Coronavirus in the US

Parent Cafe
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Opera singer Placido Domingo is hospitalized in Mexico with coronavirus
CNN

Opera legend Placido Domingo has been hospitalized in Acapulco, Mexico, with complications related to Covid-19.

“He is doing well and is responding to treatment,” Domingo’s spokesperson said in a statement to CNN.
Last Sunday, the Spanish tenor announced on his Facebook page that he had tested positive.

The 79-year-old resigned as general director of the Los Angeles Opera last year, after being accused of sexual harassment.

While Domingo denied all allegations, the Los Angeles Opera’s independent investigation into 10 allegations of sexual harassment by Domingo were found to be credible earlier this month.

Domingo joins a growing list of celebrities that have tested positive for coronavirus, including Idris Elba, Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson, Kevin Durant and Daniel Dae Kim.

US FDA issues limited emergency use authorization for two drugs usually used to treat malaria
From CNN Health’s Arman Azad

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an emergency use authorization for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat patients hospitalized with Covid-19.

The drugs – which are used to treat malaria and other conditions – have been called game changers by President Donald Trump.

But thus far, there is little scientific evidence that chloroquine, or its closely-related analogue hydroxychloroquine, are effective in treating Covid-19.

What happened? The authorization came in a letter dated Saturday, but the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) acknowledged the FDA’s action in a Sunday news release. The FDA limited the scope of its authorization to drugs supplied from the Strategic National Stockpile. The HHS announced that two pharmaceutical companies – Bayer and a division of Novartis – had donated the drugs to the stockpile.

Do the drugs work? In its statement, HHS said:

“Anecdotal reports suggest that these drugs may offer some benefit in the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
“The safety profile of these drugs has only been studied for FDA approved indications, not COVID-19.”
While there’s limited evidence on the efficacy of chloroquine, or hydroxychloroquine, the FDA said the drugs’ benefits outweighed their risk. In its letter, the FDA encouraged randomized clinical trials that could assess the effectiveness of the drugs. It also noted that the known and potential benefits outweigh the risks.

Who can the drugs be used to treat? The authorization is limited to patients who are currently hospitalized and weigh at least 50kg, or about 110 pounds. Under the emergency use authorization, health care providers must contact their local or state health department to access the drugs.

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**USA - 18,469 new cases totaling 142,047 and 264 new deaths totaling 2,484.

ITALY - 5,217 new cases totaling 97,6892 and 756 new deaths totaling 10,779.
Both new cases and new deaths were down from yesterday. The coronavirus death toll in the northern Italian region of Lombardy has risen by about 416 in a day to at least 6,360, Reuters reports. Day-on-day the deaths were down markedly from Saturday’s 542.

CHINA - 31 new cases (all but 1 imported) totaling 81,470 and 4 new deaths totaling 3,304. 322 new recoveries reported.
SPAIN - 6,875 new cases totaling 80,110 and 821 new deaths totaling 6,803.
Spain’s infection rate drops. Although the increase was the highest yet recorded, the percentage increase fell, from 17% to 14% – the lowest since March 16.
The total number of active or current coronavirus cases rose by an increase of 6% – which is sharply lower than on recent days. On Saturday, the number of active cases recorded rose by 8.8%. A total of 4,907 people are now in intensive care in Spain, an increase of more than 300 since Saturday. But the Health Ministry also reported that a total of 14,709 people had recovered from the illness, a rise of nearly 20% from the previous figure of 12,285.

GERMANY - 4,740 new cases totaling 62,435 and 108 new deaths totaling 541.

FRANCE - 2,599 new cases totaling 40,174 and 292 new deaths totaling 2,606.
There are currently 19,354 people in hospital in France, an increase of 10% on the previous day. There are 4,632 people in intensive care in hospital; 359 more than yesterday. Of those in intensive care: 34% are under 60 years old; 64% aged 60-80. 7,132 people have recovered.

IRAN - 2,901 new cases totaling 38,309 and 123 new deaths totaling 2,640.

UK - 2,433 new cases totaling 19,522 and 209 new deaths totaling 1,228.

SWITZERLAND - 753 new cases totaling 14,829 and 36 new deaths totaling 300.

