it doesn't seem real enough. Maybe if everyone had at least one relative or friend who became sick it would be different.

Trump says it’s safe to reopen states as governors grapple with loosening restrictions

I worry.

Coronavirus VI: Testing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

A handful of Starbucks stores reopened near me for mobile order pick up only ... or so I thought. The store I visited keeps one door propped open with a table wedged in the doorway. You're supposed to order well in advance with the app, then walk up to the door, give your name, and a staffer will carry your drink and set it on the table for you to take. No contact, no crowding.

This morning I placed my mobile order, headed to the store, and there were people at the doorway placing orders in person and handing over cash and their cells phones for scanning! Then of course they lingered in a clump in front of the door waiting for their orders, blocking the way for those of us who ordered correctly and had drinks ready. WTF? This particular store has always had a clique of elderly people who spent every morning there and acted like they owned the place, and some of the miscreants were those people. But again, WTF?! Finally an employee came and asked the malingerers to move aside from the door but why are they even accepting in-person orders and filthy cash in the first place?

Sorry, just wanted to rant. And keep the shit you want to give me for going to Starbucks to yourself.

Some counties around CA are opening up. On radio the “doctors and experts” seem to know much less than DL! It’s infuriating. Just now mentioning pulse ox meters and DL was saying this in Jan. Couldn’t even name Li Weiang who sounded the alarm. We are too stupid in this country

Some counties around CA are opening up. On radio the “doctors and experts” seem to know much less than DL! It’s infuriating. Just now mentioning pulse ox meters and DL was saying this in Jan. Couldn’t even name Li Weiang who sounded the alarm. We are too stupid in this country

Well, of course.! This is not the fucking flu! ALL deaths are under-reported in ALL countries! If there are discrepancies like this in western countries, we can only imagine the true scale of the problem in the developing countries.

BBC-Italy may be relaxing its lockdown but the death toll from coronavirus could be far higher than has currently been reported, a new report says. The Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) says thousands of fatalities not officially attributed to Covid-19 could have been caused by the virus. The official death toll in Italy stands at 28,884, the second highest total in the world after the US. But from 21 February, when the first Covid-19 deaths occurred in Italy, until March 31, nationwide deaths were up 39% compared to the average of the past five years. Of the 25,354 excess deaths during the period, coronavirus was registered as the official cause for 13,710, leaving around 11,600 unaccounted for.

Coronavirus Live Updates: Trump Administration Models Predict Near Doubling of Daily Death Toll by June

We're rockin'!

R471 The day my Texas Governor Abbott announced "loosening" the shackles, I thought, Yup, give the people an inch and they'll take a foot. The Starbucks will probably have both doors wide open tomorrow--like nothing ever happened. If we think the Coronavirus is spreading rapidly, people's memories of lockdown being erased is moving like a cyclone. What we have to do to clamp things down, if there is a second, more volatile wave of the virus, will be met with insurrection.

The paid actors from Los Angeles were sent into Michigan this past week to conduct a staged event that acted as a "how to" for people, the next time their freedom is encroached upon and surely was successful. Guns were displayed, but not used. This will not always be the case. Employers do not want to pay unemployment. The people must be free to work, or not be paid. The fix is in.

They need to update the numbers...

The IHME model has been updated.

It used to show about 60,000 US projected deaths, then about 72,000. And now: 134,475.

State example, Ohio: Previous death estimate: around 800. Now: 2,552

Great, they found a mutated form.

It's probably spread by murder hornets.

70K deaths

At least.

Paywalled AND Muriel shut down #39 after the first post!

Paywalled AND Muriel shut down #39 after the first post!

Are you serious that some asshat (WE KNOW WHO) started part 39 already?

Yes, and Muriel CLOSED the thread immediately.

R485, the OP of THIS thread is also the OP of the CLOSED #39 thread.

He also started another stealth CV thread after that.

Nearly 800 deaths already in the US after the weekend reporting lags. It's going to be a long day and night

Apparently, Norwegian Cruise Line is likely to be the first casualty in the travel sector.

With 693 deaths, the UK has officially passed Italy for #1 In Europe, #2 In the world behind the US. Way to go Boris!

R489. The first of several I fear. I enjoyed a great cruise with Norwegian last November. It was spectacular! But, the world is different now. Especially for the cruise industry which has been devastated by many high profile cases. Same for the airline industry. The loans and bailouts can only go so far. All are affected, many will go under. Ditto for many movie theaters, restaurants, malls and bars.

