Category Archives: Economic Crisis

U.S. sets one-day record with more than 60,500 COVID cases; Americans divided

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa/u-s-sets-one-day-record-with-more-than-60500-covid-cases-americans-divided-idUSKBN24A28B?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202020-07-10%20Healthcare%20Dive%20%5Bissue:28416%5D&utm_term=Healthcare%20Dive

Texas, Florida and Arizona see increase in COVID-19 deaths | Daily ...

More than 60,500 new COVID-19 infections were reported across the United States on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, setting a one-day record as weary Americans were told to take new precautions and the pandemic becomes increasingly politicized.

The total represents a slight rise from Wednesday, when there were 60,000 new cases, and marks the largest one-day increase by any country since the pandemic emerged in China last year.

As infections rose in 41 of the 50 states over the last two weeks, Americans have become increasingly divided on issues such as the reopening of schools and businesses. Orders by governors and local leaders mandating face masks have become particularly divisive.

“It’s just disheartening because the selfishness of (not wearing a mask) versus the selflessness of my staff and the people in this hospital who are putting themselves at risk, and I got COVID from this,” said Dr. Andrew Pastewski, ICU medical director at Jackson South Medical Center in Miami.

“You know, we’re putting ourselves at risk and other people aren’t willing to do anything and in fact go the other way and be aggressive to promote the disease. It’s really, it’s really hard,” he said.

Stephanie Porta, 41, a lifelong Orlando, Florida, resident, said only about half the shoppers at her grocery store wore masks, though that was more than she saw two weeks ago.

“They’re trying to make everything seem normal, when it’s not. People are dying, people are getting sick. It’s insane,” she said.

Florida on Thursday announced nearly 9,000 new cases and 120 new coronavirus deaths, a record daily increase in lives lost. Governor Ron DeSantis called the rising cases a “blip” and urged residents not to be afraid.

“I know we’ve had a lot of different blips,” DeSantis said. “We’re now at a higher blip than where we were in May and the beginning of June.”

Florida is one of the few states that does not disclose the number of hospitalized COVID patients. But more than four dozen Florida hospitals reported their intensive care units reached full capacity earlier this week.

In Texas a group of bar owners sued Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, saying his June 26 order closing them down violates the state constitution, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday that keeping schools closed would be a greater risk to children’s health than reopening them.

California and Texas, the two most populous states, announced record increases in COVID deaths on Wednesday.

California has seen cases and hospitalizations surge, even though it imposed one of the strictest lockdowns. After several lawmakers and staffers at the state Capitol in Sacramento were infected, lawmakers said the legislature would not return from summer break until July 27.

Riverside University Health System, east of Los Angeles, expanded its 44-bed intensive care unit after it filled up with patients.

“It’s been very consistent every day in the last couple of weeks. Every day has been like a full moon,” Riverside emergency room physician Stephanie Loe said, referring to doctors’ beliefs that a full moon brings more patients to the emergency room.

Governors in California, Florida and Texas have either ruled out forced business closures and quarantines or called them a last resort. But Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti warned he would impose a new stay-at-home order in two weeks if the latest surge did not ease.

The rise in infections also weighed on the stock market Thursday on fears of new lockdowns, which would take a toll on the economic recovery. The Dow .DJI and the S&P 500 .SPX ended down about 1%.

 

 

 

 

Trump sidelines public health advisers in growing rift over coronavirus response

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Coronavirus, Data Integrity, Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS), Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Evidence-Based Care, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, False Hope, False Narrative, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Integrity, Intimidation, Leadership Culture, Leadership Decentralized, Mislead, Misleading, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Physician, Public Health, Public Safety, Retaliation, Scientists, Transparency, Trust, Truth, Womens Health • Leave a comment

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The Health 202: Health officials promise to ramp up pandemic ...

The June 28 email to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was ominous: A senior adviser to a top Health and Human Services Department official accused the CDC of “undermining the President” by putting out a report about the potential risks of the coronavirus to pregnant women.

The adviser, Paul Alexander, criticized the agency’s methods, and said its warning to pregnant women “reads in a way to frighten women . . . as if the President and his administration can’t fix this and it is getting worse.”

As the country enters a frightening phase of the pandemic with new daily cases surpassing 62,000 on Wednesday, the CDC, the nation’s top public health agency, is coming under intense pressure from President Trump and his allies, who are downplaying the dangers in a bid to revive the economy ahead of the Nov. 3 election. In a White House guided by the president’s instincts, rather than by evidence-based policy, the CDC finds itself forced constantly to backtrack or sidelined from pivotal decisions.

