^^Stevens Pass in WA is closed. Snoqualmie will operate but there will be no new ticket sales.
And now ALL colorado ski resorts are closed https://www.summitdaily.com/news/vail-resorts-suspending-operations-sunday-through-march-22/
(As an aside, Whistler is part of Vail resorts so closed as part of their closing)
It cannot possibly be better to pack crowds people tightly together for six hours before screening them for Covid, than to just not screen at all. For every infected person you detect, they’ll have caused at least more than one new infection that they won’t detect. They’ll cause a lot more infections than they detect. One infected person at that Biogen conference infected 70 other people! This is a fiasco.
Here is an article from the Guardian talking about the difference between ibufrofen and paracetamol (acetaminophen systemic) during the treatment of COVID-19. Apparently, ibuprofen should be avoided. Interesting stuff…
The announcement from Israel that it will use anti-terrorism tracking technology to minimise coronavirus transmission follows a series of ever-stricter restrictions imposed by the Israeli government to contain the virus, Reuters reports.
The Israeli military said earlier on Saturday that it had ordered all troops to be back on their bases by Sunday morning, and that combat soldiers should prepare for a lengthy stay with no leave for up to a month.
Last week anyone entering Israel was ordered to self-isolate for two weeks and schools have been shut. Tens of thousands of Israelis are presently quarantined.
Israel’s Health Ministry said 193 people have tested positive, with no fatalities. Many had been on international flights in the past two weeks. (Guardian)
80% of South Korea’s cases are linked to cluster transmissions
From CNN’s Yoonjung Seo in Seoul
About 80% of all coronavirus cases in South Korea are associated with cluster transmissions, according to the country’s Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).
The country has reported 8,162 cases and 75 deaths.
Several clusters have been found around the country. The Shincheonji religious group, based in the southern city of Daegu, is the biggest cluster; 74% of all cases nationwide are from the city.
Nationally, 60% of all cases are linked to the group, said the KCDC release.
Officials identified another cluster at a call center in Seoul this week, which has led to 124 cases so far.
Another cluster is within the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, where 29 people have tested positive.
China is lifting travel restrictions and life is returning to normal
Life in China is beginning to return to normal now that the coronavirus outbreak has largely been contained across the country, with lockdowns lifting and employees returning to work.
China only reported 20 new cases today – a drastic drop from just a few weeks ago, when the country was recording thousands of new infections a day.
The new cases are no longer spread out across the country – now, new cases are mostly either imported from international travelers or concentrated in Hubei Province, the epicenter of the outbreak.
Domestic travel is resuming: During the worst of the outbreak, 1,119 highway entrances and exits across the country were closed. Now, all but two have reopened, according to state media outlet Xinhua.
Hundreds of previously-closed roads in counties, towns, and provinces have also reopened. The national road network is “basically running normally,” and 28 provinces have resumed inter-provincial travel, Xinhua reported.
Of 12,028 health and quarantine stations set up on highways, 11,198 have been removed.
This is a huge contrast to February. Just a month ago, much of China was essentially locked down. Many residents weren’t allowed to leave their apartment complexes, let alone the city. Some stayed indoors for weeks on end.
Even within cities, public transport was restricted; in Wuhan and other locked-down cities, subway trains were halted and most taxis suspended, with only a small number of government-issued shuttles and cars operating. (CNN)
I heard a similar story of someone who returned from Italy who wasn’t at all asked upon arrival in the US. And just today, my local TV station had an interview with an American just back from Spain. He was stunned that no one at his US point of entry even seemed interested where he’d been.
This is all very third world. Very shocking. And bodes very badly for the immediate future.
My European friends are all talking about it. Apparently the French are urging all their people and doctors to NOT use pain relievers like ibuprofen because it complicates recovery from COVID particularly among younger people. So there was all this drama – and then the Germans are saying, this is FAKE news. So you’ve got two nations saying two different things about a common pain reliever at a time of a world-wide health emergency. Oy gevalt.