Europe's largest regional airline, Flybe, collapsed back in March.

Reuters:

U.S. coronavirus deaths exceed 70,000 as forecasting models predict grim summer

UPDATE: Trump administration officials are telling members of the coronavirus task force that the White House plans to wind down the operation and it’s not clear whether any other group might replace it.

D.C. Eagle and Secrets (the gay strip club in Navy Yard) have both permanently closed.

From r480's link, "In addition to spreading faster, it may make people vulnerable to a second infection after a first bout with the disease, the report warned."

Great.

CNN:

Ousted vaccine director files whistleblower complaint alleging coronavirus warnings were ignored

We watched Contagion again for the first time since it first came out this past weekend so I was prepared for that plot twist R480.

OK lame joke over.

Isn't that a reboot of the L vs S strain theory we were hearing in (I think) late February which was then debunked? Also I am not sure if they mean that the risk of the second infection would apply to all previously infected people or just the ones that got the mild strain.

Please let me know if Naked BMC has posted and I've just accidentally blocked him.

Somewhat related to my lame joke, if somewhat tangential to this thread, if you liked Contagion you'll probably like The Knick. It has the same director and composer. I know some of you have some extra time now.

Texas Governor Abbott caved to the pressure and on May 1st we had a light (hehe) opening. This, when the numbers were still climbing, and still are. Already, one lake park had to be closed down. It's still full steam ahead. But that's not where the big problem lies.

Texas is out of control containing thousands of hot spots: 104 prisons with over 150,000 inmates, 239 county jails, 1,200 nursing homes, and 2,000 assisted living facilities. Not only does the Coronavirus spread faster in these enclosed environments, the tainted workers go home at the end of their shifts and spread the virus to family, friends and essential service workers.

Texas is also the last in testing its residents and we still don't have a clue as to how bad things really are. They aren't good. The current two big hot spots are Houston and Dallas. On the other hand, of the 254 counties in the state, many haven't even had their first case yet. It's going to be messy all the way into Fall. Then it might just turn tragic.

Yesterday, PA had more deaths than NJ and NY for the first time...

The peak was later for PA. Deaths follow infections by about 2-3 weeks.

Interesting antibody study

Guardian:Immunity to Covid-19 is only building very slowly in the Czech Republic and probably does not cover more than 4-5% of the population, the country’s health ministry has said. The preliminary figures came from a mass testing for antibodies that started in April, the ministry added. According to figures compiled by John Hopkins University, there have been 7,896 confirmed cases and 257 Covid-19 deaths so far in Czech Republic. The country, which has a population of 10.7 million, was one of the swiftest in Europe to impose curbs on travel and border crossings and shut most shops and restaurants in March. The preliminary results from the study found immunity levels were likely lower in the two biggest cities of Prague and Brno. Overall, it found 107 positive cases after testing 26,549, making it one of the largest studies in Europe.

Oh THIS isn't the least bit suspicious....

[quote] ROSS TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A man who police said was found shot dead at his Ross Township home was a research assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, where he was working on a coronavirus research project. Police said they believe that Bing Liu, 37, was shot inside his Elm Court townhome by a man who then went outside to his car and shot himself. Liu's death is believed to be a homicide, police said.

Wonderful headline.

[quote]Trump gives up on virus fight to focus on economic recovery – and re-election

Marsha Blackburn has introduced legislation to allow Americans to sue China over COVID.

Basically, every Karen will now have the opportunity to demand to speak with the manager of COVID.

R404. Sadly, a lot of countries are starting to give up now due to immense pressure. Here in Europe, thousands of new cases are still being reported everyday and hundreds upon hundreds of deaths. Although the situation is much better compared to the peak, we are only at the level when lockdowns were started. Yet, now countries are starting to open up??? Even though the governments are saying that the situation is still dangerous, etc., they are also promoting their success stories about how they conquered phase I of the pandemic for political and economic reasons. It's a mixed message that is confusing for a lot of people, some of which have totally returned to life as normal. No masks. No social distancing. No filters. It's even worse in the US and UK as they still have a long way to go based on the number of new cases and deaths yet they are already looking ahead. And the problem is only getting started in the Southern Hemisphere. With this backdrop, I have little confidence about the rest of this year short of a miracle vaccine. I fear that it is going to be absolutely brutal with well over a million reported deaths worldwide. Of course, the true figures will be much, much higher.

