Category Archives: Public Safety

Iowa tells workers to return to their jobs or lose unemployment benefits, despite warnings that reopening could lead to a 2nd wave of infections

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https://www.businessinsider.com/iowa-tells-workers-return-to-work-or-lose-unemployment-benefits-2020-4?fbclid=IwAR3OghoKRKsPt9JVz4TIsn_Qv5im_ZPaCmzPenmsEFgJR80YXbFJ2QWrxpE

Iowa tells workers to return to work or lose unemployment benefits ...

  • Iowa is preparing to partially reopen 77 counties on Friday.
  • The state said furloughed employees who refuse to return to work that they would lose their unemployment benefits — and Gov. Kim Reynolds said it could disqualify them from future unemployment benefits.
  • However, a group of experts advised the governor last week not to loosen restrictions and said the state has not reached its peak of infections and deaths.

As Iowa prepares to partially reopen on Friday, the state has told furloughed workers that they will lose their unemployment benefits if they refuse to return to work.

The Des Moines Register reported that businesses like restaurants, bars, retail stores, and fitness centers would be allowed to reopen at half capacity starting on May 1. Gov. Kim Reynolds said the 77 reopening counties either have no cases or are on a downward trend.

Iowa Workforce Development, a state agency that provides employment services for individual workers, said an employee’s refusal return to work out of fear would be considered a “voluntary quit” — which would mean they could no longer receive unemployment benefits. The announcement applies to workers across the state.

Ryan West, the deputy director of Iowa Workforce Development, told Radio Iowa that there were some exceptions, such as workers diagnosed with COVID-19.

The Iowa Workforce Development website prompts employers to fill out what it calls a Job Offer Decline Form for employees who refuse to return to work. The governor has said that opting not to go back to work could disqualify employees from future unemployment benefits.

Business Insider’s Andy Kiersz reported that 232,913 Iowans filed for unemployment between March 15 and April 18, which is 13.5% of the state’s labor force.

Last week, seven epidemiology and biostatistics professors from the University of Iowa advised the governor not to loosen social-distancing restrictions, KWWL reported. They wrote a research paper for the governor after they were commissioned by the Iowa Department of Public Health.

“We observe a huge range of possible outcomes, from relatively low fatalities to catastrophic loss of life,” the paper said.

The scientists said there was still “considerable uncertainty” over how many deaths the state may eventually have; the projections range from 150 to over 10,000 deaths.

“We have found evidence of a slowdown in infection and mortality rates due to social distancing policies, but not that a peak has been reached,” the paper said. The professors said that did not mean measures should be eased: “Therefore, prevention measures should remain in place. Without such measures being continued, a second wave of infections is likely.”

 

 

 

U.S. Coronavirus Cases Passes 1 Million–A Third Of All Cases Globally

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/04/28/us-coronavirus-cases-passes-1-million–a-third-of-all-cases-globally/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailydozen&cdlcid=5d2c97df953109375e4d8b68#5526ebe370a5

U.S. Coronavirus Cases Passes 1 Million--A Third Of All Cases Globally

TOPLINE

Confirmed cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus passed 1 million in the United States Tuesday, making up a third of all global cases, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

KEY FACTS

Of the 1,002,498 Americans who have been confirmed to have contracted the disease, 57,266 have died while 112,315 have recovered.

The new milestone comes as some states announce plans for reopening, something President Trump has been adamantly pushing for as 26 million Americans lose their jobs during the pandemic.

New York, the epicenter of the outbreak with 295,106 cases, saw its hospital admittance number drop below 1,000 for the first time in a month on Monday, with Governor Andrew Cuomo detailing a plan to start easing stay-at-home restrictions in parts of the state starting as early as May 15.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, however, with the state’s 24,604 cases, has drawn criticism from health officials and even Trump for allowing businesses like restaurants, hair salons and gyms to reopen before seeing a sustained reduction in cases.

Around 5.6 million people, or about 1.7% of the population, have been tested for the coronavirus, but researchers at Harvard Global Health Institute report that the country will need to perform 3.5 million tests per week at minimum before reopening.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease doctor, warned Tuesday during an interview that “it’s inevitable that we will have a return of the virus,” and that states reopening prematurely could cause “a rebound to get us right back in the same boat that we were in a few weeks ago.”

BIG NUMBER

87%. That’s how many Americans support current social distancing restrictions, or even want stronger measures in place, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey conducted from April 16-20.

