Coronavirus

They say orders from China are safe because the virus cannot live that long. However, I’m like you- I rather err on the side of caution and not do mail orders.

It’s a virus that we don’t know. We do not know if it can survive 2 weeks on a surface. Probably not. But we don’t know. But what about express mail?

Locally, what about junk mail that was sneezed on by a postal worker who thinks he has a mild cold?

 

I don’t know. I just know that what I’ve read about mail orders. The thing is, we could go to the local store for some things and be exposed. Or we could go out to eat (that one’s my big worry) and end up exposed by a sick cook who won’t take off due to no sick time or medical insurance to see a doctor. S/he could be running a fever and then get hauled off to the hospital from work while cooking food because s/he is sick from it. They don’t even know if it will die down over the summer months or continue or ramp up or what.

Update: Washington State has lost a second person to the COVID-19. A 70 year old man with underlying health issues, much like the 50-something man. :frowning:

Thanks for the update. Rule of thumb, one would think, is that if there is a 2% death rate, then there is likely around 100 people who have the virus, if 2 died, from it, that we know of.

 

Unfortunately, there are 70 people… wait N.Y. now has one confirmed case, so I guess it’s 71 or 70 with the loss of this new one. It was 70, one died, then one Dx in N.Y. So I guess it’s still 70, if you include those on the Princess cruise ship that were brought home. If those who were on the ship are not included, which they sometimes are not, depending on which article you read, is doing the update. Italy now has around 200 confirmed cases and according to my source who lives in Southern Italy, Italy isn’t closing anything to fight it. In fact, she said officials decided not to fight it, which is dumb in my opinion and she agreed. France has around 100.

If you’re into keeping tab on the number, as they say it’s a rapidly evolving situation

Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by Johns Hopkins CSSE

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

 

I saw that two days ago, bookmarked it, and now it wants a username and password from me. I can’t seem to view it now.

update: Now it’s letting me view it via your link. Wonder what happened with my bookmark?

That stinks, I just found it this morning. All these connections being forced on us, so yet another layer of entities can track your every move. Weird world, even without the environmental cannibalism and interconnected global biology hitting the fan, yeah as in shit, this AI world we’re building will implode on itself.

Most people think it’s so permanent, well let your “battery” run out and see how much good our computer or phone or smart TV does us. The complex global grid is an incredible number of facilities that need to be powered, maintained and running to perfection to operate. See potential problems there, considering how unstable global affairs are getting?

 

Saw an interesting video last night, glossy for sure, but still the gathering of facts and visuals spoke for itself. It’s a few years old and I’m surprised I hadn’t come across it before, it’s a great add on to Earth’s Evolution. And then came man.

https://www.pbs.org/show/humanity-space/ 2015 PBS

Trace humankind’s long journey from hunter-gatherer to dominant global species. From the perspective of space, this special uses mind-boggling data and CGI to disclose the breathtaking extent of humanity’s influence, revealing how we’ve transformed our planet and produced an interconnected world of extraordinary complexity.

Re: the Coronavirus. I saw an interview of Gov. Cuomo (of NY). Cuomo was going on and on about how we should be getting true information about the status of the virus. He went on and on about how we SHOULD NOT overestimate the scariness of the outbreak. Cuomo stated many many times during his spiel, that the death rate from COVID-19 is ONLY twice that of the regular flu. It is probably, actually closer to 20 times the death rate of the flu.

This was glaring misinformation, being spread by an official who was complaining that there should NOT BE misinformation spread about the disease. So F Governor Cuomo and the horse he rode in on.

We had similar here in my area too. However, WHO said 81% have a mild case (whatever that is) and recover. On top of it all, they aren’t going to test here because it’s “no worse than the flu” at worse and at best like “a cold” and the reason why they aren’t going to test unless the person is needing to be hospitalized, is because it takes days for the results to return. The reporter said people want to know if they are contagious (well if you have the flu you are contagious, but that’s not what she meant). It’s ridiculous, but stay home if they feel sick, but don’t have any info to give to their employer to get time off without being penalized. It’s crazy. The mayor of KC speaking in a video on the link below. I only hope they are not just doing crowd control and it ends up being a horror.

