Links - 5th April 2020 (1) (Coronavirus)

Pornhub: Malaysia top in Asia when it comes to "Coronavirus Porn" - "worldwide traffic to Pornhub was up by 11.6% on March the 17th—around the time that many countries were beginning to feel the impact of the outbreak. Countries that were given free Premium access also saw a huge spike in traffic—predictably. France showed a spike in 38.2%, while Spain saw a rise in traffic of 61.3% on March 17th; free Pornhub Premium began on the 16th of March for Spain and France... Interestingly, Pornhub’s sites are, by default, blocked by local ISPs in Malaysia, although there are workarounds to access blocked sites in general. That, perhaps, could be why Malaysians are yet to receive free access to Pornhub’s Premium services.Additionally, statisticians also say that people generally stayed up later and stayed in bed for longer on the 17th of March"

Person Under Coronavirus Lockdown in Spain Tries to Leave House Dressed as T. Rex - "Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez imposed a 15-day state of alarm that restricted free movement apart from traveling to work, food, health medication or for caregiving.One small exception was that pets can be taken out on short walks, but police noted on social media that dinosaurs are not considered to be included in this category. "During state of alarm, walking of pets is allowed if accompanied by one person, always short walks so they can relieve themselves. Having a Tyrannosaurus rex is not covered. #stayathome," Murcia Police wrote on Twitter alongside the footage, which has since attracted tens of thousands of shares and likes on the platform.The clip—which was edited to include the theme tune to the film franchise Jurassic Park—proved to be one small lighthearted moment during a challenging time for the country's authorities... a second video published to Twitter yesterday indicated that it may have actually been an attempt at a preventative measure.In that footage, a person in the same dinosaur outfit can be seen shuffling slowly along the sidewalk with a bag of rubbish in hand, before hurling it into a large waste bin and running back down the street."

There’s Plenty of Food in the World, Just Not Where It’s Needed - Bloomberg - "Global warehouses are stuffed with frozen cuts of pork, wheels of cheese and bags of rice. But as the coronavirus snarls logistical operations, the question becomes: How does all that food actually get to people?Despite the inventories, grocery stores are looking almost apocalyptic with aisles of empty shelves. Panic buying has made it nearly impossible for retailers and suppliers to keep up with the unprecedented spike in demand. In just one example of the constraints, there’s a finite number of trucks that can load up at warehouses to bring in the chicken or ice cream or toilet paper that people want to buy.There are limits on how much time can be spent stocking shelves or filling rail cars. Then there’s this weird knock-on from the outbreak in China: Fewer goods were shipped out of Asia last month, and now there aren’t enough empty containers in countries like Canada to send peas out to the world... There’s the possibility of worker shortages as employees are forced to stay home because they’re ill or they’ve come into contact with someone who is. As schools close, plants may slow production because parents need to prioritize child care. Restrictions on migrant labor are increasing all over the world, stifling workers who are key to making sure tomatoes get picked and slaughterhouses run efficiently. Port closures and limits on trade could end up disrupting the flow of supplies and ingredients. “We do not see a supply shock in the sense of the availability,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. “But there could be a supply shock in terms of logistics, not being able to move it from point A to point B. This is something new and very difficult to predict. It’s that uncertainty that right now is the biggest danger.”"

China's inaction for 3 days in January at root of pandemic - Nikkei Asian Review - "Zhong Nanshan -- the 83-year-old medical doctor specializing in respiratory diseases who became a national hero in the fight against SARS in 2003 -- is spearheading the fight against this coronavirus. Zhong's team made an interesting observation of the threat China was facing in the initial stages of the crisis. Noting that the actual situation in Hubei in January was far worse than the media was suggesting, his team said that "a five-day delay in controlling the virus would have led to three times as many infections."... The Chinese government locked down Wuhan on Jan. 23, halting all public transportation going in and out of the city. The following day an order was issued suspending group travel within China. But in a blunder that would have far reaching consequences, China did not issue an order suspending group travel to foreign countries until three days later, on Jan. 27... The Chinese government let the massive exodus of group travelers continue despite the public health crisis. No explanation has been given.Furthermore, while suspending group travel, China did nothing to limit individuals traveling overseas... This was happening while many restaurants in China were unable to open for business due to the outbreak. It is said that once abroad, many Chinese prolonged their vacations as much as possible to avoid having to return home."
Of course now we have people saying China did all it could to control the pandemic. Even this aside, they ignore their role in persecuting whistleblowers

China recasts itself as global coronavirus response leader as US, Europe struggle - "It's an extraordinary transformation.In a matter of weeks, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Communist Party have apparently managed to convince the world to forget that they muzzled the coronavirus for months as it grew into what is now a global pandemic, silencing doctors and critics whose early alarms could have saved thousands of lives. Instead, the communist-run nation has now positioned itself as the country ahead of the coronavirus curve, even as they make unsubstantiated claims that the U.S. is behind the crisis. From denying its central role in unleashing the pandemic to baseless finger-pointing and finally, to casting itself as a global savior, China's makeover has been aided by a compliant media and allies such as Russia and Iran who are eager to help deflect the blame to the U.S... A study by the University of Southampton in the U.K. published earlier this month, cited by Axios earlier this week, concluded that if Chinese authorities had acted accordingly three weeks earlier than they did, the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by as much as 95 percent and its spread across the world limited. Even acting one week earlier would have reduced the number by 66 percent... Chinese officials have tried to turn the tables and claim America is the country to blame for the virus -- an accusation that did not sit well with President Trump, who has gone out of his way to call COVID-19 the "China Virus" or the "Wuhan Virus""
Trump is racist for rightly linking the virus to China. But no one cares about China shamelessly lying and linking it to the US

Where Is Coronavirus Explosion Expected in Japan? - Bloomberg - "Japan was one of the first countries outside of China hit by the coronavirus and now it’s one of the least-affected among developed nations. That’s puzzling health experts. Unlike China’s draconian isolation measures, the mass quarantine in much of Europe and big U.S. cities ordering people to shelter in place, Japan has imposed no lockdown. While there have been disruptions caused by school closures, life continues as normal for much of the population. Tokyo rush hour trains are still packed and restaurants remain open.The looming question is whether Japan has dodged a bullet or is about to be hit. The government contends it has been aggressive in identifying clusters and containing the spread, which makes its overall and per capita number for infections among the lowest among developed economies. Critics argue Japan has been lax in testing, perhaps looking to keep the infection numbers low as it’s set to host the Olympics in Tokyo in July... In Tokyo, among the world’s most densely packed metropolitan areas, cases made up 0.0008% of the population... Despite the infectiousness of the virus, a March 9 report by a government-appointed panel said that about 80% of the cases identified in Japan didn’t pass on the infection. But there’s little consensus over why and skepticism over whether the same government that was issued a rare rebuke by U.S. health authorities for letting the Diamond Princess outbreak get out of hand is getting it right on coronavirus... Japan may have some built-in advantages, such as a culture where handshakes and hugs are less common than in other G-7 countries. It also has rates of hand-washing above those in Europe.Cases of seasonal flu have been declining for seven straight weeks, just as the coronavirus was spreading, indicating Japanese may have taken to heart the need to adopt some basic steps to stem infectious diseases"

Japan's winning its quiet fight against Covid-19 - "a Japanese official who gave an off-the-record briefing to Asia Times suggested that a “don’t ask, don’t tell” strategy, based on minimal testing and buttressed by information massage, has been quietly emplaced.That may sound opaque – even inhuman. But it has ensured national calm and continued economic activity. It has kept the medical system from being overwhelmed and rests on a strong foundation: world-class treatment of the disease’s main symptomatic killer, pneumonia... Even the Japan Medical Association announced there were 290 cases of doctors deciding that a patient needed to be tested for the novel coronavirus – but healthcare centers refused to administer tests.Though the scale of the epidemic cannot be gauged without tests, the Japanese government is holding back data, keeping test numbers low and doing its best to make sure that everything looks “under control.”... The Japanese Society for Infection Prevention and Control (JSIPC) updated their coronavirus manual on March 10.The tone is calm. “Japan is moving from containment measures to a period of spreading infection and we must adjust accordingly,” it says. Since March 6 , Covid-19 testing won coverage under national health insurance – ergo, “as public money is being used for the coronavirus testing, it is necessary to carefully screen who gets tested.”It gently chides anyone who seeks “needless” testing and urges medical professionals to prevent overcrowding at hospitals by instructing patients with light symptoms to stay home and avoid others.Critically, it points out that since there is no specific treatment for Covid-19, the priority must be treating the illness via its pathogen causes... Japanese doctors may also be finding novel treatments.For example, there has been success using hydroxychloroquine, a malaria medication, to treat patients with advanced states of the illness. An asthma medicine sold here has also seemingly worked wonders. Reportedly, a woman in her 70s not only had her fever go down, but her severe pneumonia alleviated. Two other elderly patients were taken off respirators after receiving a regular dosage and recovered... Japan only does autopsies in 10% of suspicious deaths. If someone dies of pneumonia in a hospital, the odds of an autopsy are low... “We are in a period where containment is probably not realistic,” the official said. “We need to focus on treating the serious cases and most experts would quietly agree. If everyone is urged to get testing, then medical institutions will overflow with people who do not need to be there. This not only detracts from taking care of more critical cases, it could indirectly result in a greater health crisis.”While South Korea and other countries have established off-site, drive-thru test stations, that is not the case in Japan. But the official also made clear that hospitals can be dangerous places. “Please consider that people and patients would also be exposed to higher risks of infection in crowded hospitals and clinics – and secondary infections as well. How does this sound? ‘Come in for a coronavirus test and leave with the flu!’ Unnecessary spending on tests is a waste of government resources, time and fiscals reserves. There is no specific treatment for Covid-19 yet.”At a time when other countries are in a panicked lockdown, with virtually all economic activity suspended indefinitely, the official went to the crux of what may be Japan’s unspoken strategy.“Ask yourself, ‘What is the value of wisdom when it brings no benefit to those who are the wiser?’ Most of the infected will recover on their own, thanks to their own immune systems. We need to first take care of those whose immune systems are failing them, or the health care system itself will fail.”That appears to have kept the medical sector from being overwhelmed. However, one tantalizing possibility – that the vaccination program for pneumonia which Japan has been enacting for the elderly since 2014 may be acting as a shield against Covid-19 – has not yet been scrutinized."
Strange how socialised healthcare works in Japan. I mentioned this to someone and he started ranting about how this is because they live in small apartments and work very hard - anything to avoid acknowledging the poverty of the American system
Japan didn't get the memo that Trump was dangerous

Arizona man dies after taking aquarium cleaning product chloroquine phosphate for coronavirus - "An Arizona man has died and his wife is in critical condition after they ingested chloroquine phosphate - an aquarium cleaning product similar to drugs that have been named by US President Trump as potential treatments for coronavirus infection."
Obama drew attention to the opioid epidemic and said opioid overdoses killed more people in the United States than traffic accidents did. So if someone stopped taking opioids because of what he said and suffered unbearable pain, it's Obama's fault for giving medical advice
If I say drinking water is good and someone dies of water intoxication, it's my fault
If I say drinking H20 is good and someone dies drinking H202, it's my fault

When might experimental drugs to treat Covid-19 be ready? A forecast - "The early hope is on hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, and many hospitals, including the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Washington, include them in their treatment guidelines... Much of the published evidence comes from a very small French study and reports from China"
I guess the universities missed the memo that the drugs were dangerous and unproven, and they and the journalist missed the other memo that there was no evidence for them

French study finds anti-malarial and antibiotic combo could reduce COVID-19 duration - "A new study whose results were published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents has found early evidence that the combination of hydroxychloroquine, a popular anti-malaria drug known under the trade name Plaqenuil, and antibiotic azithromycin (aka Zithromax or Azithrocin) could be especially effective in treating the COVID-19 coronavirus and reducing the duration of the virus in patients.The researchers performed a study on 30 confirmed COVID-19 patients, treating each with either hydroxychloroquine on its own, a combination of the medicine with the antibiotic, as well as a control group that received neither. The study was conducted after reports from treatment of Chinese patients indicated that this particular combo had efficacy in shortening the duration of infection in patients."
There was a guy who claimed the studies showing efficacy had no negative controls and so were useless. I posted a chart from one of the studies showing the control group's response vs the treatment group's (this one has 2 treatment groups, and so is even better), and he threw a hissy fit, said he gave up and had failed as a science communicator and begged us not to follow bad science. A science communicator who ignores incontrovertible proof he is wrong, hmm. I guess that does show failure

Coronavirus: When will the outbreak end and life get back to normal? - "It is clear the current strategy of shutting down large parts of society is not sustainable in the long-term. The social and economic damage would be catastrophic.What countries need is an "exit strategy" - a way of lifting the restrictions and getting back to normal.But the coronavirus is not going to disappear.If you lift the restrictions that are holding the virus back, then cases will inevitably soar."We do have a big problem in what the exit strategy is and how we get out of this," says Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh."It's not just the UK, no country has an exit strategy...
There are essentially three ways out of this mess.
vaccination
enough people develop immunity through infection
or permanently change our behaviour/society...
Vaccine research is taking place at unprecedented speed, but there is no guarantee it will be successful and will require immunisation on a global scale.The best guess is a vaccine could still be 12 to 18-months away if everything goes smoothly. That is a long time to wait when facing unprecedented social restrictions during peacetime."Waiting for a vaccine should not be honoured with the name 'strategy', that is not a strategy"...
The UK's short-term strategy is to drive down cases as much as possible to prevent hospitals being overwhelmed - when you run out of intensive care beds then deaths spike.Once cases are suppressed, it may allow some measures to be lifted for a while - until cases rise and another round of restrictions are needed... Doing this could, unintentionally, lead to herd immunity as more and more people were infected.But this could take years to build up... But there is a question mark over whether this immunity will last... "The third option is permanent changes in our behaviour that allow us to keep transmission rates low," Prof Woolhouse said.This could include keeping some of the measures that have been put in place. Or introducing rigorous testing and isolation of patients to try to stay on top of any outbreaks."We did early detection and contact tracing the first time round and it didn't work," Prof Woolhouse adds.Developing drugs that can successfully treat a Covid-19 infection could aid the other strategies too."