The latest clash between the White House and its top public health advisers erupted Wednesday, when the president slammed the agency’s recommendation that schools planning to reopen should keep students’ desks six feet apart, among other steps to reduce infection risks. In a tweet, Trump — who has demanded schools at all levels hold in-person classes this fall — called the advice “very tough & expensive.”

“While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!” Trump tweeted Wednesday. Within hours, Vice President Pence had asserted the agency would release new guidance next week.

“The president said today we just don’t want the guidance to be too tough,” Pence told reporters. “And that’s the reason next week the CDC is going to be issuing a new set of tools.”

Analysts say the deepening divide is undermining the authority of one of the world’s premier public health agencies, which previously led fights against malaria, smallpox and HIV/AIDS. Amid the worst public health crisis in a century, the CDC has in recent months altered or rescinded recommendations on topics including wearing masks and safely reopening restaurants and houses of worship as a result of conflicts with top administration officials.

“At a time when our country needs an orchestrated, all-hands-on deck response, there is simply no hand on the tiller,” said Beth Cameron, former senior director for global health security and biodefense on the White House National Security Council.

In the absence of strong federal leadership, state and local officials have been left to figure things out for themselves, leading to conflicting messaging and chaotic responses. Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the World Health Organization further undermined efforts to influence global strategies against the coronavirus, including how vaccines will be distributed.

The CDC, meanwhile, is increasingly isolated — a function both of its growing differences with the White House and of its own significant missteps earlier in the outbreak.

Those stumbles include the botched rollout of test kits likely contaminated at a CDC lab in late January, which led to critical delays in states’ ability to know where the virus was circulating. And the CDC’s initial decision to test only a narrow set of people gave the virus a head start spreading undetected across the country.

During a May lunch with Senate Republicans, Trump told the group the CDC “blew it” on the coronavirus test and that he’d installed a team of “geniuses” led by his son-in-law Jared Kushner to handle much of the response,” according to two people familiar with the lunch who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“There is a view the CDC is staffed with deep state Democrats that are trying to tweak the administration,” said one adviser who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal private conversations.

White House officials, who see the president’s reelection prospects tied to economic recovery, also say they’ve been deeply frustrated by what they view as career staffers at the agency determined “to keep things closed,” according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal deliberations.

Trump believes the CDC is “ineffective” and a “waste of time,” but doesn’t blame CDC Director Robert Redfield and generally likes him, said another official speaking on the condition of anonymity. “He just thinks he is a poor communicator,” the official added.

Joe Grogan, former head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said Redfield had fans inside the White House who work on “addiction issues, on life issues, on HIV issues,” among other topics.

But he said Redfield has few political appointees to help him run a complex agency. “How do you run a place like that with … [few] appointees?” Grogan asked.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar called the director “a key scientific guide for the President and his administration, a trusted source for the American people, and a closely engaged partner of state and local governments.”

But Redfield is not a voice in coronavirus task force meetings, and “is never really in the Oval [Office] with the president,” said another senior administration official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal dynamics.

Even Redfield’s supporters say he has failed to be an effective advocate for the agency.

“Bob Redfield’s commitment to public health is completely strong,” said William Schaffner, a veteran infectious-disease specialist at Vanderbilt University. But he said Redfield lacks the standing, deftness, and communication capacity to persuade skeptical audiences, including those in the White House, that protecting public health and fostering economic recovery are not opposing goals.

Redfield, for his part, downplayed Trump’s criticism of the CDC school reopeniing guidelines after a coronavirus task force briefing Wednesday, saying the agency and the president were “totally aligned.”

“We’re both trying to open the schools,” he said.

White House spokesman Judd Deere also disputed big differences, saying in a statement the White House and the CDC “have been working together in partnership since the very beginning of this pandemic to carry out the President’s highest priority: the health and safety of the American public.

“The CDC is the nation’s trusted health protection agency and its infectious disease and public health experts have helped deliver critical solutions to save lives. We encourage all Americans to continue to follow the CDC’s guidelines and use best-practices they have learned, such as social distancing, face coverings, and good hygiene, to maintain public health and continue our Transition to Greatness.”

But some health experts were indignant the agency had been ordered to rewrite guidance to reopen schools to “make it easier and cost less” — a demand that effectively “turns science on its head,” said Tom Inglesby, director of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security.

