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macgyvermedical · 5 years ago

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Email From My Parents’ Former Chiropractor, a Medical Review

I had to read that and now so do you. But guess what? I also get to tear it apart line by line with extreme prejudice. And not the bad kind. At. All.

This went out to probably close to a thousand people.

People will die because of this email.

“We have been keeping up with the true data from the CDC and WHO that is giving very accurate information on this virus.“

I’m relatively neutral on this. The CDC and WHO are probably some of the most official sources. They’re a little behind (1-2 days for WHO, and both only update every 24 hours), but overall no one would fault him for citing them as sources. Here’s the source I’ve been using.

My biggest problem with that beginning is that the sentence structure is... alarmingly presidential.

“First, this is not a new virus. It's been known to cause respiratory problems since the 1960's.”

The group of viruses called “coronavirus” have been identified since 1965. But there are hundreds of unique viruses in this group, and 7 of them infect humans at very different severities. The most recent one, identified in December 2019 and now named SARS-CoV-2, is definitely a coronavirus, but it’s also definitely not one we’ve seen before.

“So far, the new coronavirus has led to more than 100,000 illnesses and more than 3,000 deaths worldwide.”

I mean, he’s technically right that it’s “more than” 100,000 cases. But this email went out today, when confirmed cases were a lot closer to 784,400 and deaths were 37,780 (see source above). Even the WHO numbers today are 693,224 and 33,106 respectively. So my best guess is he was writing this on March 7th (per WHO sitreps) and didn’t bother to update it before sending it out March 30th.

“In the U.S. alone, the flu has caused an estimated 34 million illnesses, 350,000 hospitalizations and 20,000 deaths this season... Per the CDC data, the flu virus as far more contagious and deadlier.”

This info is also substantially out of date. Currently, these numbers are 38 mil, 400,000, and 24,000 respectively.

I have to say, I did fall for the corona vs flu false equivalency once upon a time, but I’ve learned and grown a lot since then. We’re prepared for the number of hospital beds we need for (seasonal-not-pandemic) flu. We know how fast spreads and we have a vaccine that offers at least partial protection from it. We have widespread testing for it. We’re relatively comfortable with it’s severity and mortality rate.

But you heard it here last: with the data we have right now, none of those things apply to covid-19. We don’t have the beds, ventilators, or PPE to take all of it’s excessive illness on, which leads to higher mortality rates. It's more contagious than flu (infecting 2-2.5 people per infected person, vs seasonal flu’s 1.3). We don’t have a vaccine or significant natural immunity. We don’t have adequate testing, so we don’t know enough to know if anything we do know is close to correct. All of that makes it much, much worse than seasonal flu despite numbers.

“What to do? First, all patients are responsible for their own immune system.”

I mean, sure, okay, you have the responsibility to make the best choices you can for you in the situation that you’re in. That’s fair. And generally people do. But saying you’re responsible for your own immune system seems to imply that if you get covid-19, it’s your own dang fault because you weren’t responsible enough?

If that stresses you out, rest easy in that you don’t control nearly as much of your health status (look up the Whitehall Studies) and immune status (look up the Pittsburgh Cold Studies and a paper that came out of them titled “Types of Stressors That Increase Susceptibility to the Common Cold in Healthy Adults” by Cohen et al, 1998), as people like to think you do.

“When a bacteria or virus enter the body, your bodies natural immune system will attack this foreign body by creating an antibody that will destroy these foreign viruses or bacteria's (sic)...”

Okay, sure, that’s not a bad explanation.

“...So, when someone isolates themselves, the virus will still be "out there" and vaccinations will not stop the spread of any virus. A vaccination will force your body to make antibodies, which is the body's natural response to a virus. In other words, the virus will populate the world.“

I’ll be honest, I don’t entirely understand what he means with this passage, but I’ll give it my best shot.

If you never come into contact with a virus, it’s certainly true that you won’t ever get antibodies from it naturally. You also won’t get sick, and won’t have the opportunity to spread it to other people. That’s, like... the entire point of isolation.

But if a vaccine exists, that gives you the opportunity to have the best of both worlds- you get to make antibodies, and you never have to get sick! Score!

And if a lot of people have the antibodies, the illness can’t spread through the population (”herd” or “community” immunity), meaning that very few people get sick. You don’t have to be exposed to the virus after being vaccinated in order to become immune. The vaccine is literally the part of the virus the body needs to be exposed to to learn how to create antibodies.

He then goes on to list the ways in which you can build a strong immune system to fight covid-19. These suggestions include:

“Eat Healthy Natural Foods: These foods have the vitamins and nutriatiants (sic) your body needs to build its immune system.”

Sure, healthy food is good for you. No one’s arguing with you there.

“Get Adjusted: Every tissue in the body depends 100% nerve supply from the brain. These nerves carry all the cells information to repair and regenerate injured tissue. When the nervous systems is interfered with, this communication system between the brain and the tissue cells is weakened, therefore causing decreased immune response.”

This isn’t wrong so much as poorly worded. The brain (and vagus nerve) is involved in healing injured or infected tissues, particularly as part of modulating inflammatory response and eliciting reactions like vomiting, mucous production, and coughing to get rid of irritating substances. The inflammatory response kicks off the healing process, and we know that if the vagus nerve has been cut or in some other way interfered with, there is not as much inflammation across the board (which is why vagus nerve simulators have been shown to work against arthritis).

I’m not sure if there’s literature on chiropractic care improving this, but I certainly don’t think it’s impossible.

May I, however, suggest an editor at this point?

“Sleep 7-9 hours per night: Cellular regeneration happens mostly a night. Drink enough water: Dehydrate causes stress in the body, that will weakened the immune system.“

Great!

“Take natural supplements: These will help your immune systems, if you are not getting enough nutrients and vitamins through your healthy diet.”

Supplements generally aren’t necessary for most people (unless they have a diagnosed deficiency), but if you just like taking a multivitamin no one’s stopping you. Just don’t go overboard.

“P.S. Our team at [redacted] Chiropractic is super healthy. We follow the above guidelines!! We are asking anyone who may be ill, to stay home, or even more important get adjusted in our office [emphasis added]. Just let us know you are not feeling well and we will get you in and out with minimal contact with others. We take pride in cleanliness with all our patients. Hope to see you soon.”

I just... felt the need to leave that last paragraph in it’s entirety. If you’re all the way at the end of this post, you really deserve to read it again and let it sink in that he’s ASKING SOMEONE TO GO OUT IN PUBLIC WITH COVID-19 IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC, IN AN AREA WHERE A “SHELTER IN PLACE” ORDER HAS BEEN ISSUED.

As medical facilities, chiropractic offices are allowed to stay open. I don’t mind this generally. A lot of people rely on chiropractic care for pain control and I would never want to take that away from them if there was another way.

But I work at a doctor’s office (sometimes). We are all but refusing to see patients in the office unless absolutely necessary to comply with social distancing rules and conserve PPE. If I were a chiropractor right now, I would be limiting my services to emergencies or people who really can’t get along without it, and encouraging people to NOT COME IN IF THEY KNOW OR SUSPECT THEY ARE SICK HOLY CRAP MAN STAP.

That’s like, the bare, bare minimum.

Thank you for reading.

#medical review #chiropractic care #vaccines #covid-19

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noyaibamovies · 4 years ago

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The world sent India millions in Covid aid. Why is it not reaching those who need it most?

https://tcea.instructure.com/eportfolios/1187/Home/__Demon_Slayer_Kimetsu_no_Yaiba_the_Movie_Mugen_Train_ https://tcea.instructure.com/eportfolios/1188/Home/10HD https://tcea.instructure.com/eportfolios/1189/Home/___2020_ https://tcea.instructure.com/eportfolios/1191/Home/_HK_Demon_Slayer_Kimetsu_no_Yaiba_2020_1080P https://tcea.instructure.com/eportfolios/1192/Home/___2020_ https://tcea.instructure.com/eportfolios/1193/Home/ZH_2020_1080p720p https://tcea.instructure.com/eportfolios/1196/Home/2020_____HD4K https://tcea.instructure.com/eportfolios/1197/Home/HK___Kimetsu_no_Yaiba_Mugen_ResshaHen_ https://tcea.instructure.com/eportfolios/1198/Home/_Kimetsu_no_YaibaHD https://tcea.instructure.com/eportfolios/1200/Home/2020 https://tcea.instructure.com/eportfolios/1201/Home/_1080P2020HD https://tcea.instructure.com/eportfolios/1202/Home/TW__2020HD1080PNew Delhi (CNN)As India's Covid-19 crisis tipped past breaking point last month, dozens of countries pledged critical aid.

Planeloads of ventilators, oxygen supplies and antiviral drugs began arriving last week, with photos showing massive parcels being unloaded at New Delhi airport. There's just one problem: for many days, much of the cargo sat in airport hangars as hospitals on the ground pleaded for more provisions. Medical workers and local officials are still reporting the same devastating shortages that have strained the health care system for weeks now -- raising questions, even among foreign donors, of where the aid is going. In a US State Department news briefing on Friday, a reporter asked where the US aid was, demanding "accountability for US taxpayers' money," according to the briefing transcript. "Is there anything being done to check on how it is being distributed, the aid that we are sending?" the reporter asked.

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The Indian government issued a strong denial of any delay on Tuesday evening, saying it had installed a "streamlined mechanism" for allocating aid. Nearly 4 million donated items, spanning 24 categories, have already been distributed to 38 health care facilities across the country, the Health Ministry said in a statement. But on the ground, many state and local authorities claim there has been little to no communication from the central government on how or when they would receive relief. "We sent delegations to (the government) for clarity on supplies of (oxygen), drugs and vaccination drive but were not spoken to in clarity from the Union Government," said Raghu Sharma, health minister of Rajasthan state, on Tuesday. "Regarding the import or foreign aid, no information or supply details have been shared with the state government." The central government has "kept states in the dark during the pandemic," he added, calling for a more "transparent environment." The Health Ministry said on Tuesday that it had distributed aid to two hospitals in Rajasthan, in the cities of Jodhpur and Jaipur. There are a number of feasible reasons for the delay: unnecessary bureaucracy, human error, or time-consuming protocol. But to those on the ground, such possible explanations matter little; all they want is for the government to take quicker action and get the aid to their ICU wards, where thousands are dying every day.

India reported 382,315 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday and 3,780 virus-related deaths, according to the Health Ministry. The country has now recorded more than 20.6 million cases since the pandemic began. Oxygen shortages are particularly pronounced in the union territory of Delhi, which does not produce its own oxygen and relies on the central government to send allocations from different manufacturers and states. "It's the duty of the government to provide us oxygen," said Dr. S.C.L. Gupta, director of Batra Hospital in the capital New Delhi. At least 12 patients, including a doctor, died at Batra Hospital on Saturday after it ran out of oxygen. Gupta said hospital staff spent the day telling authorities they only had a few hours of oxygen left; toward the end, they had to rely on oxygen provided by patients' families. "Patients are dying in front of us," Gupta said. "I'm sorry we cannot save you." A logistical nightmare

https://tea.instructure.com/eportfolios/117387/Home/______Akari_Kit https://tea.instructure.com/eportfolios/117389/Home/2020_HD https://tea.instructure.com/eportfolios/117390/Home/2020HK_ https://tea.instructure.com/eportfolios/117380/Home/2020 https://tea.instructure.com/eportfolios/117381/Home/_1080P2020HD https://tea.instructure.com/eportfolios/117384/Home/TW__2020HD1080P https://lulunaulia400.medium.com/ https://kimetsunoyaiba801605425.wordpress.com/the-world-sent-india-millions-in-covid-aid-why-is-it-not-reaching-those-who-need-it-most/ https://kimetsunoyaiba801605425.wordpress.com/state-local-health-orders-end-tuesday-as-utah-reaches-pandemic-endgame/ https://kimetsunoyaiba801605425.wordpress.com/pfizer-will-ask-for-approval-to-give-covid-19-vaccine-to-children-ages-2-to-11/ https://tea.instructure.com/eportfolios/117527/Home/The_world_sent_India_millions_in_Covid_aid_Why_is_it_not_reaching_those_who_need_it_most https://tea.instructure.com/eportfolios/117530/Home/State_local_health_orders_end_Tuesday_as_Utah_reaches_pandemic_endgame https://tea.instructure.com/eportfolios/117533/Home/Pfizer_Will_Ask_For_Approval_To_Give_COVID19_Vaccine_To_Children_Ages_2_to_11 One distribution problem highlighted by Indian media is simply that the government did not have protocols in place before receiving the aid, and had to quickly cobble together guidelines on allocation and coordination. It took the government seven days to create a mechanism to distribute supplies to states, the Health Ministry said in a news release on Tuesday. They began working on the plan on April 26, and only issued their Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) -- guidelines on how to distribute aid -- on May 2. The release did not state what day the distribution of aid began. In those seven days, more than 23,000 Indians died of Covid-19.

