No testing is happening in NY except for NYC yet there are dignosed cases in your Upstate NY area? Testing is either happening Upstate or it isn’t.
Lambeth House in New Orleans had a sixth resident pass away. If I am remembering correctly over 23 residents are positive. I am really feeling worried about our relatives that live there.
https://www.nola.com/news/coronavirus/article_fed9538e-6b70-11ea-827f-db045f504c38.html
I could not be crossing my fingers harder that this treatment shows immediate benefit.
Despite federal guidelines, President Donald Trump suggests ‘sanitizing’ and reusing medical masks
From CNN’s Matthew Hilk
Despite federal guidelines, President Trump Saturday suggested health care workers sanitize and reuse masks when treating coronavirus patients, rather than “throwing away” masks that are in short supply.
Suggesting that health care workers instead clean and reuse the masks, the President said:
We have very good liquids for doing this, sanitizing the masks, and that that’s something they’re starting to do more and more. They’re sanitizing the masks."
It is unclear which type of mask the President was describing, but FDA guidelines for the common N95 respirator masks state they “should not be shared or reused.”
Neither the FDA nor CDC guidelines suggest the possibility of sanitizing masks for safe reuse.
[ I was surprised with these comments when listening today. Sure, some might be forced to do that and reuse out of pure desperation and lack of options but health care workers are our most valuable resource right now and we should be doing everything in our powers to get them the PPE they need to stay safe and healthy. Trump should leave such things to the experts, IMO. ]
Chile reports first coronavirus death
From CNN’s Taylor Barnes
An 82-year-old woman in Chile died from coronavirus, making her the nation’s first death, according to the country’s health ministry Saturday.
The woman had other conditions, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the health ministry said.
The woman attended a family gathering of approximately 20 people on March 4 and that four people in the family “cluster” have tested positive for coronavirus, the health ministry said.
I was surprised to hear those remarks about cleaning the masks, too, and then later there was a suggestion that one of the reasons there is a shortage is because healthcare workers use them for a short time and just throw them away. SMH. Luckily, Dr. Fauci was there to gently correct.
One way or another this will pass.
What condition will our country be in afterwards?
Right now we’re experiencing economic destruction.
In many ways the economic consequences are going to be much more painful than the virus.
Italian PM orders business to close all operations
Italian prime minister Guiseppe Conte has said businesses should close all operations apart from essential supply chains, according to Reuters.
In Argentina’s nationwide lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus, one magical being has been handed a presidential exemption: the tooth fairy.
President Alberto Fernandez earlier this week ordered all but essential workers to stay home and off the streets. But he was forced to amend the list of exceptions after receiving a message from the mother of a seven-year old boy who had recently lost his first tooth.
“Dear @alferdez, I need to ask if the tooth fairy is among those exempted from quarantine? Joaquin has lost his first tooth and we don’t know if we should leave him a letter (we can’t find the tooth). We don’t want to cause the tooth fairy problems or for the police to detain him.”
Fernandez reassured the boy an hour later that the tooth fairy was indeed on the official list of exceptions.
“@littlekbz Cecilita! The tooth fairy can leave rewards for fallen teeth because he is not under quarantine. But the rest of us are… Joaquin should leave the tooth beneath his pillow and enjoy the prize,” Fernandez wrote on Twitter.
Aside from the tooth fairy, Argentina has also exempted key agricultural and export industry workers from the lockdown, and allows people on the streets to buy groceries and medicine, and for urgent medical needs.
The country thus far has confirmed 158 cases of coronavirus and four deaths from the disease. (Guardian) 
They both are painful. Everybody needs to do their part by isolating as much as humanely possible NOW. Not visiting their grocery store daily. Not just to save lives but for every restaurant worker, nurse, airline employee, every owner of a 401K, etc. The sooner we take this seriously, the sooner we can get back to a normal economy. Be responsible. Don’t drag it out.
I don’t see us getting back to “normal” anytime soon. One month, nope. Two months, nope. Four months, nope. Eight months??? Perhaps some semblance, perhaps not.
This may turn into the next great depression.
It is extremely important for the vulnerable to self-isolate, leaving the rest of the population to trudge on and continue to maintain the economy.
In the end, the vulnerable are much more dependent on a good economy than others. Poor countries do not spend much money on people who are well past their productive years, or those who are very unhealthy.