Stopping COVID-19 could require eight months of ‘aggressive social distancing,’ outbreak modelling shows - "Wolfrom is a family doctor and former medical officer with the Canadian Armed Forces who completed two deployments to Afghanistan. “I’m starting to equate so much of what’s going on now to my experiences over there,” he says over the phone from Kingston.Stress, uncertainty, social isolation. Periods of crisis punctuated by calm. “The absolute lack of social interaction focused on anything other than the mission, and a lot of death,” says Wolfrom, postgraduate program director for family medicine at Queen’s University... Canadians may have to face 32 weeks of aggressive social distancing to prevent thousands of deaths — nearly eight months to keep intensive care units from being overrun with the sick and get us closer to when vaccination may be a possibility, according to outbreak modelling by researchers at the University of Toronto and University of Guelph... Ferguson’s team predicts population-wide social distancing, home isolation of cases and school closures, will be needed for 18 months or more, at least sporadically, on and off again, to avoid a rebound in transmission that could kill two million Americans alone, until large stocks of vaccines are available... Not everyone agrees. Some are calling overkill. “The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable,” Stanford University professor of medicine John Ioannidis writes in STAT.But the modellers beg to differ.The Trump administration is making contingency plans for the pandemic to stretch up to 18 months or longer and cause multiple waves of sickness, according to a 100-page federal plan obtained by CNN. A Public Health England document seen by the Guardian warns the epidemic could last until next spring and see up to millions hospitalized... Wolfrom worries about the psychological fallout if our world is effectively shut down for months on end. An exacerbation of existing mental illness, and new mental illness that may come out of all of this"

Social Distancing In Canada Will Last Months Not Weeks Says The Health Minister

Living in 2077 - "*Apparent picture of hands opening a butthole for a penis to enter*
#washyourhands My kid is not so good at drawing. This is his picture to participate in school competition about designing placards to raise people awareness about protecting themselves from flu. His teacher was angry and took him to the principle, he called me very angrily. I went to the school in hurry and helped my kids explained that it was a picture of a sink. They felt embarashed cuz thingking about something else. They said sorry to him. So if you wanna say sory, too; I'll help tellibg my kid. Cre: Phuong Nam"

Destroyed Habitat Creates the Perfect Conditions for Coronavirus to Emerge - Scientific American - "deadly diseases new to humans were emerging from biodiversity “hot spots” like tropical rainforests and bushmeat markets in African and Asian cities... Villagers told me how children had gone into the forest with dogs that had killed a chimp. They said that everyone who cooked or ate it got a terrible fever within a few hours. Some died immediately, while others were taken down the river to hospital. A few, like Nesto Bematsick, recovered. “We used to love the forest, now we fear it”... Increasingly, says Jones, these zoonotic diseases are linked to environmental change and human behavior. The disruption of pristine forests driven by logging, mining, road building through remote places, rapid urbanization and population growth is bringing people into closer contact with animal species they may never have been near before... Humans, says Gillespie, are creating the conditions for the spread of diseases by reducing the natural barriers between virus host animals—in which the virus is naturally circulating—and themselves... The Wuhan market, along with others that sell live animals, has been shut by the Chinese authorities, and the government in February outlawed trading and eating wild animals except for fish and seafood. But bans on live animals being sold in urban areas or informal markets are not the answer, say some scientists.“The wet market in Lagos is notorious. It’s like a nuclear bomb waiting to happen. But it’s not fair to demonize places which do not have fridges. These traditional markets provide much of the food for Africa and Asia,” says Jones.“These markets are essential sources of food for hundreds of millions of poor people, and getting rid of them is impossible,” says Delia Grace, a senior epidemiologist and veterinarian with the International Livestock Research Institute, which is based in Nairobi, Kenya. She argues that bans force traders underground, where they may pay less attention to hygiene. Fevre and Cecilia Tacoli, principal researcher in the human settlements research group at the International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED), argue in a blog post that “rather than pointing the finger at wet markets,” we should look at the burgeoning trade in wild animals."
Actually the moral of the story is that we need to destroy more nature, to create clear buffer zones between the human world and the natural world, in order to prevent pathogens crossing over: Man cannot live in harmony with nature

Coronavirus: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ends spring-break partying - "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is shutting down spring-break festivities in his state amid the coronavirus pandemic and as footage trends of tourists and Floridians crowding beaches and concert venues."The message I think for spring breakers is the party is over in Florida"... DeSantis banned gatherings with more than 10 people, closed bars and nightclubs for 30 days, and forced restaurants to shift to 50% capacity... As much of the nation has adopted social-distancing policies, footage of thousands of spring breakers packed together on Florida's beaches has sparked widespread condemnation.Critics went after a handful of college students who told local media in interviews that they didn't care if they contracted the hyperinfectious virus"

Coronavirus: US surgeon general asks Kylie Jenner, influencers to help - "The top doctor in the US has called on Kylie Jenner and social-media influencers to help get young people to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously."

PolitiFact | Celebrities are sharing a misleading post about Trump’s response to coronavirus - "Trump did attempt to cut the CDC’s funding, but Congress prevented it from happening.
While officials in charge of the U.S. response to pandemics did leave in 2018, it’s unclear if they were “fired.”
The U.S. was not on a list of countries receiving COVID-19 tests from the WHO. But the U.S. doesn’t usually rely on the agency for diagnostic tests, and the testing delay was due mainly to an error with the CDC’s protocol.
While Trump has called the Democratic response to the coronavirus a “hoax,” he has not used the term to describe the virus itself."

False Claim About CDC's Global Anti-Pandemic Work - "a number of politicians, news organizations and public figures have made the false claim that the Trump administration cut the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s anti-pandemic work in over 40 countries to just 10. The CDC told us that’s not true.The claim appears to have been based solely on outdated news reports from early 2018 that said the CDC was preparing to dramatically reduce its work helping to prevent infectious-disease epidemics. Those reports said much of that work on the Global Health Security Agenda, a pact between over 60 nations that began in 2014, had been funded by a five-year, nearly $600 million supplemental package that was dwindling. That one-time funding, which Congress originally appropriated in response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014, ran out at the end of September 2019... Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed the Trump administration made “drastic cuts to the global health division at CDC,” before saying, “In 2018, CDC was forced to reduce the number of countries it operated in from 49 to 10.”  Three days later, Democratic Sen. Murphy of Connecticut made a similar claim on Twitter — though he used slightly different figures.  “President Obama set up anti-pandemic programs in 47 vulnerable countries, as a way to protect against something just like Coronavirus breaking out across the world,” Murphy wrote. “Experts begged Trump to keep them open. He closed 37 of them.”  Murphy’s tweet appeared to catch the attention of Joy Behar, co-host of ABC’s “The View,” who made the same claim on the daytime talk show March 9.   Murphy’s office did not respond when we asked for a source for his statement, and Schumer’s office told us Schumer relied on a New York Times article that was published the day of his floor remarks. That Times piece was not the only one from a news outlet to state that the cutbacks the CDC warned about in 2018 had actually gone into effect.  As we said, the CDC told us that’s false. “CDC did not have to cut back its work from 49 to 10 countries,” said Maureen Bartee, CDC’s associate director for Global Health Security, in a statement to FactCheck.org. “In the FY18-FY20 annual appropriations, CDC received base appropriations for global health security from Congress. This was used to continue the essential public health capacity development in the four core areas that was started in 2014 with the one-time supplemental funds.”... With its current funding, Bartee said, the CDC is actually working in “more than 60 countries” — not 10 — to address the threat of global infectious diseases and outbreaks."

No, the White House didn’t ‘dissolve’ its pandemic response office. I was there. - The Washington Post - "It has been alleged by multiple officials of the Obama administration, including in The Post, that the president and his then-national security adviser, John Bolton, “dissolved the office” at the White House in charge of pandemic preparedness. Because I led the very directorate assigned that mission, the counterproliferation and biodefense office, for a year and then handed it off to another official who still holds the post, I know the charge is specious. Now, I’m not naive. This is Washington. It’s an election year. Officials out of power want back into power after November. But the middle of a worldwide health emergency is not the time to be making tendentious accusations.When I joined the National Security Council staff in 2018, I inherited a strong and skilled staff in the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate. This team of national experts together drafted the National Biodefense Strategy of 2018 and an accompanying national security presidential memorandum to implement it; an executive order to modernize influenza vaccines; and coordinated the United States’ response to the Ebola epidemic in Congo, which was ultimately defeated in 2020.It is true that the Trump administration has seen fit to shrink the NSC staff. But the bloat that occurred under the previous administration clearly needed a correction. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, congressional oversight committees and members of the Obama administration itself all agreed the NSC was too large and too operationally focused (a departure from its traditional role coordinating executive branch activity). As The Post reported in 2015, from the Clinton administration to the Obama administration’s second term, the NSC’s staff “had quadrupled in size, to nearly 400 people.” That is why Trump began streamlining the NSC staff in 2017. One such move at the NSC was to create the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which was the result of consolidating three directorates into one, given the obvious overlap between arms control and nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction terrorism, and global health and biodefense. It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented. If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled. The reduction of force in the NSC has continued since I departed the White House. But it has left the biodefense staff unaffected — perhaps a recognition of the importance of that mission to the president, who, after all, in 2018 issued a presidential memorandum to finally create real accountability in the federal government’s expansive biodefense system... when people play politics in the middle of a crisis, we are all less safe.We are less safe because public servants are distracted when they are dragged into politics.We’re less safe because the American people have been recklessly scared into doubting the competence of their government to help keep them safe, secure and healthy.And we’re less safe because when we’re focused on political gamesmanship, we’re not paying enough attention to the real issues. For example, we should be united behind ensuring that, in a future congressional appropriations package, U.S. companies are encouraged to return to our shores from China the production of everything from medical face masks and personal protective equipment to vitamin C and penicillin... Just as the United States has fought against fake information aimed at our elections, we should fight back against CCP propagandists. They are not only campaigning against the use of the term “Wuhan virus” (a more geographically accurate description than “Spanish flu” ever was about the 1918 pandemic) but now also promoting the false claim that covid-19 was created by the U.S. Army"

What Really Doomed America's Coronavirus Response - The Atlantic - "Many will be tempted to see the tragic coronavirus pandemic through a solely partisan lens: The Trump administration spectacularly failed in its response, by cutting funding from essential health services and research before the crisis, and later by denying its existence and its severity. Those are both true, but they don’t fully explain the current global crisis that has engulfed countries of varying political persuasions. As it turns out, the reality-based, science-friendly communities and information sources many of us depend on also largely failed. We had time to prepare for this pandemic at the state, local, and household level, even if the government was terribly lagging, but we squandered it because of widespread asystemic thinking: the inability to think about complex systems and their dynamics. We faltered because of our failure to consider risk in its full context, especially when dealing with coupled risk—when multiple things can go wrong together. We were hampered by our inability to think about second- and third-order effects and by our susceptibility to scientism—the false comfort of assuming that numbers and percentages give us a solid empirical basis. We failed to understand that complex systems defy simplistic reductionism... from the end of January through most of February, a soothing message got widespread traction, not just with Donald Trump and his audience, but among traditional media in the United States, which exhorted us to worry about the flu instead, and warned us against overreaction... Another New York Times op-ed, on February 5, provocatively titled “Who Says It’s Not Safe to Travel to China?” and written by a tourism-industry reporter, claimed travel bans were unjust and ineffective, and were racist especially because they weren’t issued for flu—and, astonishingly, went on to reassure readers that most coronavirus victims recovered... viewed through a systemic lens, even a small fatality rate foretold a disaster. It is true that the flu kills tens of thousands annually, but the choice here wasn’t between worrying about this coronavirus or seasonal influenza. It was about assessing what adding a COVID-19 pandemic on top of a flu season would mean—and how it would overwhelm health-care systems... Health systems are prone to nonlinear dynamics exactly because hospitals are resource-limited entities that necessarily strive for efficiency. Hospitals in wealthy nations have some slack built in for surge capacity, but not that much. As a result, they can treat only so many people at once, and they have particular bottlenecks for their most expensive parts, such as ventilators and ICUs. The flu season may be tragic for its victims; however, an additional, unexpected viral illness in the same season isn’t merely twice as tragic as the flu, even if it has a similar R0 or CFR: It is potentially catastrophic... If emergency rooms and ICUs are overloaded from COVID-19, we will see more deaths from everything else: from traffic accidents, heart attacks, infections, seasonal influenza, falls and traumas—basically anything that requires an emergency-room response to survive... Medical-equipment producers are being told, understandably, to drop everything and produce more swabs. That means something else will not be produced, which we might notice as a crisis in a year... Not everything had to wait for the government. Hong Kong, too, had a largely unresponsive government, but great popular pressure and people’s own actions—immediate adoption of social distancing in January, universal mask wearing, calling for closures and cancellations even when the government dragged its feet—have meant that the city had a very low rate of infection until late March, despite its nearness to China and its status as one of the most densely populated places in the world"
Also advertised as: "It wasn't just Trump who got it wrong"
We must call it the Trump virus because no one else in the US had any power - despite a federal system, it doesn't matter what everyone else thought, and the world outside the US doesn't exist

Despite new U.S. coronavirus deaths, 'the risk is low,' Trump officials say - "“The risk is low,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, added that there are no advisories for travel within the U.S."
From Mar 2

The U.S. Now Leads the World in Confirmed Coronavirus Cases - The New York Times - "The United States instead remained preoccupied with business as usual. Impeachment. Harvey Weinstein. Brexit and the Oscars"
Damn Trump, he should have resigned so the US wouldn't have needed to bother with impeachment! Even if they'd have moved on to something equally pointless

George R. R. Martin In Self-Isolation And Finally Finishing Game Of Thrones Books