NETHERLANDS - 1,104 new cases totaling 10,866 and 132new deaths totaling 771.

*BELGIUM - 1,702 new cases totaling 10,836 and 78 new deaths totaling 431.

S. KOREA - 78 new cases totaling 9,661 and 6 new deaths totaling 158.
Reuters reports that South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in said on Monday that the government will provide emergency cash payments to many families and draw up a second supplementary budget soon to ease the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak. The cash payments will be made to all households except the top 30% by income.

*TURKEY - 1,815 new cases totaling 9,217 and 23 new deaths totaling 131.

AUSTRIA - 517 new cases totaling 8,788 and 18 new deaths totaling 86.

CANADA - 665 new cases totaling 6,320 and 5 new deaths totaling 65.

PORTUGAL - 792 new cases totaling 5,962 and 19 new deaths totaling 119.
Madeira, an autonomous region of Portugal, has announced it will cap the number of people allowed to enter its islands at 100 a week from Tuesday, Reuters reports. The available hotel space will be used to quarantine people with coronavirus symptoms. The region has confirmed a total of 34 cases.

NORWAY - 269 new cases totaling 4,284 and 2 new deaths totaling 25.

BRAZIL - 352 new cases totaling 4,256 and 22 new deaths totaling 136.

*ISRAEL - 628 new cases totaling 4,247 and 3 new deaths totaling 15.

*AUSTRALIA - 528 new cases totaling 4,163 and 3 new deaths totaling 17.

SWEDEN - 253 new cases totaling 3,700 and 5 new deaths totaling 110.

CZECH REPUBLIC - 186 new cases totaling 2,817 and 5 new deaths totaling 16.

IRELAND - 200 new cases totaling 2,615 and 10 new deaths totaling 46.

MALAYSIA - 150 new cases totaling 2,470 and 8 new deaths totaling 35.

DENMARK - 194 new cases totaling 2,395 and 7 new deaths totaling 72.

CHILE - 230 new cases totaling 2,139 and 1 new death totaling 7.

LUXEMBOURG - 119 new cases totaling 1,950 and 3 new deaths totaling 21.

ECUADOR - 101 new cases totaling 1,924 and 10 new deaths totaling 58.

JAPAN - 173 new cases totaling 1,866 and 2 new deaths totaling 54.

POLAND - 224 new cases totaling 1,862 and 4 new deaths totaling 22.

*ROMANIA - 363 new cases totaling 1,815 and 6 new deaths totaling 43.

PAKISTAN - 102 new cases totaling 1,597 and 2 new deaths totaling 14.

*RUSSIA - 270 new cases totaling 1,534 and 4 new deaths totaling 8.

*PHILIPPINES - 343 new cases totaling 1,418 and 3 new deaths totaling 71.

THAILAND - 143 new cases totaling 1,388 and 1 new death totaling 7.
Dozens of prisoners broke furniture and torched buildings during a riot in a Thai jail on Sunday sparked by fears of a coronavirus outbreak in the facility, AFP reports. Six prisoners were injured in the melee by broken glass. More than 1,500 prisoners had to be evacuated before the rioting could be stopped. At least two prisoners in the country tested positive. In a bid to prevent outbreaks in jails, authorities have banned visitors and are quarantining new inmates for 14 days.

SAUDI ARABIA - 96 new cases totaling 1,299 and 4 new deaths totaling 8.
Saudi Arabia has tightened its restrictions on movements to contain spread of coronavirus. The interior ministry has today banned residents from entering or exiting the city of Jeddah.

*INDONESIA - 130 new cases totaling 1,285 and 12 new deaths totaling 114.

SOUTH AFRICA - 93 new cases totaling 1,280 and 1 new death totaling 2.

INDIA - 37 new cases totaling 1,024 and 3 new deaths totaling 27.

ICELAND - 57 new cases totaling 1,020 and no new deaths totaling 2.

PANAMA - 88 new cases totaling 989 and 7 new deaths totaling 24.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC - 140 new cases totaling 859 and 11 new deaths totaling 39.

*PERU - 181 new cases totaling 852 and 2 new deaths totaling 18.

MEXICO - 131 new cases totaling 848 and 4 new deaths totaling 16.