"Right now we’re experiencing economic destruction.
In many ways the economic consequences are going to be much more painful than the virus."
I agree with @MarylandJOE .
Right now the flight to cash is coming from everywhere, regardless of the assets that need to be liquidated. Its going to be a LOT worse than in 2008.
My personal guess is 20 years. I hope I’m wrong, but I think this pandemic will lead to a long term world wide depression, not a relatively short term recession.
here is what Mohamed A. El-Erian has to say, in a very somber Bloomberg opinion post.
I’d pay attention to what he says-
"In a well-known Scottish joke, a visitor to a village stops and asks a resident how to get to a large city. The resident looks up and says, “Oh, if I were going there I certainly wouldn’t start from here.”
This simple joke illustrates the complexity that faces many institutional and individual investors as soon as they emerge from the current “fog of war” in which they are managing their investments and retirements through the fastest stock market correction in history. It encompasses the trifecta of the initial conditions, the journey and the destination, all of which influence the extent to which the coronavirus-driven financial disruptions will spill over into the broader economy.
Markets entered the coronavirus shock conditioned by many years of ample and predictable liquidity injections by central banks. The resulting repression of volatility, and the seemingly endless decoupling of elevated asset prices from more sluggish fundamentals, encouraged ever more risk-taking.
Investors relied on what is known as the central bank put, or comfort that central banks will always be willing and able to provide an effective backstop for their investments. With that came increasing complacency toward what investment professionals refer to as the equity, credit and liquidity risk factors. (That is, the risk of sharp deteriorations in companies’ earnings and profits, of a spike in corporate and sovereign defaults, and of an inability to reposition holdings). The result was an investor base that took on too much risk, a growing component of which resided in asset classes well beyond their natural habitat and lacking inherent liquidity.
The complacency was not limited to investors, who are the demand side for investment products. Suppliers also became infected, first meeting the demand through simplified and seemingly more flexible liquid vehicles, the prime example being the proliferation of ETFs both overall and in segments of the main stock and bond markets. This then migrated to less liquid asset classes, including inherently illiquid segments such as corporate bonds in emerging markets.
As I’ve been warning for several years now, including in some detail in my book “The Only Game in Town” (an updated version of which has been in the works for months and will be available in a few weeks), all this risked leaving the investment world particularly vulnerable to a bad exogenous shock, let alone a devastating one such as the coronavirus shock.
By rendering both monetary and fiscal stimulus ineffective for now, and by unleashing an unprecedented period of unsettling uncertainty and fear, the coronavirus has simultaneously destroyed supply and demand and has plunged the global economy into a deep recession, if not worse. This constitutes a fundamental reversal of the prevailing market paradigm that is also having to cope with the sudden disappearance of the central bank put.
It is an environment in which most investors’ assessment of equity and credit risk goes from a flashing green to a constant red. The resulting desire to reposition badly offside portfolios is frustrated by a lack of liquidity that reflects more than just its under-appreciation in the run-up to the shock. The industry itself is structurally less able and willing to provide it given that its capacity to absorb risk has been sharply curtailed by regulation post the 2008 global financial crisis, consolidation and tighter risk management.
The result of all this is already clear from what has transpired in the last few weeks, from unsettling market volatility and a sharp plunge in asset prices to a breakdown in traditional risk mitigation tools as some investors look to dispose of whatever they can in their scramble into cash. This explains days of simultaneous declines in the prices of both risky assets, such as stocks, and traditional risk-free safe havens, such as government bonds and gold. The more this continues, the higher the vulnerability to financial market failures and the greater the risk for yet another big blow to a real economy already reeling from the twin collapse in consumption and production.
Huge central bank intervention can — and should — minimize the risk of market failures. But it will struggle to place a net under markets off of which asset prices could bounce sustainably absent investors feeling more confident about health-care solutions to contain the spread of the virus, treat illnesses and increase immunity.
This is the tough journey that investors face. I would argue it’s uniquely complex, and that’s before factoring in the wrong starting point and an asset-management industry being hit by the nightmare trifecta of investor redemptions, falling asset values and negative relative performance for many active managers. Then there’s a host of uncertainties about the destination, an additional complication that is yet to be internalized by most analysts and investors.