Even with the SOP issued, the process of distribution is complex, with room for further delay. Once the aid arrives in India, it is received by the Indian Red Cross Society, which works closely with the government. The Red Cross works with customs to approve the goods, the Health Ministry said, adding that customs is "working 24 x 7 to fast track and clear the goods on arrival." After being cleared, the items are handed to the ministry and a government-owned health care product manufacturer called HLL Lifecare, which handles transportation of aid to its final destination. But it's a massive logistical undertaking because "the materials from abroad are currently coming in different numbers, specifications and at different times," the ministry said in its Tuesday release. A number of problems might arise, it said: "in many cases," the type or number of aid supplies don't match the inventory list provided by the foreign donor. Authorities then have to waste precious time "reconciling (discrepancies) at the airport" while the aid sits idle, according to the release. Only when the paperwork is updated with the correct details can authorities move forward with distribution.

India is a huge country, home to 1.3 billion people, and most of the foreign aid is being flown to New Delhi -- meaning much of it then has to be redistributed to far-flung states. The military has been deployed to help with this process, with the air force flying supplies to various cities and making overseas flights, too. States with high caseloads, or those that are regional medical hubs, will be prioritized, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday. Donations are also allocated to states with fewer resources or those in remote areas. It's unclear how much aid is still being processed, but images began emerging this week of supplies finally arriving on the ground. The air force airlifted the "first batch" of 450 oxygen cylinders from the United Kingdom to Chennai on Tuesday, according to the city's customs authority. Meanwhile, 350 oxygen concentrators from Hong Kong are being sent to Mumbai on Wednesday. These supplies will only provide a modicum of relief, however. As of Tuesday, Chennai had more than 32,000 active cases, while Mumbai had over 56,000. Hospitals in both cities are so under-resourced and the situation so dire that patients are dying by the dozen. Desperate patients wait for oxygen As the government scrambles to get backlogged aid to desperate states, it is also working to increase domestic oxygen production. And at every turn, federal authorities have claimed they have enough supplies to meet states' demands. "The (daily) production of oxygen in the country was 5,700 metric tons (6,283 tons) on August 1, 2020, which has now increased to around 9,000 metric tons (9,920 tons)," a Health Ministry spokesperson said at a news conference on Monday. Last month, the ministry said it had 50,000 metric tons (55,115 tons) in surplus oxygen stocks. On Monday, the ministry spokesperson again asserted, "There is enough oxygen available in the country." But doctors, officials and desperate patients tell a very different story. In a hospital in Meerut, a city in Uttar Pradesh, one family has worked around the clock to care for their 55-year-old mother in the intensive care unit. The family told CNN this week she had been in the hospital for six days before getting a ventilator, and they had to bring their own oxygen cylinder. At one point, her vitals began dropping dangerously; her sons pumped her chest frantically, crying out and clutching her hands as family members wailed next to the bed. A doctor was able to help stabilize the woman -- but later, she flatlined again. This time, she could not be revived; her body was left in the ICU for nearly an hour before it was moved. The same scenes are playing out in nearly every major city. In New Delhi, the situation has deteriorated so badly that India's Supreme Court ordered the central government to address the oxygen shortages there by the end of Monday. Similar hearings have taken place in the Delhi High Court. "Do you mean we will shut our eyes to the people dying in Delhi?" the court told the central government on Saturday, according to CNN affiliate CNN-News18. "Enough is enough."

Some state authorities, too, have come under fire for their handling of the oxygen crisis. A high court in Uttar Pradesh demanded "immediate remedial measures," pointing to specific instances of patients dying due to oxygen shortages. "Death of Covid patients just for non supplying of oxygen to the hospitals is a criminal act and not less than a genocide by those who have been entrusted the task to ensure continuous procurement and supply chain of the liquid medical oxygen," the court said on Tuesday. The central government has responded by ramping up emergency measures. Two of five on-site oxygen plants earmarked for Delhi hospitals would be operational on Wednesday, the Health Ministry said on Twitter. The government plans to set up 500 plants across the country within three months, according to a ministry statement. This week, some of these increased oxygen supplies are being sent to various hard-hit states by rail, in what has been dubbed the "oxygen express."

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newstfionline · 3 years ago

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Thursday, July 1, 2021

As Canada sees record temperature of over 118 degrees amid heat wave, police warn of deaths (Washington Post) Lytton, a village in British Columbia, became the first place in Canada to record a temperature above 113 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday, with the thermometer hitting 116 degrees. But that national record did not last for long. On Monday, according to government weather agency Environment Canada, Lytton saw temperatures soar to just above 118 degrees on Monday. That is one degree higher than the record in Las Vegas, the desert city more than a thousand miles south of Lytton. In Burnaby, neighboring Vancouver in British Columbia, local law enforcement announced Tuesday that they had responded to more than 25 “sudden death” calls in 24 hours. Though the causes of death were still being investigated, police said that many of the victims were elderly and that the heat was suspected to be a contributing factor. In nearby Surrey, police had responded to 22 sudden-death calls Monday and 13 by midday Tuesday. Canada’s record comes amid a severe heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, with records Monday of 116 degrees in Portland, Ore., and 108 degrees in Seattle.

The power grid problem (Washington Post) In the punishing heat wave that has struck the Pacific Northwest, about 17,000 electricity customers were without power Monday evening. Nearly 20,000 more were in blackouts in Idaho, Oregon, California and Nevada. Those aren’t devastating numbers, but they are a reminder that the electric grid in America is frayed and always operating close to the edge. The high temperatures come just four months after Texas power was poleaxed by the February freeze, and only two weeks after the Texas grid wobbled again in its own heat wave. A year ago, California experienced failures on a wide scale. A compromise reached in the Senate would pump billions of dollars into upgrading the nation’s electricity system, if it becomes law, but the need is immense. And at the same time the Biden administration is pushing for electric cars, trucks and buses, and a widespread conversion to electric heating, all while slashing the emissions of greenhouse gases. The nation’s already strained power grid is either at a turning point or poised to dash all those clean-power visions as it crumbles under the new stresses being placed on it.

Millions skipped church during pandemic. Will they return? (AP) With millions of people having stayed home from places of worship during the coronavirus pandemic, struggling congregations have one key question: How many of them will return? As the pandemic recedes in the United States and in-person services resume, worries of a deepening slide in attendance are universal. Some houses of worship won’t make it. Smaller organizations with older congregations that struggled to adapt during the pandemic are in the greatest danger of a downward spiral from which they can’t recover, said the Rev. Gloria E. White-Hammond, lecturer at the Harvard Divinity School and co-pastor of a church in Boston. On the Maine coast, the pandemic proved to be the last straw for the 164-year-old Waldoboro United Methodist Church. Even before COVID-19 swept the world, weekly attendance had dipped to 25 or 30 at the white-clapboard New England church that could hold several hundred worshippers. The number further dwindled to five or six before the final service was held Sunday, said the Rev. Gregory Foster. About three-quarters of Americans who attended religious services in person at least monthly before the pandemic say they are likely to do so again in the next few weeks, according to a recent AP-NORC poll. That’s up slightly from the about two-thirds who said in May 2020 that they would if they were allowed to do so. But 7% said they definitely won’t be attending. Some may continue online. Eight in 10 congregants in the U.S. reported that their services were being streamed online, Pew said.

America’s workers are exhausted and burned out—and some employers are taking notice (Washington Post) Meg Trowbridge’s plans for the week are pretty simple. She’ll take long, meandering walks and explore some new parks and visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for the first time since 2019—all on company time. In pre-pandemic times, Trowbridge would have joined colleagues from around the world at Mozilla’s annual two-week off-site meeting—last held in Berlin in January 2020—a mix of creative work and networking that left her both exhilarated and exhausted, she said. Instead of shifting that program online for a week of Zooms, Mozilla is shutting down the entire company for a “Wellness Week,” which will lead into the Fourth of July weekend. It dovetails with another initiative the company formalized this past January, a “Wellness Day,” or companywide day off, once a month every month this year. All 12 are scheduled for Fridays to tack onto the weekend. It’s not just Mozilla. Employers across the country, from Fortune 500 companies such as PepsiCo and Verizon to boutique advertising firms and nonprofit organizations, are continuing pandemic benefits such as increased paid time off and child- or elder-care benefits as well as embracing flexible work schedules and remote work in recognition that a returning workforce is at high risk of burnout. About 40 percent of Americans say they felt burned out while working at home this past year, according to a March Ipsos poll. Some 42 percent said they would look for another job if required to return to the office full-time, and 72 percent said they wanted more flexibility regarding going back into work.

British CCTV (CNN/UK News) The British government has been handed an embarrassingly disturbing reminder that leaks will always happen, and people outside of government will always want to see them. Last Friday, Matt Hancock, a married senior cabinet official, was caught on a security camera in his private office canoodling with an also-married female adviser. The tape was leaked to the press, and a newspaper published photos of the tryst. The now-former Health Secretary, who resigned on Saturday, said he had no idea there was a CCTV camera in his office; it was reportedly hidden inside a smoke detector. What’s freaking out his Westminster colleagues isn’t the fact that the woman wasn’t Hancock’s wife, or that the pictures meant Hancock was breaking his own government’s Covid rules. It’s the enormous security implications surrounding the kinds of sensitive conversations that take place in the official offices of the most senior people in the government of a G7 nation. The fact a camera ended up in the office of a senior cabinet minister could just as easily have been an error rather than conspiracy. But even if the camera’s existence was a mistake, and the content of the leak wasn’t of huge national importance, anyone with a top-level government job should know they are always at risk of being watched. Modern espionage often preys on weak links and amateurish mistakes. If the camera footage had been exploited by an enemy, Hancock could have been open to blackmail.

U.S. military commander in Afghanistan warns of chaotic civil war (Washington Post) The top American military commander in Afghanistan expressed deep concern Tuesday that the country could slide into a chaotic civil war and face “very hard times” unless its fractious civilian leadership united and the haphazard array of armed groups joining the anti-Taliban fight were controlled and made “accountable” for their actions in battle. The bleak assessment by Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, who met with journalists, came as Taliban forces continued their rapid advance across northern Afghan provinces and expanded into other rural regions. The insurgents also began drawing closer in a circle around the capital city. In the past several days, officials and Afghan media reported, Taliban fighters have overrun parts of three provinces, all just short drives from Kabul on highways running north and south. They also attacked security posts in a third area that hugs the city’s western border. By some experts’ estimates, Taliban forces control as many as 140 of the country’s 370 districts and are active or influential in 170 others. U.S. and Afghan military officials alike have given much lower estimates, but more districts continue to fall to the Taliban almost daily.

China remakes Hong Kong (NYT) With each passing day, the boundary between Hong Kong and the rest of China fades faster. The Chinese Communist Party is remaking this city, permeating its once vibrant, irreverent character with ever more overt signs of its authoritarian will. The very texture of daily life is under assault as Beijing molds Hong Kong into something more familiar, more docile. Residents now swarm police hotlines with reports about disloyal neighbors or colleagues. Teachers have been told to imbue students with patriotic fervor through 48-volume book sets called “My Home Is in China.” Public libraries have removed dozens of books from circulation, including one about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. Hong Kong is now a montage of scenes unfamiliar and, for many, unsettling. Police officers have been trained to goose-step in the Chinese military fashion, replacing decades of British-style marching. City leaders regularly denounce “external elements” bent on undermining the country’s stability. Armed with the expansive national security law it imposed on the city one year ago, Beijing is pushing to turn Hong Kong into another of its mainland megacities: economic engines where dissent is immediately smothered.

Kim Jong Un’s shakeup (Foreign Policy) North Korean leader Kim Jong Un accused officials of causing a “great crisis” in the country’s COVID-19 response that would lead to “grave consequences,” North Korean state media reported on Wednesday, a rare acknowledgement of the pandemic as North Korea officially claims to be free of the virus. State media said that several Workers Party members had been replaced over the unspecified incident, including one of its powerful five-member Politburo standing committee known as the Presidium. The publication of Kim’s remarks comes soon after the leader admitted to a “tense” food situation in the country.

Lockdown measures extended in Australia amid COVID-19 outbreak (Reuters) Australian officials extended lockdown and social distancing measures to more of the country on Wednesday, with four major cities already under a hard lockdown in a race to contain an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta coronavirus variant. Around one in two Australians are under stay-at-home orders, with millions of others subjected to movement curbs and mandatory mask-wearing amid COVID-19 flare-ups in several locations.

Economic crisis, severe shortages make Lebanon ‘unlivable’ (AP) Ibrahim Arab waits in line several hours a day in the hot summer sun to buy gas for his taxi. When he’s not working, the 37-year-old father of two drives from one Beirut pharmacy to another, looking for baby formula for his 7-month-old son—any he can find—even though the infant got severe diarrhea and vomiting from an unfamiliar brand. He worries what would happen if his children got really sick. Once among the best in the region, Lebanon’s hospitals are struggling amid the country’s economic and financial crisis that has led to daily power outages that last for hours, shortages of diesel fuel for backup generators, and a lack of medical equipment and drugs. After 20 months of suffering with no end in sight, a new reality is setting in for most of Lebanon’s estimated 6 million people: Days filled with severe shortages—from spare parts for cars to medicine, fuel and other basic goods in the import-dependent country. “My life was already difficult, and now the gasoline crisis only made things worse,” Arab said on a recent day. To survive, he works a second job at a Beirut grocery store, but his monthly income in Lebanese pounds has lost 95% of its purchase power. “I wish I had the opportunity to leave. This country is unlivable,” Arab said.