ARGENTINA - 75 new cases totaling 820 and 1 new deaths totaling 20.

SERBIA - 82 new cases totaling 741 and 3 new deaths totaling 13.

COLOMBIA - 56 new cases totaling 702 and 4 new deaths totaling 10.

HONG KONG - 81 new cases totaling 641.

EGYPT - 33 new cases totaling 609 and 4 new deaths totaling 40.

*UAE - 102 new cases totaling 570 and 1 new death totaling 3.

MOROCCO - 77 new cases totaling 479 and 1 new death totaling 26.

*UKRAINE - 119 new cases totaling 475 and 1 new deaths totaling 10.

IVORY COAST - 64 new cases totaling 165 and 1st death.

CAMEROON - 48 new cases totaling 139 and 4 new deaths totaling 6.

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Get well Placido!

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Rationing resources

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/29/intensive-care-coronavirus-patients-now-limited-reasonably-certain/

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Re

I read about it a few days ago, From what I understand, there was one more person in congress who made money off of sales before the crash, but like Feinstein and Inhofe, the transaction was done by their stock brokers, without any contact with the member of congress. Only Burr is really suspicious, since he decided on the sale, AND he was privy to information about the coming pandemic that wasn’t available to other people. Loeffler may or may not have known, so I have no opinion at the moment.

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“Loeffler, who was appointed to her seat in December and was sworn in in early January, has denied having any knowledge of the stock sales, saying she uses a third-party financial adviser and did not learn of the trades until later. Loeffler’s husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, is chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.”

I have to believe that Loeffler’s husband - as an executive of the NYSE - has a strict compliance system like most/all financial services companies. In these systems, you have to preclear trades and CERTIFY that you are not in possession of material non public information. So I would think his employer would be also looking into this. If they determine that he did have access, he could be fired and would have to give back the gains on the stocks (this is how most financial service compliance policies work - i have no insight into the NYSE, but think they would be just as strict as others).

“Feinstein said on Twitter earlier this month that she has no involvement in her husband’s financial decisions.”

I had read (and have not re-verified) that Feinstein and her husband had all their assets in “blind trust” meaning their advisor makes ALL their individual stock decisions without them knowing. If that is the case, I wish she would be specific and say so, instead of “I’m not involved in my husband’s decisions”.

The rest don’t seem to have a good excuse. Hard to believe the Stock act was only passed in 2012. When Tucker Carlson says that he doesn’t understand how relatively ‘poor’ people come to Washington to work in politics or industries related to politics and then 10 years later are rich, this is some of what he’s talking about. He has a point.

Burr’s behavior is especially egregious since he was caught on audio telling donors that the virus was going to be bad and to be prepared, while downplaying it to the public. And he sold a huge portion of his portfolio… Loeffler and Feinstein are uber rich and these stocks represent a very tiny part of what they own.

@privatebanker - thoughts? I know you are also in the industry.

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@jym626 My condolences.

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Thank you, @mathmom

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There are many things that are strange about Epstein’s theory of the case, but I have particular trouble with the idea that the virus showed up in Wuhan as a lethal virus and then weakened, and then it hopped over to Italy and got strong again and then weakened, and now it has hopped over to New York in the strong lethal form. Yeah. Right. I hope it hurries up and weakens.

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If the world did nothing - no shut down, etc - then Covid-19 would run rampant through the population. The WHO has said the death rate is approx 3.4%, but most folks think that might be high due to not knowing how many don’t show symptoms (though this is true with the flu too). So… I believe most are using about a 1% death rate from Covid itself. The flu has a death rate of 0.1% (from those tested) meaning Covid has a death rate roughly 10x that of the flu.

If you think 61,200 deaths are high, what do you think of 612,000?

THEN that’s not the end. Between 10-20% of cases need hospitalization even though most will eventually survive if they get assistance with things like breathing (ventilators). Countries around the world don’t have enough beds, protective gear, or ventilators for so many people coming in all at once. This means places like Italy and Spain are already deciding who gets treatment and who doesn’t - spiking the death rate even higher. If 612,000 was high, what about 5 times that (a low estimate of what lack of beds/equipment might bring). What about 10 times? 20 times?

