Coronavirus Special Coverage

A collection of news posted throughout the week for those that want signal, not noise.

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COVID-19: key developments for Friday, March 27, 2020

The US added more than 15,000 cases since yesterday and continues to lead the globe in number of active cases.  Global cases rose by over 60,000. Italy continues to suffer a huge number of daily deaths, nearly 1,000 per day. Italy is slowly bending the curve—the number of new cases per day is slowly decreasing. Europe remains the COVID epicenter, but the US may overtake all of Europe within weeks in the absence of a coherent national strategy to battle the pandemic.

How to handle food, money, and other ways to stay safe during this time. Hand washing and endeavoring not to touch your face (I say endeavoring because it is terribly difficult not to do this) are extremely important. Stay home as much as you can. Social distancing is the best measure. Here’s a related useful demonstration:

Dyson and others in industry are working on making ventilators. It’s useful and it’s needed, but it sure makes me wonder why we don’t have a national plan of attack for this kind of thing. Why is private industry tasked with this? Is this the most effective way to address needs during a pandemic? GM and Ventec are also ready to help, but the White House is weary of the cost.

14 million more jobs could be lost by summer. These losses are estimated to happen even in the face of a 1-trillion-dollar stimulus. Nevada, Montana, and Hawaii are projected to be hit the hardest.

Crocs will donate 10,000 pairs of shoes per day to health care workers. Health care workers can request a pair here.

Cuomo asks for 30-40K ventilators, but the president doesn’t “believe you need 30,000 or 40,000“.

Folks are getting creative to prevent masks and respirators from hurting their face. Incidentally, I wouldn’t recommend this with an n95 mask as it would cause too much air leakage. But for a surgical mask? Sure.

Wearing a face mask for an extended period of time. Sew a button to a headband to keep from destroying your ears.
byu/daito- inlifehacks

Boris Johnson has tested positive and has mild symptoms. He has a fever and cough and is isolating at home.

Mayor de Blasio expects half of New Yorkers to get the virus. Half of the infected in NY are under 50. The Health Commissioner believes the crisis will last through September. Mayor de Blasio still has yet to mandate a strict lockdown for NY.

Is Wuhan’s death toll real? There are reasons to question it. I am reminded of the rumors that crematoriums in Wuhan were running 24 hours per day, processing an estimated 1,000 bodies per day. Now this was just a rumor, but as the daily death toll in Italy rises towards 1,000 I am once again left to wonder.

Chemicals needed to make test reagents are running short. Supply chain challenges could domino, resulting in testing capabilities coming to a halt. An increased diversity of tests which use different chemical components could help prevent this.

Things are getting scary in NY:

A temporary hospital has been built, which will help:

A reader provides a useful link to a UW COVID-19 Projection calculator. Play with the numbers! You can click the drop-down arrow to play with state projections.

Anticipated hospital beds needed by date

  • 8 Comments

    • Bob6590

      You have been doing a great job keeping us up to date. I checked in here 40 days ago or so, and have been checking in most every day ever since. So thank you.

      I decided to make a comment today, and it is that I am a little frustrated to find that you don’t cover some of the points in today’s national COVID19 Team news conference from 5-~6:30 tonight (March 27). Maybe it was after your deadline for this, if so I apologize.

      Maybe you don’t have time to watch them, I’m retired and so can do it most days(if I can find it).

      Here is the real problem. I know if I don’t watch the conference completely myself, and rely on the media to cover what was laid out — guess what?  On checking various media the issues reported are only ones that support the press’s agenda. Lots of important stuff is lost.

      Left, center(a myth lately) or right…they all have an agenda, and I don’t believe their agenda includes telling both sides of the issue at hand anymore. Maybe it did in Walter Cronkite’s or Paul Harvey’s time, but not now.

      Another problem is very few are actually showing the whole conference, all the major media this week cut out after 30-40 minutes. That means that the true medical experts on the team, who go on after the politicians,  are cut off.  So we have media bites instead of full explanations.  This a darned complicated situation and bites don’t cover it. That’s why I come here to read you summaries daily, after all…. I also have been able to find some feeds of the entire conference to watch on the internet, thank goodness.

      Thanks for listening to me, and also again Thanks for your contributions to this site.

      Bob

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      • Kaizenjutsu Bob6590

        Bob, would you please share those links?

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      • Bob6590 Kaizenjutsu

        I found it on Cspan, but since have no cable anymore, didn’t connect. I had it on a local stations feed for 1/2 hour, then they dropped it. Eventually did a Google search for White House press conference and found it still up live on Breitbart, and also a NY TV station that kept it going.

         

        Just looked on YouTube, and the recorded full conference appears to available several places, if you want to go back and see. There may be several days recorded up there, I did not go back, however.

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      • Stephanie ArnoldContributor Bob6590

        Thank you for your interest and your comment. I’m usually writing around that time–I don’t tend to watch the conferences live. Because I am writing at those times I have to read about them after the fact.

        The news coverage of the conferences is broadly available and covers what decisions have been made and those decisions (if a national quarantine were enacted, for example) would probably also be covered here.

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      • Bob6590 Stephanie Arnold

        Thanks

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      • John AdamaStaff Bob6590

        Bob, thanks for the note. We’re doing our best to scale up in these crazy times. But you’re more than welcome to comment with your recap of the news conference if/when you feel like it. We all appreciate factual/civil contributions here.

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      • Girard Bent Bob6590

        I agree we all should watch the news conferences in their entirety although it’s hard for me. This might be something:

        https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-task-force-briefing-live-stream-sunday-how-watch-white-houses-latest-covid-19-1494891

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      • Bob6590 Girard Bent

        Thanks for this link Girard, as I tuned into it late today. Looks like it actually starts at about 31 minute mark in this record.

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