“CDC should be giving their best judgments on how to lower risks to make schools safer,” he said. “That’s their job. If they aren’t allowed to do that, the public will lose confidence in the guidance.”

Why are they ‘not shouting “fire”?’

The diminished role of the 74-year-old agency has bewildered infectious-disease experts, as well as members of the public seeking guidance.

After six states set one-day case records on July 3, Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean at Emory University’s School of Medicine, tweeted at Tom Frieden, a former CDC director, “Tom, where is @CDCgov ? Why are they not out there shouting ‘fire’?”

Frieden shot back: “They are still there, still doing great work, just not being allowed to talk about it, not being allowed to guide policy, not being allowed to develop, standardize, and post information that would give, by state and county, the status of the epidemic and of our control measures.”

Jeffrey Duchin, the health officer at Seattle and King County health department, added: “Agree. Muzzled, neutered and exiled.”

The agency has been largely invisible. After more than three months of silence, it resumed briefings for the public last month. There have been two.

By comparison, when the H1N1 swine flu pandemic hit the United States in the spring of 2009, the CDC held briefings almost every day for six consecutive weeks.

During this outbreak, the agency’s regular briefings ended abruptly after White House officials were angered when a top CDC leader warned that Americans could face “significant disruption” to their lives as a result of the virus’s spread to the United States.

CDC officials say they are still getting their message out, pointing to more than 2,000 documents providing pandemic-related information about reopening and staying safe for dozens of groups and venues, including funeral home directors, amusement parks, and pet owners. Each Friday, the CDC also posts CovidView, a weekly report of selected data and trends on testing, hospitalizations, and reported deaths.

But the information is posted without additional explanation or analysis.

“I want to hear a real person give me three minutes based on these findings,” said del Rio, also a global health and infectious-disease professor at Emory. “I want to see them in the news, being interviewed, giving us the data.”

Scientists at the CDC and former colleagues speak of deep frustration and low morale over its inability to fully share and explain scientific and medical information.

Researchers are fearful for their jobs and want to protect the integrity of the data they release. “If you want to say something, you’re thinking, ‘what’s the White House going to say and how are they going to use it,’ ” said one longtime scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

The lack of briefings has fostered misunderstandings at times. In early April, for instance, when the agency reversed its position and recommended the use of cloth face coverings, CDC scientists gave no public briefings explaining why they made the change.

“It’s not rocket science,” said Nancy Cox, a virologist and former CDC official who led the influenza program for 22 years and was part of the agency’s response during the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic. “But the reasoning behind those changes should be explained as clearly as possible and then you can get everyone on board.”

In the CDC’s absence, academic medical centers, public health and professional disease groups have filled the void by holding coronavirus briefings and providing analysis of key issues, data and research studies. Frieden, the president of Resolve to Save Lives, a New York nonprofit, has also been posting long Twitter threads analyzing the weekly CDC data released on Fridays.

Speaking ‘with an unfettered voice’

Alarmed at the agency’s diminished role, nearly 350 public health organizations sent a letter Tuesday to Azar urging him to advocate for the CDC. The agency must be allowed to speak based on the best available science “and with an unfettered voice,” said John Auerbach, president and chief executive of Trust for America’s Health, a public health nonprofit that led the effort.

House Democrats echoed those concerns in a separate letter to Azar last month. Reps. Diana DeGette of Colorado and Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said they were troubled by reports that administration officials are considering narrowing the CDC’s mission and embedding more political appointees at the Atlanta-based agency.

Traditionally the CDC has one political appointee, the director. Now it has Redfield and five other political appointees, including two advisers who were added in recent weeks.

“Now more than ever, the American people need a robust and effective CDC that is not repeatedly undermined by others in the administration, including the President and the Vice President,” the letter said.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows views the agency as a problem and has criticized the CDC repeatedly to other administration officials, said a senior administration official.

White House and HHS officials are discussing what the CDC’s “core mission needs to be,” said one adviser familiar with the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment on policy deliberations. The discussions were first reported by Politico.

Over the years, the agency that was founded to fight malaria now works on virtually every aspect of public health. “It has tried to be everything to everyone,” the adviser said, suggesting the agency might need to refocus more narrowly.

On the global front, administration officials are also weighing a $2.5 billion initiative called the President’s Response to Outbreaks that would move a significant portion of national and international pandemic responses to the State Department, according to a draft obtained by The Post. Details were first reported by Devex.

