This has been out there a few days. So sad. He’s a young BOA business analyst. They moved him from NJ to Penn Medical this week via helicopter. Thank god it happened here and think few places in the world could have pulled that off.
So Cuomo’s promise to be a distribution center for the vents he has after NY’s crisis has passed is sounding kind of hollow, since it will probably be too late with the extended vent time for COVID patients.
2,474 new confirmed cases in the last 24 hours in NJ. 19 new fatalities.
I’m not as optimistic as you. With the sporadic uncoordinated shutdowns, this pandemic could roll on for months in this country.
Stocks surge has Dow flirting with bear-market
By Jonathan GarberFOXBusiness
US unemployment claims soar as coronavirus slams economy
Last week’s jobless claims hit a record-breaking 3.28 million. FOX Business’ Lauren Simonetti with more.
U.S. equity markets clambered higher Thursday as investors digested record jobless claims and waited for the House to vote on a $2 trillion relief package.
First-time unemployment filings surged to a record 3.28 million last week, according to the Labor Department, as the COVID-19 pandemic prompted businesses to temporarily close their doors and lay off employees. The previous record was 695,000, set in 1982.
The all-time high in claims came hours after the Senate voted 96-0, passing the $2 trillion relief package that would extend aid to individuals, small businesses and corporations hit hardest by the pandemic. The House of Representatives is scheduled to debate the bill on Friday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained as many as 1,171 points, or 5.5 percent, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite climbed as much as 4.7 percent and 3.9 percent, respectively. An increase at the close of trading of 1,109.77 points or more would lift the Dow out of bear-market territory
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China cashes in on Coronavirus, sells 467mm of supplies to Spain and many are substandard
“As the novel coronavirus sweeps across the world, some countries are finding themselves in a difficult situation.
Low on supplies or money, traditional American allies like Spain, Italy, France and Japan have had to turn to China for help.
China creates the poison and sells the solution to it," foreign affairs expert Gordon Chang told Fox News.
China has used its money, medical equipment and teams of doctors and nurses in a high-stakes campaign to show the world that while the United States scrambles to contain the novel coronavirus within its borders, China is busy moving in on some of America’s closest allies.
Never let a good crisis go to waste," Dimitar Bechev, a senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, wrote. “There is no better illustration that the medical supplies and crews of doctors China has been supplying to Italy and other European countries battling COVID-19. Beijing does carry a large share of the blame for the global pandemic… but now it seeks to shape the narrative of the crisis unfolding before our eyes.”
China has also been floating the idea that it has donated all of the medical supplies out of concern for the world. That’s not the case, Chang said.
A lot of the stuff that China claims has been donated has not been donated," he said. "It’s been sold.
While China has come through for several countries but, in some, it has fallen short of expectations.
In Spain, for example, Health Minister Salvador Illa announced Wednesday that the country had bought $467 million in medical supplies from China, including 950 ventilators, 5.5 million testing kits, 11 million gloves and more than half a billion protective face masks.
Soon after receiving the supplies, the Spanish government announced plans to return 9,000 “quick result” test kits to China, El Pais reported, because they were deemed substandard, specifically the sensibility of the test was around 30 percent, when it should be higher than 80 percent.
China admitted that the kits they sold to Spain were bought from Bioeasy, a Chinese company not licensed to make them.
The time and money Spain wasted on faulty supplies could have devastating effects on a country that is now in its second week of a national lockdown after cases of COVID-19 spiked.
Spain now has at least 49,515 confirmed coronavirus cases, according to its Ministry of Health. Of that number, 8,000 people were confirmed to have the virus in the past 24 hours. Nearly 27,000 people remain hospitalized as Spain scrambles to contain the virus.
In Italy, Beijing sent more than 300 Chinese intensive-care doctors to help the country, which has the second-highest number of COVID-19 cases behind China. As of Thursday, Italy has 74,386 cases of the coronavirus compared to China’s 81,782 cases.
Though the country has close ties with the United States, Italy has turned to China, Russia and Cuba for help.
Chinese teams arrived in mid-March with medical equipment and experts who told the Italian government that its lockdown was too weak. Italy took China’s advice and tightened the screws, making sure people had protective masks and practiced social distancing. China also sent over shipments of medical supplies with a gigantic Chinese flag displayed on the supplies that read, “The friendship road knows no borders.”