KEY BACKGROUND

The U.S. reached 500,000 cases on April 10 and 100,000 on March 27. The model prefered by the federal government increased the projected death count from the coronavirus for the second time in a week on Tuesday, now projecting 74,000 total deaths from the virus.

TANGENT

Germany has been a leader in mitigating the spread of the coronavirus, but after easing some lockdown restrictions this past week, the country saw an uptick in infection rate.

 

 

 

 

COVID-19 brings largest quarterly GDP drop since last recession

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Coronavirus, Cost Management, Cost Reduction, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy, Employee Furlough, Employee Hiring Freeze, Employee Layoffs, Employee Pay Cuts, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Operating Expenses, Operating Income, Operating Margin, Operating Performance, Operating Revenue, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Recession, Social Distancing, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance • Leave a comment

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/covid-19-brings-largest-quarterly-gdp-drop-since-last-recession.html?utm_medium=email

GDP sinks 4.8% in the first quarter, biggest drop since 2008 and ...

Gross domestic product in the U.S. fell 4.8 percent in the first quarter of 2020, the biggest drop the nation’s economy has seen since the last recession in 2008, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The downturn reflects how shutdowns of businesses and schools and social distancing, which started in the final three weeks of the first quarter, affected the U.S. economy. According to The Journal, many economists believe the U.S. is now in a recession, as layoffs and declines across industries hit unprecedented levels.

With the economy largely shut down in April, economists are expecting a bigger drop-off in economic activity in the second quarter of this year. A few states have started to slowly reopen their economies, but many still have social-distancing restrictions in place that extend through May.

 

 

 

 

US surpasses 1 million COVID-19 cases

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Emergency Preparedness, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Mortality, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/494792-us-surpasses-1-million-covid-19-cases

Did the Trump Administration Overpromise 1 Million COVID-19 ...

More than a million people in the United States have tested positive for the coronavirus, a sobering milestone that experts say represents only the beginning of a months-long battle to end the pandemic.

The United States has now registered about a third of all confirmed cases of COVID-19 around the globe, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. More than 57,000 people have died in the United States, about a quarter of the known COVID-19 deaths around the globe.

The United States has now registered more confirmed cases than the next five countries suffering the largest outbreaks — Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the United Kingdom — combined.

Those numbers are partly a reflection of population, but there are troubling signs for the United States.

While those countries have reduced the pace of transmission and the growth in the number of new cases they are seeing on a daily basis, the United States has not similarly bent the curve.

Instead, it is stuck at a deadly plateau: In the last week, the U.S. has reported between 24,000 and 41,000 new cases a day, and between 1,200 and 2,600 deaths per day, according to The Covid Tracking Project, a group of researchers who keep tallies of case counts around the country.

Even as some states begin to relax orders that closed retail and service stores, experts warned the country is still at risk of a new rush of cases, and that the downslope of declining case counts will be much longer than the sudden surge the United States saw in April.

“We’re in the opening stages of this,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Prevention at the University of Minnesota. States “are not in the mountains, they’re in the foothills. The mountains are still to come.”

More than a quarter million residents of New York have tested positive for the virus, and commuter suburbs in New Jersey and Connecticut have reported tens of thousands of cases. More than 50,000 residents of Massachusetts have tested positive, and California, Illinois and Pennsylvania have all confirmed more than 40,000 cases.

There are growing signs that the virus is shifting into new, more rural territory. States like Arkansas, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia all recorded substantial growth in the number of new cases they had confirmed in the last few days.

That pattern of viral spread beginning in large urban cores and eventually making its way to rural areas is typical, experts said, given societal connections between urban areas, suburbs and more rural areas.

“Epidemiologists know that this pattern is a very expectable one, that rural areas are going to have lagged waves of cases. So we’ve been bracing for that,” said Nita Bharti, a biologist at the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Penn State University. “What they’re experiencing now is what cities have been seeing. It’s the same, it’s just delayed, and we knew it would happen.”

About six months after the coronavirus outbreak was detected in Wuhan, China, and four months after the first case arrived on American shores, the United States still lags the world in testing capacity. States have bolstered their capacity in recent days, conducting more than 225,000 tests per day over four of the last five days, the capacity needed to ensure the virus can be brought under control lags substantially.