“There is no clear leadership role for CDC” in this plan, said Jennifer Kates, a senior vice president for global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “In global health, you need an engaged CDC.”

Taken together, the administration efforts seem “designed to position CDC to the margins,” said one federal health official who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

‘Boogeyman where there aren’t any’

The report that drew the email attack, accusing the agency of undermining the president, had provided detailed but incomplete information about pregnancy risks related to the coronavirus. It found pregnant women with covid-19 were more likely to be hospitalized, admitted to an intensive care unit, and to need ventilator support than infected women who are not pregnant.

The sender, Alexander, a specialist in health research methods, is a senior adviser to Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump ally who was recently appointed assistant HHS secretary for public affairs , which includes the CDC.

The email was directed to Redfield and Caputo.

Even amid the intense criticism of the agency, the email “crosses the line,” said the official, who was aware of the content.

Like all of the CDC’s reports, the analysis itself noted several limitations. One key one that researchers acknowledged was that they did not have data to indicate whether the pregnant women were hospitalized because of labor and delivery, or because they had covid-19.

Administration officials are “seeing political boogeymen where there aren’t any,” the federal health official said, adding that such narratives could further hamper the U.S. response.

“It could feed the fire to limit the flow of scientific data and communication to the general population,” the official said. “People are getting sick and dying. Can we just focus on the science?”

Alexander said in his email that the lack of data about why women were hospitalized was a “key issue.”

“The CDC is undermining the President by what they put out, this is my opinion and sense, and I am reading it and can see the subtle and direct hits,” he wrote.

Alexander, also a part-time assistant professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, did not respond to emails and telephone calls seeking comment.

Caputo said in an interview that he agreed with Alexander. The CDC represents itself as the gold standard for public health agencies, he said, “but in the case of pregnancy analysis, it wasn’t even bronze.”

He called CDC’s track record “spotty” and “questionable,” pointing to Zika diagnostic testing errors in 2016.

“In many cases over the years, regardless of administration, the CDC has undermined presidents and themselves,” Caputo said, referring to leaked drafts of CDC guidances. “Who says the CDC is the sole font of wisdom when it comes to detecting and fighting deadly pathogens?”

Experts say that even with some big unanswered questions, the pregnancy findings represent the best available evidence and are important. The lack of data reflects decades of long-neglected national surveillance on pregnancy.

“I don’t think this is frightening women,” said Denise Jamieson, who heads the obstetrics and gynecology department at Emory University and Emory Healthcare. True, the report “suffers from completeness of data,” she said. But now doctors can be more confident that pregnant women are more likely to have severe disease and use “this really important information” to counsel patients, she said.

 

 

Another 1.3 million people applied for new jobless benefits last week as the pandemic’s toll on the economy continued

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Employee Furlough, Employee Hiring Freeze, Employee Layoffs, Employee Pay Cuts, Job, Job Market, Job Search, Job Security, Market Outlook, Pandemic, Paycheck Protection Program, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance • Leave a comment

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/09/another-13-million-people-applied-new-jobless-benefits-last-week-pandemics-toll-economy-continued/?fbclid=IwAR0cDN8SNbJF-SoMktqUOPJyJQ5ZTwvqENXxZzkbXhcygOOrgVxVDotPlHI

Another 1.3 million people applied for new jobless benefits last ...

Another 1.3 million people filed for unemployment for the first time last week, a slight decrease from the week before, as novel coronavirus cases and closures surged around the country, according to data released Thursday by the Department of Labor.

The numbers of new unemployment filings have remained above a million each week since the pandemic began mid-March. That number has averaged about 1.4 million the past four weeks.

In addition, states reported that another 1 million claims were made under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which grants jobless benefits for gig workers, self-employed workers and contractors, the agency reported.

When combined, the two numbers for initial unemployment claims have ticked up the past three weeks, from 2.24 million in mid-June to 2.44 million last week.

The numbers for the first few days of July come as rising cases of coronavirus infections have hit states and counties nationwide, touching off a new round of closures and restrictions and sending some workers back to the unemployment insurance queue for the second time in just a few short months.

“The bad news is that initial claims are still historically very high and they suggest that damage is continuing to accumulate in the economy,” Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork, said in an interview.