A few days after the supplies started arriving, China’s President Xi Jinping called Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and told him that China wants to help Italy in its times of crisis and build a “Health Silk Road,” NPR reported, adding that Italy was the first G7 country to endorse China’s Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative
Nine Ilyushin 76 planes from Russia arrived in Italy crammed with epidemiologists, virologists, medical equipment and pharmaceuticals. The Italian media dubbed the help from Moscow as “From Russia With Love,” a nod to the 1963 James Bond movie.”
Barnini Chakraborty
Barnini Chakraborty is a senior feature writer for Fox News
Thanks. I also live in the SF Valley and the doctors and nurses in my area told me that they have had a hard time testing suspected COV-19 patients and the ones at the hospital that they do test, have to be quarantined from the rest of the population for 5-6 days before they are getting the results of the test.
I suspect that there are many, many cases that just have not been identified yet, but hopefully we are all wrong?
WOW! Don’t you love Chinese!
From what I’ve read, doctors are using Remdesivir and other antivirals on patients in ventilators, but they shouldn’t. The encouraging results for antivirals are in the early phase of the disease, the first week. By the time the patient is in the ventilator, the damage is done, the problem is no longer caused by the virus, and the patient is attempting to heal.
My analogy is a knight going to battle. He puts on armor (the antiviral) to protect him from being hit by swords (to get rid of the virus so it doesn’t hurt him). But after the battle, when he’s got sword and axe wounds (damaged lungs) armor is no longer useful.
One of the scariest things about the Bates kid, aside from how horrific it is that he’s fighting for his life, is that he’s a 25 year old formerly healthy athlete with no pre-existing conditions. So much for the theory that we can let the young and healthy catch it to provide herd immunity for the old and fragile.
@katliamom , a number of people have questioned why Prince Charles felt it was right to travel to his second (third, fourth?) home in Scotland on a Sunday, after he’d first experienced symptoms and after the Scottish administration specifically asked second home owners from the south not to travel to rural Scotland because the scarce healthcare resources might be overwhelmed quickly. And why, allegedly feeing fine and experiencing only mild symptoms, the Scottish NHS would test him even though mild symptoms are not a testing indication, testing resources being as scarce as any others.
I posted in #9348 that Gilead is no longer allowing most patients to access remdesivir on a compassionate use basis. The primary way to access it going forward would be if one qualifies for one of the ongoing clinical trials.
When does that go into effect? As soon as you apply for that loan? Or as soon as you’re approved for it? In other words, how helpful is this for a business unable to pay salaries NOW?
If we don’t get people back to work, we won’t have any money to support the ones who are sick. Then the new epidemic will be drugs and suicide, and I guarantee, those deaths will FAR surpass COVID-19.
Italy has asked pretty much everyone for help, including the US. Only a few countries have supplied it thus far. I’m sure they’d love help from the US, too. This article certainly twists that around as well as other things in the article but I’m not going to waste my energy on Fox News reporting.
I’m not having much luck finding out about the forgivable small business loans. If anyone finds out info, can you post it here? It might help my husband and me (along with a lot of others, of course).
My sister-in-law makes Small Business Administration loans (somewhat subsidized). Even before the bill passed, she was swamped, which is a good thing. She’s sitting at home in front of her screen, making small loans for small businesses.
My boss owns 2 restaurants and a wholesale bakery and 2 other businesses.
He said it makes no sense to keep everyone on payroll. Demand for the product(s) – at the restaurants and bakery – has dried up.
He has laid off all the employees except for a skeletal crew to continue curbside pick up and delivery at one store.
He has said more than once that it might make more sense to have the business(es) declare bankruptcy and start over.
Our thoughts (the managers, including myself on the office end) if we are lucky enough to rise from the ashes, our salaries will be cut dramatically. We don’t believe we’ll have packed restaurants the minute we re-open. Many of our guests are elderly!
So much uncertainty.
Hydroxychloroquine is already approved and available for off-label prescription, though. The supply is being depleted by people using it where it doesn’t work, keeping the drug from people it helps.
Trump team failed to follow NSC’s pandemic playbook
The 69-page document, finished in 2016, provided a step by step list of priorities – which were then ignored by the administration.
"he Trump administration, state officials and even individual hospital workers are now racing against each other to get the necessary masks, gloves and other safety equipment to fight coronavirus — a scramble that hospitals and doctors say has come too late and left them at risk. But according to a previously unrevealed White House playbook, the government should’ve begun a federal-wide effort to procure that personal protective equipment at least two months ago.
“Is there sufficient personal protective equipment for healthcare workers who are providing medical care?” the playbook instructs its readers, as one early decision that officials should address when facing a potential pandemic. “If YES: What are the triggers to signal exhaustion of supplies? Are additional supplies available? If NO: Should the Strategic National Stockpile release PPE to states?”