While much will depend on the severity and duration of the coronavirus shock, there’s already evidence of potential changes to the post-crisis landscape — something that I am spending more time analyzing. And, returning to the risk factor characterization, they will impact interest rate risk as well as equity, credit and liquidity.
It is already clear that markets will be navigating through a huge increase in fiscal deficits and central bank balance sheets; large-scale corporate bailouts and the tricky political decisions that come with them about which sectors and companies to help and how to allocate support among people and different suppliers of capital (including within layers of the capital structure); omnibus legislation on payment holidays; and a big corporate rethinking of the cost-benefit analysis of globalized supply and demand chains.
These are only four items on my list of uncertainties about the post-virus economic and financial landscape, and it’s a list that is bound to grow the longer the economic sudden stops continue. It is a reality that investors will have to deal with, regardless of where they start out."
This is cool.
Robots using ultraviolet light to kill viruses in hospitals.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51914722
“Please leave the room, close the door and start a disinfection,” says a voice from the robot.
“It says it in Chinese as well now,” Simon Ellison, vice president of UVD Robots, tells me as he demonstrates the machine.
Through a glass window we watch as the self-driving machine navigates a mock-hospital room, where it kills microbes with a zap of ultraviolet light.
“We had been growing the business at quite a high pace - but the coronavirus has kind of rocketed the demand,” says chief executive, Per Juul Nielsen.
He says “truckloads” of robots have been shipped to China, in particular Wuhan. Sales elsewhere in Asia, and Europe are also up.
“Italy has been showing a very strong demand,” adds Mr Nielsen. "They really are in a desperate situation. Of course, we want to help them.
Production has been accelerated and it now takes less than a day to make one robot at their facility in Odense, Denmark’s third largest city and home to a growing robotics hub.
Glowing like light sabres, eight bulbs emit concentrated UV-C ultraviolet light. This destroys bacteria, viruses and other harmful microbes by damaging their DNA and RNA, so they can’t multiply.
It’s also hazardous to humans, so we wait outside. The job is done in 10-20 minutes. Afterwards there’s a smell, much like burned hair.
“There are a lot of problematic organisms that give rise to infections,” explains Prof Hans Jørn Kolmos, a professor of clinical microbiology, at the University of Southern Denmark, which helped develop the robot.
“If you apply a proper dose of ultraviolet light in a proper period of time, then you can be pretty sure that you get rid of your organism.”
He adds: “This type of disinfection can also be applied to epidemic situations, like the one we experience right now, with coronavirus disease.”
I too am concerned about the effects on the economy. But a somber article based on the outlook for “investors” seems quite narrow. Most people are not investors. Traditionally disadvantaged individuals will be hit hardest, both medically and financially, by COVID-19 and responses to the virus.
I do go to the store most days bcos, as someone who followed the rules, we did not over-buy or hoard. Now, store shelves are bare of the basics: bread, milk, eggs, produce. So, I was fortunate to find a loaf of sandwich bread today – first time since last Thursday. The local markets are under seige, and just say with a smile, ‘we get another shipment tonite, so check back tomorrow.’
While I concur with your point, I suggest its just not realistic. As I was driving to the market, I noticed that the neighbhorhood parks are full of kids and families. Little kids playing soccer. Bigger kids (HS-age?) working on their badminton game. Runners, joggers, families walking with baby strollers. Pick-nickers, group sunning. Bike clubs on the road.
Sorry, little isolation in our SoCal community on a beautiful day outside. It’s only gonna get worse.
Didn’t the WHO find that even the confirmed carriers in Wuhan would not isolate so they were (ahem) ‘encouraged’ to move into dorms and hospitals? Bruce Aylward : "After a couple of days people get bored, go out for a walk and go shopping and get other people infected.”
I don’t have a link. However the Dr expert they had on NBC following the press conference said that there are guidelines in the 3m website for sanitizing and reusing masks. She also said there is always a resource conservation tension at hospital and reuse is common under normal circumstances and in some cases. She wasn’t against the idea at all. FWIW.
If they can recycle at some level why not. If it it safe in some circumstances and situations. We should be trying to recycle everything in general.
here is great advise from someone who spent a year in space-alone.
"I Spent a Year in Space, and I Have Tips on Isolation to Share
Take it from someone who couldn’t: Go outside.