Anger in the West Bank (Washington Post) Palestinians and advocacy groups continued Tuesday to protest the recent death of a local anti-corruption activist in custody of Palestinian security forces. For days, marchers have braved beatings and intimidation to rally in cities across the West Bank. In Ramallah, Hebron and Bethlehem, demonstrations have called for an independent investigation of the death of Nizar Banat, a vocal critic of the governing Palestinian Authority, and for President Mahmoud Abbas to step down from his 16-year rule. Banat was beaten by security officers when they pulled him from bed in a predawn raid on June 24, witnesses said. Officials announced two hours later that he had died, blaming an unspecified health problem. The official pushback against the demonstrations has been violent, with riot police deploying tear gas and reportedly assaulting female protesters. Video showed plainclothes security officers and Fatah supporters attacking protesters with rocks and clubs at a weekend rally of several hundred in Ramallah. Officers confiscated cellphones from marchers shooting video and reporters have had cameras broken.

Trapped in Ethiopia’s Tigray, people ‘falling like leaves’ (AP) The plea arrived from a remote area that had so far produced only rumors and residents fleeing for their lives. Help us, the letter said, stamped and signed by a local official. At least 125 people have already starved to death. Trapped in one of the most inaccessible areas of Ethiopia’s conflict-torn Tigray region, beyond the reach of aid, people “are falling like leaves,” the official said. The letter dated June 16, obtained by The Associated Press and confirmed by a Tigray regional health official, is a rare insight into the most urgent unknown of the war between Ethiopian forces backed by Eritrea and Tigray’s former leaders: What’s the fate of hundreds of thousands of people cut off from the world for months? The letter that reached the regional capital, Mekele, this month from the cut-off central district of Mai Kinetal was just the second plea of its kind. But the letter from Mai Kinetal offered badly needed, well-compiled data that lay out the devastation line by line: At least 440 people have died, and at least 558 have been victims of sexual violence. More than 5,000 homes have been looted. Thousands of livestock have been taken. Tons of crops have been burned.

#headlines #news

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gordonwilliamsweb · 4 years ago

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‘Go Ahead and Vote Me Out’: What Other Places Can Learn From Santa Rosa’s Tent City

SANTA ROSA, Calif. — They knew the neighborhood would revolt.

It was early May, and officials in this Northern California city known for its farm-to-table dining culture and pumped-up housing prices were frantically debating how to keep covid-19 from infiltrating the homeless camps proliferating in the region’s celebrated parks and trails. For years, the number of people living homeless in Santa Rosa and the verdant hills and valleys of broader Sonoma County had crept downward — and then surged, exacerbated by three punishing wildfire seasons that destroyed thousands of homes in four years.

Seemingly overnight, the city’s homeless crisis had burst into view. And with the onset of covid, it posed a devastating health threat to the hundreds of people living in shelters, tents and makeshift shanties, as well as the service providers and emergency responders trying to help them.

In the preceding weeks, as covid made its first advance through California, Gov. Gavin Newsom had called on cities and counties to persuade hotel operators to open their doors to people living on the streets whose age and health made them vulnerable. But in Santa Rosa, a town that thrives on tourist dollars, city leaders knew they would never find enough owners to volunteer their establishments. City Council member Tom Schwedhelm, then serving as mayor, settled on an idea to pitch dozens of tents in the parking lot of a gleaming community center in an affluent neighborhood known as Finley Park, a couple of miles west of Santa Rosa’s central business district.

Neighborhood residents weren’t keen on the idea of accepting homeless people into their enclave of tree-lined streets and sleepy cul-de-sacs. Yet in short order, thousands of residents and businesses received letters notifying them of the city’s plans to erect 70 tents that could shelter as many as 140 people at the Finley Community Center, a neighborhood jewel that draws scores of families and fitness enthusiasts to its manicured picnic grounds, sparkling pool and tennis courts.

The backlash was fierce. For three hours on a Thursday evening in mid-May, Santa Rosa officials defended their plans as hundreds of residents flooded the phone lines to register their discontent.

“Will there be a list of everybody who decided to do this to us and our park, in case we want to vote them out?” one resident barked.

“This is a family neighborhood,” another fumed.

“How can we feel safe using our park?” others pleaded.

In Santa Rosa, like so many other communities, strenuous neighborhood objections typically would drive a stake through a proposal for homeless housing and services. Not this time. Elected officials were not asking; they were telling. The project would move ahead.

“Go ahead and vote me out,” said Schwedhelm, recounting his mindset at the time. “You want to shout at me and get angry? Go ahead. It’s important for government to listen, but the reality is these are our neighbors, so let’s help them.”

Within days, the spacious parking lot at the Finley Community Center was cordoned off with green mesh fencing. Inside, spaced 12 feet apart, were 68 blue tents, each equipped with sleeping bags and storage bin. A neat row of portable toilets lined one side of the encampment, and it was fitted throughout with hand-washing stations and misters for the summer heat.

The city contracted with Catholic Charities of Santa Rosa to manage the camp, and social workers fanned out to the city shelters and unsanctioned encampments, where they found dozens of takers. The first dozen residents were in their tents four days after the site was approved, and the population quickly swelled to nearly 70. In exchange for shelter, showers and three daily meals, camp residents agreed to an 8 p.m. curfew and a contract pledging to honor mask and physical-distancing requirements and act as good neighbors.

Santa Rosa’s tent city opened May 18. And, not too long after, something remarkable happened. Finley Park residents stopped protesting and started dropping off donations of goods — food, clothing, hand sanitizer. The tennis and pickleball courts, an afternoon favorite for retirees, were bustling again. Parents and kids once more crowded the nearby playground.

And inside that towering green perimeter, people started getting their lives together.

From May to late November, Santa Rosa would spend $680,000 to supply and manage the site, a six-month experiment that would chart a new course for the city’s approach to homeless services. As cities across California wrestle with a crisis of homelessness that has drawn international condemnation, the Santa Rosa experience suggests a way forward. Rather than engage in months of paralyzing discussion with neighborhood opponents before committing to a housing or shelter project, city officials decided their role was to lead and inform. They would identify project sites and drive forward, using neighborhood feedback to tailor improvements to a plan — but not to kill it.

It was a watershed moment of action that would echo across Sonoma County.

“We know we’re pissing off a lot of people — they’re rising up and saying, ‘Hell, no!’” said county Supervisor James Gore, president of the California State Association of Counties. “But we can’t just keep saying no. That’s been the failed housing policy of the last 30 to 40 years. Everybody wants a solution, but they don’t want to see that solution in their neighborhoods.”

‘Death by a Thousand Cuts’

About a quarter of the nation’s homeless reside in California, nearly 160,000 people living in cars, on borrowed couches, in temporary shelters or on the streets. The pandemic has exacerbated the crisis for a host of reasons, including covid-related job loss and prison releases and new capacity limits at homeless shelters.

From Los Angeles to Fresno to San Francisco and Sacramento, homeless encampments have multiplied. And without toilets or trash bins, unsanctioned encampments have become magnets for neighborhood complaints about seedy, unsanitary conditions. That leads to regular law enforcement sweeps that raze an encampment only to see it rise elsewhere.

California’s capital city offers a telling example of the dynamic. An estimated 6,000 people are living homeless in Sacramento, a population that has grown more visible since covid brought office life to a standstill. Tents and tarps crowd freeway underpasses throughout the downtown grid, accompanied by wafting piles of trash and clutter.

The mayor, Darrell Steinberg, is known as a champion on homelessness issues. During his years in the state legislature, he pushed through measures that exponentially increased funding to address homelessness and mental illness. But in more than four years as mayor he has struggled to muscle through a cohesive policy for moving people off the streets and into supportive housing.

“The problem with our approach,” Steinberg said earlier this year, “is that every time we seek to build a project, there is a neighborhood controversy. Our own constituents say, ‘Solve it, but please don’t solve it here,’ and we end up experiencing death by a thousand cuts.”

With community uproar building, he is leading the charge on a new initiative to build a continuum of city-sanctioned housing, including triage shelters, sanctioned campgrounds and permanent housing with social services. The city has allocated up to $1 million in an initial outlay for tiny homes and safe camping, but as of March had gotten consensus on just one site: a parking lot beneath a busy freeway where the city will install toilets and hand-washing stations and allow up to 150 people to set up camp.

Donta Williams, homeless the past five years, shakes his head at how long it’s taken the city to sanction a campsite. Priced out of the South Sacramento neighborhood he considers home, Williams has subsisted in a series of squalid lots, regularly packing up and moving from one to the next in response to law enforcement sweeps.

“We’ve got nowhere to go,” said Williams, 40, who is a plaintiff in a legal battle with the city over encampment sweeps. “We need housing. We need services like bathrooms and hand-washing stations. Or how about just some dumpsters so we can pick up the trash?”

A Real Job, a New Beginning

Like Sacramento, Sonoma County has battled unruly homeless encampments for years. Before the fires, the crisis was more hidden, with people sheltering in creek beds and wooded glens abutting hiking and biking trails. The wildfires of 2017, 2019 and 2020 brought many out of the backcountry. And the 5,300 homes decimated by flames meant even more people displaced.

Politicians in Sonoma County described their soul-searching over how to cut through the community gridlock when it comes to finding locations to provide housing and services.

“It’s fear and anger that you’re going to take something away from me if you build this housing — that’s a big part of it, and I saw that anger directed at me, too,” said Shirlee Zane, a vocal backer of homeless services who lost her reelection bid last year after 12 years on the county board of supervisors. “It’s a psychology we see here too often, a sense of entitlement from white middle-class people.”

In creating the Finley Park model, Santa Rosa leaders drew on a few basic tenets. Neighbors were worried about crime and drug use, so the city deployed police officers and security guards for 24/7 patrols. Neighbors worried about trash and disease; the city brought in hand-washing stations, showers and toilets. Catholic Charities enrolled dozens of camp residents in neighborhood beautification projects, giving them gift cards to stores like Target and Starbucks in exchange for picking up trash — usually $50 for a couple of hours of work.

A few times a week, a mobile clinic serviced the camp, dispensing basic health care and medications. Residents had access to virtual mental health treatment and were screened regularly for covid symptoms; only one person tested positive for the coronavirus during the 256 days the site was in operation.

“We were serious about providing access to care,” said Jennifer Ammons, a nurse practitioner who led the mobile clinic. “You can get them inhalers, take care of their cellulitis with antibiotics, get rid of their pneumonia or skin infections.”

Rosa Newman was among those who turned their lives around. Newman, 56, said she had sunk into homelessness and addiction after leaving an abusive partner years before. She moved into her designated tent in September and in a matter of days was enrolled in California’s version of Medicaid, connected to a doctor and receiving treatment for a painful bladder infection. After two months in the camp, she was able to get into subsidized housing and landed a job at a Catholic Charities homeless drop-in center.

“Before, I was so sick I didn’t have any hope. I didn’t have to show up for anything,” she said. “But now I have a real job, and it’s just the beginning.”

James Carver, 50, who for years slept in the doorway of a downtown Santa Rosa business with his wife, said he felt happy just to have a tent over his head. Channeling his energy into cleanup projects and odd jobs around camp, Carver said, his morale began to improve.

“It’s such a comfort; I’m looking for work again,” Carver, an unemployed construction worker, said in November while cleaning stacks of storage totes handed out to camp residents. “I don’t have to sleep with one eye open.”

Jennielynn Holmes, who runs Catholic Charities’ homeless services in Northern California, said the Finley Park experiment helped in ways she didn’t expect.

“This taught us valuable lessons on how to keep the unsheltered population safe, but also we were able to get people signed up for health care and ready for housing faster because we knew where they were,” Holmes said. Of the 208 people served at the site, she said, 12 were moved into permanent housing and nearly five dozen placed in shelters while they await openings.

When Santa Rosa officials conceived of the Finley site, they sold it to the community as temporary, believing covid would run its course by winter. And though covid still raged, they kept that promise and closed the site Nov. 30, then held a community meeting to get feedback. “Only three or four people called in, and they all had positive things to say,” said David Gouin, who has since retired as director of housing and community services.

Several area residents said they changed their mind about the project because of the way the site was managed.

“I was amazed I never saw anything negative at all,” said Boyd Edwards, who plays pickleball at the Finley Community Center a few times a week.

“I thought they were going to be noisy and have crap all over the place. Now, they can have it all year round for all I care,” said his friend Joseph Gernhardt.