Colombia to expel four European visitors for violating quarantine
BOGOTA/CARACAS (Reuters) - Colombia will expel four Europeans for violating compulsory quarantine protocols designed to halt the spread of coronavirus, just hours after it closed its border with Venezuela, the government said on Saturday.
Two men and two women of French and Spanish nationality will be deported after ignoring mandatory instructions to isolate themselves and leaving their hotels, against the warnings of staff, the migration agency said.
Colombia has so far reported 22 cases of COVID-19 and has declared a health emergency to contain the disease. Measures include suspending public gatherings of more than 500 people and blocking cruise ships from entering its ports.
Colombia had previously asked visitors from France, Spain, Italy and China to self isolate for two weeks upon arrival.
Passengers held on cruise ship in New Zealand over virus fears
Passengers on the Golden Princess cruise liner were barred from disembarking at a New Zealand port on Sunday because of a suspected coronavirus case on board, health officials said.
There were 2,600 passengers and 1,100 crew on the boat docked at Akaroa near the South Island city of Christchurch, according to the port’s cruise ship schedule.
New Zealand’s director-general of health, Ashley Bloomfield, said the ship’s doctor had quarantined three passengers. One of them has developed COVID-19 symptoms and is being treated as a suspected case.
“All on board are not being allowed off the ship until results are known,” Bloomfield said.
Princess Cruises, which operates the vessel, announced three days ago it was suspending voyages worldwide for two months in response to the coronavirus pandemic. (Al Jazeera)
Myanmar’s government has rejected suggestions that the country has undetected cases of the virus, reiterating that it is free of any infections and that “the lifestyle and diet of Myanmar citizens” has helped protect the country.
According to Global New Light of Myanmar, a state-run news source, the director general of the ministry of office of the state counsellor, U Zaw Htay, told a press conference:
Myanmar does not share the customs of greeting with handshakes, hugs or kisses that [Western] countries have. It also does not have a high number of credit card users compared to other nations, as the person handling credit cards at the counter would be in close contact with hundred of different people in a day. This is avoided by Myanmar’s predominant use of paper currency.
Myanmar people wearing protective face masks pass along a roadside at downtown area in Yangon, Myanmar, 13 March 2020.
Myanmar people wearing protective face masks pass along a roadside at downtown area in Yangon, Myanmar, 13 March 2020. Photograph: Lynn Bo Bo/EPA
U Zaw Htay added that the government was taking measures to prepare for the pandemic, and that people should avoid large gatherings, maintain good personal hygiene and not panic buy at shops.
Severe legal action would be taken against anyone sharing fake news online and against any businesses attempting to make profit from the situation, reporters were told.
Myanmar recently cancelled water festivals due to take place next month to mark the Buddhist New Year. Other Southeast Asian countries are also scaling back planned events. (Guardian)
Korean Air is using passenger planes for cargo to make up for lost revenue
From CNN’s Yoonjung Seo in Seoul
Korean Air has started using grounded passenger planes to transport cargo, the airline said in a news release today.
The move will help make up for lost revenue and support South Korean companies in importing and exporting goods, according to the company.
Due to various global travel bans and restrictions, Korean Air has suspended 89 of its 124 passenger routes. The airline is only operating 14% of its international passenger flights.
Korean Air began using passenger aircraft for cargo on a flight to Ho Chi Mihn, Vietnam, on Friday, and will begin cargo transport to Qingdao, China, on March 21.
The aviation industry is suffering. Earlier this month, Airports Council International (ACI) predicted that airport passenger traffic volume for the first quarter of 2020 will be down at least 12 percentage points compared to what it previously projected, with Asia-Pacific passenger traffic down 24% compared to previous forecasts.
Before the pandemic, global airport revenues for the first quarter of 2020 were forecast to reach almost $39.5 billion. ACI now estimates a loss of revenue of at least $4.3 billion.
Face mask shortages lead to resale bans and crackdowns
A law banning the resale of face masks has gone into effect in Japan as the government tries to address severe shortages as a result of the outbreak.