Hmm, R505. Seems like a dangerous precedent, as it could open up a path to suing the federal or a state government, whose wrongful death culpability is far more demonstrable.

[quote] On the other hand, of the 254 counties in the state, many haven't even had their first case yet. It's going to be messy all the way into Fall. Then it might just turn tragic.

That we know of. There isn't enough testing to be sure and SARS-COV-2 is on the road, singing "Amarillo by Morning"

Try collecting damages from China.

So what do we make of this? Older people with younger asymptomatic family living with them?

Seems legit. I cancelled several plans involving large gatherings this summer because I have an elderly housemate who's not in any hurry to die, no matter how much the GOP wants it to happen. Every time I go out, I risk his life even more than my own (and vice versa when he goes out).

R511 Good for you. My 77 year-old mother went to a goddamned cookout at her younger-but-still-over-60 brother's house on Sunday! His three 30ish year old daughters were there, as well as one of my other uncles. It was all I could do to not start screaming. Hopefully they all sat outdoors, but I was afraid to ask.

They live in a newly downgraded area of PA with low infections, BUT STILL. Now -I'm- afraid I'll catch it from my mother on Mother's Day.

R510, Yep, they had to have gotten it from someone (I'm very doubtful that anything more than a tiny minority got it from packages), so it's either from another member of the household, or because some of them weren't 100% staying from home.

Didn’t they say the tests were going to be free? I got a text from a urgent care I could have a test if I wanted. I did and it came out negative. They were very wishy washy about whether or not I would have to pay.

Once summer hits everyone is going to go out regardless of whether it’s “allowed” or not. It’s high time we let people decide for themselves if they want to risk it or not. We shut down for 2 months like they asked us to. Another 2 months will lead to collapse of society. We can’t hide away from a bad strain of the flu for the rest of our lives.

Please show us the data for which flu has killed more than 73,211 U.S. citizens in four months/3,774,664 people worldwide in 6 months.

From a US perspective I give Trump just as much blame as China, perhaps more, because he refused to take it seriously until it was way past the point of being able to do so effectively.

I watched my housemate sign for delivery food with a pen that went house to house during other deliveries, then wipe his eye. The driver also handled his credit card wirh gloves that were probably not changed between customers any more than the pen was. The odds are slim, but don't completely factor out delivery people as potential virus spreaders. Not all of them wear masks, either.

R514, urgent care facilities are giving antibody tests, not true coronavirus tests. A lot of them are very unreliable, and I don’t know if we were promised free antibody tests.

R518 What kind of food delivery service is making people sign anything and taking credit cards at the door? All the major ones have gone to no-contact delivery.

Small restaurants, Sylvia. Very few of the local eateries even use delivery apps, and I had such a bad experience with Door Dash that I wouldn't use one again, anyway. I usually meet the delivery people at the door with my own pen, in a mask, and clean the credit card if it's handled by anyone else, but Ron beat me that time.

The idea is to order only pizza and have them slide it under the door.

I have been living off no-contact delivery until I ordered a pizza today. When that poor woman handed me a pen, I coolly signed and tipped. Then ran to clean my hands thoroughly before touching the pizza.

I know - but I don't know where the pen has been.

I feel as though COVID-19 is owning extremists on both sides of the political spectrum:

- overweight people are disproportionately likely to die from it, showing the darker side of "body positivity" campaigns

- men are much likelier to die of it than women are, demonstrating the ridiculousness of the claim that the sex binary is a social construct and all that matters are genderfeelz

- Brexiteers who've been crowing for years about how "special" the UK is have been shown that actually, the country has handled this crisis so poorly that we've ended up with the highest death toll in Europe

- Brexiteers have also been shown that the NHS is highly reliant on immigrants

- there have been several stories of Trumpsters claiming that the pandemic is a hoax to discredit Trump, or saying that we should just carry on as normal and trust in God... and then dying of the virus themselves

They're starting a recall petition against the batshit Vegas mayor, so that's one good thing.

The AP got a copy of a very detailed CDC guide for reopening, which I'm sure the Trump administration shelved because it was advocating caution.

[quote]Woman upset at McDonald's closed dining area shoots at employees, injuring four

[quote]Police say a woman became upset when she learned the dining room was closed for coronavirus precautions. Police say the woman refused to leave and a physical altercation ensued.