Being stuck at home can be challenging. When I lived on the International Space Station for nearly a year, it wasn’t easy. When I went to sleep, I was at work. When I woke up, I was still at work. Flying in space is probably the only job you absolutely cannot quit.
But I learned some things during my time up there that I’d like to share — because they are about to come in handy again, as we all confine ourselves at home to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. Here are a few tips on living in isolation, from someone who has been there.
Follow a schedule
On the space station, my time was scheduled tightly, from the moment I woke up to when I went to sleep. Sometimes this involved a spacewalk that could last up to eight hours; other times, it involved a five-minute task, like checking on the experimental flowers I was growing in space. You will find maintaining a plan will help you and your family adjust to a different work and home life environment. When I returned to Earth, I missed the structure it provided and found it hard to live without.
But pace yourself
When you are living and working in the same place for days on end, work can have a way of taking over everything if you let it. Living in space, I deliberately paced myself because I knew I was in it for the long haul — just like we all are today. Take time for fun activities: I met up with crewmates for movie nights, complete with snacks, and binge-watched all of “Game of Thrones” — twice.
And don’t forget to include in your schedule a consistent bedtime. NASA scientists closely study astronauts’ sleep when we are in space, and they have found that quality of sleep relates to cognition, mood, and interpersonal relations — all essential to getting through a mission in space or a quarantine at home.
Go outside
One of the things I missed most while living in space was being able to go outside and experience nature. After being confined to a small space for months, I actually started to crave nature — the color green, the smell of fresh dirt, and the feel of warm sun on my face. That flower experiment became more important to me than I could have ever imagined. My colleagues liked to play a recording of Earth sounds, like birds and rustling trees, and even mosquitoes, over and over. It brought me back to earth. (Although occasionally I found myself swatting my ears at the mosquitoes. )
For an astronaut, going outside is a dangerous undertaking that requires days of preparation, so I appreciate that in our current predicament, I can step outside any time I want for a walk or a hike — no spacesuit needed. Research has shown that spending time in nature is beneficial for our mental and physical health, as is exercise. You don’t need to work out two and a half hours a day, as astronauts on the space station do, but getting moving once a day should be part of your quarantine schedule (just stay at least six feet away from others).
You need a hobby
When you are confined in a small space you need an outlet that isn’t work or maintaining your environment.
Some people are surprised to learn I brought books with me to space. The quiet and absorption you can find in a physical book — one that doesn’t ping you with notifications or tempt you to open a new tab — is priceless. Many small bookstores are currently offering curbside pickup or home delivery service, which means you can support a local business while also cultivating some much-needed unplugged time.
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You can also practice an instrument (I just bought a digital guitar trainer online), try a craft, or make some art. Astronauts take time for all of these while in space. (Remember Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield’s famous cover of David Bowie’s Space Oddity?)
Keep a journal
NASA has been studying the effects of isolation on humans for decades, and one surprising finding they have made is the value of keeping a journal. Throughout my yearlong mission, I took the time to write about my experiences almost every day. If you find yourself just chronicling the days’ events (which, under the circumstances, might get repetitive) instead try describing what you are experiencing through your five senses or write about memories. Even if you don’t wind up writing a book based on your journal like I did, writing about your days will help put your experiences in perspective and let you look back later on what this unique time in history has meant.
Take time to connect
Even with all the responsibilities of serving as commander of a space station, I never missed the chance to have a videoconference with family and friends. Scientists have found that isolation is damaging not only to our mental health, but to our physical health as well, especially our immune systems. Technology makes it easier than ever to keep in touch, so it’s worth making time to connect with someone every day — it might actually help you fight off viruses.
Listen to experts
I’ve found that most problems aren’t rocket science, but when they are rocket science, you should ask a rocket scientist. Living in space taught me a lot about the importance of trusting the advice of people who knew more than I did about their subjects, whether it was science, engineering, medicine, or the design of the incredibly complex space station that was keeping me alive.
Especially in a challenging moment like the one we are living through now, we have to seek out knowledge from those who know the most about it and listen to them. Social media and other poorly vetted sources can be transmitters of misinformation just as handshakes transmit viruses, so we have to make a point of seeking out reputable sources of facts, like the World Health Organization and the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
We are all connected
Seen from space, the Earth has no borders. The spread of the coronavirus is showing us that what we share is much more powerful than what keeps us apart, for better or for worse. All people are inescapably interconnected, and the more we can come together to solve our problems, the better off we will all be.