Of the 108 calls for police service, almost all were in response to other homeless people wanting to sleep at the site when it was at capacity, records show. And there was no violent behavior, said Police Chief Rainer Navarro.

With the Finley encampment closed, Santa Rosa has expanded its primary shelter while drafting plans to set up year-round managed camps in several neighborhoods, this time with hardened structures. County supervisors, meanwhile, are using $16 million in state grants to purchase and convert two hotels into housing, and have stood their ground in pushing through two Finley Park-style managed encampments, one on county property, the other at a mountain retreat center.

The time has come, they said, to stop debating and embrace solutions.

“We have estates that sell for $20 million, and then you walk by people sleeping in tents with no access to hot food or running water,” said Lynda Hopkins, chair of the county board of supervisors. “These tiny villages — they’re not perfect, but we’re trying to provide some dignity.”

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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This story can be republished for free (details).

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covid19worldnews · 4 years ago

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Coronavirus live news: Germany goes into 'lockdown light'; Italy accused of wasting time as infections rise

11.27pm GMT 23:27

The Culture Secretary in England has confirmed arts venues can remain open for rehearsals during the country’s lockdown.

Oliver Dowden said while audiences will not be able to attend the venues they are “places of work” and will therefore be able to remain open.

Footage of performances taking place inside venues will also be permitted to be streamed online when tougher restrictions come into force in England, he confirmed on Twitter.

“Arts venues are places of work, so people can come into them for work, if it cannot be undertaken from home,” he wrote.

“This includes rehearsals and performance. Audiences are not permitted.”

A number of productions, including Les Miserables in the West End and a panto at the London Palladium, are due to return to the stage with socially distanced audiences over the festive period.

11.05pm GMT 23:05

Argentina is expecting 10 million doses of Russia’s main experimental COVID-19 vaccine between December and January, the government said, as infections continue to climb in the South American country.

The vaccine, known as Sputnik V, is given in two doses and could begin arriving as early as next month, the government said in a news release. The price of the Russian vaccine would be “more or less average” compared with others, President Alberto Fernandez said in the release.

“We had a proposal from the Russian foreign ministry and the Russian (Direct Investment) Fund to see if Argentina was interested in having doses of the vaccine in the month of December and of course we said yes,” Fernandez said.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) is backing the development and roll-out of the Sputnik V vaccine. Fernandez said talks with RDIF had been going on “for quite some time.”

Officials including Argentina’s deputy health minister had traveled to Russia to review the vaccine’s development, the government said.

“The Sputnik V vaccine for Argentina will be produced by RDIF partners in India, Korea, China and a number of other countries that are setting up a production of the Russian vaccine,” RDIF’s CEO, Kirill Dmitriev, said in comments shared by a company spokesman.

10.46pm GMT 22:46

The Labour party in England has called for Chancellor Rishi Sunak to engage in cross-party talks to produce a six-month economic support plan to guide the country through coronavirus.

Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds said the Treasury should “stop the last-minute scramble” and combine with opposition leaders, businesses and unions to draw up a long-term strategy.

Dodds has written to her Government counterpart after he announced on Saturday that, to coincide with the second national lockdown for England, the furlough scheme would continue in its current form, paying 80% of employees’ wages for hours not worked, up to a maximum of 2,500 per month.

In her letter to Sunak, she said the announcement “just hours before” the initial furlough scheme was due to end was “symptomatic” of what she said appeared to be a “lack of any strategic planning by the Government to support jobs and businesses”.

10.27pm GMT 22:27

Portugal considering state of emergency to tackle Covid-19

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said he is pondering declaring a state of emergency as a preventive measure to fight the spread of the coronavirus at a time when infections are soaring.

Hours after Prime Minister Antonio Costa asked the president to declare the state of emergency, Rebelo de Sousa said in an interview with RTP Television he was considering the request, explaining it would include specific measures to combat the pandemic but not a “total or nearly total” lockdown.

The initial COVID-19 state of emergency, which under Portuguese law is limited to 15 days but can be extended indefinitely in 15-day periods if necessary, was declared in March and lasted six weeks.

It restricted the movement of people and led thousands of businesses to suspend activities, devastating the once-bailed-out economy.

“The economy cannot handle a (total) confinement,” Rebelo de Sousa said during the interview at his official residence. “What is being considered is a different thing.” If Rebelo de Sousa declares an emergency, lawmakers must approve it, which is considered highly likely.

On Saturday, the government introduced measures, such as the civic duty – a recommendation rather than a rule – to stay at home except for outings for work, school or shopping, across 121 municipalities including in the key regions of Lisbon and Porto.

A state of emergency would clear the way for compulsory measures such as restrictions on movement of people but only if and when needed.

10.10pm GMT 22:10

The Premier League in England has confirmed four positive coronavirus tests have been returned from the latest round of testing.

The government has allowed Premier League football and other elite sports to continue during a four-week ‘circuit break’ lockdown, which will start in England on Thursday, due to the strict testing regimes in place.

In total, 1,446 players and club staff were tested for coronavirus between Monday, October 26 and Sunday, November 1.

Players or club staff who have tested positive will self-isolate for a period of 10 days.

9.51pm GMT 21:51

In Australia, travellers from regional NSW are now able to go to Queensland for the first time in almost four months but Sydneysiders are still not welcome in the Sunshine State.

Travel restrictions eased at 1am on Tuesday (Australia time), with the Queensland border flung open to everyone except those in greater Sydney and Victoria.

The NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian is irate that Sydney residents are banned, arguing the bar Queensland has set for resuming free travel between the states is too high.

Meanwhile, Berejiklian has indicated a reopening of the NSW border with Victoria could happen soon.

We’re talking weeks not months in terms of when the Victorian border may come down, but that again is based on health advice,” she told reporters on Monday.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we moved more quickly against Victoria than Queensland did against us.”

When asked if an announcement would be made this week, Berejiklian said “potentially, yes”.

9.41pm GMT 21:41

French writer Sylvain Tesson poses inside the Librairie des Abbesses bookstore as he signs one of his books during the launch of “Rallumez les feux de nos librairies” (Turn back our bookstores’ lights) event on November 2, 2020 in Paris, on the fourth day of the second national general lockdown aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19. Small book traders are forced to shut up shops for a second time this year during what is usually a busy time for retailers in the run-up to the year-end holidays. Photograph: Stéphane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images

9.28pm GMT 21:28

Some of Germany’s top orchestras, including Berlin’s prestigious Staatskapelle and the Munich Philharmonic, staged protests on Monday, warning that coronavirus lockdowns pose an existential threat to the arts and entertainment industries.

Musicians from the internationally-renowned ensembles in Berlin and Munich, as well as the orchestra of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, staged a minute’s silence at the start of their respective concerts.

And on Twitter, a wide range number of artists posted pictures of records turning without any sound.

They argue that not enough support is being made available to people in the sector as Germany shuts down its theatres, concert halls, opera houses and museums for the next four weeks as part of a wider tightening of measures to try to curb a second wave of Covid-19 infections.

Freelance musicians in particular are finding it difficult to survive as they frequently do not qualify for the furlough schemes introduced for paid employees in other sectors.

Culture Minister Monika Gruetters said she was “greatly concerned” for the industry.

“Even if the new restrictions are understandable” from a health point of view, they constitute “a catastrophe” for the sector, she said.

9.00pm GMT 21:00

A summary of today’s developments

Italy’s coronavirus strategy is ‘wasting time’, says scientific advisor. Italy is working towards measures that could include a national 9pm curfew, a ban on inter-regional travel and the closure of shopping malls at weekends. But scientists have for weeks been urging the government to take tougher action, such as imposing local lockdowns, as infections escalate and hospitals come under strain.

Slovakia carries out Covid mass testing of two-thirds of population. Two-thirds of Slovakia’s population of 5.4 million people were tested for coronavirus over the weekend as part of a programme aimed at making it one of the first countries to test its entire population.

Germany begins ‘light lockdown’. Germany goes into “lockdown light” mode today, as the country’s disease control agency recorded 12,097 new confirmed Covid-19 infections in the last 24 hours. Bars, cinemas, theatres, museums, fitness studios and swimming pools will remain closed from today, while cafes and restaurants are allowed to offer takeaway food only. Meetings in public are restricted to two households and no more than 10 people. Unlike during the first lockdown in the spring, schools and nurseries will stay open.

Coronavirus infections fall for third day straight in the Netherlands. The number of new coronavirus infections in the Netherlands rose by nearly 8,300 over the past 24 hours, the slowest pace in roughly two weeks.

Iran reports record high Covid death toll as travel bans go into force. Iran reported a record 440 Covid deaths in the past 24 hours, pushing the country’s death toll to 35,738 as a ban on travel in and out of major cities came into force.

Donald Trump tries to stoke fears of Covid lockdown under Joe Biden. In the final hours before election day, one of Trump’s closing messages to Americans was an exaggerated threat: that a Joe Biden presidency will result in a national Covid-19 lockdown. Speaking in Iowa on Sunday, the president said the election was a “choice between a deadly Biden lockdown … or a safe vaccine that ends the pandemic”.

The European Union (EU) has agreed to provide Mozambique with 100 million euros ($116.30 million) in coronavirus-related aid. The EU cut off direct budget support to Mozambique in 2016 after the country revealed the existence of hefty state-guaranteed loans that it had not previously disclosed.

T-cell Covid immunity ‘present in adults six months after first infection’. Cellular (T-cell) immunity against the virus that causes Covid-19 is likely to be present within most adults six months after primary infection, with levels considerably higher in patients with symptoms, a study suggests.

8.44pm GMT 20:44

Children watch a lesson next to an image of late Cuban President Fidel Castro during their first day of classes since April amid COVID-19 concerns in Havana, Cuba. Photograph: Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters

https://www.covid19snews.com/2020/11/03/coronavirus-live-news-germany-goes-into-lockdown-light-italy-accused-of-wasting-time-as-infections-rise/

#covid19

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expatimes · 4 years ago

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'I just want my husband's remains to be returned to us'

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.

Stanley Jungco had only ever been to sea on a fishing boat once before, and he had vowed to his sisters that he would never go again.

But in September 2018, tempted by the promise of a monthly salary of $ 380, the 24-year-old went back to sea as crew on a Chinese-owned trawler.

The money would be enough for him to buy back the land his father had pawned and buy some for himself too. He could settle down and marry his girlfriend. One more trip would be the difference between a life spent jumping from one odd job to another, and stability.

Five months ago, Jungco had an accident on board and later died from complications. Worse, as a result of restrictions associated with the coronavirus pandemic, his body remains in a mortuary in the southern Chinese province of Fuzhou.

“My mother didn't want him to go, but he was determined to work and help our family,” his sister Rica Jungco told Al Jazeera.

The Philippines is at the center of a maritime crisis that has left thousands of seafarers locked down in their ships and exiled from home. The island archipelago, which has a maritime history dating back to the Galleon Trade during Spanish colonial rule, supplies about a quarter of the world's 1.2 million seafarers. Last year, they sent home some $ 6.14bn in remittances.

Sealed borders and ports closed to curb the spread of COVID-19 have kept some 300,000 seafarers quarantined on their ships, with little to no chance of being replaced by a fresh crew, according to the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF).

Stanley Jungo, 25, had an accident on board a deep-sea fishing vessel when a steel bar hit his thigh in April. He ignored the injury but it got worse and six weeks later he was dead. His body remains in a mortuary in southern China [Martin San Diego/Al Jazeera]

And if anyone dies, varying country health protocols on the repatriation of remains, discontinued flights and inter-governmental bureaucracy means families are facing hearting obstacles to claiming the remains of their loved ones.

A long time at sea

Debbie and Raul Calopez's 11-year marriage was mostly long distance. She worked as a domestic helper in Hong Kong and Lebanon while Raul stayed at home to raise their two children.

Debbie was still in Lebanon finishing her contract when Raul boarded the 7874 Fu Yuan Yu, a Chinese fishing vessel bound for the Atlantic Ocean, in March 2019. “He called me from the airport, told me he loved me and promised that when he came back, our family would finally be complete, ”she said.

That day would never come.

On December 31, 2019, while hauling in their catch, Raul fainted, hitting his head on a steel pipe as he fell to the floor. In a handwritten letter penned by crew members, Raul complained of a headache and body pains after the accident. The men took turns looking after him during their breaks, but he became weaker.

“We tried to ask for medical assistance, but the captain wouldn't listen. They gave us medicine, but it was in Chinese characters we couldn't understand, ”said Jesus Gaboni, one of Raul's crewmates.

On January 19, Raul finally got medical attention, but by then it was too late. A few hours later, he was dead.

Jesus Gaboni, left, with other Filipino crew on board their fishing vessel. The man on the right, Raul Calopez, got sick onboard and eventually died. Gaboni helped store Calopez's body in the ship's freezer where it remains today [Martin San Diego/Al Jazeera]

Gaboni and the other men took his body, wrapped it in a blanket and buried it in the ship's freezer. But as the pandemic accelerated, first in China and then around the world, the 7874 Fu Yuan Yu was stranded in China.