Coronavirus: South Korea’s infection rate falls without citywide lockdowns like China, Italy - "South Korea has seen a steady decrease in new coronavirus cases for four consecutive days, despite being one of the worst-affected countries outside China, although global attention has shifted towards outbreaks in Italy and Iran... The steady decrease in cases has been attributed to a variety of factors, including mass testing, improved public communications and the use of technology. Extensive testing of members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, which was linked to more than 60 per cent of the country’s cases, has been completed. South Korean officials have shared their experiences in containing the outbreak, saying that citywide lockdowns, as imposed by China in Wuhan, where the outbreak originated, are difficult to enforce in an open society... “Without harming the principle of a transparent and open society, we recommend a response system that blends voluntary public participation with creative applications of advanced technology,” South Korea’s Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip told journalists. Conventional and coercive measures such as lockdowns of affected areas have drawbacks, he said, undermining the spirit of democracy and alienating the public who should participate actively in preventive efforts.“Public participation must be secured through openness and transparency”... The importance of maintaining good hygiene has also been stressed. South Koreans seldom leave their homes without wearing a face mask, with many buildings putting up signs reading “No Masks, No Entry”. Restaurant workers and retail staff wear masks while serving customers... South Korea has also come up with creative measures, including about 50 drive-through testing stations across the country, where it takes only 10 minutes to go through the whole procedure. Test results are available within hours. Covid-19 tests are prohibitively expensive in many countries but in
South Korea, all tests are free. The country is also capable of processing up to 15,000 diagnostic tests a day, and the aggregate number of tests has reached almost 200,000... South Korea has established “special immigration procedures” to monitor arrivals for two weeks without having to ban inbound travellers from entering the country. Those arriving from China, including Hong Kong and Macau but excluding Taiwan, have their body temperature checked, while their domestic contact information is verified and they are required to fill in a health questionnaire. They are also asked to download a self-diagnosis app on their mobile phones and put under intensive management if they show symptoms.South Korea is also using its cutting-edge IT technology and its ubiquitous surveillance cameras to track infection sources, identifying the movements of confirmed cases based on their credit card transactions and mobile phone tracking, and disclosing this information to help trace those who may have come into contact with them. Those who are at risk are placed in self-isolation and thoroughly managed on an individual basis by health authorities.To cope with hospital bed shortages, the country has turned many job training centres and other public facilities into “living and treatment centres” where patients showing light symptoms of the coronavirusare placed in quarantine... Seoul’s Guro district on Monday said at least 46 people were infected at an insurance company call centre, where employees working in closed rooms are not allowed to wear masks so that they can speak clearly on the phone"

South Korea’s coronavirus response is the opposite of China and Italy – and it’s working - "South Korea is not unique in claiming some success in its fight against the virus. Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, informed by past outbreaks such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) and Mers, have managed to keep confirmed cases low while eschewing the sort of draconian measures implemented in mainland China.Early on, Hong Kong took some of the most comprehensive steps to implement “social distancing” – in which events are cancelled and venues closed to minimise contact between people – by shutting schools in late January, while the authorities produced a digital map of confirmed cases to allow people to avoid potentially infected areas.In Taiwan, officials have pooled information from immigration and health insurance databases to track people’s travel histories and symptoms, and used phone tracking to ensure compliance with quarantine. Singapore has similarly tracked infected patients and traced their contacts, with stiff penalties for those who disobey quarantine or mislead the authorities about where they have travelled. But where South Korea has stood apart is seemingly turning the tide against a major outbreak while maintaining openness and transparency... [China] claims to have effectively halted the spread of the virus after recording more than 80,000 cases and 3,100 deaths, and its daily updates have in recent weeks fallen from thousands of new cases to dozens. However, scepticism lingers over official figures after local and provincial officials in Hubei initially tried to hide the extent of the outbreak... Some experts suggest South Korean society’s emphasis on discipline and community may have given it room to avoid implementing more draconian measures."

Why does South Korea have so few coronavirus deaths while Italy has so many (opinion) - "more testing saves lives by preventing the next infection, not by allowing doctors to catch an individual patient earlier. The "treat early" paradigm works when there is an effective drug against the disease. Give antibiotics early for sepsis, you live; wait too long, you die.The coronavirus, though, has no specific treatment. Indeed, the syndrome of a rapidly progressing lung failure that appears to kill COVID-infected persons is a familiar clinical condition. Many infections and exposures can cause the same problem; ICU specialists have been treating it for years... South Korea has an outbreak among youngish, non-smoking women, whereas Italy's disease is occurring among the old and the very old, many of whom are smokers. (We do not know the male-female breakdown of Italy's cases).These basic demographic distinctions explain the difference in death rates between these two hard-hit countries -- as well as helping to explain why Seattle, with its nursing home outbreak, accounts for such a large proportion of US coronavirus deaths"

M’sia may deploy army to enforce lockdown as only a reported 60% of population is complying - "Malaysia now has the highest number of reported cases in Southeast Asia.Local Health Director General Noor Hisham Abdullah has also confirmed that more than 500 of the 790 confirmed cases are related to the religious event that took place from Feb. 27 to Mar. 1"

Uncooperative M'sians making life difficult for medical staff - "Refusing to be quarantined, demanding unnecessary screenings, lying about their travel history, and concealing the fact that they have had contact with a positive patient – these are just some of the issues medical personnel are facing... "One person walked past a group of Chinese tourists, no talking or touching, and he immediately asked for a Covid test"... “We said no, and he started to scream and shout, saying ‘How can you be sure I don't have it'?”... a patient who was asked to self-quarantine after attending the tabligh gathering at Masjid Jamek, Sri Petaling, defied doctor’s orders and attended two weddings before finally testing positive... one patient did not disclose that he had attended the tabligh gathering, so his doctor examined him as a normal case.“The next day, the patient went to a different clinic and tested positive for Covid-19. Now my doctor, who is pregnant with her first child after years of trying to conceive, is developing the symptoms, “ she said."

How Sri Petaling tabligh became Southeast Asia's Covid-19 hotspot - "“Holding hands at the religious ceremony was done with people of many countries. When I met people, I held hands, it was normal. I don’t know who I was infected by,” he said, asking not to be named due to fears of discrimination at his mosque.None of the event leaders talked about washing hands, the coronavirus or health precautions during the event, but most guests washed their hands regularly, two guests said. Washing hands among other parts of the body is part of Muslim worship.Another attendee from Cambodia said guests from different countries shared plates when meals were served.Only half of the Malaysian participants who attended have come forward for testing, the health minister has said, raising fears that the outbreak from the mosque could be more far-reaching... Some attendees defended the event, saying that at the time the situation in Malaysia - which had announced 25 known cases by Feb 28 - was not severe... Khuzaifah said some of the worshippers who attended the event have since refused to be tested for coronavirus, preferring to rely on God to protect them... “We are a bit disappointed that this outbreak has been blamed entirely on us. That view is unfair. There was no ban on our gathering,” said Karim, who gave only his first name.  “Now I am concerned because I am positive. Please pray for me.”"
Wuḍūʾ isn't done with soap, so
Presumably a libertarian would blame this on government regulation

How one small Italian town cut coronavirus cases to zero in just a few weeks - "the town was put on lockdown, and all 3,300 residents were tested for coronavirus... This mass testing revealed that about 3% of residents were infected with the virus, and of these, about half did not show any symptoms... After two weeks of a strict lockdown and quarantine of cases, only 0.25% of residents were infected. The town isolated these last few cases and has since reopened... "The lesson we learned is that isolating all positive cases, whether they were sick or not, we were able to reduce transmission by 90 percent," Andrea Cristani, a professor of microbiology at the University of Padua in Italy who helped carry out the testing, told RFI.This message echoes a recent statement from the World Health Organization (WHO). "We have a simple message to all countries — test, test, test," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, said at a news briefing Monday (March 16). "All countries should be able to test all suspected cases. They cannot fight this pandemic blindfolded.""

99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says - Bloomberg - "The Rome-based institute has examined medical records of about 18% of the country’s coronavirus fatalities, finding that just three victims, or 0.8% of the total, had no previous pathology. Almost half of the victims suffered from at least three prior illnesses and about a fourth had either one or two previous conditions.More than 75% had high blood pressure, about 35% had diabetes and a third suffered from heart disease. The median age of the infected is 63 but most of those who die are older. The average age of those who’ve died from the virus in Italy is 79.5. As of March 17, 17 people under 50 had died from the disease. All of Italy’s victims under 40 have been males with serious existing medical conditions."

25,000 people gather for Covid-19 prayer session in Bangladesh sparking outcry - "A massive Covid-19 prayer session with tens of thousands of devotees sparked an outcry in Bangladesh Wednesday (March 18) as the South Asian nation reported its first death from the global pandemic.Local police chief Tota Miah said some 10,000 Muslims gathered in an open field in Raipur town in southern Bangladesh to pray "healing verses" from the Koran to rid the country of the deadly virus."

Baltimore Mayor Begs Residents To Stop Shooting Each Other So Hospital Beds Can Be Use For COVID-19 Patients - "Baltimore Mayor Jack Young urged residents to put down their guns and heed orders to stay home after multiple people were shot Tuesday night amidst the coronavirus pandemic.Young said hospital beds are needed to treat positive COVID-19 patients and not for senseless violence"
Damn white supremacy!

Stoners in Netherlands panic buy weed in a chill way amid Covid-19 concerns - "the Dutch government announced the temporary closure of its red light district to prevent further spread of Covid-19."

'It's about being well': Cannabis shops thrive as 'essential businesses' in coronavirus pandemic - "Designated by many cities as "essential businesses," legal weed purveyors from Oakland, California, to Denver have been reporting long lines of customers outside their shops similar to those recently seen at entrances to grocery stores and pharmacies... "We also know that there's a great number of people with conditions like anxiety who medicate those conditions with cannabis. And a lot of folks are going to be suffering heightened degrees of anxiety and other types of emotional disruption given everything that's going on""

What a massive study of COVID-19 cases in China tells Canada about what’s to come | The Star - "if anything — because we have a slightly older population — we may end up seeing more severe cases here.But, on the other hand, because there’s less pollution here and lower rates of smoking, maybe we won’t see as many severe cases as China. It’s hard to say...
With seasonal influenza, there is about 0.1 per cent chance of dying. If you look at reported cases of the novel coronavirus, it’s around 2 per cent.But if you factor in all the unreported cases, then the percentage that are fatal would go down. So maybe the true per cent of fatalities is lower — but still a lot more significant than influenza. And the other thing with influenza is that only 10 or 15 per cent of the population will get it in a season.
What did you think of the figure federal health minister Patty Hajdu used — that 30 to 70 per cent of the population could be infected?
It’s a big number. There’s no getting around that — you have a population of 37 million. The thing to keep in mind, when they say 30 to 70 per cent it’s not like tomorrow, 30 to 70 per cent of Canadians are going to have it. It’s not like we may even reach that proportion in a year. That may be the number over the next three or five years."

Refugees to be turned back at U.S. border: Trudeau - "Asylum seekers crossing into Canada on foot from the U.S. will be turned back as part of the border shutdown between the two countries.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the announcement Friday, hours before the closure to all but essential travel between the two countries was to go into effect... The move comes after years of pressure on the Liberal government to close a loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement, the deal with the U.S. that governs asylum claims made at the border. As written, the agreement says people can’t show up at a land border office and ask for refugee status; thousands of people in recent years have gotten around that by crossing at informal points. The best known is one in Quebec called Roxham Road.  The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic had renewed calls from the Quebec government, and other politicians, for the government to find a way to cut off the flow of migrants.  But the move stunned the Canadian Council for Refugees.  “During a pandemic, we must uphold our commitments to protecting the rights of refugees and vulnerable migrants. This includes our fundamental legal obligation to not turn refugees away at the borders,” said Janet Dench, the organization’s executive director, said"
Apparently refugees have more rights than everyone else
"If the US is not considered a safe country, does that mean the US doesn't need to accept any refugees, for the refugees' protection?

At least 18 priests are killed by coronavirus in Italy - "At least 18 priests have died of coronavirus in Italy, where clergymen are exposing themselves to the illness by comforting sick patients.The Pope has encouraged Catholic priests to 'have the courage to go out and go to the sick people', but their visits to intensive care units have brought them into contact with some of the most serious virus cases... 'They enter the intensive care unit where, naturally, no one is supposed to go.'"
Given that priests tend to be older, this is a perfect storm
Maybe this Pope is a secret weapon to destroy Catholicism
So much for social distancing - they're great vectors of contagion

Cuomo shuts down non-essential businesses - "Laundromats and gas stations will be allowed to remain open, as will liquor stores and restaurants for take-out and delivery service... Cuomo said the orders will be strictly enforced and businesses in violation will be fined. And, he said violators will be fined to coordinate the lock-down policies with New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware.“Regional action is the best,” he noted.Cuomo’s directive follows California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordering his entire state Thursday to stay home in a desperate bid to slow the spread of the disease.And it came after nearly a week of sparing between City Hall and Albany over the potential restrictions and the language used to describe them.“I accept full responsibility,” Cuomo told reporters. “If someone wants to blame someone: blame me.”"
1 week of sparring is another week of the disease spreading
The people claiming this is the plot of a tyrannical government will be coming out and assembling their 'militias' (fat, untrained people running around in the forest and infecting each other)

What Israel can learn from Vietnam on how to beat the coronavirus - ""You need to do everything to keep people away from hospital. In Vietnam they haven’t internalized this. … You need to encourage people to be checked because so many people are afraid to, but, again, it’s hard to declare we’ve stopped the spread. While there are no flights from China, the land border is open between the two countries and Chinese can enter Vietnam.”
The border is open for political reasons?
“Undoubtedly. Vietnam can’t close its border with China. The Chinese have put immense pressure on everyone: the Koreans, Vietnam, everyone. Asian countries cannot act as they want vis-a-vis China because it’s the big power in the neighborhood"

"What the West Can Learn From Vietnam’s Response to Covid-19 - "I remember it was during the last week of January... The virus had infected about ~1000 people worldwide, 500 alone in Wuhan, China, and 1-2 cases in the US. I told the group that just days ago, the Vietnamese government ordered all schools to be closed for the foreseeable future, as would be many "non-essential" public gatherings and businesses. People were on high alert. Masks and hand sanitizers were severely out of stock."How many cases are current there?" - someone asked."8" - I said.There was an audible gasp. Wow. Paranoid much? 8 cases and the whole country was already under a semi lockdown?... [Vietnam] has successfully kept the number of cases at 76 (as of March 19, 2020) and fatality at zero, over two months after the first cases were reported. And it's not because of underreporting. The West has a lot to learn from this tiny little country south of China, namely: 1. fast, efficient, affordable test kits 2. 14-day mandatory quarantine and 3. transparency via technology and social media... Vietnam is the first country to develop a fast, efficient, AND affordable test kit in one month that the WHO says should have taken 4 years to develop... The test kits were so efficient and easy to use, that as of last week, 20 countries and territories in the world are looking to purchase tens of thousands of test kits from Vietnam. Vietnam's current production capacity is 3,600 kits/day, but the country could make 10,000 kits a day, and triple the capacity if needed... [Vietnam] has been mandating 14-day quarantine for all foreigners as well as returning Vietnamese from Covid-19 epicenters, on top of restricting travels from these regions. At first, these applied to people coming from China & South Korea. Of late, the mandate has been extended to people coming back from all of Europe, the UK and the US.Here's the kicker: the Vietnamese government provided 100% of Vietnamese citizens and foreigners under quarantine with shelter, food and medical attention during these 14 days. They have been for the past 2 months...
Whenever there's a new case, the Ministry of Health (MoH) online portal immediately publicizes the case to all major news outlets and the general publics with details including: where the cases are, how they get infected, what actions are to be taken. Information is to be wide-spread across social media and television channels, even texted to your phone via a hotline.
The MoH and Ministry of Information & Media's sponsored mobile app, called NCOVI is extremely friendly and easy to use. The app allows you to: 1. submit health & travel information so you can get yourself tested 2. learn about the "hotspots" within the cities/whole country where new cases are defected 3. get up-to-date information regarding best practices re/ Covid-19 in Vietnam and in the world."

Fake animal news abounds on social media as coronavirus upends life - "Swans had returned to deserted Venetian canals. Dolphins too. And a group of elephants had sauntered through a village in Yunnan, China, gotten drunk off corn wine, and passed out in a tea garden... The swans in the viral posts regularly appear in the canals of Burano, a small island in the greater Venice metropolitan area, where the photos were taken. The “Venetian” dolphins were filmed at a port in Sardinia, in the Mediterranean Sea, hundreds of miles away. No one has figured out where the drunken elephant photos came from, but a Chinese news report debunked the viral posts"

Graph theory suggests COVID-19 might be a ‘small world’ after all - "The media regularly refers to "exponential" growth in the number of cases of COVID-19 respiratory disease, and deaths from the disease, but the numbers suggest something else, a "small world" network that might have power law properties. That would be meaningfully different from the exponential growth path for the disease... most people have only a small number of connections to other people, most of whom are neighbors within their community... That doesn't mean disease can't spread fast, Barabási wrote. But he hypothesized that the small-world network must have "hubs," just like the major internet sites, to amplify the spread of signals.The point is that a lot of real-world networks, such as infectious disease, are not random networks where there is an even chance of any one person coming into contact with another... There is a tapering off that's been seen in the China data, they write, after an initial exponential curve. That suggests to them a "kind of small-world interaction network where individuals have many local neighbors and occasional long-range connections (such as caused by people traveling on trains, boats, and planes).""

Corona Is Slowing Down, Humanity Will Survive, Says Biophysicist Michael Levitt - "Another reason the infection rate has slowed has to do with the physical distance guidelines. “You don’t hug every person you meet on the street now, and you’ll avoid meeting face to face with someone that has a cold, like we did,” Levitt said. “The more you adhere, the more you can keep infection in check. So, under these circumstances, a carrier will only infect 1.5 people every three days and the rate will keep going down.” Quarantine makes a difference, according to Levitt, but there are other factors at work. “We know China was under almost complete quarantine, people only left home to do crucial shopping and avoided contact with others. In Wuhan, which had the highest number of infection cases in the Hubei province, everyone had a chance of getting infected, but only 3% caught it,” he explained. “Even on the Diamond Princess (the virus-stricken cruise ship), the infection rate did not top 20%.” Based on these statistics, Levitt said, he concluded that many people are just naturally immune to the virus.The explosion of cases in Italy is worrying, Levitt said, but he estimates it is a result of a higher percentage of elderly people than in China, France, or Spain. “Furthermore, Italian culture is very warm, and Italians have a very rich social life. For these reasons, it is important to keep people apart and prevent sick people from coming into contact with healthy people.”"

Tim Mc Inerney on Twitter - "Just in case quarantined Paris wasn’t disorientating enough: my neighbourhood was being used as a film set when the lockdown hit. Now the whole block has been left frozen in 1941"

Jon Stewart Mill ️ on Twitter - "The same group of people who don't bat an eye when Asian students need to get 140 points more on the SAT to have the *same chance* as a white student (270 more than Hispanic and 450 more than black) for getting into a top college.... suddenly care about anti-Asian racism."
Comments: "Also dude not every asian carries water for the CCP. A lot of Asians actually hate the CCP even more than trump does. Assuming all Asians are against blaming China for this is racist in its own way"
"Progressives need to decide if Asians are "up" or "down" so we can know if it's ok to punch them."

Alex VanNess on Twitter - "This morning a White House official referred to #Coronavirus as the “Kung-Flu” to my face. Makes me wonder what they’re calling it behind my back."
"Several days and 100K retweets later and she still hasn't identified the person who allegedly said this to her"
Other replies: "You put this out under your CBS News account while in assignment.   So who was the WH official who said this to you and why are you protecting their anonymity?"
"Ah yes. The anonymous “White House official” has struck again. How long will this person remain in the shadows?!!!"
"And I bet he was wearing a MAGA hat, carrying bleach and yelling “This is MAGA country”"

Gad Saad on Twitter - "Btw "wet market" is a dog whistle in the same way "bushmeat" was during the Ebola outbreak.They both revive old stereotypes of certain non-white ppl as dirty and barbaric enough to eat these wild animals we would never touch, placing the blame of disease on their own savagery"
"So progressive, so virtuous, so enlightened. This is why I NEVER criticize the Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea when they engaged in cannibalistic brain eating because bruh racism. Identity politics is a cancer of the human mind. Never forget it. [I'll also post as a reply.]"
Another reply: "I like how this post about not being racist and using stereotypes just turned into hate towards white people"

Opinion | Why Did the Coronavirus Outbreak Start in China? - The New York Times - "As far as the current outbreak goes, two cultural factors help explain how the natural occurrence of a single virus infecting a single mammal could have cascaded into a global health crisis. And now for the controversial aspect of this argument: Both of those factors are quintessentially, though not uniquely, Chinese.The first is China’s long, long history of punishing the messenger... the epidemic of SARS — which is caused by another coronavirus — that broke out in southern China in late 2002 was covered up by local authorities for more than a month, and the surgeon who first sounded the alarm was held in military detention for 45 days. In 2008, a scandal erupted over tainted baby formula, after major Chinese producers were found to have added melamine to milk powder. (Six infants died; 54,000 had to be hospitalized). Four years later the whistle-blower credited with first exposing the problem was stabbed to death under mysterious circumstances.These are recent examples, but that doesn’t mean they should be pinned solely on the Chinese Communist Party: The practice of punishing whoever brings embarrassing truths has been the order of the day since at least the time of Confucius, in the sixth century B.C.... A second cultural factor behind the epidemic are traditional Chinese beliefs about the powers of certain foods, which have encouraged some hazardous habits. There is, in particular, the aspect of Chinese eating culture known as “jinbu,” (進補) meaning, roughly, to fill the void. Some of its practices are folklorish or esoteric, but even among Chinese people who don’t follow them, the concept is pervasive.It is better to cure a disease with food than medicine, so starts the holistic theory. Illnesses result when the body is depleted of blood and energy — though not the kind of blood and energy studied in biology and physics, but a mystic version... I’ve seen snakes and the penises of bulls or horses — great for men, the theory goes — on offer at restaurants in many cities in southern China. Bats, which are thought to be the original source of both the current coronavirus and the SARS virus, are said to be good for restoring eyesight — especially the animals’ granular feces, called “sands of nocturnal shine” (夜明砂). Gallbladders and bile harvested from live bears are good for treating jaundice; tiger bone is for erections... Less wealthy people might turn to dog meat — preferably a dog that has been chased around before being slaughtered, because some people believe that more “jinbu” benefits are reaped from eating an animal whose blood and energy ran high. Similarly, it is thought that animals killed just before serving are more “jinbu” potent, which is one reason the more exotic offerings in wet markets tend to be sold alive — also making them more potent vectors for any virus they might carry.Eating exotic wildlife has long been endorsed by scholars and elevated to mystical heights, including in the medical treatise “The Inner Bible of the Yellow Emperor” (黃帝内經), written some 2,000 years ago and still revered by many health-conscious Chinese today."
Asian values!
Of course the writer is an Uncle Tan

Young Conservatives on Twitter - "If you think it’s racist to call a disease from China the ‘Chinese Virus’ but not racist to say all white people have ‘white privilege’ then you’re the problem. 🤦🏼‍♂️"

Lucas Lynch - ""American virus is very bad, shipping is a bit slow"
"This is a *real* communication between a Canadian small business owner and a Chinese supplier they buy from regularly. Wow."

Ang Ferraguto on Twitter - "I am Italian-American. Both countries absolutely fucked up the COVID19 response and put the world at risk. But I'll go my whole life not being profiled for it. If you hear anyone blaming China, and you are not Asian, it is your job to step the fuck up and call it out."
To think that Trump was mocked for not believing in truth
Replies: “Don’t blame China for the epidemic they lied about, censored, and arrested doctors trying to whistleblow about”
"I’m a Hongkonger and I’m more than happy to say: China deserved to be blamed. #ChinaLiedPeopleDied"
"Oh, I’m Asian. Yet, we all call it Wuhanvirus or Chinese virus. except Mainland Chinese. Understand?"

Buck Sexton on Twitter - "Lots of people on here leave out the NBC reporter implying that Trump is “giving people false hope” about chloroquine (this is editorializing, not an objective question, clearly an attack) and jumping right to the response to follow up “what do you say to those who are scared?”
I watched the press conf live, and just watched it back again. The journo was playing politics and grandstanding while the country is in crisis. It was gross, and Trump called him out for it.The end."

Supermarket in Denmark uses clever price trick to stop sanitiser hoarding. It worked. - "the store priced one bottle of sanitiser at kr40 (S$8.47), but sold two bottles at kr 1,000 (S$211.69) each"

Jennifer Zeng's blog 曾錚的博客 - Posts - "When CCP claims there's no new cases"
"Notices from somewhere in Wuhan tell us CCP is lying"

Coronavirus: leading Hong Kong microbiologist retracts op-ed claiming pandemic began in Wuhan - "A world-renowned microbiologist has stepped into a political minefield by writing an op-ed about the origin and naming of the coronavirus sweeping the world, expressing views that aligned with the Trump administration’s rhetoric over the pandemic and left him in the cross hairs of mainland Chinese.Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Hong Kong, retracted late Wednesday night the piece he co-wrote and which Chinese-language Ming Pao newspaper had published and ran online earlier that day. The authors also apologised for the misunderstanding caused by the piece, titled: “The pandemic originated from Wuhan and the lessons from 17 years ago have been forgotten.”They argued that the idea the novel coronavirusSars-CoV-2 originated in the United States is “unsubstantiated”.“It amounts to self-deceit and please don’t spread it recklessly. It would only invite ridicule”... Yuen and Lung argued “Wuhan virus” was a layman’s term established through convention and usage, one that was easy to understand and communicate to people... Zhao Lijian, a ministry spokesman last week tweeting that the virus might be linked the US Army’s participation in the Military World Games held in Wuhan in October.  Mainland Chinese sensitivity about attributing the origin of the new coronavirus can be seen in social media reaction towards a People’s Daily post on Weibo, which carried Zhong Nanshan, the mainland’s leading respiratory disease authority, reiterating his view on Wednesday that “the outbreak starting in Wuhan doesn’t necessarily mean [the virus] originated from Wuhan”... Many of the comments that received the highest number of responses shared a similar theme: that the new coronavirus should be attributed to the US and Trump"

Resistance Cartoons - Posts - "Why isn't the President doing something to stop the corona virus?!"
"Breaking news! The President has put a travel ban on flights coming from Europe and China..."
"What a xenophobe!"
Friend: "Don't know what to feel about the ceaseless coverage criticising Trump for the looming epidemic. Can people stop politicising every single thing and look from a point of view of what needs to be done and how long these things need to be done, and what are the steps necessary to solve it? In Dec we already knew about the Coronavirus but the western media was all about impeachment. Doesn't the loudness and the partisan nature of Western media drown out more significant global developments? Think the western media as a whole needs to do some soul searching if they still want to carry the banner of being informers of the public."