One of the side effects of seeing Earth from a the perspective of space, at least for me, is feeling more compassion for others. As helpless as we may feel stuck inside our homes, there are always things we can do — I’ve seen people reading to children via videoconference, donating their time and dollars to charities online, and running errands for elderly or immuno-compromised neighbors. The benefits for the volunteer are just as great as for those helped.
I’ve seen humans work together to prevail over some of the toughest challenges imaginable, and I know we can prevail over this one if we all do our part and work together as a team.
Oh, and wash your hands — often."
@NYGovCuomo
·
7h
Younger people listen up: 55% of NYS #Coronavirus cases are ages 18-49.
Young people aren’t invincible. You can get this and you can give it to someone older you love.
You shouldn’t endanger your own health & you certainly shouldn’t endanger other people’s health.
StayAtHome
This is really sad and should have been anticipated
Nigeria reported two cases of chloroquine poisoning after U.S. President Donald Trump praised the anti-malaria drug as a treatment for the novel coronavirus.
Health officials are warning Nigerians against self-medicating after demand for the drug surged in Lagos, a city that’s home to 20 million people. Two people were hospitalized in Lagos for chloroquine overdoses, Oreoluwa Finnih, senior health assistant to the governor of Lagos, said in an interview.
“Please don’t panic,” she said via text message. “Chloroquine is still in a testing phase in combination with other medication and not yet verified as a preventive, treatment or curative option.”…
Going outside does not necessarily mean being in close proximity to other people. It is certainly possible to run, bicycle, or walk outside while keeping away (out of coughing / sneezing range) from anyone whom you do not live with.
From the CDC’s study on transmission in China and Princess Cruise outbreak -
A growing body of evidence indicates that COVID-19 transmission is facilitated in confined settings; for example, a large cluster (634 confirmed cases) of COVID-19 secondary infections occurred aboard a cruise ship in Japan, representing about one fifth of the persons aboard who were tested for the virus. This finding indicates the high transmissibility of COVID-19 in enclosed spaces
Dr. Paul Auwaerter, the Clinical Director for the Division of Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine echoes this finding,
“If you have a COVID-19 patient in your household, your risk of developing the infection is about 10%….If you were casually exposed to the virus in the workplace (e.g., you were not locked up in conference room for six hours with someone who was infected [like a hospital]), your chance of infection is about 0.5%”
According to Dr. Auwaerter, these transmission rates are very similar to the seasonal flu.
Air-based transmission or untraceable community spread is very unlikely. According to WHO’s COVID-19 lead Maria Van Kerkhove, true community based spreading is very rare. The data from China shows that community-based spread was only a very small handful of cases. “This virus is not circulating in the community, even in the highest incidence areas across China,” Van Kerkhove said.
“Transmission by fine aerosols in the air over long distances is not one of the main causes of spread. Most of the 2,055 infected hospital workers were either infected at home or in the early phase of the outbreak in Wuhan when hospital safeguards were not raised yet,” she said.
True community spread involves transmission where people get infected in public spaces and there is no way to trace back the source of infection. WHO believes that is not what the Chinese data shows. If community spread was super common, it wouldn’t be possible to reduce the new cases through “social distancing”.
“We have never seen before a respiratory pathogen that’s capable of community transmission but at the same time which can also be contained with the right measures. If this was an influenza epidemic, we would have expected to see widespread community transmission across the globe by now and efforts to slow it down or contain it would not be feasible,” said Tedros Adhanom, Director-General of WHO.
An author of a working paper from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University said, “The current scientific consensus is that most transmission via respiratory secretions happens in the form of large respiratory droplets … rather than small aerosols. Droplets, fortunately, are heavy enough that they don’t travel very far and instead fall from the air after traveling only a few feet.”
The media was put into a frenzy when the above authors released their study on COVID-19’s ability to survive in the air. The study did find the virus could survive in the air for a couple of hours; however, this study was designed as academic exercise rather than a real-world test. This study put COVID-19 into a spray bottle to “mist” it into the air. I don’t know anyone who coughs in mist form and it is unclear if the viral load was large enough to infect another individual. As one doctor, who wants to remain anonymous, told me, “Corona doesn’t have wings”.