The crew members managed to return to the Philippines when travel restrictions were eased in July. They were transferred to another boat with crew from other company vessels stranded by the pandemic but, in the confusion, Raul's body was left behind - in the freezer of the 7874.

After the crew disembarked, the ship went back to sea.

According to correspondence between Debbie and the Philippine Embassy in Chile, the vessel's location on the high seas blurs country jurisdictions and accountabilities, complicating the repatriation of Raul's remains. The vessel may possibly dock in October and Raul's body may finally be retrieved. By then, it will have been almost a year since his death.

“It's been so long already. I just want my husband's remains to be returned to us. Then we can all be together again, like he promised, ”Debbie said.

Global Maritime Crew and Global Offshore & Marine Manpower Solution, the manpower agencies that recruited most of the crew for the Fu Yuan Yu vessels, could not be reached for comment.

Most dangerous job in the world

Seafaring is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.

Migrants on deep-sea fishing boats spend months at a time on the high seas, working in the most perilous conditions and at risk of physical abuse in a situation some have likened to slavery.

Jesus Gaboni at home in the Philippines. He was the more senior of the Filipino crew and moved Raul Calopez's body to the ship's freezer after he died. It is still there, and the boat is back on the high seas [Martin San Diego/Al Jazeera]

Al Jazeera interviewed dozens of migrants.

They spoke of a life dictated by the availability of the catch - hauling in squid, fish and crab, cleaning and freezing it at all hours of the day and night.

“Commercial fishing is largely unregulated and unsupervised. It is practically lawless, ”said Rossen Karavatchev, ITF Fisheries Section Coordinator.

Among the major countries operating commercial fishing vessels, only Thailand has ratified the Work in Fishing Convention, which sets international standards for the safety and protection of crew, while South Africa is the only country in the world that allows port inspection of fishing vessels.

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned ships into virtual floating prisons, with some sailors now spending between 17 and 21 months at sea. The average contract is about 11.

“Getting sick and the chances of dying on board are much more than before. If you get sick on board, sorry. You can't get medical assistance and you can't get out. If you die, you may be thrown into the sea for a sea burial, ”added Karavatchev.

About a quarter of the world's seafarers come from the Philippines [Martin San Diego/Al Jazeera]

The International Labor Organization estimates about 41,000 people working on trawlers are migrants, mostly from Southeast Asia. However, this number could be as high as 100,000 as many people are undocumented or trafficked into sailing in international waters.

As Marla de Asis, a researcher at the Scalabrini Migration Center in Manila put it, “Once seafarers are on board, who gets to check on how they are doing?”

'He was our baby'

After Jungco set sail on his fateful voyage - to the rich fishing grounds of the southern Atlantic - his family did not hear from him for more than a year.

It was only in April, when Jungco's ship docked in Peru and he finally had access to a mobile signal, that they could speak.

He told his sisters that he was on his way home and that his ship would meet up with other fishing vessels off the coast of China en route to the Philippines. What Jungco did not tell them was that he had had an accident a few days before. The crew was dismantling fishing rigs and other gear in preparation for going home when a steel bar slammed into his thigh.

Jungco's crewmates were making similar calls to their own families, frantically trying to get updates over a patchy mobile signal. By then, news of the COVID-19 virus had reached every corner of the globe - except the deep seas.

They had heard scraps of information from the English their Chinese captain mustered, but the crew could not believe it. They thought the pandemic was an excuse to keep them from going home.

When their boat docked in China, Jungco texted his sisters again on June 1. He told them they had been prohibited from disembarking and had been forced to stay on board.

Jungco's crewmates wrote up the details of his final moments on board the deep-sea shipping vessel, His family hope they will soon get him home [Martin San Diego/Al Jazeera]

By that time, Jungco's condition had deteriorated. His left thigh had turned purple and was swollen. Video footage taken by crew members shows him lying in his bunk bed, visibly weak and having difficulty breathing.

The next message the sisters received was on June 6, from a crew member. Jungco had died.

“He was our baby, our youngest,” sobbed Rosalie Jungco-Pacheco, Jungco's sister who spoke to Al Jazeera via phone from their hometown in the central Philippines. The cause of his death has not yet been determined.

The oldest in the family of 11 children, Rosalie is 18 years older than Jungco. “When he was growing up, I was the one who would brush his teeth and bathe him. It hurts so much to think of how much he suffered without any of us beside him, ”she said.

When travel restrictions eased in July, the crew was allowed to sail back to the Philippines but Jungco's body was left behind. Through updates from the Philippine Embassy in China, Rica and Rosalie were able to confirm that he had been taken to a mortuary in Fuzhou.

“Repatriating seafarers, in particular, is made more challenging due to docking and disembarkation restrictions for vessels set by local authorities and the severely limited number of flights,” the Department of Foreign Affairs - Manila (DFA) said in a statement.

The DFA has been working with various governments to assist stranded seafarers all over the world, its latest data shows that more than 66,000 seafarers affected by the pandemic have been brought home.

A bittersweet goodbye

Last July, Ann-Ann Geraldino stood at Pier 15 of the Manila Port Area as the crew of various Fu Yuan Yu fishing vessels that had been stuck in China as a result of the pandemic finally disembarked.

Stanley Jungco, 25, died on a Chinese-owned deep-sea fishing vessel on June 6. His family are still waiting for his body, which remains in a mortuary in southern China, to be returned [Martin San Diego/Al Jazeera]

She was there to collect the remains of her brother, Felix Mark Guial, who was on board the Fu Yuan Yu 7886. Her husband held her hand and her brother-in-law was at her side. A government official and a doctor in hazmat suits stood behind them to witness his body being handed over by the port authorities.

The details are scant, but Geraldino said he suffered a stomach ache while onboard and never got better. She is certain that COVID-19 was not the cause of death. Nonetheless, health protocols mandated cremation and they went straight from the dock to a funeral home.

“Our parents call him Ar-Ar. All of us 10 kids have repeating nicknames. But we siblings call him “ears” or “rat” because of his protruding ears, ”said Geraldino.

It was bittersweet, she said, when she received her brother's ashes.

“It's very painful especially for his partner and young kids, but at least my brother is home. I hope the other families get to have their last good-bye, too. ”

#world Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=11054&feed_id=7778

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techcrunchappcom · 4 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/the-latest-iran-passes-20000-coronavirus-deaths-world-news/

The Latest: Iran passes 20,000 coronavirus deaths | World News

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran has surpassed 20,000 confirmed deaths from the coronavirus.

Wednesday’s announcement comes as Iran struggles with the largest outbreak in the Middle East with 350,200 confirmed cases. But despite the somber statistic, the Islamic Republic is still holding university entrance exams for over 1 million students and is preparing for mass Shiite commemorations at the end of the month.

Earlier this year Iran suffered the Mideast’s first major outbreak, with senior politicians, health officials and religious leaders in its Shiite theocracy stricken with the virus.

It since has struggled to contain its spread across this nation of 80 million people, initially beating it back only to see it spike again, beginning in June.

———

HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:

— Baby boom ahead as COVID-19 kept millions of women from care

— Colleges grapple with coronavirus as students return

— Lives Lost: ‘Warrior’ fought for slave descendants in Brazil

— A widely used coronavirus test is under scrutiny after federal health officials flagged two separate issues that could deliver inaccurate results for patients.

— France is now mandating masks in all workplaces, from the Paris business district to factories in the provinces.

— Rates of depression appear to have almost doubled in Britain since the country was put into lockdown in late March as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

———

— Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

———

HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

LONDON — London’s Heathrow Airport, the U.K.’s busiest, has unveiled a new coronavirus testing facility that could sharply reduce the length of time people have to stay at home after arriving from countries on the government’s quarantine list.

Heathrow’s chief executive John Holland-Kaye said testing will help avoid what he termed the “quarantine roulette” that many British travelers have faced over the past few weeks when countries like France and Spain were taken off the U.K.’s safe list.

The new facility has been set up by aviation services company Collinson and logistics firm Swissport at Heathrow’s Terminal 2. They say more than 13,000 tests will be available to passengers each day, with results within hours.

It is proposed that arrivals will then take a second test at home and will be able to leave their 14-day quarantine early if they pass both.

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the government was not in a position to back Heathrow’s plan but insisted that it was working with airports to find a way for coronavirus testing to reduce the quarantine period.

———

HELSINKI — Finland says it will tighten travel restrictions and reintroduce and step up border checks for arrivals from 10 countries starting Monday due to the worsening pandemic situation in Europe and elsewhere.

The Finnish government says border checks will apply for passengers to and from Nordic neighbors Denmark, Iceland and Norway as well as Germany, Greece and Malta – all countries belonging to the European Union’s borderless Schengen area.

Outside the Schengen area, border checks will be stepped up for arrivals from Cyprus, Ireland, San Marino and Japan.

Passengers arriving to Finland from those countries are recommended to self-quarantine for 14 days. Travel in Finland’s border areas with Sweden and Norway is more relaxed.

Interior Minister Maria Ohisalo says Finland’s current coronavirus travel policies are among the tightest in the EU.

Border checks can be relaxed if a country records fewer than eight infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the past two weeks.

———

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis is warning against any prospect that rich people would get priority for a coronavirus vaccine.

Francis says, “The pandemic is a crisis. You don’t come out of it the same — either better or worse.″ He added that “we must come out better.”

In remarks on Wednesday during his weekly public audience, he said that after the COVID-19 pandemic, the world can’t return to normality if normal means social injustice and degradation of the natural environment.

Said Francis: “How sad it would be if for the COVID-19 vaccine priority is given to the richest.”

He also said it would be scandalous if all the economic assistance in the works, most of it using public funds, ends up reviving industries that don’t help the poor or the environment.

———

WARSAW, Poland — The director of a major Polish hospital has warned that his facility is at risk of running out of beds for coronavirus patients.

The country of 38 million has so far registered some 58,000 cases and 1,900 deaths, numbers which are far lower than many countries in western Europe. However, infections have been rising for weeks, with around 700 new cases per day — up from 200-300 earlier in the summer.

Marcin Jędrychowski, director of the University Hospital in Krakow, the largest and most modern facility in Poland, told the news portal Onet that his hospital has already been forced to select patients and admit only the most severe cases.

He says, “With such an upward trend that has continued for many days, we will soon run out of places.”

He said he was also concerned about a further rise of infections once schools reopen on Sept. 1.

———

TOKYO — Japan’s exports in July plunged 19.2% from a year ago, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to slam the world’s third largest economy.

The Finance Ministry’s provisional numbers showed Japan’s imports in July fell 22.3%.

Exports to the U.S. especially suffered, declining 19.5% last month. They include plastic goods, iron and steel and computer parts. But Japan recorded its first trade surplus in four months on the back of a recovery in China.

Japan’s export-reliant economy has been ailing since the outbreak caused some plant production to be temporarily halted, squelched tourism and generally hurt economic activity.

Japan has never imposed a lockdown but has encouraged people to work from home, wear masks and social distance. Some stores have closed or shortened their hours.

Japan has had about 1,100 confirmed COVID-19 deaths among 57,636 cases. Worries are growing over a recent surge in infection, especially in Tokyo and other urban areas.

———

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand appears to be gaining control over a coronavirus outbreak in Auckland after just five new community infections were reported Wednesday amid record levels of testing and contact tracing.

A sixth infection was found in a quarantined traveler who had returned from Qatar.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says 500 more military personnel would be deployed to quarantine hotels as the nation looks to reduce the number of private security guards it employs and tighten its border controls.

Health authorities have still not figured out how the outbreak began after the country went 102 days without the virus spreading in the community. The discovery of the outbreak last week prompted authorities to put the nation’s largest city into a two-week lockdown.

———

NEW DELHI — India reported 1,092 new fatalities from COVID-19 on Wednesday, its highest single-day total.

India has the fourth-most deaths in the world and the third-most cases, with over 2.7 million — including more than 64,000 new infections reported in the last 24 hours.

The actual numbers, like elsewhere in the world, are thought to be far higher due to limited testing.

Four of India’s 28 states now account for 63% of total fatalities and 54.6% of the caseload. The western state of Maharashtra and the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are the country’s worst-hit regions.

———

CANBERRA, Australia — Australia has announced a deal to manufacture a potential coronavirus vaccine being developed by British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZenec.

“Under the deal, every single Australian will be able to receive the University of Oxford COVID-19 vaccine for free, should trials prove successful, safe and effective,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a statement Wednesday.

Morrison said the Oxford University trial was in a phase-three stage and more work was needed to prove its viability.

“If this vaccine proves successful, we will manufacture and supply vaccines straight away under our own steam and make it free for 25 million Australians,” Morisson said.

Morrison said there was no guarantee that the vaccine would be successful, “which is why we are continuing our discussions with many parties around the world while backing our own researchers at the same time to find a vaccine.”