The unemployment rate, which is tabulated separately from the weekly jobless claims, has trended downward the past two months, to 11.1 percent last month, as many laid off or furloughed workers in industries like food service and retail were called back to work. Yet a rising number of workers have reported permanent layoffs.

And the jobless statistics don’t capture the damage from the new round of cases yet.

“All these factors look more like an economy that is riding into a recession than out of one,” Ozimek said. “At this stage in the game, when we’re this far from initial shock, it becomes less likely that new layoffs are the types of jobs that snap back.”

The numbers of people continuously receiving benefits at the end of June has also trended gradually downward. The last week of June saw 18.1 million people on unemployment insurance, down from 19.3 million people the week before that, as re-hirings have slightly outpaced new layoffs week by week.

But as hopes fade for a quick rebound from the pandemic — the United States reported more than 60,000 new cases on Wednesday, a new high — signs of longer term economic damage are emerging.

Levi Strauss & Co. said this week that it planned to cut about 15 percent of its nonretail and nonmanufacturing positions, or about 700 jobs this year. United Airlines warned it may need to furlough nearly 40 percent of its workforce this year, about 36,000 employees. Industrial and aerospace manufacturer the Barnes Group said it would layoff 400 workers; BAE Systems, a defense and aerospace company, said it planned to layoff 300 employees.

There are many workers like Samantha Hartman, 29, whose temporary layoff — she was furloughed in March from Rosen Hotels & Resorts, the hospitality company she works for in Orlando — became permanent this week.

Hartman said her supervisor called her this week to tell her that the company had tried to come up with a way to keep employees but found their hands tied with almost no business coming in.

“Everything is up in the air,” Hartman said. “I fully expect not to find another job in this industry.”

The company, which received a Paycheck Protection Program small business loan of more than $6 million according to the Orlando Sentinel, announced Wednesday that it would layoff a “substantial” amount of its workforce by July 31.

Hartman, who has a heart condition, said the company is letting her keep her health care through August. She moved to Orlando two years ago for the job. Now, she says she’ll probably move back with her family in California when her lease is up next year.

She said Florida’s challenges — including large delays in unemployment insurance processing, mishandling of the coronavirus response, a governor she doesn’t trust — make her less likely to stay in Florida. “If I’m going to struggle financially, I’d rather do that back home where I have a support system,” Hartman said.

Plunging consumer demand amid the virus’s surge and ensuing shutdowns have shuttered businesses across the country. Bed Bath & Beyond announced it would close 200 stores; Brooks Brothers, which filed for bankruptcy protection this week, said it would close 51 stores.

And there’s a grim waiting game for what are expected to be widespread layoffs in state and municipal governments, as budgets are drastically pared to meet declining tax revenue.

Initial weekly jobless claims remain well above the record before the pandemic, of 695,000 in 1982. They have dropped every week since the peak of 6.9 million, from a week in late March, but have plateaued for more than a month.

 

 

 

 

Merkel says pandemic reveals limits of ‘fact-denying populism’

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Accountability, Compromise, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Democracy, Democratic Institutions, Disinformation, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Economy Reopening, Fact-Denying Populism, False, False Hope, False Narrative, Governance, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership, Leadership Trust, Lies, Misinformation, Misleading, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Good, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Readiness, Responsibility, Social Distancing, Transparency, Trust, Truth • Leave a comment

Merkel says pandemic reveals limits of ‘fact-denying populism’

Covid-19 has exposed the limits of 'fact-denying populism', Merkel ...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told European Union (EU) countries Wednesday that the coronavirus pandemic is showing the limits of “fact-denying populism” as she urged the bloc to reach an agreement on an economic recovery package.

Merkel said that the EU “must show that a return to nationalism means not more, but less control,” according to France 24.

Without naming any specific nations, Merkel said: “We are seeing at the moment that the pandemic can’t be fought with lies and disinformation, and neither can it be with hatred and agitation.”

“Fact-denying populism is being shown its limits,” she added. “In a democracy, facts and transparency are needed. That distinguishes Europe, and Germany will stand up for it during its presidency.”

The pandemic has killed more than 100,000 people in the 27 EU nations and sparked what is expected to be the largest recession the continent has experienced in decades.

On Tuesday the EU released a report predicting the bloc’s economy will contract more than initially expected due to coronavirus-related lockdowns.

Merkel on Wednesday joined EU Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni in urging the commission to quickly reach an agreement on the 750 billion-euro stimulus package proposed earlier this year.