Those who violate the law that came into effect on Sunday risk a prison term of up to one year or a fine of up to one million yen ($9,260).
In Hong Kong, meanwhile, authorities are telling retailers to stop selling four types of surgical masks because their bacterial counts exceeded maximum legal limits.
The masks are sold in boxes of 50 pieces each and two of the samples listed Nepal and Turkey as the countries of manufacture, Hong Kong customs said in a statement. The others were unlabelled, but are thought to have come from Southeast Asia. (Al Jazeera)
When coronavirus numbers don’t paint a big pandemic picture
Egypt appears to have very few cases of Covid-19 while South Korea and Italy have thousands
But one expert warns that Africa could be the disease’s next hotspot, despite the low reported caseload
From the raw numbers alone, the new coronavirus would appear to have less of a foothold in places like Egypt and India than countries such as Italy or South Korea.
As of Sunday, Egypt had at least 67 cases of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and India had 83 while South Korea had more than 8,000 and Italy more than 21,600.
But a new set of numbers last week indicates that the raw numbers are not an accurate reflection of whether the epidemic is spreading in a country.
On Wednesday, nine members of a Hong Kong tour group who had visited Egypt were confirmed to have the coronavirus while last week two residents who had visited Mumbai tested positive for Covid-19 upon return to the special administrative region.
The difference, according to experts, is testing.
Benjamin Cowling, a professor at the University of Hong Kong’s school of public health, said that many countries were already affected, and many more would be in the coming weeks. The actual number of infections in a country would depend on surveillance and testing capacity.
“South Korea has a high number of cases but also has done a very large number of tests,” Cowling said. “Other countries might have more infections than South Korea but less confirmed cases, because they have done fewer tests.”
South Korea has been praised for its mass screening, testing 248,647 people as of Thursday, or 4,831 per million people in the country. This rate is far higher than other countries that have released data on testing.
Italy’s rate was 1,422 per million people, Japan’s was 81 and the US’ was at 42, according to data from health departments.
As a result, South Korea had the highest number of cases outside China at one point, although the growth of new cases has slowed and the country reported more recoveries than new cases for the first time on Friday.
In Egypt, 45 of the 67 confirmed cases were on a cruise ship in the southern city of Luxor, as of Thursday. However, at least 40 visitors who travelled to Egypt later tested positive for Covid-19 at home, according to data compiled by the Post. This included tourists from the United States, Greece, France and Hong Kong.
More than 42 African countries have been trained to test for Covid-19 and there is a stockpile of 60,000 test kits, John Nkengasong, the director of Africa CDC, said in an interview published by the Harvard Global Health Institute on Friday. The challenge now was to expand testing capacity within each country and identify community spread, he said.
“Our greatest need for the continent now is to cascade the testing within the country down and make sure diagnostic [capabilities] leave the central lab,” he said. “People [have been] slipping in without symptoms and we didn’t know. They could be seeding infections everywhere and then we’d see an outburst. That is a scenario that wakes me up at night.”
When asked which countries had sought help with testing, the WHO said it had sent laboratory tests for Covid-19 to more than 120 countries. This included centres in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and almost all of the countries in South America, Africa and eastern Europe. North Korea was also listed as one of the recipients.
But the WHO did not clarify how many laboratory tests were sent to each of the countries.
Tom Kenyon, who worked for 21 years at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and is now the chief health officer of medical NGO Project Hope, said Africa could be the next front line. “I think Africa could be the next major hotspot and their ability to cope, such as with testing, is going to be a major challenge,” Kenyon said. “It’s really surprising that there hasn’t been much onward transmission yet. But that’s what I worry about the most.”
Cowling said ultimately countries might not need to test every single person with symptoms and could consider an alternative. “We would like to keep track of where the virus is going, and how far epidemics have progressed, but counting numbers of cases is not the best way to do that,” he said. “Perhaps better would be systematic approaches that can estimate the number of people that have been infected as time goes on.”
The worldwide coronavirus pandemic will change the way we shop, travel and work
for years to come. History shows us how
Every economic shock leaves a legacy. The deadly coronavirus will be no different.