———

SPARKS, Nev. — Thousands of students began returning to northern Nevada classrooms or the first time since March with masks, social distancing and other precautions to help guard against the spread of COVID-19.

Others cranked up their laptops from home Tuesday in Reno and Sparks where the Washoe County school district is using a combination of in-person and distance learning.

The scheduled start of the new school year in Reno-Sparks was delayed a day over concerns about unhealthy air quality driven by smoke from a nearby wildfire.

The state’s largest school district doesn’t open until next week in Las Vegas, where it will be having only remote instruction.

———

RALEIGH, N.C. — Health officials have identified a COVID-19 cluster at another North Carolina university.

A statement from North Carolina State University confirmed on Tuesday that Wake County health officials identified of COVID-19 cases at off-campus housing east of the Raleigh, North Carolina, campus.

The school said several people who have tested positive as part of this cluster have been identified, including some who are N.C. State students. Contact tracing has been initiated with direct communication to anyone known to have been in close contact with a person who has tested positive for COVID-19, according to the school.

The school said reports indicated a party or some type of gathering was hosted at the location on or around Aug. 6. The notice said it was not known how many people were at the gathering, but encouraged anyone who attended to visit their personal healthcare provider or Student Health Services.

———

SANTA FE, N.M. — It’s too early to say whether a COVID-19 vaccine — once available — will be mandatory for certain people in New Mexico, but Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is indicating that health care workers, educators, nursing home residents and emergency responders could be among those required to be inoculated.

Acknowledging uncertainties about the availability and effectiveness of a vaccine, the Democratic governor said she expects a debate over mandating certain groups of people to accept the vaccine.

Her comments came during a recent briefing as pharmaceutical companies race to have a vaccine ready by early next year.

New Mexico has seen its daily COVID-19 case counts improve. On Tuesday, an additional 79 cases were confirmed, bringing the statewide total to nearly 23,580 since the pandemic began.

The governor’s administration has authority under a 2003 state law to issue vaccine orders during a declared public health emergency. The Albuquerque Journal reported that those who decline a vaccine for reasons of health, religion or conscience can be ordered to isolate or self-quarantine under the same law.

#coronavirus #deaths #latest #passes #World

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ladystylestores · 4 years ago

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Victoria coronavirus cases surge as lockdown looms: Live updates | News

The Australian state of Victoria has confirmed 134 new cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, as its borders were closed and it moved to impose a six-week lockdown in Melbourne.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has tested positive for COVID-19 after months of downplaying the virus as a “little flu”.

The United States has officially notified the United Nations secretary-general of the country’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization even as it grapples with nearly three million cases of coronavirus.

A group of opposition supporters stormed the Serbian parliament on Tuesday night in a protest against plans to impose a lockdown on the capital this weekend.

Nearly 11.8 million people around the world have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and nearly 544,000 have died, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The US and Brazil have reported the most cases and the highest death tolls.

Here are the latest updates.

Wednesday, July 8

05:30 GMT – Fireflies of Tatsuno dance free as coronavirus curbs visitors

The coronavirus forced the cancellation of Tatsuno’s annual firefly festival leaving the area’s thousands of fireflies to mate in peace – away from crowds of people.

The spectacle lasts just ten days in early summer and, when the conditions are right, the fireflies take to the night skies to find a mate and lay eggs for the next year. The insects glow to communicate with each other.

Festival organiser Tatsuki Komatsu told AFP he felt the fireflies were “looking for a partner more freely with no humans around” but hoped the event would be able to return in 2021.

“The brief shining of the light is so impressive, making me feel that I also have to live my best,” he said.

A long exposure picture shows the light created by the fireflies in Tatsuno in Japan’s central Nagano prefecture [Philip Fong/AFP]

04:35 GMT – Doubts over AirAsia’s ability to continue in business

Auditors for AirAsia, Southeast Asia’s biggest low cost carrier, have warned there is risk to the airline’s ability to continue in business as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The airline has said it is looking to raise more capital. On Monday, it posted its biggest ever first quarter loss – 803.3 million ringgit ($103 million).

AirAsia was bought over by Malaysian tycoon and former music industry executive Tony Fernandes nearly 20 years ago and turned into a low cost airline inspired by EasyJet in the UK. Its shares were suspended on Wednesday.

AirAsia, with 255 planes and over 20000 employees, is in deep trouble.

Auditors say its ability to continue as a going concern may be in “significant doubt.” https://t.co/6UlG9pgR0L

— Tarun Shukla (@shukla_tarun) July 8, 2020

03:45 GMT – Panic buying hits Victorian supermarkets

Panic buying has hit supermarkets in Melbourne and Victoria again, ahead of the six-week lockdown that comes into force in a few hours time.

Woolworths – Australia’s biggest grocery chain – has already reinstated buying limits for basics including pasta, sugar and toilet paper.

Disappointing.

There is absolutely no need to rush out to the supermarket.https://t.co/kFonAZbgVD

— 3AW Melbourne (@3AW693) July 8, 2020

03:35 GMT – Australia to consider limiting citizen and resident returns

Australia’s coronavirus emergency cabinet is to consider limiting the number of citizens and residents allowed to return to the country, following a spike in cases in Melbourne.

Health authorities say many of the cases have been traced back to hotels where people who had returned from overseas were being quarantined.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says there are no plans to reimpose coronavirus restrictions across the country after the Melbourne outbreak prompted the closure of state borders and a citywide lockdown.

Many are asking where the lockdown areas end. See map below.

Stage 3 restrictions will affect Melbourne and Mitchell Shire, for six weeks.

This is to #FlattenTheCurve once more, here in Victoria.

For more: https://t.co/hwxYe9WtB3 #COVID19Vic @VictorianCHO pic.twitter.com/9h0dTzx6NI

— Dr Sandro Demaio (@SandroDemaio) July 8, 2020

03:05 GMT – Scientists warn of coronavirus carries risk of brain damage

Scientists at University College London are warning of the risk of brain damage from coronavirus.

UCL researchers studied 43 patients who suffered either temporary brain dysfunction, stroke, nerve damage or other serious effects on their brain, and say the disease can lead to severe neurological complications including psychosis and delirium.

The study found nine of the patients were diagnosed with a rare condition called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), which is usually seen in children and can be triggered by viral infections.

The team said they would only usually see about one adult patient with ADEM a month, but it had risen to a “concerning” one a week while they were conducting the study.

“Given the disease has only been around for a matter of months, we might not yet know what long-term danage COVID-19 can cause,” said Ross Paterson, who co-led the study. “Doctors need to be aware of possible neurological effects, as early diagnosis can improve patient outcomes.”

A human brain, part of a collection of more than 3,000 brains that could provide insight into psychiatric illnesses, at a psychiatric hospital in Duffel, Belgium [File: Yves Herman/Reuters]

02:35 GMT – Britain to unveil mini-budget to boost COVID-hit economy

The UK government is to announce a mini-budget later on Wednesday to kickstart the economy after the prolonged coronavirus lockdown.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak will announce the plan – with a focus on infrastructure spending – at 11:30 GMT. He’s expected to offer 2 billion pounds ($2.5 billion) in grants for households to improve home insulation, while 1 billion pounds ($1.25 billion) will be available for public buildings including hospitals.

Sunak is also expected to reveal new plans to create jobs for young people. You can read more on that story here.

02:15 GMT – New Zealand to charge man with coronavirus who escaped quarantine

New Zealand is to prosecute a 32-year-old man who briefly absconded from an isolation facility after testing positive for the virus.

The man was in quarantine in Auckland after arriving from Delhi on July 3. He escaped through a fenced area of the hotel and and visited a supermarket before returning to the facility.

“We take any breach of the COVID-19 rules very seriously,” said Commodore Darryn Webb, the head of managed isolation and quarantine. “Willfully leaving our facilities will not be tolerated, and the appropriate action will be taken.”

00:45 GMT – California reports more than 10,000 confirmed cases

The US state of California has reported a record daily rise in confirmed cases of coronavirus – some 10,201 cases.

The state has taken steps to curb the outbreak by suspending indoor activities and training contact tracers.

Other states have also reported record daily numbers of cases including Hawaii, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas, with the number of known cases across the US now approaching three million.

00:00 GMT – Australia’s Victoria state confirms 134 new cases after lockdown imposed

The Australian state of Victoria has confirmed 134 new cases of coronavirus, with Melbourne due to begin a six-week lockdown at midnight (14:00 GMT).

Around 4.9 million people in the country’s second-biggest city will be confined to their homes for all but essential activities.

Australia’s second-largest city Melbourne reimposes lockdown

—-

Hello and welcome to Al Jazeera’s continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. I’m Kate Mayberry in Kuala Lumpur.

Read all the updates from yesterday here.

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xtruss · 5 years ago

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Bill Gates has been warning of a global health threat for years. Here are 11 people who seemingly predicted the coronavirus pandemic.

Bill Gates, disease experts, government officials, books, and movies have all alluded to something like the coronavirus sweeping the globe.

— Hillary Hoffower | Business Insider | March 21, 2020

Bill Gates has previously said the world needs to prepare for a pandemic the way it prepares for war.

Bill Gates, flu and disease experts, and government officials have been warning of a pandemic for years.

There's also speculation that pop culture, such as books and movies, predicted the novel coronavirus.

While some of these predictions are conspiracy theories, others are more serious and adamant that the world isn't properly prepared for a pandemic.

History has proven that worldwide diseases are inevitable.

There was the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed at least 50 million people, or one-third of the world's population at the time. The 20th century also saw outbreaks of Ebola and Nipah virus. And in the 2000s, SARS and MERS hit nearly 30 countries each.

Now, COVID-19, the disease that can result from the coronavirus pandemic, is spreading across the globe. While it has a lower fatality rate than the last four aforementioned diseases above, it has spread to many more countries and has infected thousands more people.

But some people have seen such a pandemic coming. Bill Gates has been warning of a pandemic for years, as have notable disease and flu experts. Former White House officials have also previously warned of an upcoming pandemic threat.

Pop culture, too, has seemingly predicted the novel coronavirus. Online conspiracies are circulating over books and movies that have alluded to a worldwide pandemic.

Some of these predictions are pure speculation. But the ones by experts are more accurate and all say the same thing: That the world isn't prepared for it.

1- Bill Gates has been warning of a pandemic for years.

In a 2015 TED talk, Gates said the world was "not ready for the next epidemic."

And in a 2018 discussion about epidemics hosted by the Massachusetts Medical Society and the New England Journal of Medicine, Gates said a pandemic could happen within the next decade.

He presented a simulation by the Institute for Disease Modeling which found that a new flu like the one that killed 50 million people in the 1918 pandemic would now most likely kill 30 million people within six months.

The likelihood that such a disease will appear continues to rise in our interconnected world, he said, whether it happens naturally or is created as a weaponized disease.

"In the case of biological threats, that sense of urgency is lacking," he said. "The world needs to prepare for pandemics in the same serious way it prepares for war."

Infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm has also been warning of a global pandemic for the past decade.

According to CNN, Osterholm wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2005 that, "This is a critical point in our history. Time is running out to prepare for the next pandemic. We must act now with decisiveness and purpose."

He also said that the US isn't properly prepared for a pandemic in his 2017 book, "Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs."

Virologist and flu expert Robert G. Webster predicted an upcoming flu pandemic in a book he published in December.

In "Flu Hunter: Unlocking the secrets of a virus," Webster questioned whether another deadly, disruptive pandemic is possible. "The answer is yes: it is not only possible, it is just a matter of time," he wrote.

Millions of people could die before such a pandemic is controlled or modified, he added.

"Nature will eventually again challenge mankind with an equivalent of the 1918 influenza virus," he wrote. "We need to be prepared."

The US Intelligence Team has warned about the possibility of a pandemic in recent years.

In 2018, the intelligence community's Worldwide Threat Assessment warned that a "novel strain of a virulent microbe that is easily transmissible between humans continues to be a major threat," according to CNN's Daniel Dale.

And the 2019 threat assessment from last January stated that, "We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support."

Jeremy Konyndyk, former director of USAID's Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance under the Obama administration, has said a virus similar to the 1918 flu pandemic will emerge.

Konyndyk wrote in a 2017 Politico article that "a major new global health crisis is a question of when, not if."

"At some point a highly fatal, highly contagious virus will emerge — like the 1918 'Spanish flu' pandemic, which infected one third of the world's population and killed between 50 and 100 million people," he wrote, adding that President Trump is unprepared for such a pandemic.

While research on the new coronavirus is still in its infancy, and the world looks nothing like it did in 1918, the stats surrounding it "have started to ring alarm bells," wrote Business Insider's Morgan McFall-Johnsen and Holly Secon.

"COVID-19 has started behaving a lot like the once-in-a-century pathogen we've been worried about," Bill Gates wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Luciana Borio of the former White House National Security Council (NSC) team responsible for pandemics has previously warned of a pandemic flu threat.

According to CNN's Dale, Borio, the council's director of medical and biodefense preparedness, said in 2018: "The threat of pandemic flu is the number one health security concern. Are we ready to respond? I fear the answer is no."