An analysis by Harvard researchers for the scientific publication STAT found more than half of states would have to significantly bolster their testing capacity in order to safely begin easing stay-at-home orders in May. The hardest-hit state, New York, will have to be able to test at least 100,000 more people every day than it is currently able to; New Jersey’s capacity would need to increase by 68,000 a day.

Smaller states and those that have yet to experience thousands of new cases — places like Mississippi, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona and New Mexico — already have the testing capacity they need to identify and squelch any new viral hotspots. Even Washington state, the first state to confirm a positive case, has built its capacity to meet demand.

Public health experts say a robust testing program must be supplemented by armies of contact tracers who can track down those who are at risk of contracting the virus.

Already, Massachusetts has partnered with the nonprofit Partners In Health to deploy about 1,000 contact tracers across the state. Alaska has managed to trace the contacts of each of its 341 positive cases. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that the city would hire 1,000 contact tracers of its own, and former Mayor Mike Bloomberg has pledged $10 million to kick start a contact tracing program in the tri-state area.

On Monday, a bipartisan group of top public health experts led by President Trump‘s former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb and President Obama’s former Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Andy Slavitt called on Congress to spend $46 billion to expand contact tracing capacity, including $12 billion to hire 180,000 new workers.

It is unclear how the outbreak in the United States compares with outbreaks in authoritarian countries like China, Russia and Iran, which do not report reliable numbers.

But even in the United States, where state and local governments are transparent about the data they collect, the actual number of cases and deaths are higher — likely significantly so. Early antibody tests in places like New York City and Miami show a significant number of people contract the virus without showing symptoms, and as studies show people who died inexplicably over the last several months tested positive for the virus.

 

 

 

COVID-19 vulnerability: A state-by-state analysis

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https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/rankings-and-ratings/covid-19-vulnerability-a-state-by-state-analysis.html?utm_medium=email

To live and die in Dixie - Covid-19 is spreading to America's ...

Every state in the U.S. will be affected by COVID-19, but some are more vulnerable due to limited ability to mitigate and treat the virus, and to reduce its economic and social impacts, according to a COVID-19 vulnerability index created by the Surgo Foundation. 

The Surgo Foundation, a privately funded think tank, created an index that combines indicators specific to COVID-19 with the CDC’s social vulnerability index, which measures the expected negative impact of disasters of any type. The Surgo Foundation’s index takes into account factors that fall into one of several categories, including socioeconomic status, minority status, housing type, epidemiologic factors and health care system factors. Each state and the District of Columbia received a score in each category and an overall score, with a higher score indicating that the state is more vulnerable. Read more about the methodology here.

Here is each state’s ranking and composite score based on the vulnerability index: 

1. Mississippi: 1

2. Louisiana: 0.98

3. Arkansas: 0.96

4. Oklahoma: 0.94

5. Alabama: 0.92

6. West Virginia: 0.9

7. New Mexico: 0.88

8. Nevada: 0.86

9. North Carolina: 0.84

10. South Carolina: 0.82

11. Kentucky: 0.8

12. Hawaii: 0.78

13. Tennessee: 0.76

14. Missouri: 0.74

15. Kansas: 0.72

16. Indiana: 0.7

17. Georgia: 0.68

18. Oregon: 0.66

19. District of Columbia: 0.64

20. New York: 0.62

21. Alaska: 0.6

22. Delaware: 0.58

23. Michigan: 0.56

24. Arizona: 0.54

25. Illinois: 0.52

26. Iowa: 0.5

27. Texas: 0.48

28. New Jersey: 0.46

29. Idaho: 0.44

30. Maryland: 0.42

31. Ohio: 0.4

32. Massachusetts: 0.38

33. Nebraska: 0.36

34. Florida: 0.34

35. Washington: 0.32

36. Connecticut: 0.3

37. Pennsylvania: 0.28

38. Montana: 0.26

39. Rhode Island: 0.24

40. Virginia: 0.22

41. South Dakota: 0.2

42. Utah: 0.18

43. Wyoming: 0.16

44. California: 0.14

45. Minnesota: 0.12

46. Colorado: 0.1

47. Wisconsin: 0.08

48. North Dakota: 0.06

49. Maine: 0.04

50. Vermont: 0.02

51. New Hampshire: 0

 

 

 

The only way to get back to normal this summer is to test everyone in the United States, Nobel Prize-winning economist says

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/27/economy-coronavirus-romer-reopen/?fbclid=IwAR0AI-Cmf34bjZwphHNREngiy6CoKIbYHU2zb1QlnBg_jm7MXgWObMTVjZ4&utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

Coronavirus tests should be as cheap as a 'morning latte' to ...