The world is shutting down because oodles of intelligent people can do the math and don’t like the results. The hope is to slow down how many people get the disease and allow science (with treatments and/or vaccines) and manufacturers (making equipment) better able to keep pace.

The good thing (as told to me by my med school lad) is that his hospital has been seeing fewer cases of the flu there too - unofficially giving credit to the shut down and better hygiene being recommended now. Those things don’t just help slow the new one. They also likely slow down the old one too.

I’m praying/hoping the slow down works and there are far fewer deaths than there would have been without it. Only time will tell - esp since so many don’t give a hoot about social distancing and that ruins it for many.

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Theory with a short shelf life.

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How is it possible - that 3 weeks after the “millions and millions of tests” statement from Trump - there is still so much undertesting in the state with the most elderly people in the country?

As numbers rise across Florida, many are turning to Orlando for testing.

Testing continues at the Orange County Convention Center. They’ve been able to do 250-tests a day.

In just the first few days of being open, they tested just under 1,000 people for coronavirus.

There is a strict criteria for who can be tested. You must either be a healthcare worker or a first responder, or you must be 65 years or older. And you have to have identification ready to show when you get in line.

If you qualify for testing by age, you must have an on-site temperature of 99.6 or higher.

https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2020/03/29/covid-19-testing-continues-at-the-orange-county-convention-center

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'I’m not a scientist, so I can’t evaluate all Epstein’s arguments. But this question and answer are easy to interpret: I"I think I’m smarter than everyone, even though I’m a lawyer, not a medical researcher or physician."

Yet another arrogant person, with the Presidents ear, who suffers from the Dunning- Kruger effect.
God save us from fools like these…

https://www.verywellmind.com/an-overview-of-the-dunning-kruger-effect-4160740

"The Dunning-Kruger effect is a type of cognitive bias in which people believe that they are smarter and more capable than they really are. Essentially, low ability people do not possess the skills needed to recognize their own incompetence. The combination of poor self-awareness and low cognitive ability leads them to overestimate their own capabilities.

The term lends a scientific name and explanation to a problem that many people immediately recognize—that fools are blind to their own foolishness. As Charles Darwin wrote in his book The Descent of Man, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

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"Andrew Cuomo during the covid-19 crisis is the same as ever, with one big difference:

People like him

One odd side effect of covid-19 has been what it does to taste. Even those who have avoided the illness enjoy things they once disliked: Government spending. Facetiming with family.

Andrew Cuomo

The governor of New York’s morning news conferences have become part of the country’s new daily rhythm. He is broadcast live from the wood-paneled Red Room of the state capitol building or New York City’s convention center — a leader in a polo shirt or neatly knotted tie, projecting competence to go along with the PowerPoint projection of hard truths. And to the surprise of anyone who has watched his State of the State, it’s must-see television.

First come the facts. In a matter of days, there are no cases, then 30,000 cases, then nearly 45,000 cases in New York state. “That’s a problem,” he says. They are running out of beds and ventilators. He doesn’t shy away from that. “That’s a challenge.” He pauses.

“Take a breath,” he says, and when he starts to talk again it is the revival portion of the meeting. There are moving stories about New York, his mother, his father and all of humanity. The density of the state — its “closeness,” he says — is its vulnerability in this moment. But it is also what will get it through. He is talking to New York but the whole country is listening to the Cuomo Monologues: part briefing, part sermon, part inspirational talk.

By the end, viewers at home are getting choked up, and people in California and Colorado are texting about him. They’ll tune in later to watch as he and his younger brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, rib one another about who mom loves more amid the coverage of impending doom.

The comedian Chelsea Handler is attracted to him. Even women who used to despise him find him irresistible. His enemies give him praise.

The coronavirus crisis has reintroduced the nation to a different cast of Democratic leaders. Former vice president Joe Biden — the supposed standard-bearer of the party — has been largely missing, as governors like Jay Inslee of Washington state, Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan find the spotlight. And no one is on a bigger stage right now than Cuomo.

It’s an interesting turn of events for a governor who has mostly been known as a micromanager, a bully, a vacuum cleaner set on high to suck up power.