John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser at the time, later disbanded the team while reorganizing the NSC.

More than a decade ago, Massachusetts public health officials projected that millions could become ill from a novel respiratory disease.

In a 2006 Flu Pandemic Preparedness Plan, these public health officials projected that as many as 2 million people could become ill, according to local outlet 10Boston.

They predicted that up to 1 million people in the state would need to be treated on an outpatient basis and that 80,000 would need hospital treatment, based on models developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Because the hospital system would be overwhelmed by patients infected with the disease, up to 20,000 could die, according to their projections.

They put a preparedness plan in place by having hospitals negotiate agreements to host "alternative care sites" in similarly large facilities, like high schools.

Online conspiracies have also been circulating, such as whether author Dean Koontz predicted the pandemic in a 1981 novel.

According to the Guardian, Koontz's "The Eyes of Darkness" referred to a virus called "Wuhan-400" — the city in China where the novel coronavirus originated.

But Harmeet Kaur for CNN has bunked this conspiracy theory, pointing out the differences between the real coronavirus and Wuhan-400 — in the book, the virus was made by a scientist as a biological weapon and had a 100% mortality rate. Both of those things aren't true of the real coronavirus.

Self-proclaimed psychic Sylvia Browne was also said to have predicted a global pandemic similar to the coronavirus.

In her 2008 book, "End of Days: Predictions and Prophecies About the End of the World," she wrote: "In around 2020, a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments."

But scientific paranormal investigator Benjamin Radford pointed out that while COVID-19 can lead to pneumonia, it's not a "severe pneumonia-like illness."

Browne also wrote that the illness will have "suddenly vanished as quickly as it arrived," which Radford said isn't currently true.

Browne, who has since passed away, made several predictions later proven false, according to Jacob Stolworthy for The Independent.

Director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z Burns's film "Contagion" also seemingly predicted the coronavirus pandemic.

Released in 2011, the movie is about a fictional illness called MEV-1, which becomes a global pandemic after a bat spread it to a pig who spread it to a person who didn't wash his hands before shaking hands with another person.

The fictional virus has a 72-hour incubation period and high fatality rate, according to The Sun.

There's also speculation that Nostradamus, the famous 16th century physician, astrologer, and seer, predicted a "plague" similar to what has been seen with the coronavirus.

In 1555, Michel de Nostredame, or Nostradamus, published "Les Prophéties," a collection of nearly 1,000 prophetic and poetic quatrains (four-line rhyming verses).

One of them reads:

"From the vain enterprise honour and undue complaint,

Boats tossed about among the Latins, cold, hunger, waves,

Not far from the Tiber the land stained with blood,

And diverse plagues will be upon mankind."

The Tiber is a river in Italy said to symbolize the country and its history, according to Andrew Whalen for Newsweek.

Another quatrain reads:

'The sloping park, great calamity,

Through the Lands of the West and Lombardy

The fire in the ship, plague and captivity;

Mercury in Sagittarius, Saturn fading."

One Twitter user speculated that "plague" and "captivity" refer to the coronavirus and lockdown, according to Express. The last line, he said, refers to the beginning of January 23 and 24 in 2020. Wuhan was placed under strict quarantine on January 23. "Lands of the west and Lombardy," he added, refer to Europe, Australasia, America, and Italy (Lombardy).

But this is all pure speculation. While some people avidly believe Nostradamus has correctly predicted events in the past, others say his alleged prediction of the coronavirus is a false claim.

"The straight fact is that nobody has ever used Nostradamus' writings to predict a future event in specific terms which later came true," renowned skeptic Brian Dunning said in his podcast.

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jeffrmayhugh · 5 years ago

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How USDT Burn Impacts Bitcoin | Covid-19 and Cryptocurrency | Sharering

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hey, everybody, Maddie here with altcoin Buzz, happy Thursday. Hope you’re having a great one. We’re looking today on news BTC dot com. And historically at the traditional pattern that is where we’ve seen major burns of Teather, subsequent bitcoin crashes have occurred. We’ll examine whether or not that’s likely to occur again. We’ll also discuss that sentiment on bitcoin as dot com. They suggest that a downside risk remains likely. Despite this kind of buy the dip sentiment that we’re all feeling right now. Then take a look. On an extra at this piece, Cauvin 19 outbreak and the crypto market, a brief historical look at what’s happened traditionally in times of crisis like this one. And I’m talking about the economic crisis and how bitcoin is different. Some of the arguments you’re probably familiar with, a couple of them, however, are novel and worth sharing. Speaking of sharing, we’re talking about sharing an article by Deepika here on altcoin Buzzacott IO Blockchain for the sharing economy. And finally, we’ll do a quick follow up on the exchange that we mentioned the other day. Storm gain has been crowned the cryptocurrency trading and exchange platform of the year this unknown t.x dot com. We’ll take a look at those stories. We’ll first examine the market. However, on market cap, dot com, we are at two hundred five point five billion dollars. That’s up a little bit since yesterday. As you can see, things are up a percentage point or two or three in some instances. Bitcoin up 1.5, 8 percent in the last 24 hours above 7 K currently. So that’s 7 K has now become support right now seven thousand one hundred and three dollars with the dominance of sixty-three point four percent. Here now on news BTC. Com. Nearly every past teather burn preceded a bitcoin crash and it just happened again. So the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, which is a stable coin of course. Teather and whose ticker is U.S.D.A., has become increasingly important in its support role for the cryptocurrency market. So much so that the other day data shared by unfolded suggested that tethers market capitalization hit seven billion dollars. Or, to put it in another perspective, 3.4 percent of the entire industries value will alert is a Twitter tracking bot and it announced yesterday on the 22nd of April again at the whale. Underscore or alert 220 million U.S. d.t 222 10 3 0 1 USD burned at Teather Treasury. Bitcoin has not reacted yet. However, bloodstreams Zach Vogel noted that every previous U.S. team burn, according to Weil Alert has coincided, quote, at or near pivotal points in the market. And his chart indicated the pivotal points have preceded drops like when U.S.D.A. was burned around February 20th near the top. And just weeks prior to the drop to $3700 or when it was burned in November last year prior to the 35 percent drop to seven thousand dollars. So keep that variable of the Teather burn in mind as we examine this piece on bitcoiners.com glaring downside risks makes bitcoin correction likely despite quote by the dip sentiment. So as it mentions in the article here, yes, we are above 7k once again, but only just barely. And there’s not really any breakup momentum that we’re seeing. The cryptocurrency market rebounded as U.S. stocks and oil broke their two-day losing streak. However, they’re still in rough shape. And the main argument here is that oil’s collapse is a big warning sign. So Karen Ward, the chief marketing strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management, noted that investors are turning very optimistic about the stock market recovery. But this may be unwarranted as these rallies come on the back of central bank support rather than concrete fundamentals. In other words, they are the direct result of the stimulus injection. And that’s all it was ever meant to be. It was meant to be a stimulus, to temporarily rally things and provide support. But really at a fundamental underlying level, while people still aren’t using oil, people are still, for the most part, stuck at home. People still aren’t working or they’re not participating in the job market, in the labour force. And so what real value can that money have? It’s just a temporary bandage. Meanwhile, and as I mentioned, the crashing U.S. oil prices below zero is an alarm showing how uncertain markets, including Bitcoin, can be as more than half of the world goes into lockdown to slow the speed of the Cauvin pandemic. The corporate earnings come out of the US that has come out of the U.S. are poor and therefore do not justify the gains. Ward, once again of JP Morgan said the following, quote, The second quarter is going to be awful for earnings. We think the market is still a little bit optimistic. That’s the thing that concerns me. You know, I’ve shared my opinion here in the past. I think to a certain extent we have to continue monitoring and be health-conscious and be safe. In response to Cauvin. But on another level, there has to be a time limit. There has to be kind of a checkpoint that we hit and at which we reassess our strategy, because if the economic collapse, whether it’s just for myself in Canada, for the United States, for North America, Europe or globally, the implications of that. My opinion and I think in objective truth are much, much, much, much worse than this. Coronavirus pandemic, whose mortality rate seems to be much less than was originally anticipated. Any death that can be prevented is one that we should seek to prevent that. That’s going to be very important in terms of our mission here. That’s true. That being said, there are many, many, many more deaths that could be made possible. If society utterly collapses. And so this is something that we have to keep in mind. But getting back to Bitcoin for just a second, many analysts are suggesting that nine thousand dollars are a reasonable short term target. We’ve been fluctuating just below K, just above 7 K, back and forth, back and forth. Resistance becomes support and vice versa. But we’re not really improving much. We’re not really blazing any new trails. However, at $9000, we would be able to break out of our most recent trading zones and some people are suggesting that is possible. Take a look at the analytics in the rest of this article for more information. Speaking about cobia. However, let’s take a look at the relationship to Coronavirus that it has with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency here on extra com. I’ve used the term many times, but we are indeed dealing with a black swan event in terms of this coronavirus. First of all, there’s very little at a literal level that we know about it in terms of its health impact. We don’t know the nature of the virus all that well. That is why it is novel, of course, and we’ve seen a lot of examples of how utterly unprepared we were for this disruption. I mean, it always strikes me as quite amazing to see just how fragile some of these major massive international corporations are, where, you know, if they can’t bring in revenue for perhaps a month or so or even a couple of weeks, I mean, they just get devastated by that. It’s shocking to me. And the same goes for people, I think the same in a microcosmic Conways, same for individuals that unfortunately through perhaps sometimes no fault of their own. But in some cases, it is their fault. People don’t prepare. People don’t have a rainy day fund. They don’t save. And I think we’re seen with our habits, with our 21st century, high consumption, highly indebted habits, just how fragile the system truly is. Well, there is an argument that Bitcoin does have an outsized role to play in readjusting and recalibrating things. Of course, outbreaks and epidemics. As this article describes, have occurred in the past. But, you know, in that sense, people always looked in crises to things like gold. And did you know that during the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt actually banned the ownership of gold, which in my opinion is an astoundingly tyrannical move? When people were out of work, they had no jobs. They had no means by which to make a living. Fiat currencies and the relatively newly established Federal Reserve were failing. So people turned to gold. They put their trust and their confidence in gold and it was banned outright. I mean, that to me is just criminal. In my opinion. But, you know, even if you had gold back in those times, there were still the matters of authenticating it, the logistics of transporting it, all that kind of thing. Know, we didn’t have a world wide web, we didn’t have an Internet, we didn’t have the digital infrastructure that we now do in the 21st century. And that’s why people love Bitcoin. Put simply, it represents freedom and it totally defies manipulation. So different parties value cryptocurrencies and bitcoin in particular for various reasons. We all know that. But, you know, right now, I don’t think it has necessarily acted as that go to a trustworthy safe haven in terms of crisis. But it is gaining some traction and some credibility during these uncertain times, certainly more than the U.S. dollar or the Federal Reserve. And don’t forget, there are those that are calling for much higher bitcoin prices, really even in the next couple of years, such as Tim Draper, for example, who predicted 250000 by 2022 or 2023. And you have others that have even more optimistic price projections. This is a great article. I would encourage you to check it out in full. But as it concludes here, as the world progresses and fights back against the pandemic, Bitcoin’s value and acceptance will only grow from routine payments and daily coffees at Starbucks too much more sophisticated uses yet to be imagined and created by necessity. Being the mother of invention. Absolutely. Bitcoin has provided a new financial canvas with its users having painted an impressive first layer. Now the time has come to add more paint life and colour to the painting. So a true masterpiece emerges, and the full picture of endless possibility is undeniable to all. We’re now looking at sharing blockchain for the sharing economy. And this article on altcoin Buzzacott. Oh by Deepika with partnerships in multiple sectors of the sharing economy. Sharing is well on its way to being the bridge among stakeholders. So the term sharing economy, if you haven’t really heard about that before, it was an innovative buzzword about a decade ago and experts are now predicting that the sharing economy will grow to over three hundred five billion dollars in the next five years. And this is because people have shown a robust appetite for. Most of the services that such an economy facilitates, especially in travel, hospitality, dining, insurance, car rentals, automotive and more. You know, I myself was travelling for the last couple of years quite a bit for work, but travelling regionally. So not really long distances. And I would often make use of in particular of two services that tie right into the sharing economy. So no one housing. I was basically living out of an air BMB for over a year and my kind of swapped around a little bit. But eventually, you get a little bit cosier with one particular owner and so you settle in for something more long term. So that was as a client, I guess I would say. And then as a vendor of my services, I would go back and forth between cities here in eastern Canada and I would sell my vacant car seat. So I have a sedan, not a big car or a big vehicle, but I would always sell up car seats, my empty car seats, usually three at a time on a multi-hour ride. And it’s just a quick way to number one facilitates people. Sometimes students, people travelling between cities. But it also puts a nice chunk of pocket change into your wallet. So I think it’s it’s a win-win. And more and more, we’re talking about how this is the 21st century, the digital century. More and more we’re seeing that these options are readily available and all around us. So people naturally are availing themselves of these opportunities. There are some roadblocks in this space that need to be considered. So the current shared economic model stands fragmented and disjointed, unfortunately. And on top of that, there are inherent flaws in the existing tech framework on which they operate, leading to issues like privacy and data ownership. Price discrimination, racial bias is, unfortunately, a problem. Security concerns, monopoly and middleman costs. These are all concerns that have yet to be optimised in this sharing economy. Space sharing, however, aims to address these issues and level the playing field for everyone by running the shared economy in a truly decentralized, blockchain-powered ecosystem. So sharing is using the power of distributed ledger technology and it will bring the gap bridged, rather the gap between the stakeholders of the sharing economy. So to date, sharing has announced the addition of the following services to its ecosystem accommodation, tours and activities, flights, insurance, different products including rather DGI Drones and Australia luggage company, car rental services, tech and Research, Automotive Charity and Krypto, including Nano Tron Credits, cam- Investment, Double Peak and Coin Street Partner Sharing also employs an El P.O.S. consensus that’s a least proof of stake, consensus mechanism and sharing. Enjoy support from M.A.D. And their stakeholders. The node operators and stakeholders received 50 percent of the ecosystem revenue to support the network. And I’m playing here a brief explainer video that talks all about sharing what it is they’re all about. Guys, if you want to read more about the duel token mechanism S H R and S H R P, you can check that out. There’s information as well about one idea the power of one i_d_ is that basically your ID is in your control and you can control whether your ID data where it goes rather and how it stores your I.D. data as well. There’s information here about quick rentals, express check-ins, even visa information and of course details about the master nodes and the token omics as well as the distribution. So for all of this and more for interesting information about sharing, including their major partnerships on the rise and checkout speakers article in full, of course, we will link to this in the description below. Of course, guys, none of this is financial advice. We’re neither encouraging you nor discouraging you from any kind of investment in sharing. However, they are a very intriguing player in this cryptocurrency space and we’re simply providing you with the information, hopefully objectively. And finally, for today on Nulty X, dot.com Storm Gane, which we talked about yesterday, really for its very strong infrastructure and characteristics related to other exchanges that were failing in those regards. Will Storm Gain has been crowned cryptocurrency trading and exchange platform of the year. Check out the full article here. Unknow t.x dot com. We are plum out of time. But just as a quick follow up to yesterday’s content, I wanted to mention this before signing off, but that about wraps it up for today, everybody. To be sure, you’re following us on all the regular social media channels and keep checking back into altcoin based on I owe for all the latest guys. Go ahead. Like subscribe, share and hit the belt, receive notifications if you’ve enjoyed today’s video. Best of luck if you choose to invest on this Thursday. But have a great one, everybody. And hey, as always, we do see you again soon. In our next take care.

