Note that rationing health care by age was advocated upthread:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/22671656/#Comment_22671656
Meanwhile, the coronavirus tracker I follow indicates that today, for the first time, the number of new cases in the US topped 10,000/day. Just think: 10,000 new cases in one day. Five days ago, there weren’t 10,000 total (cumulative) cases in the whole US.
CHINA - 78 new cases totaling 81,171 and 7 new deaths (all Hubei) totaling 3,277.
1 of the new cases is in Wuhan after 5 days of all cases being imported.
ITALY - 4,789 new cases totaling 63,927 and 601 new deaths totaling 6,077.
**USA - 10,168 new cases totaling 43,734 and 140 new deaths totaling 553.
SPAIN - 6,368 new cases totaling 35,136 and 539 new deaths totaling 2,311.
GERMANY - 4,183 new cases totaling 29,056 and 29 new deaths totaling 123.
IRAN - 1,411 new cases totaling 23,049 and 127 new deaths totaling 1,812.
FRANCE - 3,838 new cases totaling 19,856 and 186 new deaths totaling 860.
S. KOREA - 76 new cases totaling 9,037 and 9 new deaths totaling 120.
SWITZERLAND - 1,321 new cases totaling 8,795 and 22 new deaths totaling 120.
UK - 967 new cases totaling 56,650 and 54 new deaths totaling 335.
Britons placed on “stay at home” orders
NETHERLANDS - 545 new cases totaling 4,749 and 34 new deaths totaling 213.
AUSTRIA - 892 new cases totaling 4,474 and 5 new deaths totaling 21.
BELGIUM - 342 new cases totaling 3,743 and 13 new deaths totaling 88.
NORWAY - 240 new cases totaling 2,625 and 3 new deaths totaling 10.
*CANADA - 621 new cases totaling 2,091 and 4 new deaths totaling 24.
*PORTUGAL - 460 new cases totaling 2,060 and 9 new deaths totaling 23.
*BRAZIL - 378 new cases totaling 1,924 and 9 new deaths totaling 34.
*AUSTRALIA - 781 new cases totaling 1,887.
*TURKEY - 293 new cases totaling 1,529 and 7 new deaths totaling 37.
MALAYSIA - 212 new cases totaling 1,518 and 4 new deaths totaling 14.
*ISRAEL - 371 new cases totaling 1,442.
CZECH REPUBLIC - 116 new cases totaling 1,236.
*IRELAND - 219 new cases totaling 906 and 2 new deaths totaling 6.
*ECUADOR - 192 new cases totaling 981 and 4 new deaths totaling 18.
LUXEMBOURG - 77 new cases totaling 875.
PAKISTAN - 99 new cases totaling 875 and 1 new death totaling 6.
POLAND - 115 new cases totaling 749 and 1 new death totaling 8.
CHILE - 114 new cases totaling 746 and 1 new death totaling 2.
THAILAND - 122 new cases totaling 721.
INDONESIA - 65 new cases totaling 579 and 1 new death totaling 49.
*ROMANIA - 143 new cases totaling 576 and 4 new deaths totaling 7.
SAUDI ARABIA - 51 new cases totaling 562.
SINGAPORE - 54 new cases totaling 509.
*INDIA - 103 new cases totaling 499 and 3 new deaths totaling 10.
30 States/UTs (covering 548 districts) announce complete lockdown. PM Modi had said earlier: “Many people are still not taking the lockdown seriously. Please save yourself, save your family, follow the instructions seriously. I request the state governments to get the rules and laws followed”
*PHILIPPINES - 82 new cases totaling 462 and 8 new death totaling 33.
RUSSIA - 71 new cases totaling 438.
*SOUTH AFRICA - 128 new cases totaling 402.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that a national lockdown for 21 days would be implemented from midnight on Thursday
PERU - 32 new cases totaling 395.
BAHRAIN - 39 new cases totaling 377.
EGYPT - 39 new cases totaling 366 and 5 new deaths totaling 19.
HONG KONG - 38 new cases totaling 356.
PANAMA - 32 new cases totaling 345 and 3 new deaths totaling 6.
*MEXICO - 65 new cases totaling 316 and 1 new death totaling 4.
*CROATIA - 61 new cases totaling 315.
COLOMBIA - 46 new cases totaling 231 and 1 new death totaling 3.
*DOMINICAN REPUBLIC - 43 new cases totaling 245.
ALGERIA - 62 new cases totaling 201 and 2 new deaths totaling 17.
ARMENIA - 41 new cases totaling 235.
UAE - 45 new cases totaling 198.
LITHUANIA - 36 new cases totaling 179.
*BURKINA FASO - 24 new cases totaling 99.
USVI - 11 new cases totaling 17.