Plenty of Americans have had a thing for “tough guys” before. Trump became president, after all. People don’t seem to mind a jerk if he’s their jerk.

It helps Cuomo that the other daily programming is the president’s presser, equal parts bravado and wishful thinking, underscoring a message that conjures a deadbeat dad — “I take no responsibility at all.”

It can make Cuomo’s faults feel reasonable. He’s the strongman who can admit he’s wrong. He speaks fluently about the facts. He worries about his mother, and by extension, yours, too.

He can screw up. Cuomo, who declined an interview for this story, got into a public bickering match with his old rival, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), about a shelter-in-place order and wavered on whether to close New York’s schools. He shut down nonessential businesses after California did. When Cuomo decided to use the state’s prisoners to produce hand sanitizer, critics howled that he was exploiting what was essentially slave labor in a health crisis. Just this past week, citing an academic study, Cuomo wondered whether parts of mandatory quarantine, like sending people — both those in college and those without the savings to live on their own without a job — back home to live with their vulnerable parents, may not have been the best decision. But at least he doesn’t go against his own scientific advisers about when to open businesses back up.

“All of those attributes that at times grate at people — even like me who want to poke him sometimes — frankly are useful in an emergency,” said Marc Molinaro, Dutchess County executive and Cuomo’s 2018 Republican opponent in the governor’s race.

The state now accounts for more than half of all cases of covid-19 in the country, and after he granted himself immense power to make unilateral decisions, the success of the response largely falls to Cuomo and his ability to work with the federal government.

“This is not a time to play nice in the sandbox,” he said at Wednesday’s news conference.

“We are going to go out and kick coronavirus’s a–,” he said Friday."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/andrew-cuomo-during-the-covid-19-crisis-is-the-same-as-ever-with-one-big-difference-people-like-him/2020/03/28/11a89a0a-6fd7-11ea-b148-e4ce3fbd85b5_story.html

funny how perspectives change in a time of great stress …

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Century-Old Vaccine Investigated as a Weapon Against Coronavirus

A vaccine that’s been used to prevent tuberculosis is being given to health-care workers in Melbourne to see if it will protect them against the coronavirus.

The bacillus Calmette-Guerin, or BCG, shot has been used widely for about 100 years, with a growing appreciation for its off-target benefits. Not only is it a common immunotherapy for early-stage bladder cancer, it also seems to train the body’s first line of immune defense to better fight infections.

With an immunization specifically targeted against the pandemic-causing Covid-19 disease at least a year away, the World Health Organization says it’s important to know whether the BCG vaccine can reduce disease in those infected with the coronavirus, and is encouraging international groups to collaborate with a study led by Nigel Curtis, head of infectious diseases research, at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne.

“It can boost the immune system so that it defends better against a whole range of different infections, a whole range of different viruses and bacteria in a lot more generalized way,” said Curtis, who’s also a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Melbourne and head of the infectious diseases unit at the city’s Royal Children’s Hospital.

Read More: Why Coronavirus Drugs, Vaccine Require More Time: QuickTake

Hospital staff who volunteered to be part of a six-month trial in Australia involving 4,000 health-care workers will be randomly allocated to be vaccinated starting Monday against seasonal influenza and TB, or the flu shot only.

A placebo vaccine won’t work as a control in this case because the BCG shot typically causes a localized skin reaction that leaves a scar, making it obvious which group received the TB vaccination.
Netherlands, Boston

Similar research is going on in the Netherlands. Curtis, in an interview Saturday, said he’s in discussions with potential trial sites in other Australian cities as well as Boston.

Although the inexpensive vaccine, which is used to immunize some 130 million newborns worldwide each year, may potentially offer protection to a broader group of people, the priority is on health workers who are at higher risk from being infected with coronavirus while caring for sick patients.

“We need to think of every possible way that we can protect health-care workers,” Curtis said. “And there’s going to be a particular need to reduce the amount of time that our health-care workers are absent.”

Studies in infants in Africa have shown that the BCG vaccine offers protection against TB and other pediatric infections, probably by enhancing the body’s innate immune system – specifically white blood cells that target non-specific pathogens before an antibody response has kicked in usually days later.

