
Cartoon – Covid Leadership Hindsight




Over 10,000 Floridians have now died of coronavirus, marking a grim milestone that comes weeks after the state led the record U.S. coronavirus case surge earlier this summer.
10,049 Florida residents have died of coronavirus, according to the state, reaching that mark after adding 117 deaths Thursday.
Florida is the fifth state in the U.S. to record over 10,000 deaths, joining New York and New Jersey, where most deaths happened during the spring coronavirus surge, along with California and Texas, where most deaths occurred during the summer.
Florida has been the nation’s recent coronavirus epicenter, but the pandemic’s spread seems to have slowed there over the past few weeks, even as deaths, which lag behind other statistics, have been at record highs in the state.
New cases have recently reached their lowest daily increases in two months, and hospitalizations have trended downward since late July.
The testing positivity rate, seen as one of the first indicators of increased coronavirus spread, dropped below 10% Thursday—the first time the state has been below that threshold since June 21, and less than half the 20.71% positivity rate the state had at its highest point on July 8.
23.8%. Gov. Ron DeSantis said that’s what the positivity rate was Thursday for antibody testing at state-run drive-through sites. That number suggests a massive amount of Floridians, much higher than the record-setting confirmed case counts, were infected with coronavirus this summer.
There are five U.S. states that have over 10,000 deaths. That’s a number that only 14 countries around the world have hit, according to Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. continues to have by far the most coronavirus deaths of any country and could reach 175,000 deaths before the weekend.
The U.S. as a whole is on a downward trend when it comes to coronavirus metrics, which seems to be influenced by large states, like Florida, having a reduction in coronavirus spread.
States like California, Texas and Florida, the nation’s three most populated, were all setting records when the U.S. had its highest confirmed coronavirus spike earlier this summer. They now seem to be pushing the country in the other direction.
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South Korea officials warned Thursday that the country is in a “grave situation” after Covid-19 cases rose by triple digits for a week straight, as one of the countries most hailed for its success in containing the coronavirus sees a new resurgence of the virus linked to a far-right church and anti-government protest.
South Korea added 288 Covid-19 cases Thursday—slightly down from 297 cases Wednesday, the highest number observed in the country since March 8.
“Consider the COVID-19 pandemic now to be in full-swing,” Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deputy director Kwon Jun-wook said, warning that the country could experience similar sustained outbreaks to the U.S. and Europe without aggressive contact tracing.
The new case spikes are largely tied to Sarang Jeil Church, which has been linked to 676 recent cases, and a large anti-government rally held in Seoul Saturday in which many church members participated.
The outbreak is the second time a church has been linked to a large outbreak in the country—5,200 cases in February and March were linked to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus—but officials warn this one has the potential to be worse, and the New York Times notes anti-government sentiment among the church’s members may make efforts to contain the virus more difficult.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in has shut down churches in the country in response to the new outbreak, sparking a broader controversy as conservatives accuse the government of infringing on religious freedoms.
South Korea has been hailed for its effective response to the coronavirus, and was previously able to curb the Shincheonji church outbreak through widespread testing, self-isolation orders and contact tracing.
“We are standing on the cusp of the nationwide outbreak,” Kwon said at a briefing Thursday. “The wider capital region should brace for a massive wave of the outbreak.”
16,346: The total number of Covid-19 cases in South Korea since the start of the pandemic, as reported by Johns Hopkins University.
South Korea is one of many countries to see a worrying resurgence of Covid-19 in recent weeks, as Europe and countries that had successfully contained the virus see new spikes.
Spain and Italy posted new Covid-19 case number highs Wednesday, while France reported Wednesday that it had recorded new Covid-19 cases at the highest rate since May.
Germany reported its highest case count since April on Thursday, with 1,707 new cases.
Outside of Europe, India experienced its highest daily total yet of new Covid-19 cases Thursday—69,672 cases, also the fourth highest daily total reported globally—while Japan reported that more than a third of its 59,213 cases have been recorded since the start of August alone.
New Zealand, one of the countries that had most successfully contained the virus, went back into lockdown last week after seeing Covid-19 spread through community transmission for the first time in 102 days; the outbreak has so far resulted in 80 new cases.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/05/coronavirus-from-mink-to-human-cvd/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=Animals_20200820&rid=C1D3D2601560EDF454552B245D039020

The past few months have taught us that mink are particularly susceptible to the coronavirus. In what’s believed to be the first documented case of animal-to-human transmission, Dutch officials announced in May that a worker at a fur farm in the Netherlands seems to have gotten COVID-19 from a mink. In June, the country decided to shut down its mink fur farming industry—the fourth largest in the world—likely by the end of the year. The virus has since been found at mink farms in Spain and Denmark.
And now, the U.S.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced two mink farms in Utah reported “deaths in numbers they’d never seen before,” a USDA spokesperson told Science, in addition to several staff coming down with COVID-19. Nat Geo’s Dina Fine Maron tells me there’s no information yet on whether the virus spread from mink to humans or vice versa (that’ll require genetic testing, which is currently underway), and the USDA hasn’t shared whether it’s testing for the virus at any of the nation’s other 275 mink farms. (U.S. mink farms produce about three million mink pelts a year.)
Hundreds of thousands of mink have already been culled in Europe (above, in the Netherlands) to help control spread of the virus, but there are no plans yet to cull the animals on U.S. farms. Maron discusses the situation further on this tweet thread.
That said, there’s still no evidence that animals—including mink—play a significant role in the spread of the virus. We do know that humans have occasionally spread the virus to animals, such as their pet dogs and tigers and lions at the zoo, but those cases too are extremely rare. Scientists are still trying to learn in which species the virus can not only take hold but also replicate.
What’s clear at this point? We need a lot more research.