The strategies are among hundreds of tactics and key policy decisions laid out in a 69-page National Security Council playbook on fighting pandemics, which POLITICO is detailing for the first time. Other recommendations include that the government move swiftly to fully detect potential outbreaks, secure supplemental funding and consider invoking the Defense Production Act — all steps in which the Trump administration lagged behind the timeline laid out in the playbook.
The playbook was designed “so there wasn’t piecemeal thinking when trying to fight the next public health battle,” said one former official who contributed to the playbook, warning that “the fog of war” can lead to gaps in strategies.
“These are recommended discussions to be having on all levels, to ensure that there’s a structure to make decisions in real-time,” said a second former official.
Trump has claimed that his administration could not have foreseen the coronavirus pandemic, which has spread to all 50 states and more than 180 nations, sickening more than 460,000 people around the world. “Nobody ever expected a thing like this,” Trump said in a Fox News interview on Tuesday.
But Trump’s aides were told to expect a potential pandemic, ranging from a tabletop exercise that the outgoing Obama administration prepared for the president’s incoming aides to a “Crimson Contagion” scenario that health officials undertook just last year and modeled out potential risks of a global infectious disease threat. Trump’s deputies also have said that their coronavirus response relies on a federal playbook, specifically referring to a strategy laid out by the Centers for Disease Control.
It is not clear if the administration’s failure to follow the NSC playbook was the result of an oversight or a deliberate decision to follow a different course.
The document rested with NSC officials who dealt with medical preparedness and biodefense in the global health security directorate, which the Trump administration disbanded in 2018, four former officials said. The document was originally overseen by Beth Cameron, a former civil servant who led the directorate before leaving the White House in March 2017. Cameron confirmed to POLITICO that the directorate created a playbook for NSC staff intended to help officials confront a range of potential biological threats."
Anyone who wants to read this playbook now can via the pdf file in this article.
Too bad this administration chose to ignore this document. Using it could have time and lives.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285
Canceled March Madness tournaments leaves NCAA with $375 million shortfall
From CNN’s David Close
The financial repercussions of canceling March Madness and other National Collegiate Athletic Association championships due to the coronavirus pandemic have made a substantial impact on the money sent to college and university athletic departments.
The NCAA announced on Thursday that there will be $225 million distributed to schools, rather than the budgeted $600 million in “response to the cancellation of all remaining winter and spring NCAA championships.”
The NCAA said it receives “most of its revenue from the Division I Men’s Basketball Championship television and marketing rights, as well as championship ticket sales. The revenue is used to provide distributions to member conferences and schools along with funding championships, national programs and other initiatives to support student-athletes.”
The NCAA canceled all remaining 2020 winter and spring championships on Thursday, March 12 – less than a week before March Madness was slated to tip off.
NBCUniversal CEO says he has tested positive for coronavirus
From CNN’s Frank Pallotta
Jeff Shell, the CEO of NBCUniversal, told staff in an email on Thursday that he tested positive for the coronavirus.
“I recently have been feeling under the weather and just learned that I have tested positive for Covid-19,” Shell wrote. “Although the virus has been tough to cope with, I have managed to work remotely in LA and am improving every day."
Shell, who succeeded Steve Burke in January, added that it is “absolutely critical” that employees work from home if they can.
“In the short term, the goals are simple. Take care of each other and take care of our viewers. Taking care of each other means working from home,” he wrote. “While I can’t give you an end date, I can commit that we will give everyone ample warning before we ask you to return to the office.”
Larry Edgeworth, an NBC News staffer, died as a result of complications from the coronavirus last week.
UK government announces new financial support for self-employed workers
The UK government will introduce a new financial support scheme for self-employed workers, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced today, outlining the terms of a new taxable grant worth 80% of people’s average monthly profit.
“The government will pay self-employed people who have been adversely affected by coronavirus a taxable grant worth 80% of their average monthly profit over he the last three years, up to £2500 a month,” Sunak announced.
He said “95% of those who are majority self-employed” will benefit from the plan.
Speaking during the government’s daily coronavirus press briefing at Downing Street, Sunak told self-employed workers that they have “not been forgotten,” but warned that there are “challenging times ahead” for British businesses.
“Despite these extraordinary steps, there will be challenging times ahead. We will not be able to protect every single job, or save every single business,” Sunak said. “I am confident that the measures we have put in place will support millions of families, businesses and self-employed people to get through this, get through it together, and emerge from the other side both stronger and more united.”
The government is aiming to have the plan readily available to self-employed workers no later than June 2020.