Coronavirus in the US

Parent Cafe
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Hospital ships preparing to deploy, but could still take a few weeks to arrive in New York
From CNN’s Barbara Starr

The US Navy hospital USNS Comfort could still be a “few weeks” away from arriving in New York, a US defense official tells CNN.

Both Navy hospital ships have “prepare to deploy” orders, two defense officials said. President Trump said Wednesday they’d launch in the next week or so.

Both ships will start getting ready, with crew and medical staff."

It is expected at this point the medical staff will be trauma care specialists, at least to begin with, so their presence can free up bed space in New York City hospitals. They will try for all due speed to get there, the officials said.

Trump sees country on wartime footing, calls himself a “wartime president”
From CNN’s Kevin Liptak

President Trump says he sees the country on wartime footing and himself as a “wartime president” amid a raging coronavirus crisis.

“I do,” Trump said when asked if he sees the country at war with the disease. “I’m looking at it that way.”

“I view it — in a sense as a wartime president,” Trump said after announcing he was invoking the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law allowing the government to mandate production of equipment.
“I mean, that’s what we’re fighting. I mean, it’s a very tough situation here,” he went on. “You have to do things. You have to close parts of an economy that six weeks ago were the best they’ve ever been. We had the best economy we’ve ever had. And then one day you have to close it down in order to defeat this enemy, and, but we’re doing it and we’re doing it well.”

Trump praised the nation’s citizens for their response.

“The American people have been incredible — for the most part,” he said.

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Regardless of the answer, it is overwhelming ERs and that is only going to get worse and cause more fatalities as a result. Flattening the curve is essential right now. If the US had taken action since late December when my state knew it was probably coming here and started making plans, we could be in a far better situation now and not have this massive spreading taking off and starting to overwhelm ERs. This is a serious problem if for no other reason than the ER situation and the impact flooding medical professionals will have on others who need medical care for other things. But I believe we have a lot of good data out of other countries that shows this virus is more contagious than the flu and more deadly.

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Dr. Birx said she did not mean to suggest the widely used diagnostic tests generated frequent false-positive results.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/health/coronavirus-tests-who.html

"In a somewhat rambling answer to a question related to W.H.O. tests, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said: “It doesn’t help to put out a test where 50 percent or 47 percent were false positives. Imagine what that would mean to the American people. Imagine what that would mean to tell someone they were positive when they weren’t.”

It was not clear where Dr. Birx got those figures, but obviously such an inaccurate test would be worthless. Late on Tuesday night, Dr. Birx confirmed that although she was responding to a question about the W.H.O. test, she was referring to a study of an early diagnostic test used in China.

The paper found that, in a specific subset of those tested in China — asymptomatic contacts of known cases — the tests wrongly found them to be positive 47 percent of the time.

But there have been no suggestions that the W.H.O. test, distributed worldwide, has such significant accuracy problems. On Tuesday night, Dr. Birx said she has not looked into the W.H.O. test, “but I assume it is functional.” "

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Maybe someone posted this from Pennsylvania, but I hadn’t seen it. They have only state run liquor stores, although groceries can sell wine and beer. This is going to hurt. Not much warning, either.

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Frustrating ^. I think it is intentional misleading. I don’t see Birx as a straight shooter like Fauci. My BS detector goes off with her.

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I totally agree. I see Dr. Fauci as the leader of the free world right now, but Dr. Birx does not impress me at all.

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Trump can’t say why professional athletes have access to coronavirus testing
From CNN’s Betsy Klein

President Trump wasn’t able to say when asked Wednesday why many non-symptomatic professional athletes have had access to coronavirus testing while many sick Americans don’t.

“You’d have to ask them that question,” Trump said.

“Should that happen?” the reporter followed up

Trump responded, “No, I wouldn’t say so, but perhaps that’s been the story of life.”

[ Easy - $$ and private testing. ]

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Stock trading has been halted
From CNN’s Anneken Tappe

The New York Stock Exchange has halted stock trading for 15 minutes after the S&P 500 fell 7% on Wednesday afternoon.

Once again, investors aren’t finding comfort in Trump’s press conferences.

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World Health Organization study underway to test and compare coronavirus treatment approaches
From CNN Health’s Jacqueline Howard

The World Health Organization announced in a press briefing in Geneva on Wednesday that it has organized a study to examine various untested coronavirus treatments.

“WHO and its partners are therefore organizing a study in many countries in which some of these untested treatments are compared with each other,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during the briefing. “This large, international study is designed to generate the robust data we need, to show which treatments are the most effective.”

Tedros added: “We have called this study the SOLIDARITY trial. The SOLIDARITY trial provides simplified procedures to enable even hospitals that have been overloaded to participate. Many countries have already confirmed that they will join the SOLIDARITY trial — Argentina, Bahrain, Canada, France, Iran, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and Thailand — and I trust many more will join.”

Dow erases all its gains since Trump took office
From CNN’s Anneken Tappe

The Trump stock rally, which at its peak a month ago was robust and seemingly unending, has completely evaporated.