Blood samples taken at the start and end of the trial will determine who was infected with the coronavirus, while participants will log any symptoms during the trial period. The study’s data monitoring committee will review the results after three months to look for any signs that the approach is working.

“We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t think that this might work,” Curtis said. “We cannot guarantee that this will work. And of course, the only way to find out is with our trial.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-30/century-old-vaccine-investigated-as-a-weapon-against-coronavirus

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Some Megachurches Are Still Packing In Crowds

Congregants of megachurches in Louisiana, Ohio and Florida attended services in defiance of social distancing orders on Sunday morning, even as politicians and doctors took to weekly news shows to warn of coronavirus’s spread in the U.S.

In Louisiana, which has seen a spike in cases and has a shelter-in-place order, the Life Tabernacle Church in the town of Central held services at 10 a.m. More than 550 parishioners attended, about half as many as the week before, pastor Tony Spell told a local news reporter.

His state’s governor raised alarms Sunday that hospitals in nearby New Orleans could run out of capacity for breathing machines within a week as the state’s coronavirus death toll has climbed to the fourth-highest in the country. “We’re on a trajectory right now where we’ll not be able to deliver the care that people need when they need it,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” Edwards, who has limited public gatherings to 50 or under, last week urged “all faith leaders to heed this directive”

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci warned that the U.S. could see 100,000 to 200,000 deaths from the virus, a stark counterpoint to discussions about whether to restart parts of the U.S. economy that have been on shutdown.

Pastor Spell told local news outlet NBC15 earlier this month that he didn’t believe his congregation was in danger of infection. “It’s not a concern,” he said. “The virus, we believe, is politically motivated. We hold our religious rights dear and we are going to assemble no matter what someone says.” The church did not respond to request for comment.

The River Church in Tampa, Florida, also held services this Sunday. Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne posted a livestream of the services on YouTube, showing the sizable crowd. Howard-Browne said attendees were practicing “social distancing, or whatever” though the crowd appeared to be dense.

“We are not a non-essential service,” Howard-Browne said during the service. “You’re probably going to get infected at some other place, not here.”

The pastor condemned scientific reports about the virus and said that the pandemic was of less concern than the flu, a view that medical experts have disputed. The church did not respond to a request for comment.

Solid Rock Church in Lebanon, Ohio, with 3,500 members by one recent count, held services Sunday in defiance of a letter from the local health department urging it not to meet, according to a local news report. The church, in a statement, cited its first amendment right to religious assembly.

Some megachurches have opted out of in-person services and turned to live streaming entirely. The Church at Rock Creek, a mega church in Little Rock, Arkansas, not only held online services—it also digitized tithing and children’s activities. Likewise, Joel Osteen, the nation’s best known mega church pastor, held services online, streaming on social media and through his own app."

Ah, yes… some true “believers” somehow think that they will be immune to a virus that does not discriminate or care about their beliefs.
the utter stupidly of some people is both frightening and mind boggling, at the same time…

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Fears of a second wave of infections in China

Concern of a second wave of infections is growing in China amid official pressure to resume normal life, according to Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu.

“In Wuhan, the epicentre of China’s coronavirus outbreak, some shops are open, and malls are starting to open their doors after two months. People who work in essential industries, such as the cement, steel and car industries, are also starting to go back to work,” Yu said from Beijing.

Our correspondent said officials are under “tremendous pressure to resume normal life” with President Xi Jinping travelling on Sunday to a port and an industrial park in eastern Zhejiang Province to inspect the resumption of work and production there.

“He wants to get the economy going after two months at a standstill. And because of this urgency to get things going, there are fears it may be too soon and could result in a second wave of infections,” she said. “Officials are also under pressure to keep numbers down, and that’s causing fears they may not be transparent when it comes to reporting new cases.” (Al Jazeera)

Twitter removes Bolsonaro tweets on virus quarantine

Twitter took down two tweets from Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro after he cast doubt on quarantine measures aimed at containing the new coronavirus.

The far-right leader had posted several videos on Twitter on Sunday in which he mingled with supporters in the streets of Brazilian capital, Brasilia, defending their right to work and calling for a “return to normality”.

