The opinion of one guy in a think-tank... The US is not even ‘remotely’ ready to re-open for business, says outbreak preparedness expert https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/28/the...-prepared-to-re-open-for-business-expert.html The U.S. is not even “remotely prepared” to re-open, an expert said on Tuesday as some states are set to lift lockdowns that had been imposed to contain the coronavirus outbreak. “We’re not remotely prepared neither in terms of the epidemiology of the outbreak in the United States, nor in terms of our preparedness capacities to begin suppressing this virus in ways other than through social distancing,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, a think tank. His expertise includes global outbreak preparedness. The U.S. has reported more than 988,000 confirmed cases of infection and a death toll of over 56,000 so far, according to John Hopkins University. The pandemic, which first emerged late last year in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, has prompted U.S. states to impose strict social distancing policies in order to contain the outbreak. These measures, including closing nonessential businesses and ordering residents to stay home, have led to a devastating economic rout. But states including Alaska, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas are beginning to allow restaurants and other establishments to serve customers. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said consumer retail and services can start reopening on May 12. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday the state plans to reopen its economy in phases. However, the ongoing lack of testing capabilities is one of the main factors keeping many families, employers and institutions from resuming business, even though stay-at-home orders have officially been lifted in several states. While some states have been more aggressive in testing, Konyndyk told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” that the country at large is not seeing a decline in coronavirus infections and that there needs to be more testing. “We need to be able to test widely, we need to be able to trace the contacts of those cases that we find, we need to reinforce the hospital system and we need to do far more to protect people in high risk facilities like elder care homes. None of that is in place yet,” said Konyndyk. “So no, we are not remotely ready.” Testing 2% of people in each state monthly would be a major jump — roughly 1.6% of the U.S. population has been tested in total so far, according to the Covid Tracking Project. Yet some experts say the country needs to perform closer to 20 million to 30 million tests a day to begin getting the economy back to normal, due to concerns about pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic transmission. “Right now, we’ve got much of the country quarantined, so if someone gets sick, the chances they can spread to others are smaller,” said Konyndyk. “If you begin reopening before you have the ability know who’s sick, or frankly, before those people have the ability to know they have it, you run into enormous risks,” added Konyndyk. Citing examples from places like Japan’s Hokkaido where strict curbs were lifted too soon, Konyndyk raised concerns about subsequent waves of infections. “We will face second waves and third waves of this even under the best of circumstances. But if we reopen too early, we’re going to be be much worse because the virus now is seeded so much more widely throughout the country, there are a lot more people who can potentially spread it.” Rushing to reopen could “torpedo” both economies and public health, he said. “It’s not like you can pick one or the other. You have to get the health back on track in order to get the economy back on track,” said Konyndyk.
We should collaborate. Might be interesting to see how long it would take for me to persuade you of how wrong you are. I think the two political parties are examples of the two horses tied at opposite ends of the wagon tearing the thing to pieces while we the riders suffer the consequences of whipping our chosen horse while secretly knowing we should just jump off and find another mode of transportation.
Yes, one side wants to veer away from the cliff while the other wants to see if it can fly. Most of the "other modes of transportation" are heading in the same direction: away from the cliff.
and here we go... https://www.npr.org/2020/04/27/8464...inadequate-n-y-attorney-general-s-office-says Amazon Warehouse Safety 'Inadequate,' N.Y. Attorney General's Office Says Amazon may have violated federal safety standards for providing "inadequate" protections to warehouse workers in New York, the state attorney general's office says. In a letter to Amazon obtained by NPR, the office of New York's top lawyer Letitia James says the company may have also broken the state's whistleblower laws for firing a warehouse worker who helped organize a protest in Staten Island. "While we continue to investigate, the information so far available to us raises concerns that Amazon's health and safety measures taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are so inadequate that they may violate several provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act" and other federal and state guidelines, James's staff wrote in the letter, dated April 22.
Yes, the left has us going right off the cliff forcing the other to try and fly. I'm sure you see it differently. The beat goes on.
Odumbo tried to do EVERYTHING he could get away with to harm America. He HATES our country... nothing out of character here.
A portion of $3.7 million in grants awarded between 2014 and 2019 by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to EcoHealth Alliance, a global environmental health nonprofit organization, helped fund research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. However, not all of that $3.7 million went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and not all of the funding took place under the Obama administration. Approximately $700,000 of the $3.7 million total was approved under Donald Trump. Giuliani, said this:Back in 2014, the Obama administration prohibited the U.S. from giving money to any laboratory, including in the U.S., that was fooling around with these viruses. Prohibited. Despite that, Dr. Fauci gave $3.7 million to the Wuhan laboratory. And then even after the State Department issued reports about how unsafe that laboratory was, and how suspicious they were in the way they were developing a virus that could be transmitted to humans, we never pulled that money.” Ouch....Trump was a co conspirator in diretly funding the Wuhan lab and Fauci is to blame....
A lot of fancy terms on modeling, all to be summed up by "we put forth our best guess". Many of these models have been wildly inaccurate and there's no reason to believe in any of them. Regarding this: 6 People in your high school class died from Covid and a dozen others are on ventilators? How many people are in your high school class? Because if its anything less than 1000, those stats don't make sense with the mortality rates of that age group. I find this incredibly bad luck to be shocking. I turn 50 in one year and my high school class (right outside the city) doesn't have anyone we know of that is sick with the disease at all. Though admittedly I am not in contact with every single one from my high school class. Apparently you are in contact with everyone. Of course you are. Just like you know what everyone posted here on a given subject.