The Dow briefly fell more than 1,500 points on Tuesday, bringing the index below 19,732 points. That was the Dow’s closing level on January 19, 2017, the day before Trump took office.

The S&P 500 is still above its Trump inauguration level, but it is moving closer to wiping out all of Trump’s stock market gains as well. The index, which is the broadest measure of Wall Street, was down 6.3% in the early afternoon on Tuesday.

Global equities have been hit hard by the worries about the economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak, which has by now infected more than 7,000 people in the United States.

Economists predict recessions for both individual countries and the world economy this year as the pandemic dealt both a supply and demand shock to commerce. That said, expectations for a sharp rebound for the economy and the stock market towards the second half of the year are high.

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Trump on ventilator shortage: “Nobody ever thought of these numbers”
From CNN’s Betsy Klein and Kaitlan Collins

President Trump was pressed Wednesday by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on the ventilator shortage at the nation’s hospitals.

“Hospitals are still supposed to have ventilators too, and when we have thousands of ventilators, it sounds like a lot. But this is a very unforeseen thing, nobody ever thought of these numbers. Nobody saw numbers like this even with regard to testing, normally we wouldn’t be doing testing and they decided to do it. Very, very hard to ramp up. Now we’re getting highly sophisticated tests and it’s going very well,” he said.

Asked why it took so long if the US knew it needed more ventilators, he said, “Well we knew – it depends, it depends on how it goes, worst case, absolutely, best case, not at all. So we’re going to have to see where it goes. But we are ordering thousands and thousands of ventilators and they’re complex. These are complex machines.”

Trump asked Vice President Mike Pence how many ventilators the US has.

“We have a specific number of ventilators in the stockpile. It’s in excess of 10,000. And you just heard the announcement from the Department of Defense, they’ll be adding several more thousand to that,” he said, adding that that number doesn’t count all of the ventilators that exist in the marketplace and in healthcare facilities around the country.

Pence went on to praise the “tremendous spirit” among industry leaders who are “ready to step in and add to that volume.

[ total bs. Experts have been warning about pandemics for years. We could have ramped up a month ago. ]

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And this is why those who are choosing not to help try to slow the progression (aka help the system) should not qualify to get one of those beds if they are in the 12-20% with bad symptoms and need one.

We’re going to need to make decisions - that’s one criteria that would be top of the list for me. Save the beds for those who made an effort to make things better.

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Trump: Young people are “feeling invincible,” but should “heed the advice”
From CNN’s Betsy Klein

President Trump was asked about Dr. Deborah Birx’s warning regarding millennial coronavirus and his message to many of his own young, conservative supporters who may be heeding his earlier advice downplaying the seriousness of coronavirus.

He claimed his earlier comments were “to be calm.”

“I do want people to be calm,” he said.

But, he added, “I hope they just listen to what we’ve been saying over the last period of time. We don’t want them gathering, and I see that they do gather including on beaches, and including in restaurants, young people. They don’t realize that — they’re feeling invincible, I don’t know if you felt invincible when you were young. But they don’t realize that they could be carrying lots of bad things home to their grandmother and grandfather and even their parents,” he said.

He continued, “So we want them to heed the advice… and I do believe it’s getting through.”

Asked again about those who aren’t following that advice, he reiterated, “Heed the advice, heed the advice, I just said.

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Gotta admit, I’m a little worried that Dr. Fauci was not at the press conference this morning, and hoping he’s just too busy doing his job to get to every press conference.

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Trump signs bill to take control of private sector
Donald Trump, the United States president, has announced that he will invoke a federal provision that allows the government to marshal the private sector in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Associated Press reports.

Trump, now describing himself as a wartime president, said he would sign the Defense Production Act “in case we need it” as the government bolsters resources for an expected surge in cases of the virus.

The Defense Production Act gives the president powers to direct domestic industrial production to provide essential materials and goods needed in a national security crisis.

It allows the president to require businesses and corporations to prioritise and accept contracts for required materials and services. It also allows the president to provide incentives for the domestic industrial base to expand the production and supply of critical materials and goods, according to a March 2 report by the Congressional Research Service.

Trump also said he will expand the nation’s testing capacity and deploy a Navy hospital ship to New York City, which is rapidly becoming the centre of a pandemic that has rattled the U.S. economy and rewritten the rules of American society.

A second ship will be deployed to the West Coast.

Cuba has come to the rescue of a British cruise ship rejected by port officials across the Caribbean for weeks, allowing more than 1,000 people on board ashore, including five confirmed to be infected with coronavirus.

The Associated Press reports that the Braemar arrived in the port of Mariel early on Wednesday morning, with medical workers in protective gear taking passengers from the ship to Jose Marti international airport.

Sailing the Caribbean since late February, the Braemar had already been turned away by the Dominican Republic, Barbados and the Bahamas. Cuba said it is allowing the passengers to transit as an act of humanitarian solidarity.

Ramón Castillo, head of the company of pilots of ports of the Republic of Cuba, told a press conference:

We were asked to carry out a humanitarian, safe and fast operation; Based on these three premises, the plan that we are fulfilling this morning was designed.