“The depth of the economic decline demands that we hurry,” Merkel told lawmakers, according to The Associated Press. “We must waste no time — only the weakest would suffer from that. I very much hope that we can reach an agreement this summer. That will require a lot of readiness to compromise from all sides — and from you too.”

 

 

 

 

Texas and Arizona ER doctors say they are losing hope as hospitals reach capacity

Posted on by • Posted in Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Emergency Care, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Intensive Care (ICU), Lost Hope, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Physician, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

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Texas and Arizona ER doctors say they are losing hope as hospitals ...

As concerns over the capacity of hospitals resurface amid surging Covid-19 cases, two emergency room doctors say they worry about where the pandemic could take them next.

Dr. Mina Tran, an emergency room doctor in Texas, said 70 to 80% of her patients have been admitted with upper respiratory or coronavirus complaints.
In Arizona, which saw its lowest-ever number of available ICU beds Tuesday, Dr. Murtaza Akhter told Lemon so many patients are coming in that he is already having to make tough decisions over resources.
“I’m trying not to be an alarmist. I’m an emergency physician — we’re prepped for this. Dr. Tran and I both trained very hard for this. But we can’t just build beds overnight. We can’t just hire staff overnight. And like I said, our numbers are only increasing,” he said. “It’s only going to get worse and that’s the scary part.”
With a rise in hospitalization rates across the US, doctors like Akhter are reporting waiting lists for ICU beds and having to decide who will be admitted for treatment and who will not.
Surges in hospitalization and infection rates have followed larger crowds gathering in newly reopened public spaces. Every state has started their plan to reopen, and 35 are currently seeing more new cases reported compared to last week.
Tran applauded Texas Gov. Greg Abbott closing down bars once again but said she does think the state was too quick to open back up.
While many states have paused or rolled back reopening in light of a resurgence of cases, Akhter said seeing individuals continue disregard safe practices as his emergency room treats coronavirus patients makes him feel like he is “losing hope.”
“I’m going through shifts making some very tough decisions and then I’m driving home and seeing people who are clearly not distancing, having their Fourth of July celebrations, being in big congregate settings, and it feels like what I’m doing is futile,” Akhter said. “I don’t know what more people need to hear.”
And California and Florida are feeling the strain as well.
In Florida, where cases have surged, ICUs at 56 hospitals have reached capacity. And California’s hospitalizations were at an all-time high on Tuesday with nearly 6,000 coronavirus patients.

 

 

 

IHME Model Projects 208,255 U.S. Deaths By November, But Estimate Falls Sharply If Mask Use Increases

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Partisanship, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Scientists, Social Distancing, Vulnerable Populations • Leave a comment

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/07/07/imhe-model-projects-208255-us-deaths-by-november-but-estimate-falls-sharply-if-mask-use-increases/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailydozen&cdlcid=5d2c97df953109375e4d8b68#453db3d56f2e

IHME Model Projects 208,255 U.S. Deaths By November, But Estimate ...

TOPLINE

The University of Washington’s influential Covid-19 model, extended out to November 1 for the first time, estimates that 208,255 Americans will die from the virus by then, though, the death toll could be reduced by nearly 22% if mask use were to become widespread, researchers said.

KEY FACTS

The university’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) forecasts 162,808 deaths by November if at least 95% of people were to wear face coverings in public.

A Gallup poll released Monday found that 86% of adults wore masks in the past week.

Masks have become a political issue, with only 66% of Republicans reporting mask use in the poll, while President Trump continues to refuse to wear one in public and his campaign has declared them optional at recent public campaign events and rallies.

“Mask mandates delay the need for re-imposing closures of businesses and have huge economic benefits,” said IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray.

The model anticipates a surge in deaths in September and October, with the IHME noting Tuesday that, “Current data show a strong statistical relationship between Covid-19 transmission and pneumonia seasonality, which is included as a covariate in the model.”

While many of the people infected during the current surge in cases worldwide have been on the younger side, and therefore at lower risk of death, the university warns its current projection could increase if the virus is spread to at-risk populations.

The U.S. is currently experiencing a surge in cases following the easing of social distancing policies, particularly in Southern and Western states, a situation that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease official, characterized as “really not good” during an interview Monday.

CHIEF CRITIC

President Trump, who pushed back against Fauci’s comments on Tuesday. “Well, I think we are in a good place. I disagree with him,”Trump said, according to CNN. “Dr. Fauci said don’t wear masks and now he says wear them. And he said numerous things. Don’t close off China. Don’t ban China. I did it anyway. I didn’t listen to my experts and I banned China. We would have been in much worse shape.”