In one of the deleted videos, Bolsonaro also criticised isolation measures put in place by health authorities, saying: “The country is immune when 60 to 70 percent are infected”. He also said a treatment for the coronavirus had been found, without offering proof for the claim, according to Globo news website.

Twitter said the posts violated its rules. (Al Jazeera)

A fairly full-on story coming out of Australia today. A 30-year-old man who returned to Sydney from Jordan breached the government’s orders for all returning travellers to self-isolate for 14 days three times in 24 hours.

He has been arrested and appeared in court, where he was denied bail, The Australian newspaper reports. The police minister from the state of New South Wales has called for the “harshest penalties available” to be imposed, including forcing the man to watch footage of the mass transportation of coffins in Italy.

“Its an outrageous abuse of the community’s trust,” NSW Police Minister, David Elliot told The Australian.

“I would encourage the magistrate to consider the harshest options available. I would also like part of his punishment to include forcing him to watch the footage of coffins being transported, en masse, by the military in Italy and Spain.” (Guardian)

Trump says the Secret Service stopped him from going to New York City
From CNN’s Sarah Westwood and Greg Clary

President Donald Trump said he pushed to attend the opening of a field hospital at Javits Center in New York City – but was told by the Secret Service that he would not be permitted to go.

The temporary hospital space at the Javits Center is expected to house roughly 2,900 beds to deal with an overflow of patients due to coronavirus.

“They’re opening it tomorrow,” Trump said at the coronavirus task force briefing. “I wanted to be there so badly, but Secret Service and all of the people involved won’t let me. They won’t let me. I would love to be there but they won’t let me, for obvious reasons.”
Trump also gave more detail about the hospital.

“In New York, we built 2,900 hospital rooms, beds,” Trump said. “This was done by the federal government, not by state government,” Trump said.

The Army Corps of Engineers was involved in converting the space.

A US Secret Service spokesperson said that, for operational security reasons, “the Secret Service does not discuss our protectees, protective means, methods and or protective responsibilities.”

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If people are that determined to go to church then they should be forced to quarantine there until this is over.

If they want to infect each other, be my guest, but you don’t get free range to be typhoid christian and endanger other people.

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SEATTLE
The Seattle area, home of the first known coronavirus case in the United States and the place where the virus claimed 37 of its first 50 victims, is now seeing evidence that strict containment strategies, imposed in the earliest days of the outbreak, are beginning to pay off — at least for now.

Deaths are not rising as fast as they are in other states. Dramatic declines in street traffic show that people are staying home. Hospitals have so far not been overwhelmed. And preliminary statistical models provided to public officials in Washington State suggest that the spread of the virus has slowed in the Seattle area in recent days.

While each infected person was spreading the virus to an average of 2.7 other people earlier in March, that number appears to have dropped, with one projection suggesting that it was now down to 1.4.

The researchers who are preparing the latest projections, led by the Institute for Disease Modeling, a private research group in Bellevue, Wash., have been watching a variety of data points since the onset of the outbreak. They include tens of thousands of coronavirus test results, deaths, and mobility information — including traffic patterns and the movements of anonymous Facebook users — to estimate the rate at which coronavirus patients are spreading the disease to others.

The progress is precarious, and the data, which was still being analyzed and has yet to be published, is uncertain. Officials said that expansive social distancing policies will remain a key part of daily life for weeks to come.

But the findings offer a measure of hope that the emergency measures that have disrupted life in much of the nation can be effective in slowing the spread of the disease.

“We made a huge impact — we slowed the transmission,” Seattle’s mayor, Jenny Durkan, said in an interview. She cautioned that any lifting of restrictions would bring a quick rise in new cases, and that she expected distancing requirements to continue in some form for months.

“There is evidence that doing the aggressive measures can have a benefit,” Gov. Jay Inslee said in an interview, discussing the overall numbers he is seeing.

But the governor said that the state was far from turning a corner. While there are indications of improvement, he said, he has also seen numbers in the last few days that still have him worried, including a rise in positive test results statewide and the emergence of new cases in rural areas.

He said more restrictions may yet be needed, and that the state is not “within 1,000 miles of declaring victory.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/us/seattle-washington-state-coronavirus-transmission-rate.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

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Keep it up (I mean down!), Seattle!