Words of Wisdom from the WHO:

“Stigma, to be honest, is more dangerous than the virus itself. Fear and panic are dangerous,” World Health Organization director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “It’s fine to be concerned and worried, but let’s calm down and do the right things.”
 

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/coronavirus-is-a-deadly-threat-e2-80-94-but-fear-and-panic-are-more-dangerous-global-health-chief-says/ar-BB10EEmL

Who’s afraid? Who’s panicking?

I’m outraged and disgusted by the incompetence of the US response, so far.

I think that complacency, and being quiet about lack of testing for instance, would have meant further delay in getting that BASIC INITIAL step done.

EVEN NOW, the CDC’s guidance, though, still says that people who haven’t traveled to countries with outbreaks and who have not been in contact with people sick with COVID-19 shouldn’t be tested unless they’re sick enough that they need to be hospitalized. That guidance likely won’t be sufficient to pick up any virus spreading among people who don’t get severely ill, which is around 80 to 85 percent of cases.

That CDC guidance could, however, work very well to limit the number of cases identified. But who would want to limit the # of cases identified??? Can you say T rump?

The dotard could kill us all- not necessarily by the virus, but many other ways. I just hope we get him AND his cronies out of office before they do something so stupid that millions die. I just don’t trust him or his cronies. Yes, I’m angry more than I have fear. I don’t know if I’m high risk being in my 50s with a chronic sinusitis, but I know my husband with asthma and high blood and my mother who’s 75 with asthma and high blood pressure are. My older son is almost 31 and has asthma. My younger son isn’t in good health either. There’s thousands of people with families like mine. We don’t know who is in the 80% and who’s not, except for those like my husband and mother. Too many people have lost their elderly parents and spouses already in the U.S. It’s only going to get worse- maybe worse than China because of the dotard and his cronies’ stupidity.

Words of Wisdom from the WHO:

“Stigma, to be honest, is more dangerous than the virus itself. Fear and panic are dangerous,” World Health Organization director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “It’s fine to be concerned and worried, but let’s calm down and do the right things.”


But how to achieve that? The problem with trump is that he’s ignorant of physical reality and totally focused on himself and his salesman pitch, "It’s all good, full speed ahead, hand me that cash. He will say anything he needs to his audience and the given moment. Hasn’t that been made clear a hundred times over? Why is that okay? Why has an utter disregard for promises and contracts and commitments, along with a disrespect & disregard of experts become so okay?

We have academia and education and study and experts who’ve spent years, decades, lives, soberly learning about the incomprehensibly, for most of us, complex world of biology. They have given out rational advice. Everything else is spin masters. But those spin meisters, aren’t interested in truth, or learning, or preparing for the future, just political battles and ensuring more profits for their masters.

trump should be totally irrelevant to this discussion. Because we already know he doesn’t care enough to do any homework. trump gets his talking points spoon fed by FOX murdoch corporate masters of the universe that they’ve become. Yeah, that guy won his long game pretty handily, while the left looked on stupefied and impotent. Now FOX has trump who is as dishonest as he is disinterested - but people worship him and hate anyone who won’t bow down to him.

Guy, I understand the power-political reasons that the oligarchs love him and are sinking every penny into ensuring trump’s re-election. They hate government and want to get it out of their way altogether.

But can you come up with any reasonably rational, moral, ethical, humanistic arguments to be made in favor of trump.

{ Other than the bromide that we gotta burn down the forest to let it revegetate. Guess that’s it, all I see in trump is another short-sighted monster, yes, sort of like Mussolini, his life has been nothing but a ponzi scheme, that his brass balls have enabled him (with a bunch of Russian help) to take up to the highest levels. What a foolish bunch of citizens we are. He’s got no place to take us but the big crash. Sadly we are also destroying our global life support systems fast as possible, so it’s won’t be like previous crashes. We all lose all, thanks to general disinterest, either way. }

Guy, is having the balls to say fuck off world from the presidential podium, really worth it ? What has it gained us?

