USA - There are now 2 more confirmed cases for a total of 62. Both new cases reported Friday are among Diamond Princess passengers.
44 people who were aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship
3 people repatriated from China
15 US cases
ICELAND - first case confirmed, a man who recently visited Italy but outside the area considered high risk.
FRANCE - 3 new cases for a total of 41. One is a woman from Cannes, the first in the Côté d’Azur region in the south of France. She had been in Milan.
The Cannes film festival committee said it was monitoring developments and said it was too early to say whether the event would go ahead. The 73rd annual festival is due to take place from 12-23 May.
MEXICO - the 2 cases confirmed this morning had both traveled to Italy recently.
"Moscow authorities are deporting 88 foreign nationals who violated quarantine measures imposed on them as a precaution against coronavirus, the RIA news agency cited the city’s deputy mayor as saying on Friday.
Hundreds of people have been quarantined in Russia and Moscow authorities have carried out raids on potential carriers of the virus – individuals at their homes or hotels – and used facial recognition technology to enforce quarantine measures." (Guardian)
The mortality rate for ages 60-69 is reported to be 3.6%. So if me, my husband, my friends, my brothers and sisters got this disease, each of us would have about 1 in 30 chance of dying. I do not find that reassuring.
It means if COVID-19 raged through my community, someone I cared about would die, probably. My bike club has about 1000 people, mostly older people; probably someone in the club would die. The Y I go to has a lot of retirees who are members; probably one or more of those members would die. Someone in my neighborhood would die. Parents Forum and Parent Cafe posters tend to be older; a CC poster would die. I’m not reassured.
so, are we not testing because it’s a conspiracy of some sort? if we don’t test, we can say we don’t have cases? How long would that last if that was true? wouldn’t it eventually look bad on whomever is in charge of government?
reading these posts it sounds like many believe the government is stalling and coming up with reasons to delay testing?
Come on Romani, as a budding Social Scientist, you can do better by checking primary sources* as opposed to the popular press (aka opinion). The 15 is the official number from CDC, updated MWF.
*And with the primary source, don’t forget to read the footnotes:
@Artist2233 Explain how the most developed country in the world, who has known about this disease for 5 WEEKS, still does not have test kits available for large segments of the population in our country - when Italy, who started getting cases 1 week ago, was able to test thousands of people and get results back within a couple days.
Why does all messaging have to go through the VP instead of through the appropriate agency?
Yes, I think testing has been purposely suppressed and I am not a conspiracy theorist. Please read about the woman in California and the CDCs refusal to test her because protocol said “only direct contact to China”, when all these other countries were already in community spread.
In what respect? From a medical matter, would having a confirmed Dx for her mattered in her treatment for upper respiratory disease/pneumonia? (hint: there are no yet approved therapeutics for COVID-19.)
From a practical matter, the only advantage for earlier confirmation is faster isolation so that the former community hospital does not have to put a dozen or so employees that came into contact with the patient on self-quarantine at home, hopefully with pay.
From a practical matter, California could have begun contact tracing a week sooner. Speaking as someone who lives in Northern California, if this patient has infected other people, it would be nice to know that sooner rather than later, to find the other infected people and keep them away from healthy people like me, my friends and my community.
I don’t think people on this thread are fear mongering. It’s been a fairly factual thread, with some reasonable concerns voiced. Saying the US should be doing more testing for the virus is a call for more data—more knowledge—not going off the deep end.
I find this thread fascinating. Covid-19 is a giant experiment in different ways to deal with pandemics and has a lot to teach us. I understand that the thread makes some people anxious (I don’t read the threads asking whether a 1570 SAT should be retaken because it’s not good for me). But I sincerely appreciate this thread and will stick to the medical rather than political side so it doesn’t get shut down!
I’m not arguing the fact that it looks like we were hoping it would all go away.
A day late and a dollar short.
So, now that people are making this point - when is the testing going to begin?
Look, I get it, more testing relieves concern so therefore must be good, perhaps regardless of the cost. But, for reasons yet unreleased, the US does not have the ability to test everyone that presents with flu-like symptoms (fever, cough, etc.) – as described in post 2294.
CDC is only able to run xx tests per day in their lab in Atlanta and they claim they have a one-day turnaround, but its a very small number being processed. So, given the constraint, they have an approved triage list for testing.
What we don’t know, and may not know, is what CDC thinks on the test protocols being used by other countries, such as Japan, Korea, Great Britain, France, et al. We can only assume that CDC has had access to review the other test protocols used elsewhere and has decided for medical reasons to design their own.
For example, perhaps CDC is trying to come up with a test that is 90+% accurate, with few false negatives or positives. (fill in your own accuracy number) If CDC has reviewed the other testing processes and found them wanting (false negative, false positives, accuracy), no way CDC will come out publicly and state that fact. Never good for International Relations to call out your friends publicly that the US thinks that their test is ‘poor’, particularly if WHO might be adopting some of them. In this case, transparency is not good for the US. Better to let the British press start asking questions of their own National Health Service about their own testing effectiveness.
Are you serious? How about tracking her contacts to see if others are positive and trying to get a jump on keeping it from spreading? Isn’t that a big part of containment?
US whistleblower says workers without proper protection were scolded when they raised safety concerns
"The House Ways and Means Committee has sent letters to US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar… requesting more information about the complaint.
The letter to Azar includes a quote from the whistleblower complaint, which has been obtained by the Washington Post but not independently verified by CNN.
Here’s one of the sections of the letter that quotes the whistleblower:
“The report alleges that staff were sent into quarantined areas ‘without personal protective equipment, training, or experience in managing public health emergencies, safety protocols, and the potential danger to both themselves and members of the public they come into contact with.’ The whistleblower also reported that when staff raised safety concerns, they were ‘admonished by [redacted] for ‘decreasing staff morale,’ accused of not being team players, and had their mental health and emotional stability questioned.’” (CNN)
Corona virus unlikely to vanish next year: US health official
"Anthony Fauci, head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases, said the coronavirus is unlikely to disappear next year and that many more cases should be expected in the US.
Fauci told lawmakers in a closed-door meeting that the US currently does not have enough coronavirus testing resources." (Al Jazeera)
A few days ago, CDC informed its key state labs that it would releasing an update by end of this week, and to be prepared to recieve it. So far, no official announcement that kits are in the mail.
@skieurope I thought this is all I did. I said VP in charge looks reasonable to me since the response involve multiple agencies. Help me understand why my post is deleted.
so where are all the news articles about this?
I see every other horrifying headline being mentioned all day long - why aren’t they (the media) demanding testing be done???