The ACA court case has loomed large as the nation has been ravaged by the novel coronavirus pandemic that has sickened millions, killed thousands and severed millions of people from their employer-sponsored health insurance coverage.
Alternative coverage options introduced or strengthened by the ACA, such as expanded Medicaid coverage or marketplace plans, have served as an important safety net for those who have lost coverage as a result of the pandemic.
Onlookers have long been waiting for the court to set a date for final arguments in the case against the ACA. Wednesday’s updated docket means the country is one step closer to knowing whether the ACA and its popular provisions, such as protections for pre-existing conditions, will remain the law of the land.
Waiting to schedule oral arguments until after the election may have been intentional, legal experts say.
The highly unusual decision by the Trump administration’s DOJ to refuse to defend the law is likely to change with the election result, if former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee and a staunch ACA backer, wins the White House.
Republicans for years have been trying to dismantle President Barack Obama’s landmark health law, including by eliminating the financial penalty for not holding insurance.
The central argument in the case, brought primarily by a group of red states, is whether the entire law is invalid because it no longer contains the so-called individual mandate. The red states have argued that because Congress lowered the penalty to zero that the individual mandate can no longer be considered a tax and therefore renders the entire law unconstitutional.
Lower courts have ruled in favor of the red state plaintiffs, though the appeals court did not weigh in on whether the rest of the law could be severed from the mandate.

Though critical to operations, chief financial officers are finding new roles or retiring at a blistering pace. What that means to firms.
Rewriting corporate budgets seemingly daily. Bargaining with banks over broken loan covenants. Answering constant calls from investors and board directors. And, in extreme cases, figuring out how to make payroll. All while working with no colleagues around. Is it any wonder now that so many chief financial officers have recently said, “It’s time to do something else”?
The number of CFOs—usually the second in command at a corporation—who are leaving their current job or looking for something new has surged over the summer. In just one week in early August, the high-profile CFOs at General Motors, Cisco Systems, and Avis Budget Group announced they were departing. According to one survey, 80 finance chiefs of S&P 500- or Fortune 500-listed firms left their positions through the start of August, compared with 84 at this point last year–a remarkable figure, experts say, because there was a period of about six weeks during the spring when there were almost no CFO changes.
It’s a trend that experts believe will likely continue as the pandemic continues to disrupt the finances of organizations in every industry everywhere. “This crisis will create a demand for radical, creative thinking that has often been lacking from finance leaders,” says Beau Lambert, a Korn Ferry senior client partner in the firm’s Financial Officers practice.
Experts attribute the surge in movement to a variety of reasons. Some CFOs, after helping their companies get through the period where lockdowns crippled revenues, have decided they’ve had enough. “They’re saying, ‘I have an amazing career—I’m taking the chips off the table and going home,’” Lambert says.
The lockdown period was a time when CFOs were working nonstop just to keep their organizations afloat, or if that was impossible, guide them into bankruptcy. Now these top finance leaders have had a chance to self-reflect, something they may have never done before because they’ve always been “knee-deep in the mess,” says Barry Toren, leader of Korn Ferry’s Financial Officers practice. The process has left some energized and looking for a new challenge at a different organization.
That recent career decision hasn’t always been in the CFO’s hands, however. Some company CEOs, recognizing that the financial road ahead is not going to look like it did before the pandemic, are looking for new financial talent they think is better suited to the task. “We see seasoned CFOs stepping down—of their own volition or otherwise—in order to allow a new, perhaps better-equipped, generation of finance leaders to navigate through the uncertain present and future,” says Katie Gleber, an associate in Korn Ferry’s Financial Officers practice.
Experts say the pandemic has accelerated some trends impacting CFOs that were already in place. Organizations were already looking for CFOs who could do more than just sit in the back office and handle the money. Modern-day CFOs need to be as well or more skilled in business partnering as they are in financial engineering, Lambert says. Today’s CFOs also need to have a much higher tolerance for ambiguity and the ability to inspire others.
One of the offshoots of the pandemic pushing millions to work remotely is that it has made it easier for CFOs to explore the job market. In the past, CFOs usually had to travel for a couple of days to their prospective employer to meet the senior leaders of the organization. Now, Toren says, those job-hunting CFOs can talk to CEOs and directors at two organizations in one day without leaving their house.