Paul Romer estimates that testing every American would cost $100 billion, a hefty sum but less than the $2 trillion Congress has spent so far.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer says a return to nearly normal life is possible this summer if the United States does wide-scale testing for the coronavirus.

Romer is calling on the U.S. government to test everyone in the nation once every two weeks and isolate people who test positive for the deadly coronavirus. He estimates that doing so would cost $100 billion, a hefty sum but far less than the $2 trillion Congress has spent so far and less than the cost of keeping the economy partly closed for months to come.

“I’m on the optimistic end of how quickly we can scale testing up,” said Romer, who won the 2018 Nobel Prize for economics. “I do think there’s a way most people could feel safe returning to what feels like normal life this summer if we do this wide-scale testing.”

So far, the nation has tested about 5 million people — or less than 2 percent of the population. Last week, Congress approved an additional $25 billion for testing as part of the latest funding bill, which Romer calls a good start but not enough.

Restarting the U.S. economy isn’t just about government officials clearing certain businesses to reopen. People have to feel safe enough to venture out. Romer says that will happen only when nearly everyone in the country is getting tested on a regular basis and people who are sick are being quarantined.

“It’s totally in our control to fix this,” Romer said in a phone interview. “We should be spending $100 billion on the testing. We should just get it going. It’s just not that hard.”

He advises starting with screening all health-care and front-line workers in the next month and then scaling up the testing to the rest of the nation this summer by using university labs to process tests.

Romer says massive testing is the only viable option for the nation. Otherwise, the economy will limp along, leaving millions of people unemployed and forcing small businesses to shut forever. It could take years to recover from that kind of pain. On the flip side, reopening much of the nation too soon could cause deaths to skyrocket again.

Top White House officials voiced support for more testing over the weekend. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Fox News Sunday that the Trump administration would “balance” reopening the economy with “more testing” to “monitor this very, very carefully.”

Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus task force coordinator, said Sunday that more testing would be needed and that “social distancing will be with us through the summer.“

As Congress and the White House debate another round of economic relief, it’s unclear how much more money will be allocated for testing. Evidence from China and Germany, which have begun to reopen much of their economies, shows that people remain reluctant to go out and spend again. Subways in China remain half full, big public spaces such as casinos remain nearly empty and economic activity is still way off from normal.

Although some have balked at the cost of testing every American, Romer points out that the United States is losing at least $500 billion a month from the Great Lockdown. His estimate is more modest than some other economists such as St. Louis Federal Reserve President Jim Bullard, who says the nation is losing $25 billion a day right now. Bullard has also endorsed universal testing as the only way to fix the nation’s health — and economic — problems.

“Every month of delay makes the recovery slower — and take longer,” Romer said.

Romer won the Nobel Prize for modeling the U.S. and global economies. A former chief economist at the World Bank, he has built a career thinking through big international problems and what to do about them. But the coronavirus fight is also personal for him. He has a daughter who is an intensive care physician in Philadelphia.

 

 

 

“Immunity passports” in the context of COVID-19

Posted on by • Posted in Antibodies, Clinical Research, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Health Policy, Immunity, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Social Distancing, World Health Organization (WHO) • Leave a comment

https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-passports-in-the-context-of-covid-19

Charu Kaushic (@CKaushic) | Twitter

Scientific Brief

WHO has published guidance on adjusting public health and social measures for the next phase of the COVID-19 response.1 Some governments have suggested that the detection of antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, could serve as the basis for an “immunity passport” or “risk-free certificate” that would enable individuals to travel or to return to work assuming that they are protected against re-infection. There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection.

 

The measurement of antibodies specific to COVID-19

The development of immunity to a pathogen through natural infection is a multi-step process that typically takes place over 1-2 weeks. The body responds to a viral infection immediately with a non-specific innate response in which macrophages, neutrophils, and dendritic cells slow the progress of virus and may even prevent it from causing symptoms. This non-specific response is followed by an adaptive response where the body makes antibodies that specifically bind to the virus. These antibodies are proteins called immunoglobulins. The body also makes T-cells that recognize and eliminate other cells infected with the virus. This is called cellular immunity. This combined adaptive response may clear the virus from the body, and if the response is strong enough, may prevent progression to severe illness or re-infection by the same virus. This process is often measured by the presence of antibodies in blood.

WHO continues to review the evidence on antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection.2-17 Most of these studies show that people who have recovered from infection have antibodies to the virus. However, some of these people have very low levels of neutralizing antibodies in their blood,4 suggesting that cellular immunity may also be critical for recovery. As of 24 April 2020, no study has evaluated whether the presence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 confers immunity to subsequent infection by this virus in humans.

Laboratory tests that detect antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in people, including rapid immunodiagnostic tests, need further validation to determine their accuracy and reliability. Inaccurate immunodiagnostic tests may falsely categorize people in two ways. The first is that they may falsely label people who have been infected as negative, and the second is that people who have not been infected are falsely labelled as positive. Both errors have serious consequences and will affect control efforts. These tests also need to accurately distinguish between past infections from SARS-CoV-2 and those caused by the known set of six human coronaviruses. Four of these viruses cause the common cold and circulate widely. The remaining two are the viruses that cause Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. People infected by any one of these viruses may produce antibodies that cross-react with antibodies produced in response to infection with SARS-CoV-2.

Many countries are now testing for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies at the population level or in specific groups, such as health workers, close contacts of known cases, or within households.21 WHO supports these studies, as they are critical for understanding the extent of – and risk factors associated with – infection.  These studies will provide data on the percentage of people with detectable COVID-19 antibodies, but most are not designed to determine whether those people are immune to secondary infections.

 

Other considerations

At this point in the pandemic, there is not enough evidence about the effectiveness of antibody-mediated immunity to guarantee the accuracy of an “immunity passport” or “risk-free certificate.” People who assume that they are immune to a second infection because they have received a positive test result may ignore public health advice. The use of such certificates may therefore increase the risks of continued transmission. As new evidence becomes available, WHO will update this scientific brief.

 

 

 

 

Covid-19 Testing is increasing, but still not good enough

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https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-vitals-daff1b24-727d-44eb-adb9-9f33cd61bc16.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosvitals&stream=top

The Daily Shot: So Far, About 5% of Small Businesses Received ...

The good news is that the number of daily coronavirus tests is going up again. The bad news is that it’s still not nearly enough for the country to safely reopen.

Why it matters: If we don’t know who has the virus, we can’t stop it from spreading without resorting to stringent social distancing measures.

Driving the news: On Saturday, Anthony Fauci said that the U.S. is testing roughly 1.5 million to 2 million people a week, but “we probably should get up to twice that as we get into the next several weeks, and I think we will.”

  • Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, said yesterday that “we have to realize that we have to have a breakthrough innovation in testing.” She said we’ll need tests that can detect antigen, or the part of a pathogen that triggers an immune response.

Between the lines: Testing has been hampered by shortages of supplies like swabs and test kits. There has also been a lack of coordination between labs with excess testing capacity and communities struggling to meet testing demand.

What we’re watching: Some major cities and states — including New York and California — have begun to expand testing beyond the sickest patients, which is a good sign.

 

 

 

 

The pandemic didn’t come out of nowhere. The U.S. ignored the warnings.

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Denial, Economic Crisis, Emergency Preparedness, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Mislead, Misleading, Mortality, National Security, National Security Risk, Pandemic, Partisanship, Public Health, Public Safety, Scientists • Leave a comment

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-pandemic-didnt-come-out-of-nowhere-the-us-ignored-the-warnings/2020/04/21/3bf37566-7db3-11ea-a3ee-13e1ae0a3571_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_opinions&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpis

The pandemic didn't come out of nowhere. The U.S. ignored the ...

“CAME OUT of nowhere,” President Trump said March 6 of the coronavirus pandemic. “I just think this is something . . . that you can never really think is going to happen.” A few weeks later, he added, “I would view it as something that just surprised the whole world.” Mr. Trump also said, “Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion.”

Of course, no one can pinpoint the exact moment that lightning will strike. But a global pandemic? Experts have predicted it, warned about the preparedness gaps and urged action. Again and again and again.

Just look at 2019. In January, the U.S. intelligence community issued its annual global threat assessment. It declared, “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. . . . The growing proximity of humans and animals has increased the risk of disease transmission. The number of outbreaks has increased in part because pathogens originally found in animals have spread to human populations.”

In September, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security issued a report titled “Preparedness for a High-Impact Respiratory Pathogen Pandemic.” The report found that if such a pathogen emerged, “it would likely have significant public health, economic, social, and political consequences. . . . The combined possibilities of short incubation periods and asymptomatic spread can result in very small windows for interrupting transmission, making such an outbreak difficult to contain.” The report pointed to “large national and international readiness gaps.”

In October, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, working with the Johns Hopkins center and the Economist Intelligence Unit, published its latest Global Health Security Index, examining open-source information about the state of health security across 195 nations, and scoring them. The report warned, “No country is fully prepared for epidemics or pandemics, and every country has important gaps to address.” The report found that “Fewer than 5 percent of countries scored in the highest tier for their ability to rapidly respond to and mitigate the spread of an epidemic.”

In November, the Center for Strategic and International Studies published a study by its Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security. It warned, “The American people are far from safe. To the contrary, the United States remains woefully ill-prepared to respond to global health security threats. This kind of vulnerability should not be acceptable to anyone. At the extreme, it is a matter of life and death. . . . Outbreaks proliferate that can spread swiftly across the globe and become pandemics, disrupting supply chains, trade, transport, and ultimately entire societies and economies.” The report recommended: “Restore health security leadership at the White House National Security Council.”

Came out of nowhere? Not even close. The question that must be addressed in future postmortems is why all this expertise and warning was ignored.

 

 

 

 

U.S. coronavirus updates

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https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-west-virginia-first-case-ac32ce6d-5523-4310-a219-7d1d1dcb6b44.html

Coronavirus outbreak is level of public pain we haven't seen in ...

 

The pandemic is a long way from over, and its impact on our daily lives, information ecosystem, politics, cities and health care will last even longer.

The big picture: The novel coronavirus has infected more than 939,000 people and killed over 54,000 in the U.S., Johns Hopkins data shows. More than 105,000 Americans have recovered from the virus as of Sunday.

Lockdown measures: Demonstrators gathered in Florida, Texas and Louisiana Saturday to protest stay-at-home orders designed to protect against the spread of COVID-19, following a week of similar rallies across the U.S.

  • 16 states have released formal reopening plans, Vice President Mike Pence said at Thursday’s White House briefing. Several Southern states including South Carolina have already begun reopening their economies.
  • Alaska, Oklahoma and Georgia reopened some non-essential businesses Friday. President Trump said Wednesday he “strongly” disagrees with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on the move.
  • California’s stay-at-home orders and business restrictions will remain in place, Gov. Gavin Newsom made clear at a Wednesday news briefing. But some local authorities reopened beaches in Southern California Saturday.
  • New York recorded its third-straight day of fewer coronavirus deaths Friday. Still, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he’s not willing to reopen the state, citing CDC guidance that states need two weeks of flat or declining numbers.

Catch up quick: Deborah Birx said Sunday that it “bothers” her that the news cycle is still focused on Trump’s comments about disinfectants possibly treating coronavirus, arguing that “we’re missing the bigger pieces” about how Americans can defeat the virus.

  • Anthony Fauci said Saturday the U.S. is testing roughly 1.5 million to 2 million people a week. “We probably should get up to twice that as we get into the next several weeks, and I think we will,” he said.
  • The number of sailors aboard the USS Kidd to test positive for the coronavirus has risen from 18 Friday to 33, the U.S. Navy said Saturday. It’s the second major COVID-19 outbreak on a U.S. naval vessel, after the USS Theodore Roosevelt, where a total of 833 crew members tested positive, per the Navy’s latest statement.
  • The first person known to have the coronavirus when they died was killed by a heart attack “due to COVID-19 infection” on Feb. 6, autopsy results obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle on Saturday show.
  • Some young coronavirus patients are having severe strokes.
  • Trump tweeted Saturday that White House press conferences are “not worth the time & effort.” As first reported by Axios, Trump plans to pare back his coronavirus briefings.
  • The South is at risk of being devastated by the coronavirus, as states tend to have at-risk populations and weak health care systems.
  • New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday Trump was right to criticize the World Health Organization’s handling of the global outbreak.
  • Trump signed legislation Friday for $484 billion in more aid to small businesses and hospitals.
  • The House voted along party lines on Thursday to establish a select committee to oversee the federal government’s response to the crisis.
  • Unemployment: Another 4.4 million Americans filed last week. More than 26 million jobless filings have been made in five weeks due to the pandemic.