We Asked All 50 States About Their Contact Tracing Capacity. Here's What We Learned https://www.npr.org/sections/health...contact-tracing-capacity-heres-what-we-learne States are eager to open up and get people back to work, but how do they do that without risking new coronavirus flare-ups? Public health leaders widely agree that communities need to ramp up capacity to test, trace and isolate. The idea behind this public health mantra is simple: Keep the virus in check by having teams of public health workers — epidemiologists, nurses, trained citizens — identify new positive cases, track down their contacts and help both the sick person and those who were exposed isolate themselves. This is the strategy that has been proven to work in other countries, including China, South Korea and Germany. For it to work in the U.S., states and local communities will need ample testing and they'll need to expand their public health workforce. By a lot. An influential group of former government officials released a letter Monday calling for a contact tracing workforce of 180,000. Other estimates of how many contact tracers are needed range from 100,000 to 300,000. NPR surveyed all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia to ask them how many contact tracers they currently have — and how many they were planning to add, if any. We got data for 41 states and the District of Columbiaand found they have approximately 7,324 workers who do contact tracing on staff now, with plans to surge to a total of 35,582. "It's a start," Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says of these totals. "There are some states that are really thinking about this and scaling it up; there are others that are just beginning to think about it." (More at above url including charts / maps) Note the vast majority of states do not meet the estimated need for contact tracers.
Most Americans to avoid sports, other live events before coronavirus vaccine https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ronavirus-vaccine-reuters-ipsos-idUSKCN22A2AK Fewer than half of Americans plan to go to sports events, concerts, movies and amusement parks when they reopen to the public until there is a proven coronavirus vaccine, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday. That includes those who have attended such events in the past, an ominous sign for the sports and entertainment industries hoping to return to the spotlight after being shut down by the pandemic. Only about four in 10 who follow sports avidly and go to arts and entertainment venues and amusement parks said they would do so again if they reopened before a vaccine was available, the poll found. Another four in 10 said they were willing to wait, even if it takes more than a year to develop a vaccine. The rest said they either “don’t know” what to do or may never attend those events again. “Just because people say we can go back, until people feel fully safe ... they aren’t going to go back,” said Victor Matheson, a specialist in sports economics at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. “We go to games for entertainment and you’re not going to be very entertained if you’re not worrying about who the next player to bat is and instead worrying about that person who just coughed two rows down.” The United States leads the world with almost 1 million coronavirus infections and more than 56,000 deaths as of late Monday. While as many as 100 potential vaccines are in development around the world, scientists are projecting that bringing one to market could take 18 months. SPORTS SIDELINED Only 17% of American adults said they would attend professional sporting events when they reopen to the public, while 26% said they would rather wait until there is a vaccine. Among those who have attended a professional sporting event in the past year, 42% said they would return whenever it reopens to the public and 39% said they would rather wait for a vaccine, even if that means waiting more than a year. Cincinnati resident Angie Hopkins, who has gone to pro games in the past, said she would not attend them again before there is a vaccine, out of concern for her health and that of her son. “The risk of being with all those people, crammed in together, I think that would be unsettling,” she said. “I have fibromyalgia, which could make me at risk for more serious complications. And my son has asthma, so I wouldn’t want to expose him either.” About 59% of sports fans agreed that before a vaccine is available, professional sports leagues that have seen their seasons upended - like Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League - should hold games with no in-person fans, while 33% disagreed. That could spell trouble for tennis’ U.S. Open, which is scheduled to kick off in hard-hit New York City on Aug. 24. Organizers have said it was highly unlikely that they would hold the largest and loudest Grand Slam tournament without fans. It is also unclear whether the NFL will delay the scheduled Sept. 10 start of its 101st season. Commissioner Roger Goodell said last week he believed the season could begin on time, but did not specify whether the league would consider doing so without fans. TROUBLE FOR TINSELTOWN? The poll showed that only 27% of those questioned would go to a movie theater, concert or live theater performance when venues reopen, underscoring the hurdles faced by the entertainment industry as it tries to get back on its feet. Thirty-two percent said they would wait for a vaccine before going back to the movies, theater or concerts. In all, 55% of Americans said those events should not resume before a vaccine is available. Movie buff and music fan Ana Morales of Bristow, Virginia, said she did not plan to visit a theater where she has a membership or attend a summer country music series until there is a vaccine. “It would be a bit reckless for us to go,” she said, adding that she would be afraid of spreading the disease to her in-laws, who are over 60 years old. She said that even if theaters implemented social-distancing rules, she would worry that shared surfaces like seats had not been cleaned thoroughly. Hollywood has been tentatively hoping movie theaters could reopen partially by late July and recoup some losses from the normally lucrative summer season. While dozens of summer movie releases have already been moved to the autumn or into 2021, Walt Disney Co’s “Mulan” and Warner Bros. “Wonder Woman 1984” are scheduled for release in July and August respectively. Most musicians, including Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift and the Rolling Stones have canceled or postponed their 2020 tour dates. The annual Coachella music festival in Southern California, which usually draws about 90,000 people, shifted its April dates to October in the hope the worst of the coronavirus pandemic would be over by then. Enthusiasm for amusement and theme parks was even bleaker. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they should not reopen until a vaccine is available. Only 20% said they would visit a theme park when they reopen. Universal Studios has extended its closures in California and Florida until at least May 31, while Disneyland and Walt Disney World are closed indefinitely. Disney Executive Chairman Bob Iger said earlier in April that temperature checks for visitors were one of the measures under consideration for any eventual reopening. Broadway theaters were forced to shut down in mid-March and extended the closure to June 7, with several producers saying their plays would not return at all. The Reuters/Ipsos poll surveyed 4,429 American adults from April 15 to 21, asking about their previous attendance at sports events and live concerts and their interest in attending if they reopened before a coronavirus vaccine is available. The poll questions noted a vaccine might not be available for more than a year.