Fuck this, I'm done.

And let me guess...she was white so the cops didn't shoot her ass dead? Fuck these people. I want them all to die.

Who the hell is this fawning "nurse"?

New study claims that the HVAC was not the culprit in virus spread on the Diamond Princess cruise. However, if you actually read through the PDF they make a point that during the quarantine the HVAC system was set to use "maximum outside air supply". Under normal conditions, the HVAC would be set to only 30% fresh air, and the rest would be recirculated around the cabins. Sooo...inconclusive?

CNN:

One of Trump's personal valets has tested positive for coronavirus

I recently learned that two of my friends (straight guy, NY; gay guy, Chicago) had the virus and didn't tell anyone until after they recovered. The NY guy apparently had it very early on, recovered, and donated his blood for antibodies and publicly told people when he donated. The Chicago guy is just recovering (he told me 90% yesterday) and hasn't publicly stated he had it. I wonder how many people didn't announce it because I think there's a stigma involved having it.

There’s quite a bit of stigma involved. I’m in SF and very few folks are coming forward. The ones that do, feel like they have to write this long treatise on FB almost apologizing for getting it. It’s very odd.

I’m still waiting for any preliminary research about folks on antiretrovirals.

75K deaths now in the US and +700 deaths already reported for today. Yeah sure. We are ready to open up!

Actually, no, Sylvia, R528...

I had my infusion this morning so it was the first time I've been back to the city since March 13th and exactly16 weeks since I first became aware of the coming trouble. Honestly, was surprised that therapeutic infusion never shut down. And I was surprised that it was very crowded, but it is right next to the chemotherapy center and they didn't close. I was screened on the phone last night and re-screened in the lobby before being allowed up.

But more interesting, to me at least, my labcorp antibody test came back negative. My weird arm rash in March was just a weird rash, not COVID-19.

Finally, someone with some decency and common sense

Guardian-The director of public health for the Madrid region has resigned, apparently in protest at the regional government’s decision to seek to loosen lockdown restrictions in the area of Spain hardest hit by the coronavirus. Yolanda Fuentes stepped down as the Madrid regional government, led by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, prepares to seek permission from the national health ministry to move to the next phase of de-escalation from Monday 11 May. The next stage - known as phase one - will see the reopening of small businesses, and restaurant and bar terraces reopening at 30% capacity. Hotels and tourist accommodation will reopen, with the exception of communal areas. Fuentes is understood to have had grave reservations about the move, as Madrid remains badly affected by the virus. Of the 221,447 confirmed cases in Spain, 63,870 are in and around the capital. To date, more than 8,500 people have died from Covid-19 in the region.

Sadly, history will record this moment as a missed opportunity. Despite our technological advances, we haven't learned a thing from the past. When you put the economy ahead of the well being of the people, you lose. It's the Spanish flu all over again, 2.0.

R5244 "there have been several stories of Trumpsters claiming that the pandemic is a hoax to discredit Trump, or saying that we should just carry on as normal and trust in God... and then dying of the virus themselves "

That's actually one of the few positive outcomes of the COVID19 crisis.

Today, the US already has more new deaths than the next 13 countries combined. Thank you so much Mr. Trump for your great leadership and action. WHAT, .....would we have done without you?

He's going kill us all

Kate McKinnon warned us, we didn't listen. We should have started prepping back in 2016.

How Climate Change Is Contributing to Skyrocketing Rates of Infectious Disease

3rd FB friend fessed up now to having the Covid19 back in January, after having tested for antibodies this past week.

Stephen Miller's wife just tested positive for Covid-19.

She's rich and will be fine. Rich people don't die from it regardless of age, health, weight or race.

Getting closer.

Grim Florida Records Recount Lonely Deaths at Home

Risk factor information from a large cohort.

4M cases now and 275K deaths according to Worldometer

There are no words...

Guardian-US president Donald Trump has just said coronavirus “will go away without a vaccine”, but there may be “some flare ups next year”. However he has said this may not be until after autumn, or next year, and did not offer any scientific evidence for that prediction. “[Viruses] die too, like everything else,” he said.

"like everything else"

Except for YOU, you piece of shit! DIE ALREADY! I can't take it anymore.

He has no clue that after the injection of bleach comment anyone with any intelligence his words are meaningless.

Breakdown of Ohio Coronavirus deaths by age to 5/8/20.