Stephen Davies - "Here is the analysis the current government is working on, which was drawn up in 2011. If you read through it you will see that it is following it very closely. The scenario the document looks at is an epidemic with a 60% infection rate and a 2.5% mortality rate. The current pandemic seems to be 80% infection rate and 1% fatality (or even 0.6% if we are lucky). Notice 2.12. The interesting thing is how the PM and government have basically deferred to the scientific experts who have had this plan for dealing with this scenario for almost a decade, and how cross a lot of people are with them for doing that."
On the UK's original plan for dealing with the coronavirus, which got Boris bashed

Maajid Nawaz - "Much punditry on #coronavirusuk is‬:
‪A) politicised ‬
‪B) strawmans the UK government scientists’ position ‬
‪C) raises risk factors that apply (to a greater extent) to any strategy regardless ‬
‪D) is overly siloed & dismissive of the UK’s interdisciplinary approach ‬(eg: combining virology with economics and human behaviour modelling
‪E) cites “successful lockdowns” as examples of successful policy. But this is an incomplete experiment too. Those countries cannot sustain their lockdowns. The UK government expert view is that the virus may bounce back as soon as the lockdown is over, because no “herd immunity” was built. So please don’t point to countries on lockdown & suggest that we imitate them immediately.
F) ignores the fact that lockdown renders primary carers out of action just when you may need them most. Lockdown will happen in UK, but it must be timed correctly for *our* needs, not imitating others.
G) fails to provide an alternative plan‬"

Maajid Nawaz - " The UK strategy has been devised using an interdisciplinary approach, considering not only virology, but also human behavioural psychology (eg: how to avoid panic and chaos, which also kills people) economic advice (having no money to buy food & medicine also kills people), and much more.The UK strategy has utilised computational models to determine the optimum moment that schools and stores need to be gradually shut down, without causing staff shortages (parents will need to stay home to look after children) in key frontline services (because this will lead to more deaths), and without being premature (because no shutdown can last too long before people start to ignore it and we end up with the breakdown of law & order) as well as maintaining crucial economic activity (without which entire livelihoods will collapse and again, lives are at stake).If the timing of any shutdown is too early, it can be *as damaging* as being too late. The optimum time should be determined by epidemiological models that the UK government is attempting to utilise.PM Boris Johnson has not invented this strategy. It has been advised by our chief science advisor Sir Patrick Vallance, and chief medical officer Chris Whitty. Moreoever, the UK government has no less than 6 expert specialist groups (see the image below) that help with such policies, as well as civil service emergency scenarios that have long been planned for. Yes the UK government is making errors in communicating this strategy properly, but that is not necessarily a problem in the strategy itself.If a lockdown is initiated too early, the UK expectation is that the virus will stall, only to re-emerge with a vengeance in a second wave (because this is a pandemic) once the lockdown ends... The UK government policy seeks not to save the young at the expense of the old. It is the opposite. The UK government plan hopes to encourage the young to become immune from exposure, precisely so that they do not end up infecting the elderly.Agree or disagree, but please do not dismiss this strategy as madness. Rather address it on its own terms. It relies on no less than six group committees of extremely specialised experts, and an entire government machine, not merely Boris Johnson or the Conservative party (I have never voted conservative in my life). This is a British strategy not a conservative strategy. And it is a strategy designed to adapt, pivot and evolve as more information becomes available.This is a time of global crisis. We are in uncharted and precarious times. Only half of our battle is against Coronavirus. The other half is against mass panic and hysteria"

The U.K. backed off on herd immunity. To beat COVID-19, we’ll ultimately need it. - "Many of our lessons on herd immunity come from the measles, because it's so contagious. The more infectious a disease is, the more people who need to be immune to reach herd immunity. One person with measles, for instance, could infect up to 18 other people in a susceptible population. To get that transmission rate all the way down to less than one, almost everyone in the population needs to act as a buffer between an infected person and a new potential host. That’s why measles needs such a high rate of herd immunity—around 95 percent.Research so far suggests that the coronavirus has a lower infection rate than measles, with each infected person passing it on to two or three new people, on average. This means that herd immunity should be achieved when around 60 percent of the population becomes immune to COVID-19... Some reports describe reinfections of the novel coronavirus in people who tested positive again after they had already recovered. It’s not clear, though, that these are actually cases of reinfection—it’s more likely that they can be explained by people continuing to shed the virus for a long time, and that the level of virus shedding fluctuates over time.Rapid reinfection is, for now, “an outside possibility,” Abbate agrees. If people were able to get sick again really quickly, we wouldn’t see the rapid decline in case numbers that is happening in certain parts of the world. And it would go against almost every other virus that we’ve known about"

Gunnison, Colorado: The Town That Dodged the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic - "Gunnison declared a “quarantine against all the world”. It erected barricades, sequestered visitors, arrested violators, closed schools and churches and banned parties and street gatherings, a de facto lockdown that lasted four months.It worked. Gunnison emerged from the pandemic’s first two waves – by far the deadliest - without a single case. It was one of a handful of so-called “escape communities” that researchers have analysed for insights into containing the apparently uncontainable."

Experts: Excessive use of hand sanitisers can weaken body’s natural defense against pathogens - "the hands contain harmless bacteria which are actually responsible for fighting off certain pathogens, which is why the excessive disinfecting of the hands can weaken the natural barrier against diseases. Aside from this, products such as alcohol and hand-sanitisers can cause the hands to become rough, as the disinfectants break down the skin’s natural oil and water barriers. Furthermore, the chemicals within these products can potentially cause skin irritations. Because interfering too much with the skin’s natural barrier can increase its vulnerability, a representative from Kao Corp., a chemical and cosmetics company, has said that it is better to wash hands with soap and water. “Dry and damaged skin could become a hotbed of disease bacteria and also increase the risk of viruses entering the body through cuts in the skin,” she said. “To prevent infection, it is much more important to wash hands with a moderate amount of soap for more than 30 seconds in an effective manner than to wash hands several times a day.”The spokeswoman also stressed the importance of drying hands with a clean towel or a paper towel as it is easier for bacteria to fasten onto wet hands. She also urged people to use a moisturiser in order to fortify the protective natural barrier of the skin. However, according to a report by Metro.co.uk, Young LDN aesthetician Sara Waterman pointed out that though there are downsides to using hand sanitisers, given the solemnity of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is still safer to use them than to risk getting infected with the novel coronavirus.Ms Waterman suggested the use of hand cream as a means to thwart the negative side-effects of the frequent use of sanitiser, as such a nourishing product could aid in the maintenance of the skin’s natural moisture."

Coronavirus: China's netizens get creative to share censored article on whistleblower - "Online users in China have adopted a range of creative measures - including screenshots, deliberate typos, PDF files and Morse code - to share a censored article on a whistleblowing doctor.The report features an interview with a doctor in Wuhan, the epicentre of the new coronavirus outbreak, who sounded an early alarm only to face disciplinary action... Various adaptations of the article have since been circulating online in an apparent pushback against online censorship.These include versions written in hanyu pinyin - the system for transliterating Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet - those containing intentional misspellings, and versions where many words are replaced with emojis."

Chinese refuse protective clothing for Taiwanese evacuees, 30 rejected - "During preparations to transport Taiwanese evacuees from Wuhan on Tuesday and Wednesday (March 10 and 11), Chinese authorities refused Taiwan's request that the passengers on a China Eastern Airlines jet be provided protective clothing, and 30 last-minute applicants were turned away.The odyssey of the two charter jets selected to evacuate a total of 361 Taiwanese nationals out of Wuhan is a study in contrasts. After over a month of tense cross-strait negotiations, including a dispute over which country's airlines would carry out the evacuations, the two sides came to a compromise in which there would be two flights, with one flight by Taiwan's China Airlines (CAL) and another by China Eastern Airlines (CEA).On the flight operated by CAL, Taiwan followed the strict protocols of the "Yokohama model" established during the evacuation of Taiwanese travelers from the ill-fated Diamond Princess. Each passenger was not only provided a face mask and protective clothing but was also carefully placed at a specific distance from others.However, when Taiwanese authorities requested that passengers boarding the CEA jet also be provided protective clothing, Chinese officials insisted that there was "no need" for such gear and that face masks were sufficient, reported the Liberty Times. In addition, finding that there were still some empty seats on the plane, Chinese officials tried to add 30 more passengers at the last minute who were not on the finalized list of evacuees... Some evacuees said that Chinese officials prohibited them from wearing protective garb they had obtained on their own. Yet, when they arrived at the Wuhan Tianhe International Airport they found that all the Chinese staff manning the CEA charter jet were wearing a full set of protective gear, giving passengers the feeling that the Chinese were deliberately providing them with inferior treatment."

A new star is born: Canada’s chief medical officers offer clarity in age of coronavirus - "Those who know Henry say she is both knowledgeable and battle-tested. Appointed to the position in 2018, she is an experienced virus hunter who has battled SARS, Ebola, H1N1 and polio during her career...
Arruda, 59, the province’s director of public health since 2012, played a central role after the Lac-Megantic rail disaster that claimed 47 lives. A medical specialist in community health, he has focused on epidemiology and the prevention and control of infectious diseases."
Naturally, I have seen Asians - who keep going on about racism - derisively mock white doctors with no experience in pandemics for saying most people don't need to wear masks. If only there were a word for looking down on people due to their race...

Rational use of face masks in the COVID-19 pandemic - "Evidence that face masks can provide effective protection against respiratory infections in the community is scarce, as acknowledged in recommendations from the UK and Germany. However, face masks are widely used by medical workers as part of droplet precautions when caring for patients with respiratory infections. It would be reasonable to suggest vulnerable individuals avoid crowded areas and use surgical face masks rationally when exposed to high-risk areas. As evidence suggests COVID-19 could be transmitted before symptom onset, community transmission might be reduced if everyone, including people who have been infected but are asymptomatic and contagious, wear face masks. Recommendations on face masks vary across countries and we have seen that the use of masks increases substantially once local epidemics begin, including the use of N95 respirators (without any other protective equipment) in community settings. This increase in use of face masks by the general public exacerbates the global supply shortage of face masks, with prices soaring, and risks supply constraints to frontline health-care professionals... People in some regions (eg, Thailand, China, and Japan) opted for makeshift alternatives or repeated usage of disposable surgical masks. Notably, improper use of face masks, such as not changing disposable masks, could jeopardise the protective effect and even increase the risk of infection."
5/6 of the authors have Chinese names and 2 are with a Hong Kong university

Customs reports no masks on hold or being inspected at LAX. Can you send us more details so we can help check on this? : RealTesla - Elon Musk: "We have a mask shipment stuck at LAX. Hopefully freed up soon."

WHO warns coronavirus ‘accelerating’ as Italy’s death toll rises by 602 in a day
Even on 24 March, there was someone dismissing the coronavirus as insignificant (saying that it was "only marginally worse" than the flu), and that cancer killed more Italians. I pointed out that from Friday 20th March to Monday 23rd March, between 602 and 793 people died in Italy each day. Generously rounding down to 600, if the same number of people died every day for a year in Italy (i.e. ignoring exponential, logarithmic or other greater-than-linear growth rates), that would be 219,600 deaths in total for the year, which exceeds cancer deaths (~180,000 a year). He dismissed this as being only 30% greater than cancer, ignoring the point about growth

Tyre sniffer’s - Posts - "**DEATHS IN 2020 SO FAR: **
8,979 COVID-19
66,059 Mothers during birth
103,869 SEASONAL FLU
209,636 Malaria
229,184 Suicides
288,502 Automobile accidents534,538 Alcohol
1,068,402 Smoking
1,624,510 Children under 5
1,638,000 Starvation
1,755,279 Cancer
2,016,012 Heart disease
GUESS WHICH ONE IS BEING USED TO CRASH THE ECONOMY & USHER IN MEDICAL MARTIAL LAW?
There is a global agenda afoot for medical martial law within a framework of technocratic communism. This means forced implementation of untested vaccines (with no insert / disclosure) together with nanotech / micro chip integrated with 5G & 50k satellites for ubiquitous wireless coverage to enforce that one is medicated & “an acceptable citizen” in order to buy, sell, travel, vote, etc. Don't take my word for it, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH. It may be difficult to accept, but...
#WE #ARE #BEING #MANIPULATED
**PLEASE DISTRIBUTE THESE FACTS TO YOUR COMMUNITY & ELECTED REPS**
(data: worldometers.info & deathmeters.info)"
This post did not age well. 8,979 Covid deaths was as of 18 Mar. As of 23 Mar the deaths number was 16,359.Which of the other categories almost doubled in 5 days?

Sana Bagersh on Twitter - "For those not taking COVID 19 seriously... We have surpassed 300,000 cases worldwide.( Millions not yet confirmed)..
The first 100,000 took 3 months,
second 100,000 took 12 days,
and third 100,000 took 3 days."

How COVID-19 spread in South Korea - Album on Imgur

Eight men arrested for hosting orgy during coronavirus lockdown - "Eight men were arrested on drug-related charges after Spanish law enforcement busted the group for having a cocaine-fuelled orgy in Barcelona during the coronavirus country-wide lockdown... they discovered the men sipping on a cocktail of drugs that included cocaine, speed, crystal meth and ecstasy."
Homophobia!

VIDEO: Police in Brazil use helicopter to create sandstorms on beachgoers breaking quarantine rules

Top Chinese official disowns U.S. military lab coronavirus conspiracy - "In a rare interview, China's ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, told "Axios on HBO" that he stands by his belief that it's "crazy" to spread rumors about the coronavirus originating from a military laboratory in the United States.
Why it matters: Cui called this exact conspiracy theory "crazy" more than a month ago on CBS' "Face the Nation." But that was before the spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian, began publicly promoting the conspiracy...
The big picture: There's not a credible epidemiologist in the world who has shown evidence that the virus originated anywhere but China. Scientists believe the virus emerged from animals sold in a market in Wuhan, where the first cases of the disease were discovered...
Asked whether Cui's Foreign Ministry colleague had any evidence to support the conspiracy theory, Cui replied, with a slight smile, "maybe you could go and ask him.""
Clearly to China shills this is evidence that he's been compromised by the CIA and must be executed!

Why social distancing might last for some time - "One analysis of the interventions made in several cities around the US during 1918 showed that those that banned public gatherings, closed theatres, schools and churches early had far lower peak death rates... New computer modelling research from Harvard University, which has yet to be published in an academic journal, warns that it may be necessary for intermittent social distancing measures to be maintained into 2022 in the US unless other interventions such as vaccines, drug therapies and aggressive quarantine measures can be put into place. This is because while a one-off period of social distancing might delay the peak of the outbreak until later this year, there is likely to be a resurgence in cases towards the end of the year if the virus shows some seasonal variation... In Italy, which has an older population and intergenerational families tend to live more closely together, the Covid-19 virus has claimed more lives. This is because the fatality rate in people over 80 is estimated at 14.8%, compared to 0.4% for those aged between 40 and 49, according to their study of cases and deaths up to 13 March... Of course, staying away from friends and family is not easy, especially during a global pandemic. There can be some unintended consequences that come from avoiding people. In the long term, staying isolated from social groups is linked to heart disease, depression, and dementia."