BIG NUMBER

57,718. That’s the new daily record for confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the U.S., reached on July 2, according to the CDC. The toll has been broken several times since June, the previous high coming in early April with 43,438. The U.S. leads the world in cases of the coronavirus with 2,981,602, as well as reported deaths with 131,248.

TANGENT

Both Fauci and Murry at the IHME agree that the U.S. is still deep into its first wave, as exemplified by Texas, which broke its records for cases, hospitalizations and deaths on Tuesday. Because of the situation, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner urged Texas’ GOP on Monday to cancel its in-person convention set for next week.

 

 

 

 

U.S. Tops Three Million Known Infections as Coronavirus Surges

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS), Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Intensive Care (ICU), Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2020-07-07/us-coronavirus-cases-hit-3-million-stoking-fears-of-overwhelmed-hospitals

U.S. tops three million known infections as coronavirus surges ...

 The U.S. coronavirus outbreak crossed a grim new milestone of over 3 million confirmed cases on Tuesday as more states reported record numbers of new infections, and Florida faced an impending shortage of intensive care unit hospital beds.

Authorities have reported alarming upswings of daily caseloads in roughly two dozen states over the past two weeks, a sign that efforts to control transmission of the novel coronavirus have failed in large swaths of the country.

California, Hawaii, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas on Tuesday shattered their previous daily record highs for new cases. About 24 states have also reported disturbingly high infection rates as a percentage of diagnostic tests conducted over the past week.

In Texas alone, the number of hospitalized patients more than doubled in just two weeks.

The trend has driven many more Americans to seek out COVID-19 screenings. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday it was adding short-term “surge” testing sites in three metropolitan areas in Florida, Louisiana and Texas.

In Houston, a line of more than 200 cars snaked around the United Memorial Medical Center as people waited for hours in sweltering heat to get tested. Some had arrived the night before to secure a place in line at the drive-through site.

“I got tested because my younger brother got positive,” said Fred Robles, 32, who spent the night in his car. “There’s so many people that need to get tested, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Dean Davis, 32, who lost his job due to the pandemic, said he arrived at the testing site at 3 a.m. on Tuesday after he waited for hours on Monday but failed to make the cutoff.

“I was like, let me get here at three, maybe nobody will be here,” Davis said. “I got here, there was a line already.”

In Florida, more than four dozen hospitals across 25 of 67 counties reported their intensive care units had reached full capacity, according to the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration. Only 17% of the total 6,010 adult ICU beds statewide were available on Tuesday, down from 20% three days earlier.

Additional hospitalizations could strain healthcare systems in many areas, leading to an uptick in deaths from the respiratory illness that has killed more than 131,000 Americans to date.

A widely cited mortality model from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) projected on Tuesday that U.S. deaths would reach 208,000 by Nov. 1, with the outbreak expected to gain new momentum heading into the fall.

A hoped-for summertime decline in transmission of the virus never materialized as previously predicted, the IHME said.

“The U.S. didn’t experience a true end of the first wave of the pandemic,” IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray said in a statement. “This will not spare us from a second surge in the fall, which will hit particularly hard in states currently seeing high levels of infections.”

‘PRESSURE ON GOVERNORS’

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has pushed for restarting the U.S. economy and urged Americans to return to their normal routines, said on Tuesday he would lean on state governors to open schools in the fall.

Speaking at the White House, Trump said some people wanted to keep schools closed for political reasons. “No way, so we’re very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools.”

New COVID-19 infections are rising in 42 states, based on a Reuters analysis of the past two weeks. By Tuesday afternoon, the number of confirmed U.S. cases had surpassed 3 million, affecting nearly one of every 100 Americans and a population roughly equal to Nevada’s.

In Arizona, another hot spot, the rate of coronavirus tests coming back positive rose to 26% for the week ended July 5, leading two dozen states with positivity rates exceeding 5%. The World Heath Organization considers a rate over 5% to be troubling.

The surge has forced authorities to backpedal on moves to reopen businesses, such as restaurants and bars, after mandatory lockdowns in March and April reduced economic activity to a virtual standstill and put millions of Americans out of work.

The Texas state fair, which had been scheduled to open on Sept. 25, has been canceled for the first time since World War Two, organizers announced on Tuesday.