Cleveland.com comments "Just 30 of the 1,306 known coronavirus deaths in Ohio have been to people under the age of 50."

Welcome to the Top 5 ... Russia!

I wonder if that is what is really behind the back to normal movement suddenly.....:: Fuck the elderly!

Vitamin D deficiency has been mentioned in previous threads as possibly relating to worse outcomes for coronavirus patients.

This new study indicates

[quote] Patients Low In Vitamin D Twice As Likely To Develop Severe COVID-19 Symptoms

[quote] A new study conducted at Northwestern University concludes that vitamin D may be an essential ingredient to protecting oneself from the coronavirus. The research team discovered a strong correlation between vitamin D deficiencies and mortality rates.

[quote] The research team believe vitamin D is helpful against COVID-19 because it simultaneously boosts our existing immune systems while also preventing new immune responses from going over board.

[quote] “Our analysis shows that it might be as high as cutting the mortality rate in half,” Backman says. “It will not prevent a patient from contracting the virus, but it may reduce complications and prevent death in those who are infected."

Roy Horn (yes, of Siegfried and Roy) has died of COVID.

He seems to be the only rich person I know who died of it with the exception of Rump’s so called friend.

800 deaths in Brazil yesterday with their expected peak still weeks away according to health officials. They are completely fucked thanks in part to their stupid leader.

So much for "It only kills the elderly and infirm. Kids are pretty much immune."

R560: Yep! That's why I don't trust anything they say. It changes every week!! So much for people letting their kids have playdates and run around the market/park because they are safe/just carriers!

Kids shouldn't be running around breathing all over people anyway, because they can still be asymptomatic carriers.

r560 That's right, it's called Kawasaki's Disease, very rare, but more frequent among children with COVID-19. It sounds lovely: [italic]Kawasaki disease, also known as Kawasaki syndrome, is a rare childhood illness that causes the walls of the blood vessels in the body to become inflamed.[/italic]

Who even knew this was possible. Below - a typical symptom. The Wiki article, which includes a preserved child's heart from1870 is terrifying reading to any parent.

I read that this thread is now paywalled. Is this true? And what does this mean exactly? So new to all of this.

It means you can't post unless you're a paid (and proud) DL member.

Thank you! Indeed, I signed up for the annual membership. Peanuts really. So glad to be able to post whenever I want and to access interesting threads like this one.

New York has more deaths than France and Spain! Tragic!

Trump flouts coronavirus protocols as security experts warn of need to protect president from a lethal threat

In the early days of the pandemic, the U.S. government turned down an offer to manufacture millions of N95 masks in America

More than 70 people who tested positive for the coronavirus since an April 24 rally at the Wisconsin state Capitol indicated they had attended a large gathering, but the state Department of Health Services cant’ say if they were at the rally because it is not tracking specific events.

"So I went to a garden party .... "

Watch...

I saw this on Facebook:

It's amazing how quickly folks went from being Pro-Life to being "Grandma can die, so I can get a haircut and see a movie."

Is Stephen Miller’s wife a person of color?

Please say what your video or news link is about when you post it. It's a waste of time opening things we've already seen.

So if we attempt to start a new thread soon, will Muriel destroy it?

I'm here, ElderLez. I have your bottle of Macallan, as promised.

If you make it to Orlando, I would be proud to by the first few rounds at The Polite Pig at Disney Springs. They have an extensive whisky menu.

My dearest hope is spend my next (milestone) birthday at Disney R578. I may have to stay X9 a little longer than anticipated, but I look forward to meeting you in IRL. Glad to see you here.

R578 here; buying my self a 'u' 😃.

Apparently, one of Melania's aids has tested positive.

I really don't care. Do U?

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Started Part 39, let's see what happens.

[quote]Apparently, one of Melania's aids has tested positive.

What kind of aid--hearing? Marital? Band-?

80K fucking deaths now in the US. That is all..Good night!

R584: and will be at 100K by Friday.

I’ll probably go back to work on Monday.

CNN:

Anthony Fauci to begin 'modified quarantine'

Fauci must be gleeful that he has an excuse to stay home, away from Trump.

Goodbye, thread.

Goodbye, thread.

Goodbye, thread.

Goodbye, thread.

JFC, are we there yet?

Goodbye, thread.

Goodbye, thread.

Goodbye, thread.

Goodbye, thread.

Goodbye, thread.

Goodbye, thread.

I said good DAY.