The great depression spurred a “waste not want not” attitude that defined consumer patterns for decades. Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic still haunts German policy.
The Asia financial crisis left the region hoarding the world’s biggest collection of foreign exchange. More recently, the 2008 global financial crisis drove a wedge through mature democracies that still reverberates, with workers suffering measly pay gains in the decade since.
This time it’s a public health emergency that’s shaking up the world economy. In just a matter of weeks, people in affected areas have become accustomed to wearing masks, stocking up on essentials, cancelling social and business gatherings, scrapping travel plans and working from home. Even countries with relatively few cases are taking many of those precautions.
Traces of such habits will endure long after the virus lockdowns ease, acting as a brake on demand. On the supply side, international manufacturers are being forced to rethink where to buy and produce their goods – accelerating a shift after the US-China trade war exposed the risks of relying on one source for components.
In the white-collar world, workplaces have amplified options for teleworking and staggered shifts – ushering in a new era where work from home is an increasing part of people’s regular schedule.
“Once effective work-from-home policies are established, they are likely to stick,” said Karen Harris, managing director of consultancy Bain’s Macro Trends Group in New York.
Universities stung by travel bans will diversify their foreign student base and schools will need to be better prepared to keep educating online when breakouts force their closure.
The tourism sector is seeing the most drastic hit, with flights, cruises, hotels and the web of businesses who feed off the sector struggling. While tourists will no doubt be eager to explore the world and relax on a beach again, it may take some time before the industry that hires about one in 10 people recovers.
The virus has also turned the economic policy outlook on a dime and created new priorities. Central banks are in emergency mode again, while governments are digging ever deeper to find money to prop up struggling sectors. Hygiene is soaring up government and corporate agendas – indeed, Singapore already plans to introduce mandatory cleaning standards.
“This outbreak is unprecedented in terms of its nature of uncertainty and associated social and economic impact,” said Kazuo Momma, who used to be in charge of monetary policy at the Bank of Japan. Tighter borders controls, wider insurance coverage and lasting changes to working and commuting patterns will be just some of the microeconomic changes that will endure long after the virus, Momma says.
In China, where the virus first erupted in Wuhan late last year, the top legislature has already imposed a total ban on trade and consumption of wild animals amid scientists’ warnings that the deadly coronavirus migrated from animals to humans. Additional strict hygiene rules are expected that will accelerate a push by wary consumers to online shopping, similar to how the 2003 SARS outbreak changed shopping habits as people avoided the mall.
Analysis by Bain & Company found that China will see pronounced immediate changes in health care as more and more rudimentary check-ups and transactions are conducted through online channels to avoid the risk of contamination in crowded waiting rooms and wards.
Governments may spend much more on health care to avoid the massive cost associated with epidemics, according to a new paper on the macroeconomic impact of the virus published by the Brookings Institution and co-authored by Warwick McKibbin and Roshen Fernando of the Australia National University. “The global community should have invested a great deal more on prevention in poor countries,” McKibbin said. He was also co-author of a previous paper that estimated the 2003 SARS outbreak wiped US$40 billion off the world economy.
Because no one knows how the virus will play out or what the final human and economic toll will be, economists caution against concrete predictions. It could be that much of the disruption will revert to normal activity once the outbreak is contained, according to Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps of Columbia University.
“I think most businesses and certainly the behemoths in the US and elsewhere will not fail to go back to normal business practices,” he said.
Economists like Paul Sheard, a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, also caution that because no two economic shocks are the same, it’s far from certain what legacy this one will leave.
Fabrizio Pagani, a former adviser to the Prime Minister of Italy, draws on previous shocks for guidance. “The oil supply shock in the 70s led to the first efforts of energy conservation and efficiency,” he said. “The demand shock determined by the great financial crisis was the rationale for a new, quite radical, regulatory framework across the banking and financial sectors.” This time around, he expects changes to everything from online schooling and distance learning to industrial strategy as existing business models are reworked.
A triple convergence of Brexit, the US China trade war and now Covid-19 could reshape the world’s manufacturing supply chains, according to Michael Murphree, of the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business.
Kathryn Judge, a financial markets and regulation expert at Columbia University, says the US banking crash of 2008 has left deep scars by fuelling divisive politics and declining levels of home ownership. The current crisis, as nations around the world take emergency steps to shield citizens from coronavirus infection, will have an impact too. “Long-brewing debates about how to revamp the US health care system might benefit from a renewed sense of urgency, enabling structural change,” Judge said…
James Boughton, who served for decades at the International Monetary Fund, including as the fund’s historian, cites the collapse in South Korea and Indonesia as catalysts for change, provided governments act. “Only in a crisis are governments able to rally people to accept necessary but painful reforms,” said Boughton. “Every crisis is also an opportunity.”
The US is on course to be severely ravaged by the coronavirus outbreak due to a delayed and dysfunctional testing regime and misleading messaging from the Trump administration, public health experts have warned.
As of Friday, there were more than 1,600 confirmed cases of the Covid-19 virus across the US, with 41 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control. However, the actual number of infected Americans is certain to be far higher, with the true toll obscured by a calamitous lack of testing.
A lack of planning and restrictions that barred testing people without symptoms, even though the virus can be asymptomatic for some time, or those not arriving from overseas virus hotspots has needlessly worsened the situation, critics said.
In the period from last Sunday until Wednesday morning, the CDC tested just 77 people in the US. By stark comparison the Utah Jazz basketball team alone managed to test 58 people as the NBA, along with scores of schools, Broadway shows and various other cultural and sporting events were shut down. Even in Washington state, where 31 people have died, health officials have had to ration test kits.
On 31 January the Trump administration restricted travel from China, where Covid-19 originated, but then efforts to ramp up testing and ensure containment stalled. In a key setback, the administration rejected World Health Organization testing kits in favor of developing its own, which turned out to be faulty.
“The response has been frustrating and disappointing,” said Thomas Chen-chia Tsai, a surgeon in Boston and faculty member of the Harvard Global Health Institute. “The strict quarantine measures in China bought the rest of the world a few weeks of time but in the US we were on the sidelines rather than reacting. It was a missed opportunity. If there was a targeted response we’d be in a very different position now.
“The US government didn’t want to cause panic but Americans panic when there they sense there’s no plan. That vacuum creates panic.”
This muddled response was exacerbated by Donald Trump who, reportedly fearful of the impact upon the stock market and his own re-election prospects, initially dismissed fears over the coronavirus…before stating that infections were “going very substantially down, not up”. The administration promised millions of testing kits would be easily available to Americans.
All of these pronouncements have proved untrue, leading to sharp criticism of Trump.
In an unusually stinging editorial, Holden Thorp, a chemist and editor-in-chief of Science, said the president’s “distortion and denial is dangerous and almost certainly contributed to the federal government’s sluggish response. After three years of debating whether the words of this administration matter, the words are now clearly a matter of life and death.”
The worsening situation has been acknowledged even by allies of the president. “We probably lost the chance to have an outcome like South Korea,” said Scott Gottlieb, a former Food and Drug Administration chief under Trump, referencing a country that has helped curb the outbreak by testing nearly 20,000 people every day. “We must do everything to avert the tragic suffering being borne by Italy.”
Anthony Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, admitted in testimony to Congress this week that authorities had failed to respond swiftly to the spread of coronavirus.
“The idea of anybody getting [testing] easily the way people in other countries are doing it, we are not set up for that. Do I think we should be? Yes. But we are not,” he said. “It is a failing. I mean, let’s admit it.”
The US is now bracing itself for a huge wave of new infections without a coherent federal government response.
Hampered structurally by the country’s lack of paid sick leave and a for-profit healthcare system that makes going to the doctor prohibitively expensive for millions of Americans, states and cities are falling back on “social distancing” measures such as shutting down large gatherings and promoting good hygiene.