1st confirmed cases - Myanmar (2), Belize, Turks & Caicos
I have been reading this thread regularly, but find I can not keep up with all the posts, they accumulate so quickly. Thank you to all who are researching and posting. I am hibernating at home, taking all precautions, and have a sobering reality of what we are fighting.
Still, overhearing an official from WHO (I think, not positive of source) on the nightly news say “First 100,000 cases took 67 days, second 100,000 cases took 11 days, third 100,000 cases took 3 days” really shook me up tonight.
I am focusing on making positive connections with at least one person each day, phoning an old friend or relative, chatting leisurely and catching up, and letting that person know I care for them, and giving them stories that show how they have influenced my life for good. Fighting the Fear with Love.
Amazon suspends thousands of sellers over coronavirus price gouging
Amazon says it has removed more than half a million listings that it believes are engaging in price gouging during the coronavirus pandemic.
The online giant also says it has suspended nearly 4,000 accounts in the US for violating the company’s rules on pricing.
In its corporate blog, Amazon says it is monitoring sellers to make sure they are not price gouging or making false claims related to Covid-19.
Amazon says it has reached out to every state attorney general to help monitor price gouging.
Beijing will quarantine and test all international arrivals
From CNN’s Steven Jiang in Beijing
All international travelers arriving in Beijing, regardless of their final destinations, will be quarantined and tested for the coronavirus at designated government facilities at their own expense, Chinese authorities announced today.
The procedures will also apply to people arriving in Beijing after entering China through a different port of entry within the past 14 days.
The new rules will take effect Wednesday, amid continued concerns over the rising number of imported cases coming to China from overseas.
The government reported 78 new cases nationwide on Monday, of which 74 were imported.
Previous measures: Authorities have previously ordered all Beijing-bound international flights diverted to 12 other Chinese cities for health screenings, as well as immigration and customs clearance. Only passengers deemed healthy and low-risk are allowed to continue their travel to Beijing.
With a few exceptions, travelers arriving from abroad whose final destination is Beijing are already required to undergo a 14-day quarantine at government-designated facilities at their own expense.
Atlanta issues stay-at-home order
CNN
In an effort to contain the coronavirus pandemic, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said on Monday she has signed a 14-day stay-at-home order.
“As of now it does not include essential businesses, parks, the Atlanta Beltline and restaurants serving takeout,” the mayor said in a Twitter post.
She also posted a photo of the stay-at-home order, which will prohibit nonessential gatherings and require residents to stay at their homes unless there are essential reasons to go out.
Keisha Lance Bottoms
@KeishaBottoms
Thank you @BrianKempGA for the updated state guidelines. Based upon our density & specific needs/concerns in Atlanta, I’ve signed a 14 day Stay at Home Order. As of now, this does not include essential businesses, parks, @AtlantaBeltLine & restaurants serving takeout.
Hawaii issues “stay at home” order
CNN
Hawaii is the latest state to issue a “stay at home” order due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Gov. David Ige announced the order today, saying, “These actions are extreme, but necessary, to flatten the curve and lay the groundwork for our recovery.”
The order takes effect on Wednesday and will last through at least April 30.
As with most other states instituting their own orders, exceptions are being made for essential services, medical care and grocery shopping.
Gov. Ige had said earlier that it was up to local cities and counties to decide whether to order residents to remain and home – but in his latest announcement, he said “a statewide order is necessary for cohesion and consistency.”
California needs 50,000 more beds, governor says
CNN
Predicting a three-month surge of coronavirus patients, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is calling for 50,000 more hospital beds.
He had previously called for 20,000 more beds – but increased data modeling has more than doubled the need, Newsom said today.
Hospitals are expected to cover about 30,000 beds as part of their current surge plans, and additional hospitals coming into play are providing about 3,000 more beds.
Negotiations are underway with convention facilities, fairgrounds, hotels, motels and skilled nursing centers to add the bed space, Newsom said.
In addition to the physical space, Newsom discussed the options of adding health care workers to help care for those patients, including adding fourth-year medical students into the system, and bringing back recent retirees.
I live in NYC and I see very few cars or people on the street. Both of my kids also live in NYC and they haven’t left their apartments, other than D2 walking her dog.
My apartment building is not allowing any delivery to our apartment. We have to go down to pick up our own delivery. We are also asked not to get on an elevator with other tenants.
How are we doing on morbidity and mortality on a per capita basis as compared to other countries ? That would be a measure of whether efforts are successful.
Number of cases seems less important. It’s hospitalizations and deaths .
Yes, generalization. My area within 20 miles of NYC is a ghost town. “Non-essential” people only go out to get food, medication or a little fresh air. They cross the street to avoid passing someone on the side walk. My teenaged kids have not seen their friends since March 12th. I am considered too lenient because my kids leave the house to walk the dogs, go for a run, and to the park (only with family members and we stay 20 feet from others). DH is essential and drives between several hospitals at all times of the day/night. He doesn’t see anyone gathering.