Will warm weather really kill off Covid-19? - "An unpublished analysis comparing the weather in 500 locations around the world where there have been Covid-19 cases seems to suggest a link between the spread of the virus and temperature, wind speed and relative humidity. Another unpublished study has also shown higher temperatures are linked to lower incidence of Covid-19, but notes that temperature alone cannot account for the global variation in incidence.Further as-yet-unpublished research predicts that temperate warm and cold climates are the most vulnerable to the current Covid-19 outbreak, followed by arid regions. Tropical parts of the world are likely to be least affected... Pandemics often don’t follow the same seasonal patterns seen in more normal outbreaks. Spanish flu, for example, peaked during the summer months... Research on other enveloped viruses suggests that this oily coat makes the viruses more susceptible to heat than those that do not have one. In colder conditions, the oily coat hardens into a rubber-like state, much like fat from cooked meat will harden as it cools, to protect the virus for longer when it is outside the body. Most enveloped viruses tend to show strong seasonality as a result of this... "While Sars-Cov-2 has quickly spread all over the world, the major outbreaks have mainly occurred in places exposed to cool and dry weather.”"

Tragic teen who feared coronavirus isolation dies after attempting to take her own life - "Emily, from Kings Lynn, Norfolk, had warned loved ones days before the tragedy: “More people will die from suicide during this than the virus itself”."
"Not to sound like a boomer, but this is the epitome of snowflake culture. People make things too easy for their kids, and you get shit like this."

The coronavirus crisis shows it's time to abolish the family | openDemocracy
Never waste a good crisis

Nancy Pelosi has packed coronavirus stimulus with liberal wish list - "in the words of Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC), the crisis is also “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.”  In other words, coronavirus gives good cover to impose progressive requirements on stricken businesses and a society eager to see government simply act. And fast. The 1119-page bill is Christmas in March for liberal special interests. It imposes racial and gender pay equity provisions, diversity on corporate boards, increased use of minority-owned banks by federal offices, and a grab-bag of other diversity-themed requirements. It increases the collective bargaining power for unions and cancels all the debt owed by the U.S. Postal Service to the U.S. Treasury. For the global warming crowd there are increased fuel emission standards and required carbon offsets for airlines, plus tax credits for alternative energy programs. For the kids there is a provision for student loan payment deferment, and for the education bureaucrats who overcharge them a $9.5 billion giveaway to colleges and universities. It gives $100 million to juvenile justice programs, and suspends various aspects of enforcement of immigration laws... The politics of the Democratic proposal are not hard to figure. Democrats are concerned that the Coronavirus crisis could be a “9/11 moment” for President Trump, that people might put aside partisanship for a moment to rally around a leader trying his best to help the country cope. In fact a more bipartisan stimulus measure had been negotiated over several days in the Senate and was headed towards a key procedural vote when it was stopped dead Sunday at Pelosi’s urging and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s obeisance. President Trump criticized the New York Times for allegedly giving the Democrats cover on stopping progress by running three successive headlines about the impasse in the Senate — the first two correctly blaming Democrats and the third shifting blame to the more vague “partisan divide.” But there was no divide on this issue until Pelosi decided to create it.Democrats seek to feed Republicans a crisis response bill packed with poison pills, placing them in a no-win situation. Either they go along with this nonsense, handing the bill to Trump to sign, or if Republicans push back it leads to another round of chest-beating and blame coming from Democrats and the media. And the markets continue to collapse.But this attempt to either humiliate or hamstring the President is so bold, so obvious, so opportunistic and so reckless in this time of crisis, that it can hardly succeed."
Of course, the same people who bashed the Republican bill for being shit because it supposedly gave money to big business (for the purpose of combating the recession) love this even though so many provisions have nothing at all to do with covid

Democrats Demand Stimulus Bill Include Reparations For Transgender Native Americans Affected By Climate Change | The Babylon Bee - "The Democrats' version of the bill would set aside $500 billion to fund gender reassignment surgeries and reparations for any indigenous person who has been forced to move thanks to the climate emergency. "Millions will die if we do not get this added to the bill," Nancy Pelosi warned gravely. "American families are hurting, yes, but they need to wait a while longer so we can get all our pet projects added to the bill."
More demands of the Democrats include the following:
    Funding for Cats 2
    Research into green, environmentally friendly moon power
    $50 million earmarked for research into USB cables that you can plug in correctly the first time
    Saving the endangered striped desert moose ant
    $100 million to bring back popular soda Tab
    A large supply of rainbow flags to have on hand just in case
    More butlers in the Capitol Building
    Funding for ten more seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race"
    Free housing for undocumented Mexican spider monkeys"

saira rao on Twitter - "My friend in Denver was just released from the hospital with COVID. I have another friend in NYC who is on life support with COVID. One is 45, the other 44. They both have children. White people decided that they loved white supremacy more than life itself. Hence, THIS."
Imagine believing this

Is Diverse Thought Being Suppressed in the COVID-19 Crisis? - "The singularity (of thinking) that appears to be taking place is the diametrical opposite of diversity—the thing that many people advocate for (or signal in public), except in uncertain situations when it’s needed most. At the moment, I am waiting to hear from the over 75 diversity administrators on the payroll at the University of Michigan—earning more than $10.6 million dollars combined (part of the administrative bloat that accounts for the over 1.5 trillion dollars in student debt affecting the current generation). I am waiting to hear from the scientists who devote their careers to studying diversity and the authors touting diversity in books and workshops.During this particular crisis, it seems that the numerical majority is clamping down on one way, a single "right" approach, despite the current absence of reliable data to derive courses of action. It should seem obvious that there aren't reliable data to base many decisions because the COVID-19 outbreak is only a few weeks in as of this writing. And yet, with an intolerance of uncertainty, people want to grab onto an answer, now. It gives comfort and security. It is exactly at this moment that people should be asking: what happened to all of those claims about the importance, in fact, the absolute necessity, of diversity? Especially in thought and perspectives.There is plenty of scientific research showing that having people who think differently during a group problem-solving task increases the pool of information available."

Coronavirus will bankrupt more people than it kills — and that's the real global emergency - "Worldwide, Covid-19 has killed 4,389 with 31 US deaths as of today. But it will economically cripple millions, especially since the epidemic has formed a perfect storm with stock market crashes, an oil war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, and the spilling over of an actual war in Syria into another potential migrant crisis. We may look back on coronavirus as the moment when the threads that hold the global economy together came unstuck... Human suffering can come in the form of illness and death. But it can also be experienced as not being able to pay the bills or losing your home.Small businesses in particular are struggling as supply chains dry up, leaving them without products or essential materials. Factory closures in China have led to a record low in the country’s Purchasing Manager’s Index which measures manufacturing output. China is the world’s largest exporter and is responsible for a third of global manufacturing, so China’s problem is everyone’s problem — even in the midst of a trade war between the White House and Beijing.All this makes it even more worrying that governments continue to see this as a health crisis, not an economic one"
Apparently deaths due to recession are okay, but not deaths due to the virus

Financial crisis caused 500,000 extra cancer deaths, according to Lancet study - "For the European Union alone, the estimate was 160,000 additional deaths - a term used to describe people who would not otherwise have died.For the United States, the estimate was 18,000 and for France 1,500. For Spain and Britain, which provided universal healthcare, no additional deaths were calculated... "We found that increased unemployment was associated with an increased cancer mortality, but that universal health coverage protected against these effects""
So much for superior private healthcare. Personal responsibility means that if you lose your job during a recession, it's your fault if you die
This doesn't quantify the impact to healthcare spending, or look at non-cancer deaths. Some people think government money is infinite, so budget isn't a concern

Unemployment and Early Cause-Specific Mortality: A Study Based on the Swedish Twin Registry - "Unemployment was associated with an increased risk of suicide and death from undetermined causes. Low education, personality characteristics, use of sleeping pills or tranquilizers, and serious or long-lasting illness tended to strengthen the association between unemployment and early mortality."

In the coronavirus pandemic, we're making decisions without reliable data - "A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05% is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies... Flattening the curve to avoid overwhelming the health system is conceptually sound — in theory. A visual that has become viral in media and social media shows how flattening the curve reduces the volume of the epidemic that is above the threshold of what the health system can handle at any moment. Yet if the health system does become overwhelmed, the majority of the extra deaths may not be due to coronavirus but to other common diseases and conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, trauma, bleeding, and the like that are not adequately treated. If the level of the epidemic does overwhelm the health system and extreme measures have only modest effectiveness, then flattening the curve may make things worse: Instead of being overwhelmed during a short, acute phase, the health system will remain overwhelmed for a more protracted period. That’s another reason we need data about the exact level of the epidemic activity.One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric. At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making.In the most pessimistic scenario, which I do not espouse, if the new coronavirus infects 60% of the global population and 1% of the infected people die, that will translate into more than 40 million deaths globally, matching the 1918 influenza pandemic.The vast majority of this hecatomb would be people with limited life expectancies. That’s in contrast to 1918, when many young people died.One can only hope that, much like in 1918, life will continue. Conversely, with lockdowns of months, if not years, life largely stops, short-term and long-term consequences are entirely unknown, and billions, not just millions, of lives may be eventually at stake."

Opinion | A Plan to Get America Back to Work - The New York Times - "“Society’s response to Covid-19, such as closing businesses and locking down communities, may be necessary to curb community spread but could harm health in other ways, costing lives. Imagine a patient with chest pain or a developing stroke, where speed is essential to save lives, hesitating to call 911 for fear of catching the coronavirus. Or a cancer patient having to delay chemotherapy because the facility is closed. Or a patient with advanced emphysema who dies for lack of a facility with a ventilator.’’And imagine the stress and mental illness that will come — already has come — from our shutting down our economy, triggering massive layoffs.“Income is one of the stronger predictors of health outcomes — and of how long we live,’’ Woolf said. “Lost wages and job layoffs are leaving many workers without health insurance and forcing many families to forego health care and medications to pay for food, housing, and other basic needs. People of color and the poor, who have suffered for generations with higher death rates, will be hurt the most and probably helped the least. They are the housekeepers in the closed hotels and the families without options when public transit closes. Low-income workers who manage to save the money for groceries and reach the store may find empty shelves, left behind by panic shoppers with the resources for hoarding’’... "We may even be able to leverage the current effort at horizontal, population-wide, interdiction to our advantage as we pivot to vertical, risk-based, interdiction.’’How? “Use a two-week isolation strategy,’’ Katz answered. Tell everyone to basically stay home for two weeks, rather than indefinitely. (This includes all the reckless college students packing the beaches of Florida.) If you are infected with the coronavirus it will usually present within a two-week incubation period.“Those who have symptomatic infection should then self-isolate — with or without testing, which is exactly what we do with the flu,’’ Katz said. “Those who don’t, if in the low-risk population, should be allowed to return to work or school, after the two weeks end.”Effectively, we’d ‘reboot’ our society in two or perhaps more weeks from now. “The rejuvenating effect on spirits, and the economy, of knowing where there’s light at the end of this tunnel would be hard to overstate. Risk will not be zero, but the risk of some bad outcome for any of us on any given day is never zero.’’ Meanwhile, we should do our best to sequester from any contact with potential carriers the elderly, people with chronic diseases and the immunologically compromised for whom coronavirus is most dangerous. And “we could potentially establish subgroups of health professionals, tested to be negative for coronavirus, to tend preferentially to those at highest risk”... we should also use this two-week (or longer, if that is what the C.D.C. decides) transition period to establish through data analytics the best possible criteria for differentiating the especially vulnerable from everyone else... at this stage there is no way of avoiding the fact that many, many Americans are going to get the coronavirus or already have it... Once transmission rates are down to near zero, and herd immunity has been established, concluded Katz, we can think about giving the “all-clear’’ to the most vulnerable. This could take months. But Katz’s plan offers the majority of the population the prospect of normalcy in some relatively small number of weeks, rather than indefinite number of months"

A pro-lifer shrugs in the face of mass death - "read a remarkable essay recently published by the conservative religious magazine First Things.Authored by the journal's editor R.R. Reno, "Say 'No' to Death's Dominion" manages to distill something important about the character of conservative American Christianity in the Trump era. For years now, commentators have tried to make sense of how so many people who profess devotion to the teachings of Jesus Christ can square that faith with fervent support for what the Republican Party has become in recent years. Usually the answer has to do with the president's embrace of the pro-life movement, along with his facility at antagonizing secular liberals... he offers readers a theologically inflected defense of the Fox News line on the coronavirus: Don't shut down the country because of a pesky little virus, even if it means a bunch of people die. For those looking for a primer on how conservative Christianity in the United States might look in the future, Reno's essay is the place to go... my initial reaction to Reno's piece was to be stunned that the editor of a magazine that has always been steadfastly pro-life had made an argument implying that Christians should respond to mass death with a collective "meh."... Reno apparently believes it would be vastly better for a couple million people to die over the coming months than for us to shelter in place for a few weeks.Reno calls this Christianity, but it is more accurately described as American libertarianism raised up into a theological first principle."
This essay was better than I expected. But deaths due to direct and indirect effects are indeed not the same. That's why the trolley problem is interesting. Plus Reno does not say all deaths by omission are alright - that is misrepresentation. He is saying there're other goods to weigh
And we do indeed in other contexts not prioritise life over all else (e.g. we don't make cars safer at all expense - engineering involves tradeoffs). And the shutdown will kill people too - possibly even more than cv will. Which are things the original essay might have covered. But then it has a more mystical angle
Plus it's not like death is always a bad thing in the Christian tradition. There's a reason martyrs are revered