What does he have to offer regular citizens? Explain?

 

Yeah, I digress, but we’ll get back to coronavirus soon enough, it’s the defensiveness of the president’s confused ramblings that’s more interesting right now.

Love it, the discussion seems to be on splitting hairs, rather than directly addressing trump’s predisposed contempt for these agencies.

 

snopes_com/fact-check/trump-cut-cdc-budget/

Although it’s true that Trump’s fiscal year 2021 budget proposal does propose a funding cut to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), that budget has not been enacted.

As The Washington Post explains, those funding cuts target the CDC’s chronic disease activities:

The budget request would trim funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by almost 16 percent. HHS officials said they want the CDC to focus on its core mission of preventing and controlling infectious diseases and on other emerging public health issues, such as opioid abuse.

Officials propose to take the money that would normally go to fund individual disease prevention activities and funnel it into a single block grant to states. The budget says chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes have common risk factors, and thus consolidating funds “can help magnify the public health impact.”

Although the budget reduces overall funding for global health, from $571 million to $532 million in 2021, officials carved out an extra $50 million for global health security, which are measures aimed at disease detection and emergencies. That bump comes at the expense of international HIV/AIDS programs, which is being cut by about $58 million.


 

Trump administration budget cuts could become a major problem as coronavirus spreads BY CHRIS MORRIS February 26, 2020

fortune_com/2020/02/26/coronavirus-covid-19-cdc-budget-cuts-us-trump/

The cuts started in 2018, as the White House focused on eliminating funding to Obama-era disease security programs. In March of that year, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, whose job it was to lead the U.S. response in the event of a pandemic, abruptly left the administration and his global health security team was disbanded.

That same year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was forced to slash its efforts to prevent global disease outbreak by 80% as its funding for the program began to run out. The agency, at the time, opted to focus on 10 priority countries and scale back in others, including China.

Also cut was the Complex Crises Fund, a $30 million emergency response pool that was at the secretary of state’s disposal to deploy disease experts and others in the event of a crisis. (The fund was created by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.)

Overall in 2018, Trump called for $15 billion in reduced health spending that had previously been approved, as he looked at increasing budget deficits, cutting the global disease-fighting budgets of the CDC, National Security Council (NSC), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Health and Human Services (HHS) in the process.

The effects of those cuts are being felt today. …

Did Trump Fire the US Pandemic Response Team? As a new coronavirus spread in 2020, so did concerns about the United States' preparedness for a potential pandemic. BETHANIA PALMA PUBLISHED 26 FEBRUARY 2020 UPDATED 28 FEBRUARY 2020

snopes_com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

Claim
The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs.
Rating

True

The House (Democratic House) passed a bipartisan bill for 8.3 billion to address the coronavirus disease. THAT IS MORE THAN 3 TIMES WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE ASKED FOR. And it’s probably not enough. The Dems are desperately trying to help govern. By doing so, they might even help save us from our DOTUS’s incompetence.

Meantime, I say “F you” to the daily Pence group briefing. I say “F you” to them, because every day they say that thousands of tests will be available by the end of the week. 1.5 million tests will be available next week.

What about right now??? The disease has been circulating (we now know) for at least several weeks, inside the USA. And right now, we are being told daily that lots of testing will be available.

We cannot understand this disease without identifying it. And the T rump administration seems to be doing what it always does, lie and delay.

The COVID-19 virus is immune to T rump lies and scams. It will do what it will do regardless of T rump’s minimization lies.

It didn’t listen when T rump said the cases in the US were about to go to zero. It is not listening to T rump’s current attempt to blame Obama for the crisis.

It doesn’t care that T rump keeps suggesting that a vaccine will be available soon, or that T rump says that the whole problem will go away when the weather gets warmer.

It doesn’t care whether the stock market goes up or down, (which seems to be T rump’s biggest concern about the virus impact).

 

 

 

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/trump-coronavirus-vaccine-pentagon-lying.html

 

This is maddening: