There are now 1.5 million cases around the world, gaining over 78,000 cases since yesterday. There have been over 88,000 total deaths. The US added nearly 27,000 of those cases, and had over 1,800 deaths. The US is likely to reach 500,000 cases in the next two days.
Are people producing a robust immune response during/after active infection? Some evidence says many may not. Does this mean people can get re-infected? We don’t for sure, but there have been scores of case reports of re-infection. It’s not surprising that those who experience mild illness produce a mild immune response. Those who have gotten very sick produce a larger immune response. Coronaviruses are typically very good at hiding from the body’s defense mechanisms. They cloak themselves in sugars to do this. It’s the reason there are 4 ubiquitous and endemic coronaviruses in global circulation.
Wuhan is coming back to life. The lockdown is over after ten long weeks. Tough rules are still in place to prevent a viral resurgence. 94% of businesses are back up and running.
A pre-print shows a variety of animals are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. Cats, both big and domesticated, can get sick. There’s no evidence that cats can spread the disease to humans. If cats are in a household with infected people, keep them in quarantine in the house like a person. Keep indoor cats indoors and try to prevent them from mingling with indoor/outdoor cats who could be exposed from their owners.
Policymakers recommend removing infected people from their homes and putting them in “voluntary” facilities, like re-purposed hotels. This tactic, presumably designed to reduce transmission within households and enable other people to return to work, is touted as less draconian than other proposed policies that would mandate that infected Americans get placed in central facilities (potentially against their will). I don’t know about you, but I don’t plan on being placed in a coronavirus concentration camp. I don’t care if it’s a hotel or some other central facility—the premises the policies are based on are flawed. Infected people shed virus for days before they show up positive on tests—so why not let them quarantine at home? The family members are already exposed. These policies also assume ubiquitous testing which we do not have the testing bandwidth to do.
Did we have intelligence about the initial outbreak in November? Was it ignored? Defense Secretary Mark Esper says he can’t recall.
When we say things are not going great in NY, we mean it:
How bad is it getting in NYC? That's a photo of the National Guard loading bodies into ***an Enterprise rental van***. https://t.co/Mh3aAm5oEE
— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) April 8, 2020
Huge amounts of produce are going unused and unpurchased, and they’re being dumped. This is an absolute catastrophe of food waste, especially considering American food insecurity at this time.
James Galbraith argues that economies based on the tenets of neoliberalism are burning down before our eyes. He gives a rational call for a more sustainable economy based on resilience and longer-term horizons and economic goals. The pandemic crisis lays bare the failures of our current system, he argues.