Too early, IMO. We are at the stage where cases are climbing but deaths aren’t peaking yet. It takes awhile for people to die. And as cases pick up and our health systems get overwhelmed, death rates will climb.
Maybe. Human agency can have an impact on outcomes.
I started worrying about the elderly and then realized I am elderly.
Macau’s leader Ho Iat Seng said on Tuesday that visitors from the Chinese mainland, neighbouring Hong Kong and Taiwan who have travelled overseas in the past 14 days will be banned from entering the world’s biggest gambling hub.
Visitors from greater China account for more than 90% of overall tourists to Macau. Those who have not travelled abroad in the past two weeks will still be subject to 14 days of quarantine, Ho said.
Macau has 25 confirmed coronavirus cases. The former Portuguese colony last week banned all foreign visitors and foreign non-resident workers from entering the territory but had exempted those from the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Guardian
Home deliveries and Humvees: life under Jordan’s harsh virus lockdown
Jordan
Residents face a year in jail if they leave home – no grocery shopping, no pharmacy visits, no short walks
Michael Safi in Amman
The quarantine law says anyone caught outside will be jailed for up to a year. The car is parked on the street outside, with a box of water in the boot. Do you risk it?
Such have been the sort of dilemmas facing people in Jordan since Saturday morning, when the Middle Eastern kingdom introduced one of the most stringent anti-coronavirus regimes in the world.
It was announced at 7am by rounds of air-raid sirens: every person in the country indefinitely confined to their homes. No grocery shopping. No trips to pharmacies. Not even a walk around the block. Those with medical emergencies could call the authorities, but anyone caught outside would be arrested. More than 800 people have been picked up so far, the military says.
Videos circulating on social media show army Humvees patrolling Amman’s beige streets. Another clip showed a veiled woman who parked her car in the middle of an empty street and danced to the music blaring from her stereo. Local media reported later reported her arrest.
Jordan has undergone the same whiplash-inducing shift to a new era as other countries. Nine days ago, cafes were full, tourist sites were open and just one person had tested for the virus, and recovered.
In a cascade over the next days, flights were cancelled, Jordan’s airport closed, the borders of Amman sealed, non-essential businesses shut and, finally, everyone ordered to stay home.
The curfew, imposed because people were flouting the government’s plaintive requests to stay home of their own volition, was announced at 3pm on the day before it came into force, triggering an immediate run on bakeries and supermarkets. In the hours before people would be isolated from each other for their protection, they were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder buying bread and milk.
On Monday, a government spokesman told Jordanians the curfew would extend for weeks, and they should make do with the basics until then. An unprecedented scheme for delivering bread, water and pharmaceuticals to the population of 10 million is being trialled from Tuesday, though how it will work is still unclear. Ministers have already warned citizens to get used to the absence of luxuries.
Possible problems abound. Will there be enough workers or cars to deliver on what is sure to be enormous demand? Will farmers and distributors be allowed out to keep the food system running? And what happens when people run out of cash?
For my circle, the toll of the curfew so far has been an accumulation of small inconveniences. The elaborate meals we planned to cook during isolation have been pared back. Supplies of hay fever medicine in our house have dwindled to a single pill. A friend with two dogs can’t walk either of them but says they are entertaining each other, for now.
But Jordan has shouldered far more than its fair share of refugees from across the region. On farms, in the poorer quarters of cities and in sprawling camps, more than 650,000 Syrians are also confined to their homes. There are few more resilient communities in the world, but most cannot afford to stockpile food for weeks.
“Those who can look after themselves are looking after themselves,” Ahmed, a Syrian who fled to Jordan from the city of Hama, said last week. “Those who don’t have food, don’t.”
The gamble is that a few weeks of difficulty might spare Jordan the horror that Italy, Iran and others are experiencing. Jordan has 112 coronavirus cases so far, with all but one said to be in good condition. The country’s health system is ranked by the World Health Organization as one of the least prepared in the region to fight a pandemic. The government had to act fast, and drastically.
If those who are confirmed to be sick are properly treated; if asymptomatic cases are confined long enough for the virus to work its way through them, their households and environments; if authorities can keep people satisfied long enough so that they adhere to the rules; and if the borders remain closed, preventing new cases from entering – Jordan could avoid the worst.
Four big “ifs”. On Monday night, the third day of the curfew, Jordanians gathered on their balconies to sing and cheer in solidarity with each other and health workers. It is to be a nightly ritual. Over the next weeks, it will convey the public mood.
Yes and I have responded to that as well.
One way we could not ration care is that we don’t infect people who will need ICU care. Just a thought.
Same here. I’m sure there have been real instances of people gathering close together in public places, but it’s not what we’re seeing. They’re closing state parks here to cut down on potential gatherings, but even though I’m seeing more full parking lots, the parks are large enough that there aren’t gatherings of people, just people out walking/running in the fresh air.