Opinion | Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease? - The New York Times - "I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life — schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned — will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself. The stock market will bounce back in time, but many businesses never will. The unemployment, impoverishment and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of the first order... as the work force is laid off en masse (our family has one adult child home for that reason already), and colleges close (we have another two young adults back home for this reason), young people of indeterminate infectious status are being sent home to huddle with their families nationwide. And because we lack widespread testing, they may be carrying the virus and transmitting it to their 50-something parents, and 70- or 80-something grandparents. If there are any clear guidelines for behavior within families — what I call “vertical interdiction” — I have not seen them.Such is the collateral damage of this diffuse form of warfare, aimed at “flattening” the epidemic curve generally rather than preferentially protecting the especially vulnerable. I believe we may be ineffectively fighting the contagion even as we are causing economic collapse... Well, we could focus our resources on testing and protecting, in every way possible, all those people the data indicate are especially vulnerable to severe infection: the elderly, people with chronic diseases and the immunologically compromised... there are several major problems with subsuming the especially vulnerable within the policies now applied to all.First, the medical system is being overwhelmed by those in the lower-risk group seeking its resources, limiting its capacity to direct them to those at greatest need. Second, health professionals are burdened not just with work demands, but also with family demands as schools, colleges and businesses are shuttered. Third, sending everyone home to huddle together increases mingling across generations that will expose the most vulnerable... If we were to focus on the especially vulnerable, there would be resources to keep them at home, provide them with needed services and coronavirus testing, and direct our medical system to their early care... This cannot be done under current policies, as we spread our relatively few test kits across the expanse of a whole population, made all the more anxious because society has shut down.This focus on a much smaller portion of the population would allow most of society to return to life as usual and perhaps prevent vast segments of the economy from collapsing... So long as we were protecting the truly vulnerable, a sense of calm could be restored to society. Just as important, society as a whole could develop natural herd immunity to the virus. The vast majority of people would develop mild coronavirus infections, while medical resources could focus on those who fell critically ill. Once the wider population had been exposed and, if infected, had recovered and gained natural immunity, the risk to the most vulnerable would fall dramatically...
David L. Katz is a specialist in preventive medicine and public health, president of True Health Initiative and the founding director of Yale University’s Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center."
Of course it's more fashionable to bash Boris Johnson as ignorant and callous

How much ‘normal’ risk does Covid represent? - "This suggests that COVID-19 very roughly contributes a year’s worth of risk. There is a simple reality check on this figure. Every year around 600,000 people die in the UK. The Imperial College team estimates that if the virus went completely unchallenged, around 80% of people would be infected and there would be around 510,000 deaths.So, roughly speaking, we might say that getting COVID-19 is like packing a year’s worth of risk into a week or two. Which is why it’s important to spread out the infections to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed. It’s important to note that all the risks quoted are the average (mean) risks for people of the relevant age, but are not the risks of the average person! This is because, both for COVID and in normal circumstances, much of the risk is held by people whom are already chronically ill. So for the large majority of healthy people, their risks of either dying from COVID, or dying of something else, are much lower than those quoted here. Although of course for every death there will be others who are seriously ill. Also, as Triggle points out, there will be substantial overlap in these two groups — many people who die of COVID would have died anyway within a short period — and so these risks cannot be simply added, and it does not simply double the risk of people who get infected. It is crucially important that the NHS is not overwhelmed, but if COVID deaths can be kept in the order of say 20,000 by stringent suppression measures, as is now being suggested, there may end up being a minimal impact on overall mortality for 2020 (although background mortality could increase due to pressures on the health services and the side-effects of isolation). Although, as we are seeing, at vast cost."

Coronavirus: How to understand the death toll - "Every year more than 500,000 people die in England and Wales - factor in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the figure is around 600,000.The coronavirus deaths will not be in addition to these, as statistician Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, an expert in public understanding of risk at the University of Cambridge, explains."There will be substantial overlap in these two groups — many people who die of Covid [the disease caused by coronavirus] would have died anyway within a short period. In contrast, the figures put forward for flu - 8,000 deaths a year - is different.It is actually the number of deaths over and above what you would expect to happen in any given year.In fact, it is perhaps a little low. Public Health England uses a figure of 17,000, based on recent winters.Many more actually die with flu, but this figure gives you an indication of how many more die because of flu.In comparison, the daily coronavirus death figures and the modelling by Imperial, simply look at those who die with the virus.They do not tell us is to what extent coronavirus contributed to the death... Prof Robert Dinwall, an expert in sociology from Nottingham Trent University, says it is also important to consider "the collateral damage to society and the economy".He cites the mental health problems and suicides linked to self-isolation, heart problems from lack of activity and the impact on health from unemployment and reduced living standards.The economic hit is something University of Bristol researchers have now looked at. Their conclusion? Trashing the economy costs lives.They found the benefit of a long-term lockdown in reducing premature deaths is outweighed by the cost in terms of lost life expectancy from a prolonged economic dip.And the tipping point is a 6.4% decline in the size of the economy - on par with what happened following the 2008 financial crash - which leads to a loss of three months of life on average across the population because of factors from declining living standards to poorer health care."

Volunteers Who 3D Printed Valves to Save COVID-19 Patients Threatened With Lawsuit - "the breathing equipment being used in Italy to help treat coronavirus patients requires a special valve to function. Each valve costs $11,000, and last Thursday a hospital in northern Italy ran out. When the manufacturer informed the hospital no more valves were available, volunteers stepped in to help.Christian Fracassi and Alessandro Ramaioli, of Italian startup Isinnova, responded to the call for help by providing a 3D printer capable of producing the valve. The pair contacted the valve manufacturer asking them to share the 3D schematics so they could print them, but the request was refused. Not only that, legal action for patent infringement was threatened... The pair's 3D printed valves only cost $1 each and have the added bonus of being produced on-site and on-demand"

Families start Idul Fitri ‘mudik’ early despite COVID-19 warning - "Families residing in Jakarta have started to pack their bags and return to their home towns, including to Wonogiri, Central Java, despite the government’s warning for people not to travel home for Idul Fitri this year so as to prevent the spread of COVID-19"

Mosques face up to pandemic as Friday prayers bring coronavirus risk - "In Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, mosques were crowded as a cleric told his congregation via loudspeaker: “We are not too weak to let this one virus empty our mosques.”Elsewhere, Muslims flocked to mosques from Cairo to Mogadishu, whatever the risks... “Allah is protecting those who abide by their obligations,” said Aswin Jusar, 76, in the town of Depok, south of Jakarta, as he prepared to attend Friday prayers despite a call from the mayor for religious activities to be suspended.Outside the Fatih Mosque in Istanbul, named for the 15th century Ottoman sultan who captured the city from the Byzantine empire, 85-year-old Mustafa Emin Ozbakan stood bereft.He has been praying there since 1941. “I’m not running away from corona. Even if I ran, if death is in your destiny, you can have a traffic accident or die some other way,” he said... from Morocco to Libya, governments have shut mosques, a step never before taken even in times of war or revolution.Some mosques broadcast an altered version of the call to prayer, exhorting the faithful to stay at home.An Algerian expert in Islamic law, Mohamed Mouloudi, said it was the right decision: “Islam promotes life, not death.” ... In Syria, already stricken by war, the Ummayad Mosque in Damascus closed for the first recorded time in over a thousand years"

How do pandemics change the way we think? | Spectator USA - "pathogen cues have been shown to increase xenophobia and ethnocentrism, as interaction with exotic peoples tend to increase the risk of exposure to foreign parasites that pose severe threats to locally-adapted immune systems... Broadly speaking, preferences toward social conservatism as characterized by a high degree of conformity, less openness and decreased promiscuity, are enhanced when people are primed to think about germs. The costs of both sexual promiscuity and social extraversion are relatively greater and more likely to outweigh any social benefits when individuals feel prone to infection. As a result, regularly-scheduled orgies along with non-sexual snuggle parties (thanks Obama), have all fallen by the wayside in favor of what the New York Post is calling ‘coronavirus and chill’ — shacking up with a single partner for a longer term. When dealing with an absence of real knowledge about diseases, people tend to consult with their social circles in what psychologists call ‘social learning’, since the potential cost for trial-and-error or individual learning is high (or fatal). A greater conformity to group behavior and appeal to social obligation are perceived to be effective disease-avoidance strategies... During elevated pathogen threat levels, mating preferences are skewed toward higher attractiveness and better symmetry because these two physical traits are known evolutionary proxies for high-quality gene markers that confer fitness in a disease-ridden landscape. More remarkably, this even translates to voting preferences — in the face of contagion risk, people are more likely to elect a political candidate who is young and physically attractive"

How Will COVID-19 End? World of Warcraft's Corrupted Blood Incident Might Shed Some Light - "The way in which the one-month virtual plague occurred was so true-to-life that it caught the attention of scientists and doctors, who used it as a case study to help battle real-life diseases, to great effect."

These Canadians who caught novel coronavirus say they barely knew they were infected - "Most of the 3,700 Diamond Princess passengers and crew were kept on the vessel for days after it docked in Yokohama, Japan, as the number of infected grew eventually to over 700. Of those, seven people died, all in their 70s and 80s.But Lee said he heard that 80 per cent of the cruisers who tested positive were asymptomatic like him, Yerex and her husband. Researchers have reported that about half of the infected passengers never got sick."

Coronavirus: Iceland’s mass testing finds half of carriers show no symptoms - "As the coronavirus pandemic surges worldwide, each piece of data counts in the fight against the deadly pathogen.But significant findings about the contagious disease are coming from an unlikely place: Iceland, the tiny Island state with a population of just 364,000 people, where authorities are testing large numbers of the population – without imposing any lockdown or curfew... [they] have tested more than 10,300 people. That might not sound like a large number, compared to the around 350,000 Americans who have been tested for coronavirus according to the COVID Tracking Project, but it is a far higher percentage of tests per capita - a ratio Icelandic authorities have claimed is the highest in the world... "about half of those who tested positive are non-symptomatic,” Thorolfur Guðnason, Iceland’s chief epidemiologist, was quoted as saying BuzzFeed News. “The other half displays very moderate cold-like symptoms.”... Icelandic scientists say testing has already revealed that there are at least 40 mutations of coronavirus in Iceland, and the virus might develop to become more contagious, but less dangerous"

Germany's coronavirus death rate is lower than Italy, China, Spain, France - The Washington Post - "In Italy, 9.5 percent of the people who have tested positive for the virus have succumbed to covid-19, according to data compiled at Johns Hopkins University. In France, the rate is 4.3 percent. But in Germany, it’s 0.4 percent.The biggest reason for the difference, infectious disease experts say, is Germany’s work in the early days of its outbreak to track, test and contain infection clusters. That means Germany has a truer picture of the size of its outbreak than places that test only the obviously symptomatic, most seriously ill or highest-risk patients... Initially, at least, the country’s health authorities tracked infection clusters meticulously. When an individual tested positive, they used contact tracing to find other people with whom they had been in touch and then tested and quarantined them, which broke infection chains... Norway... is at a similar point in its outbreak, it’s also worked to test and contain cases, and it also has a death rate of 0.4 percent.

Hand sanitiser, mask raid: Chinese firm shipped out Australian medical supplies - "A Chinese government-backed property giant has secretly raided in bulk Australia’s supplies of masks, hand sanitiser, antibacterial wipes and essential medical supplies and shipped them back to China.The Greenland Group, which manages high-end real estate projects in Sydney and Melbourne, proactively drained Australian supplies of anti-coronavirus equipment, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.Three million surgical masks, 500,000 pairs of gloves and bulk supplies of sanitiser and wipes were bought up in Australia and other countries where Greenland operates... As coronavirus locked down Wuhan, the global Fortune 500 company put its normal work on hold and instructed staff in Australia, Canada, Turkey and elsewhere to source supplies."
"Patriotism" means seeing Chinese companies as private and thus independent isn't always accurate

Coronavirus: French protective mask manufacturer scraps NHS order to keep masks in France - "France has forced a face mask manufacturer to cancel a major UK order as the coronavirus-inspired scramble for protective gear intensifies. The National Health Service ordered millions of masks from Valmy SAS near Lyon earlier this year as COVID-19 threatened. But amid a global shortage, France earlier this week ordered the requisition of all protective masks made in the country."

French border guards seize two lorries carrying 130,000 coronavirus face masks for hero NHS medics - "French border guards impounded the trucks after realising what was on board.They were acting on President Emmanuel Macron’s pledge to “requisition” all masks for his country’s fight.The seizure came just 24 hours after another British-bound vehicle carrying thousands of bottles of hand sanitiser was also held up on the other side of the Channel... President Macron had promised on Twitter on March 3 that the French “will requisition all stocks and the production of masks”.Former Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith said: “This shows you all you need to know about European co-operation. “Europe is in lockdown and each nation has been left to their own devices.”"

Coronavirus Latest: Germany Faces Backlash Over Mask Export Ban - Bloomberg - "A diplomatic spat has erupted between Germany and neighbors Switzerland and Austria over a decision last week by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to ban most exports of protective medical equipment.Switzerland has called in the German ambassador to complain about the decision to block a shipment of 240,000 face masks, while Austria’s economy minister demanded her German counterpart order the release of supplies destined for her country.The appeals for Germany to be more generous in sharing vital supplies with its neighbors come after it declared an export ban of medical protection gear last week unless for use in aid operations. They also highlight growing tensions among European countries amid a rapidly increasing count of coronavirus cases across the continent"

Coronavirus: Boris Johnson accused of risking lives by refusing to join EU scheme to buy key equipment - "Boris Johnson has been accused of letting “Brexit ideology dictate his approach to Coronavirus” after the government refused to take part in an EU scheme to procure much-needed medical equipment"
They are right that he's risking lives - but probably not British ones

Why a one-size-fits-all approach to COVID-19 could have lethal consequences - "Suppose you had the choice between two health policies, A and B. Policy A would result in the death of a lot of elderly people. Policy B would result in the death of a lot of children, especially infants. Which would you choose?Right now we are facing a choice between more or less drastic measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, a virus which, at time of writing, has yet to claim a life under 10, and claims very few lives under 30, with the risk rising exponentially with age. We are putting in place measures that will lead to malnutrition and starvation for millions of people, and for these horrors, children and especially infants are the most at risk. And very many of those infants are born, and will die, in Africa... In Africa, millions will starve if the global economy enters a protracted downturn. We must ask whether the number will be more than COVID-19 will kill in a region where only 6.09% of the population is over 65... It’s not even clear that the social distancing measures will curb the spread of disease here. We know from award winning work on HIV transmission by South African epidemiologists that local social context can neuter a health intervention that is effective elsewhere. So it may be with social distancing.In a South African township, living conditions are extremely crowded. Socialising is unavoidable. You might as well tell people to emigrate to Mars. In the bubonic plague, the aristocracy left London for the countryside; the poor of London could not isolate themselves, and so they died. This may be our situation. It is similarly fantastical to expect people who cannot afford food – as will soon be the case for many more – to practice personal hygiene. You can’t eat soap. If you are starving, you won’t buy it... But even if social distancing here will “flatten the curve”, will it make a difference? The logic of flattening the curve is to bring the peak of the pandemic (the highest number of sick at any one time) down to a manageable level. But this assumes access to healthcare in the first place.In much of Africa, public healthcare is inaccessible to a huge proportion of the population. Without a miraculously fast overhaul of the continent’s healthcare provision, flattening the curve will make no difference to the majority. Cute as the meme is, its logic does not apply to much of Africa."