In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine said the state was ordering people in seven counties to wear face coverings in public starting on Wednesday evening.

 

 

 

Administration Formally withdraws US from WHO

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Accountability, Blame, Coronavirus, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Partisanship, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Responsibility, Social Distancing, World Health Organization (WHO) • Leave a comment

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/506214-trump-administration-formally-withdraws-us-from-WHO-

Trump administration informs Congress the US is withdrawing from WHO

The White House has officially withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO), a senior administration official confirmed Tuesday, breaking ties with a global public health body in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.

The U.S. withdrawal is effective as of Monday and has been submitted to the United Nations secretary-general, the official said.

Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, tweeted that the administration informed Congress of the withdrawal.

“To call Trump’s response to COVID chaotic & incoherent doesn’t do it justice. This won’t protect American lives or interests — it leaves Americans sick & America alone,” the senator tweeted.

The formal notification of withdrawal concludes months of threats from the Trump administration to pull the United States out of the WHO, which is affiliated with the United Nations. President Trump has repeatedly assailed the organization for alleged bias toward China and its slow response to the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.

But public health experts and Democrats have raised alarms that the decision may be short-sighted and could undercut the global response to the pandemic, which has infected 11.6 million people worldwide. The U.S. has the highest number of reported cases in the world at nearly 3 million.

They have also argued that some of the WHO’s initial missteps can be attributed to China’s lack of transparency in the early stages of the outbreak.

The president first froze funding for the WHO in April while his administration conducted a review of its relationship with the entity. Weeks later, he wrote to the WHO demanding reforms but did not specify what those reforms would be.

Trump announced at the end of May the U.S. was “terminating” ties with the WHO.

The move was cheered by conservatives who had accused the WHO of harboring pro-China bias and argued the global body was not a productive use of funds.

Critics of the WHO have pointed to its initial assertion that the coronavirus could not be spread via human-to-human transmission, and Trump has harped on the organization’s opposition to travel bans after he imposed one on China.

Trump and his allies have also lashed out at the WHO for failing to stop early warning signs of the outbreak.

China first alerted the WHO to the presence of a cluster of atypical pneumonia in the city of Wuhan on Dec. 31 after the WHO picked up reports through its epidemic intelligence system. But there is evidence to indicate the virus was circulating in Wuhan as early as mid-November.

The United States contributes upwards of $400 million annually to the WHO — making it the group’s largest contributor — and public health experts have warned that a suspension of funds would severely damage the organization.

 

 

 

 

Daily New Confirmed Covid-19 Cases per Million People

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

New cases per capita have risen sharply in the US, compared to Europe, Canada, and Japan.

 

Fauci warns U.S. is “knee-deep” in coronavirus first wave

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Research, Clinical Testing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Epidemic, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Mortality, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing, Vaccine • Leave a comment

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fauci-warns-us-knee-deep-coronavirus-first-wave/

 

The United States is still “knee-deep” in its first wave of coronavirus infections and must act immediately to tackle the recent surge, the country’s top infectious diseases expert said Monday.

Anthony Fauci said the number of cases had never reached a satisfactory baseline before the current resurgence, which officials have warned risks overwhelming hospitals in the South and West.

“It’s a serious situation that we have to address immediately,” Fauci said in a web interview with National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins.

But Fauci added he didn’t strictly consider the ongoing rise in cases a “wave.”

“It was a surge or a resurgence of infections superimposed upon a baseline,” he said.

“If you look at the graphs from Europe, the European Union as an entity, it went up and then came down to the baseline. Now they’re having little blips, as you might expect, as they try to reopen. We went up, never came down to baseline, and now we’re surging back up.”

The death toll from the virus in the U.S. hit 130,000 Monday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, and the number of infections is nearing three million.

A worrisome number of new cases are being reported amid a resurgence that’s forced several states to suspend phased economic reopenings.

Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is a leading member of President Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force and has become a trusted face in the administration’s battle against the epidemic.

The U.S. is the world’s hardest-hit nation from the virus and has been struggling to come to grips with a new normal of social distancing and mask-wearing.

Officials have warned that some of the country’s hospitals are in danger of being overwhelmed by the influx of COVID-19 patients.

Hospital beds are full in parts of Texas, while calls for fresh stay-at-home orders are growing.

Some mayors have said their cities reopened too early as Mr. Trump tries to downplay the severity of the crisis, prioritizing economic reopening instead.