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heatherrdavis1 · 5 years ago

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How USDT Burn Impacts Bitcoin | Covid-19 and Cryptocurrency | Sharering

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scottmapess · 5 years ago

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How USDT Burn Impacts Bitcoin | Covid-19 and Cryptocurrency | Sharering

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cryptosharks1 · 5 years ago

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How USDT Burn Impacts Bitcoin | Covid-19 and Cryptocurrency | Sharering

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vsplusonline · 5 years ago

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Coronavirus impact comes into focus: How it spreads, infects

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Coronavirus impact comes into focus: How it spreads, infects

The medical impact of the new coronavirus is coming into sharper focus as it continues its spread in what is now officially recognized as a pandemic.

Its true fatality rate isn’t yet known, but it seems 10 times higher than the flu, which kills hundreds of thousands around the world each year, the United States’ top infectious disease expert told lawmakers last week.

Most people have had mild to moderate illness and recovered, but the virus is more serious for those who are older or have other health problems.

That’s a huge number, said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who now heads a global health organization. In the U.S., 60% of adults have at least one underlying health condition and 42% have two or more.

“There’s still a lot that we don’t know” about the virus and disease it causes, COVID-19, he said.

HOW IT SPREADS

Most spread is from droplets produced when an infected person coughs, which are inhaled by people nearby. Transmission from touching contaminated surfaces hasn’t been shown yet, though recent tests by U.S. scientists suggest it’s possible — one reason they recommend washing your hands and not touching your face.

The virus can live in the air for several hours, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel. Cleaning surfaces with solutions containing diluted bleach should kill it.

“While we are still learning about the biology of this virus, it does not appear that there is a major risk of spread through sweat,” said Julie Fischer, a Georgetown University microbiologist. The biggest concern about going to the gym is infected people coughing on others, or contaminating shared surfaces or equipment, she said. Consider avoiding large classes and peak hours and don’t go if you’re coughing or feverish, she suggests.

The risk of virus transmission from food servers is the same risk as transmission from other infected people, but “one of the concerns in that food servers, like others facing stark choices about insurance and paychecks, may be pressured to work even if they are sick,” she said.

HOW FAST DOES IT SPREAD?

Each infected person spreads to two or three others on average, researchers estimate. It spreads more easily than flu but less than measles, tuberculosis or some other respiratory diseases. It is not known if it spreads less easily among children, but fewer of them have been diagnosed with the disease. A study of 1,099 patients in China found that 0.9% of the cases were younger than 15.

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS?

Most people get fever and cough, sometimes fatigue or shortness of breath, and recover after about two weeks. About 15% develop severe disease, including pneumonia, Chinese scientists reported from 45,000 cases there. Symptoms usually start slowly and often worsen as the illness goes on.

In a report last week on the first 12 patients in the U.S., seven were hospitalized; most had underlying health problems and got worse during the second week of illness.

In China, slightly more males have been diagnosed with COVID-19 than females, which might be because roughly half of Chinese men smoke but only 5% of females do, Frieden said.

Children seem to get less sick — a report on 10 in China found that fevers tended to be milder and they lacked clear signs of pneumonia.

WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE?

Some cruise ship passengers described symptoms similar to the common cold or flu.

“It’s been a 2 on a scale of 10,” said Carl Goldman, who was hospitalized in Omaha, Nebraska, after flying home.

However, a Chinese postgraduate student described going to the hospital twice after her symptoms worsened, and feeling “a heavy head while walking, unable to breathe, and nauseous.”

WHAT’S THE TEST LIKE?

The CDC recommends at least two swabs — nose and throat. Samples are sent to labs that look for bits of viral genetic material, which takes roughly 4 to 6 hours. Altogether, it can take several days to ship a sample and get results back.

It’s been taking two to three days, and “we are working really hard to see if we can shorten that time” by developing an in-house test, Dr. Aimee Moulin of the University of California, Davis said Thursday in a conference call held by the American College of Emergency Physicians.

Some areas have opened drive-thru sites for testing, which could reduce exposure to health workers and other patients or the public.

WHEN IS THE VIRUS MOST CONTAGIOUS?

The average time from exposure to developing symptoms is five to six days, but can be up to two weeks. Tests have found high amounts of virus in the throats and noses of people a couple days before they show symptoms.

Signs of virus also have been found in stool weeks after patients recover, but that doesn’t mean it’s capable of causing illness, scientists warn.

“The virus can be degraded,” said Robert Webster, a St. Jude Children’s Research Center virus expert. “It’s not necessarily infectious virus at all.”

HOW DEADLY IS IT?

That won’t be known until large studies are done to test big groups of people to see how many have been infected and with or without symptoms.

Scientists have estimated the fatality rate from less than 1% to as high as 4% among cases diagnosed so far, depending on location.

Flu kills about 0.1% of those it infects, so the new virus seems about 10 times more lethal, the National Institutes of Health’s Dr. Anthony Fauci told Congress last week.

The death rate has been higher among people with other health problems — more than 10% for those with heart disease, for example. In the U.S., 30 million have diabetes, more than 70 million are obese and nearly 80 million have high blood pressure.

CAN INFECTED PEOPLE WHO RECOVER GET IT AGAIN?

It’s not known. A few reports from China say some people had COVID-19, recovered and then fell ill again. It’s unclear if that’s a relapse, a new infection, or a case where the person never fully recovered in the first place.

Scientists at the at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle say the 30,000-letter genetic code of the virus changes by one letter every 15 days. It’s not known how many of these changes would be needed for the virus to seem different enough to the immune system of someone who had a previous version of it for it to cause a fresh infection.

Fauci told Congress on Thursday that it was unlikely that someone could get reinfected.

“We haven’t formally proved it, but it is strongly likely that that’s the case,” he said. “Because if this acts like any other virus, once you recover, you won’t get reinfected.”

WILL IT GO AWAY IN THE SUMMER?

Flu fades each spring and the new virus may do the same, Fauci said last week in a podcast with a journal editor.

“I am hoping that as we get into the warmer weather we will see a decline that will give us a chance to get our preparedness up to speed,” Fauci said.

But that, too, is far from certain. “We have to assume that the virus will continue to have the capacity to spread, and it’s a false hope to say yes, it will just disappear in the summertime like influenza,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization’s emergencies chief.

Flu viruses also mutate quickly, requiring new vaccines to be made each year. If the coronavirus follows suit, Frieden said, “It could become a virus that circulates around the world for many years to come.”

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ladystylestores · 4 years ago

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Global prevention trial of hydroxychloroquine to resume: Live | News

More than 10.2 million people around the world have been diagnosed with the coronavirus, more than 5.2 million have recovered, and more than 504,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Here are the latest updates.

Tuesday, June 30

10:25 GMT – UN calls for $10bn aid for Syrians beset by war and COVID-19

The United Nations has pushed governments at a virtual conference for nearly $10bn in aid for Syria, where nine years of war has displaced millions in a humanitarian crisis exacerbated by soaring food prices and the coronavirus crisis.

The now annual fund-raising round for Syria brought together 60 governments and non-official agencies via video in an event hosted by the European Union.

“Syrian men, women and children have experienced injury, displacement, destruction, terror … on a massive scale,” said UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen.

“The danger of COVID-19 remains acute.”

10:00 GMT – Airbus slows services push amid coronavirus crisis

Airbus has postponed its target of building a $10bn services business amid the coronavirus crisis, but is sticking with a strategy of supporting airline operations, a senior executive said as the company heads for a broader shake-up.

Airbus has said it wants to boost services revenues to $10bn by 2030 compared with over $4bn in 2019, mirroring a push by rival Boeing.

But the coronavirus travel crisis has hit demand for services such as spare parts and maintenance data-crunching.

09:45 GMT – Africa free-trade vision clouded by virus and pace of talks

A historic deal to smash down tariff barriers within Africa is being braked by the coronavirus pandemic and a thicket of negotiating problems.

The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) was formally launched just over a year ago in a blaze of optimism.

The accord aims to phase out all tariffs on commerce on the continent, a goal that backers say could give trade a mega-jolt as only 15 percent of trade by African nations is with continental neighbours.

It was supposed to take operational effect on Wednesday, July 1, but the timeline has slipped, under the complications caused by the COVID-19 outbreak but also the slow pace of negotiations themselves.

09:15 GMT – United States not on EU’s ‘safe’ travel list, diplomats say

The United States is not on a “safe list” of destinations for non-essential travel due to be unveiled by European Union governments later on Tuesday, three diplomats have said.

The 27-member bloc is expected to give outline approval to leisure or business travel from Wednesday to 14 countries beyond its borders when they vote on the list by midday Brussels time (10:00 GMT), the diplomats said.

The countries are Algeria, Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay, they said.

Russia and Brazil, along with the United States, are among countries that do not make the initial “safe list”.

09:00 GMT – Spain GDP shrinks 5.2 percent in first three months of the year

Spanish official statistics show that the country’s gross domestic product contracted 5.2 percent during the first three months of the year compared to the previous quarter, the biggest drop in at least half a century.

The National Institute of Statistics, or INE, said that the economic freeze imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus impacted the economy like never before since quarterly records began to be kept in 1970.

Exclusive: Inside hospital battling coronavirus in Spain (3:02)

08:45 GMT – India’s daily coronavirus cases at about 20,000 as some cities extend lockdowns

Several Indian cities have prepared to extend their lockdowns to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, as daily cases in the country remained close to 20,000.

India reported 18,522 new cases over the previous 24 hours, according to federal health data released on Tuesday, down slightly from Sunday’s record of 19,906.

With more than 550,000 total infections, India lags only the United States, Brazil and Russia in total cases.

India coronavirus infections: Anxiety over rising number of cases (2:26)

08:30 GMT – COVID-19 increases child marriage and FGM risk for millions: UN

The coronavirus pandemic is reversing progress on ending child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM), jeopardising the futures of millions of girls, a senior UN official has said.

“The pandemic both makes our job harder and more urgent as so many more girls are now at risk,” Natalia Kanem, head of the United Nations’ sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA said.

An additional 13 million girls could be forced into child marriage, and two million more could undergo FGM in the next decade, beyond what would have been expected, as COVID-19 disrupts global efforts to end both practices, UNFPA said.