We live close to one of those beaches that regularly gets voted #1 beach in the USA so is very popular. We regularly bike there and watch the sunset and we went to watch the sunset there one last time on Friday before it’s closed to cut down on gatherings. We were a little concerned about crowding, but like in the parks, we didn’t see it. Hundreds of people - yes. But 99% of them were walking or sitting in what were obviously family groups with plenty of distance, more than 10’ in between them. We walked a couple of miles on the shore and saw a total of 3 groups that looked like friend gatherings, 2 sitting together and one throwing a ball. That was it - out of hundreds, maybe thousands of people. These are big areas and photos of them make people look much closer than they are.
Hubei province has as many people as the major European countries. I believe it’s safe to say that their medical systems were over run for a time. They have had less than 4000 deaths. I think we can still win and keep deaths as low as possible.
I thought his article gave me some hope that our health system will be stressed to the max on the coasts. But we can improvise and keep it in perspective if we can Despite it being clearly scary. 137000 people per year die from snake bites globally. Snake bites. Who knew.
“One of the worst days so far for Coronavirus was the 10th of February. On that day, 108 persons in CHINA died of coronavirus.
BUT, on that same day
26,283 people died of Cancer
24,641 died of Heart Disease
4,300 people died of Diabetes
and on that day, Suicide, unfortunately, took more lives than the virus did, by 28 times.
Moreover, Mosquitoes kill 2,740 people every day, HUMANS kill 1,300 fellow humans every day, and Snakes kill 137 people every day.
Take a deep breath, and wash your hands.”
It’s true that over a 24 hour period spanning 10-11 February, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that 108 people had died in China of Covid-19 after contracting SARS-CoV-2 (the new coronavirus that causes Covid-19). This was at the time the highest death rate for a single day.
Since then, there have been days with a higher number of recorded deaths. According to the WHO, from 23-24 February there were 156 deaths globally (150 of which were in China).
Looking at the figures for all the other causes of death mentioned in the post, some are broadly right while others are incorrect. The general claim implied by the post, that all the things listed kill more people per day than Covid-19 has so far is also correct.
However, it’s important to bear in mind that this isn’t comparing like with like. A virus can spread and kill people very differently to the other things mentioned. One of the reasons why viral outbreaks attract concern from medical authorities is that they may have the potential to kill many more if they are allowed to spread unchecked. So while it’s important to put the risks of coronavirus in perspective, raw numbers like these shouldn’t necessarily be taken as an indicator of how concerned you should be about any of them.
The estimate for cancer deaths is broadly correct. According to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer, there were 9.6 million deaths from cancer in 2018. That works out to around 26,000 deaths a day worldwide.
17.9 million people died from all cardiovascular diseases in 2016 according to the WHO—this works out as 49,000 a day, way above the figure given in the Facebook post. Ischaemic heart disease or coronary heart disease specifically was the cause of 9.4 million deaths worldwide in 2016, 25,840 a day, closer to the post’s estimate.
In 2016 the WHO estimated that 1.6 million people a year die from factors relating directly to diabetes. This is about 4,400 a day, so the Facebook post is broadly correct.
But, the post overstates the number of people who died by suicide. The WHO estimated there were 800,000 people who died by suicide in 2018, equivalent to around 2,000 per day, while the Facebook post suggests there are closer to 3,000 per day.
The post claims that mosquito-borne diseases kill 2,740 people a day, which works out at a million per year. This also seems an overestimate. The WHO estimates that vector-borne diseases (spread by animals) account for 700,000 deaths per year, of which at least 440,000 are by mosquitos alone through transmitting malaria and dengue fever (around 1,205 per day).
The figure for deaths caused by other humans seems fairly correct looking specifically at homicides. The United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime estimated that in 2017 464,000 died globally from homicide, which is about 1,270 a day. This number would be higher if deaths from war or terrorism were included.
The WHO estimates that up to 137,800 people die each year from snake bites, about 378 a day, or double the number given in the Facebook post. However, they also note that underreporting of snake bites and subsequent deaths is common, so it’s likely this number could be higher still.”
Madison, WI:
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Andrew Cuomo
@NYGovCuomo
·
1h
If it’s public health versus the economy, the only choice is public health. You cannot put a value on human life.
You do the right thing. That’s what Pop taught us
@ChrisCuomo
Please source your articles.
Also, Wuhan was shut down way before they had the number of cases/deaths we currently have.
https://fullfact.org/online/coronavirus-daily-deaths/
For the article. I thought it was there. And that’s what we are told happened in China. Not sure I’m fully on board. They could have had thousands more.
But that wasn’t my main point anyway. It was interesting. I’ll remain hopeful and vigilant.