Operations are carried out safely by personnel with proven competence and their qualifications as established by international regulations

Most of the 682 passengers were expected to arrive in London on Thursday morning on planes chartered by Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines, while those with the coronavirus or flu-like symptoms were being flown to a British military base on a separate plane.

It comes as Cuba announced its first death from the coronavirus, a 61-year-old Italian tourist who was one of 10 confirmed cases on the island.

The World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is telling Africa “to prepare for the worst and prepare today” as he holds a press conference on the latest developments on the global coronavirus pandemic.

Guardian

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That’s what I thought she meant - a hypothetical test that can be slapped together and released quickly. Although the WHO designs have room for improvement according to what I have heard. Also, because companies have diagnostics platforms on which their tests are run, having sequences on hand is only part of the overall game. It can be tricky.

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Portugal declares state of emergency
The president of Portugal has declared a state of emergency over the spread of Covid-19, subject to approval by the country’s parliament.

The country has 642 confirmed cases of Covid-19 so far, and two patients have died, according to a Reuters tally. The number of cases has risen by 194 since Monday.

The Portuguese victims of the virus include the president of the board of directors of Santander Portugal, António Vieira Monteiro, who was hospitalised after returning from a holiday in Italy.

Two of his children have also been diagnosed with Covid-19.

The first victim, Mário Veríssimo, an 80-year-old former masseur, died on Monday.

Here’s the latest public service announcement from Arnold Schwarzenegger, who says he will now start to publish daily videos on exercises that older people can do at home to stay fit.

Arnold
:heavy_check_mark:
@Schwarzenegger
Doctors say that riding my bike outside is OK so it’s the only way I’m leaving the house, but if you do ride your bike or go for a walk, don’t stop, avoid social contact. Apologies to everyone but I won’t be stopping on my rides for selfies. Stay positive, stay safe.

Guardian

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Virginia’s rate seems about like New York’s.

1278 tested. 77 positive.

I agree that no one ever thought it would get this bad. No one. The media wasn’t covering it much in January. They were covering the impeachment story. The people I know in the medical community were poo-pooing my early alarm when I asked ‘what do you think will happen here with the coronavirus’. Was anyone preparing? Were the makers of protective gear gearing up with production? Or the manufacturers of ventilators?

The general public were still traveling to Europe. College students were still planning on spring break.

Does anyone know if Dr. Fauci was raising the alarm back then?

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@OneMoreToGo2021, you seemed to ignore my point that even the “let it run its course” strategy would still lead to a big economic hit as tens of millions would get sick enough to be unable to work and people still wouldn’t go out because nobody likes to contract a virus that leads to death when everybody will know of someone dead or dying from this virus (which would be the case in the “let it run” strategy). And even survivors may suffer permanent disability. Plus, which, we don’t even know if contracting this provides permanent immunity. If this is like the flu virus which mutates quickly, then you don’t actually have herd immunity.

BTW, the UK backed off from their risky “herd immunity” plan (I prefer to call it the “400 AD solution”).

Nate Silver has made the point that with so many unknowns about the virus, shutting down preemptively is the safer wiser course. If it turns out that you were overly cautious, you could always switch back to full throttle and let everyone go wild, but if you go with the “let it run” strategy and it turns out that you were wrong, everything would be devastated (lives and economy) and there’s no way to switch because you can not go back in time.

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Interesting perspective from investor Bill Ackman, interviewed on CNBC (which I normally never pay attention to).

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/bill-ackman-advises-trump-to-shut-down-us-says-market-would-soar.html?__source=twitter%7Cmain

"Ackman revealed he went into lockdown almost a month ago to save his father’s life who is immunocompromised.

“You look at the beaches at Fort Lauderdale: Unfortunately, they’re packed with 18-to-22-year-olds having the time of their lives, spreading the virus. They’re probably OK, most of them … but when they go home to their parents, or they go home to their loved one, or to their friend who just had breast cancer surgery and is immune-compromised: They’re going to kill that person,” he said.

“Everyone feels, you know, ’99% chance I’ll be OK!’” the investor added. “But it’s not you: It’s the person you give it to. I am not going to kill my father, OK?”

The investor warned that further delays to such a “Spring Break” hiatus would continue to have disastrous costs to human life and pressed Trump to “please send everyone home now.”

“No one defaults, no one forecloses. A 30-day rent, interest and tax holiday for all,” he added. “The shutdown is inevitable as it is already happening, but not in a controlled fashion which is extending the economic pain and amplifying the spread of the virus.” "

I also thought the video interview portion was interesting. He talked about how China, South Korea and Singapore were very disciplined in their approach to shutting everything down and it was successful.

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We have to remember that it is impossible to devise a test that will never give a false negative. With this virus, all it takes is a single false negative to change everything. Patient zero feels emboldened to roam freely, and infects hundreds.

Yes, we need more testing ASAP, but the thought can’t be “If only…”

Maybe South Korea has done a good job, I don’t think anyone truly knows. By my definition of success, no one has done a good job. Everyone needs to be constantly striving to do better.