Belated actions by Trump, such as banning travel from much of Europe, have done little to tackle a virus that has already raced across the American continent, with experts now predicting that tens of millions of people will become infected.
Andy Slavitt, former head of Medicare under Barack Obama’s administration, tweeted that there were expectations of “over 1 million deaths in the US since the virus was not contained & we cannot even test for it. This will be recorded as a major preventable public health disaster.”
Even a sudden surge in testing, combined with accurate, sober advice from the Trump administration, won’t prevent a huge strain placed upon a fragmented American healthcare system that delivers wildly different outcomes for people depending upon their financial means. Ominously, there are far fewer hospital beds per capita in the US compared to the Lombardy region in Italy, where the coronavirus has overwhelmed the healthcare system.
“We don’t have all the beds we need and if this thing hits us full on we are going to be up the creek,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.
“We started with a very crippled public health system that has been underfunded for many years and we knew that something like this would cause us huge challenges. We are seeing that now. We are planning for the worst but hoping for the best.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/14/coronavirus-us-testing-donald-trump
[ I’m sure not everyone will agree with this take on the US’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis thus far but this is the interpretation from foreign press and the knowledgable experts quoted in the piece. ]
Walmart’s new, shorter hours will put a cramp in my social distancing system. There are several nonperishables we get there (including TP) and I tend to do that in the middle of the night when the store is empty. The store where I get most fresh veggies is a local, Mennonite/Amish owned store that’s only open shorter hours already.
As the stores reduce hours, that concentrates the people in there at the same time.
OMG. A friend, who I thought was educated, posted a meme stating that gargling salt water and using vinegar will help ELIMINATE the virus. I posted a link to Snopes showing that this is false. Another friend, who I also thought was educated, replied, “MLH you always love the false button. This has worked for sore throats forever. If it improves someone’s health and they monitor symptoms what’s the problem?” I replied, “Wow. Because I think it’s not a good idea to spread false information. This meme does not say that gargling helps with symptoms it says it ELIMINATES the virus and that’s false. Why would you want false information disseminated?” Then I added, “And yes, I love keeping people informed about anything false that’s posted on Facebook. I’m disappointed that you have a problem with that.”
Then my uncle tells me he thinks this “scare” is all media hype, he won’t cancel church, and he implies that my mom should attend today.
All three people I’ve mentioned in this post are supposedly educated men. Now I’m getting scared. ?
Our CSA farm stores are actually going to be open more days. Usually they are only open weekends at this time of the year…but they have posted that they will be open every day this week. They carry lots of things…veggies, bread, eggs, milk, and a variety of other foods.
A few tidbits from my H.
The State has tested 7500 people in the last few days. This number doesn’t include hospital testing ( morning call in was just with State agencies.)
Also, if you are a contact of a contact (so third in the chain) you will not be tested (yet) unless contact exhibits symptoms or test positive. The 2nd in the chain is being told to self quarantine.
@MaineLonghorn. Many articles that vinegar doesn’t touch this virus. Maybe gargling with soap and water though but yuk.
Maybe post this that says vinegar doesn’t work https://www.consumerreports.org/cleaning/common-household-products-that-can-destroy-novel-coronavirus/
This is always fun… https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/coronavirus-myths-explored
Newly diagnosed person in Kentucky is refusing to self-quarantine. Governor is enforcing quarantine with a law enforcement officer stationed outside their home.
Props to the governor and officers. Hopefully this case is a very rare outsider. ?
s refusing to self-quarantine
Oh my!!!
What is wrong with people? Yesterday I had several friends who took advantage of the “slow time” to do social non-distancing things! One posted a big dinner out with about 30 people toasting! Another took a 2 hour trip out of the area for some entertainment where things are still open. I find all of this very selfish.
Good grief, what a complete jerk.
This is what I mean when I say our country isn’t doing a good job with this. It isn’t a partisan slam or criticism of the current administration. It is shock that we are doing a really terrible job. Other countries are doing better than we are. That should not be. Surely a country like ours can do better.