COVID-19 mortality twice as high for men in Italy as women - "In China, men were similarly more likely to die of coronavirus than women...  It's notable, she added, that the trend holds true across two countries with distinct social and cultural norms... men are more likely to smoke than women... "Females generally having greater or more robust immune responses than males"... Men are also more likely to suffer from some complicating conditions, like heart disease, stroke and hypertension... "Hypertension in particular has been suggested as an important risk factor and is more prevalent in men than women," she said. "This can be reflective of our biology as well as behaviors.""

The Coronavirus Is a Disaster for Feminism - The Atlantic
As usual, "men die, women most affected"

Hilariously aggressive Covid-19 propaganda banners in China - "As a crucial element of China’s political and cultural life, “slogans,” or biāoyǔ (标语), have been around for decades, featuring a wide range of themes such as the importance of family planning and the governing mottos of presidents."

Coronavirus: India 'super spreader' quarantines 40,000 people - "Indian authorities in the northern state of Punjab have quarantined around 40,000 residents from 20 villages following a Covid-19 outbreak linked to just one man.The 70-year-old died of coronavirus - a fact found out only after his death.The man, a preacher, had ignored advice to self quarantine after returning from a trip to Italy and Germany"

Some Recovered Coronavirus Patients In Wuhan Are Testing Positive Again - "A spate of mysterious second-time infections is calling into question the accuracy of COVID-19 diagnostic tools even as China prepares to lift quarantine measures to allow residents to leave the epicenter of its outbreak next month. It's also raising concerns of a possible second wave of cases... Wang Chen, a director at the state-run Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, estimated that the nucleic acid tests used in China were accurate at identifying positive cases of the coronavirus only 30%-50% of the time.Another theory is that, because the test amplifies tiny bits of DNA, residual virus from the initial infection could have falsely resulted in that second positive reading... Caixin, an independent Chinese news outlet, reported earlier this week that Wuhan hospitals were continuing to see new cases of asymptomatic virus carriers, citing a health official who said he had seen up to a dozen such cases a day.Responding to inquiries about how the city was counting asymptomatic cases, Wuhan's health commission said Monday that it is quarantining new asymptomatic patients in specialized wards for 14 days. Such patients would be included in new daily case counts if they develop symptoms during that time... A researcher at China's health commission told reporters Tuesday that asymptomatic carriers "would not cause the spread" of the virus. Zunyou Wu, the researcher, explained this was because the authorities were isolating people who had close contact with confirmed patients. Wu did not explain how they would identify asymptomatic carriers who had no close contact with confirmed patients... Research suggests that the spread can be caused by asymptomatic carriers. Studies of patients from Wuhan and other Chinese cities who were diagnosed early in the outbreak suggest that asymptomatic carriers of the virus can infect those they have close contact with, such as family members... "In terms of those who retested positive, the official party line is that they have not been proven to be infectious. That is not the same as saying they are not infectious," one of the Wuhan doctors who tested positive twice told NPR. He is now isolated and under medical observation. "If they really are not infectious," the doctor said, "then there would be no need to take them back to the hospitals again.""

Rhode Island Police to Hunt Down New Yorkers Seeking Refuge - Bloomberg - "Rhode Island police began stopping cars with New York plates Friday. On Saturday, the National Guard will help them conduct house-to-house searches to find people who traveled from New York and demand 14 days of self-quarantine.“Right now we have a pinpointed risk,” Governor Gina Raimondo said. “That risk is called New York City”... Rhode Island has just over 200, and it has begun an aggressive campaign to keep the virus out and New Yorkers contained, over objections from civil liberties advocates... The maximum penalty for not complying: a fine of $500 and 90 days in prison.The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union blasted the new rules, objecting to the collection of motorists’ contact information in particular. “While the Governor may have the power to suspend some state laws and regulations to address this medical emergency, she cannot suspend the Constitution,” Rhode Island ACLU executive director Steven Brown said in a statement. “Under the Fourth Amendment, having a New York state license plate simply does not, and cannot, constitute ‘probable cause’ to allow police to stop a car and interrogate the driver, no matter how laudable the goal of the stop may be.”"

Fears of Racism Helped Coronavirus Spread in Italy, Virus Expert Warns - "While leftists in the U.S. echoed the Chinese Communist Party in branding President Trump racist for calling the coronavirus Chinese, a virus expert in Italy warned that the Italian government stalled in its response to the virus due to politics and fears of racism — and that stalling cost lives. Regardless of political correctness, the Chinese coronavirus started in China and taking concrete action to ban Chinese travel and to isolate people coming from China has been very effective in curbing the virus's spread... Dr. Giorgio Palù, the former president of the European and Italian Society for Virology and a professor of virology and microbiology at the University of Padova, told CNN that politics and fears of racism hamstrung the Italian government's response... Northern Italy has been hit hardest by the outbreak, and leaders there encouraged behavior that spreads the virus. Dario Nardella, the Mayor of Florence, urged Italians to "hug a Chinese" in early February, warning that coronavirus fears were leading to racism against Chinese people. Nardella, a member of the left-wing Democratic Party, even tweeted a video of himself hugging a Chinese man"
Political correctness kills

No, 'prejudice' is not our greatest enemy, coronavirus is - "What was alleged to be racist a few weeks ago has now become government policy in Italy, with the borders shut and the whole nation in a quarantine. What does this mean, when something can move from anathema to official policy in only a few weeks or days? Perhaps that we have a degree of reassessment. One of which is the way we treat language. Over recent decades the word ‘prejudice’, like the word ‘judgement’, has had an almost exclusively negative connotation in the West. If somebody expresses a prejudice it is something of which they must necessarily be ashamed. Just as if somebody is guilty of judgementalism that person is almost certainly being described negatively rather than positively.And yet both words are — or should be — morally neutral. A judgement may be good or it may be bad, but it is not wrong in and of itself. Likewise one may have a prejudice which is correct or a prejudice which is incorrect, one that is lovely or unlovely, justified or unjustified — but it is not wrong in and of itself to express or hold such a thing... if a particular virus originates from China it is not unreasonable for people to wish to stay away from Chinese areas of their cities. It may be a wise judgement call or an unwise one, a cautious one or an over-cautious one. But it is not an example of racism. In the same way it may be a sensible policy solution for the Italian government — and now the American government — to close its borders... We will likely learn a lot of things in the coming days and weeks — they will include things about human beings which we might have liked to forget. But we may also learn that the presumptions and principles of our modern age are luxuries, which the necessities brought on by a pandemic might force us to re-evaluate."

Shanghai hotel told not to accept foreign nationals from countries hard hit by coronavirus - "“I asked the woman at front desk what she would think if US hotels had blanket banned Chinese people. She just laughed uncomfortably.”... they had been told by the Shanghai government not to accept new guests from certain countries... Nathan VanderKlippe of the Globe and Mail tweets that when he called nine Beijing hotels last week, all of them said they were not accepting foreigners with some adding that it didn’t even matter how long the foreigner had been in China."
Of course, people will only bash Trump for calling it the Chinese virus

FLASHBACK Jan. 14: WHO Tells Everyone Don’t Worry Because China Says Coronavirus Isn’t Contagious - "the virus’ means of transmission was far from the only misinformation coming from Chinese officials.Beijing reported that the first known cases of the novel coronavirus were recorded in mid-December — but later reporting from outside sources suggested that the earliest cases were tracked in November and kept under wraps... Caixin Global reported that Chinese officials had identified the virus as early as mid-December — but were instructed to destroy both their test results and their samples... "A regional health official in Wuhan, centre of the outbreak, demanded the destruction of the lab samples that established the cause of unexplained viral pneumonia on January 1. China did not acknowledge there was human-to-human transmission until more than three weeks later."...
'Chinese state media initially called it "Wuhan virus"; now China says that's racist'"

Fighting Outbreak, China Urged Open Borders. Even Allies Are Resisting. - WSJ - "In Beijing and elsewhere, Chinese diplomats have pitched the crisis as a test of friendship, calling on foreign governments not to suspend travel links with China or to evacuate their citizens—measures Beijing decries as unnecessary, fear-inducing and unfriendly.“True friendship emerges in times of adversity,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying has repeated in recent weeks... China’s Foreign Ministry summoned diplomats from a number of Asian and Western embassies in Beijing to complain about their governments’ responses to the epidemic, which have included halting flights and issuing warnings against travel to China, people familiar with the matter said.In these meetings, as well as with other foreign counterparts, Chinese diplomats have reiterated the World Health Organization’s guidelines for policy responses to the epidemic, which advises against restrictions on international travel... Chinese officials have publicly and repeatedly accused Washington of being unfriendly and even antagonistic for taking steps to close its consulate in Wuhan, and for raising its travel alert for China to the highest level—“Do Not Travel”—on a par with Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan... Some critics have accused Beijing of hypocrisy, pointing to its treatment of Mexican citizens during an H1N1, or swine flu, pandemic in 2009. At the time, China forced Mexicans within its borders into quarantine, suspended flights to Mexico and stopped issuing visas to Mexicans—measures Mexico’s government denounced as discriminatory and ungrounded.
February 14

China is closing itself off as coronavirus cases spike worldwide
I guess China is not a friend to the world, and is inducing fear and being antagonistic

Opinion | Who Says It’s Not Safe to Travel to China? - The New York Times - "Time and time again, destinations perceived as “Western” benefit from a kind of cultural familiarity and presumption of safety that so-called foreign or exotic places do not. When we, as travelers, decide what places are too unsafe to travel, those decisions are determined not just by actual conditions on the ground but also by perceptions shaped by the media, the travel industry and the foreign offices of governments. Whether travelers realize it or not, that is subtly informed by the same power structures that underlie much unfairness in the world... Coronavirus shares something in common with other kinds of civil disruption, natural disasters or emergencies that affect localized travel industries: Its destructive power lies not in the actual risk but in the perception of that risk. Numerous experts have said that the majority of people who contract coronavirus will experience it as a respiratory infection they will fully recover from. But the extreme reactions — the canceling of flights, closing of borders and level-four travel warnings — seem more appropriate for something much worse... in the 2017-18 flu season, when the United States had a particularly bad outbreak, the respiratory virus resulted in an estimated 61,000 deaths and 45 million symptomatic cases — but no travel warnings."
Feb 5, by Rosie Spinks. This did not age well
Naturally, when Trump blacklisted continental Europe he still got slammed despite it being "Western"

Akshat Rathi on Twitter - "In no crisis has the world looked more desperately to science to save us all. As much as we can push the boundaries, there are (and always will be) limits to what science can do quickly."
Retweeted by Rosie Spinks

Journey to Zero Waste Life in Singapore - "Sorry it's all in Chinese, but you can guess what's the article is all about from the pictures. Mask waste is as bad as plastics now. "
戴完就亂丟？岸邊沖刷上「大批口罩」　學者憂：海上的數量無法猜想 - 爆新聞
Time to ban masks and let people die to save sea turtles!

Fire Brigades Union on Twitter - "If this crisis is doing one thing, it’s vindicating what we knew all along: that the low-paid aren’t low skilled, that key workers aren't the rich who clean us out, but the ones who keep us clean and safe. When this crisis subsides, let’s remember who kept this country running."
Apparently it is very hard to understand that skills and necessity are not the same thing
Water is essential to life, yet it is so cheap. Time to increase its price!
I guess these people haven't heard of the diamonds-water paradox

Armed gang steals toilet rolls in panic-buying hit Hong Kong - "the head of the city's Consumer Council warned people not to stockpile toilet rolls in their flats as they were prone to mould in the notoriously humid climate"

Woman gets coronavirus after bragging about not social distancing - "Ireland Tate joked about not following instructions to stay home and practice social distancing amid the pandemic just days before she fell sick... “It feels like someone is sitting on my chest at all times,” she said. “It’s really hard to breathe. I’ve coughed until my throat has bled.”Tate said she likely got the virus from a pal in her group of friends and she’s now warning other young people to stay home.“While it may not be affecting you, you could be affecting someone’s grandma or grandpa or aunt or uncle or sister”"

Priests give communion with shared spoon as Romania COVID-19 cases grow - "footage of Orthodox priests in the Romanian city of Cluj giving communion to a long line of the faithful using a shared spoon was published by a local news platform... While the Romanian Orthodox Church had announced “exceptional measures” on February 28th, with worshipers able to ask priests to use their own spoon to receive communion, it wasn’t a requirement."

Coronavirus update: Tamil Nadu man breaks quarantine, runs naked, bites woman to death - "A young man under home quarantine for coronavirus after return from Sri Lanka suddenly ran out of his house and fatally bit a 80-year old woman in his neighbourhood in a village"

Trump pushes conspiracy theories about mask thefts, instead of using the DPA to make more - "'Something is going on, and you ought to look into it as reporters. Where are the masks going? Are they going out the back door? How do you go from 10,000 to 300,000? And we have that in a lot of different places. So, somebody should probably look into that, because I just don’t see, from a practical standpoint, how that’s possible to go from that to that. And we have that happening in numerous places — not to that extent; that was the highest number I’ve heard.'
To make sure he was understood, the president later underscored his claim by saying, “I don’t think it’s hoarding ... I think maybe it’s worse than hoarding.”
The remarks drew criticism from health care workers who did not appreciate being accused of stealing...
Trump’s campaign responded to this criticism by tweeting a video from a press conference New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo gave on March 6, in which he said, “There have been thefts of medical equipment and masks from hospitals, believe it or not — not just people taking a couple or three, I mean just actual thefts of those products.”"
I like how the article smears Trump by deliberately (?) misunderstanding him (as if healthcare professionals are the only ones possible of stealing, or even that they were incapable of doing so), then admits that its premise is wrong while doubling down on it