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Key developments for Thursday, September 10, 2020

5 Comments on Key developments for Thursday, September 10, 2020

Welcome to the newly revamped Key Developments, now twice weekly and with non-COVID news. Right now, it’s actually still just COVID news, but we’ll be slowly morphing it into something broader as we go.

The world has over 28.3 million cases.  The world has added 1.9 million cases since last Thursday. There have been over 913,000 deaths. The US has nearly 6.6 million cases and has had over 196,000 deaths. At least 945 Americans have died from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours. The US has gained over 37,000 new cases since yesterday. India is first in the world for daily case growth, with over 97,000 new cases.

COVID-19 positive patients with no known positive COVID-19 contacts are more than twice as likely to have dined in at a restaurant, bar, or coffee shop in the two weeks before the test compared to those who tested negative:

The Southern Hemisphere essentially skipped its flu season because of masks and social distancing. The Northern Hemisphere typically mimics the Southern Hemisphere’s flu pattern (if they have a bad season, we follow with a bad season). Although this bodes well for us, it is predicated on the use of masks and social distancing. The US may still have a significant flu season as many are going about their lives as normal as we head into fall and winter. It’s best to get your flu shot to prevent concomitant flu and COVID:

The governor of South Dakota has diverted 5 million dollars from its coronavirus relief fund to create tourism ads for the state. The state is second in the country for new cases per capita.

Partisan bickering has axed a much-needed pandemic relief package. Provisions for school funding, jobless benefits, paycheck protection subsidies, vaccine research and development, and more have evaporated. A much anticipated second round of direct payments to Americans was not even included in the defeated legislation.

Meanwhile, half of households in the four largest US cities are suffering from financial distress:

Here’s a copy of the report on financial impacts to US households.

Transverse myelitis was (purportedly) the adverse event associated with the AstraZenica COVID-19 vaccine trial. Transverse myelitis is an inflammation of the spinal cord which can interfere with central nervous system signaling and even cause paralysis.

Mask makers are struggling to meet production demands because of lack of supplies. There’s not enough of the meltblown material needed to produce the number of n95 masks hospitals currently need. Manufacturers also don’t want to take the risk of investing in the infrastructure to make more if the need is too short-lived to make it worth it. Once again, the Defense Production Act could be used here, and it’s unclear to me why we’re not demanding this as a nation.

Florida is still concealing its numbers:

The European resurgence is really concerning:

Stephanie Arnold | cosmicpixle

Stephanie Arnold is an advanced practice psychiatric nurse and a doctoral candidate in UA Tuscaloosa’s DNP program. Stephanie moonlights from time to time at UCLA teaching mental health nursing. She also likes making cold-process soap.

  • 5 Comments
    • RS September 11, 2020

      First: I continue to appreciate these key developments, thank you for continuing to put them together!

      Second: could you just put the tweets inline with the text? For me, they are consistently unaligned with their main text paragraphs, so I spend a little too much time trying to figure out which tweets go with which part of the main text. Honestly, I don’t see the benefit of putting them in a separate column. If you keep them in a different color and font size, anyone who’s trying to skim the article can see and pick them out just as easily, and it will make the reading experience better for those of us actually interested in the full text of the article, too.

      5 |
      • Jon StokesStaff RS September 11, 2020

        Can you post a screenshot or email one to me at [email protected], along with your OS and browser info? That would help us troubleshoot this.

        This is how they’re supposed to look:  tweets-tp

        7 |
      • Bob6590 Jon Stokes September 11, 2020

        RS and Jon

        Just FYI,

        If I use Edge, the Microsoft browser, it looks like Jon’s. I usually use Firefox (for a lot of reasons, including lack of tracking) and it sets the tweets and other stuff off on the side, and then the alignment issues mentioned are happening.  So it’s likely a browser issue. Try Edge, it works OK.

        7 |
      • RS Jon Stokes September 14, 2020

        Thank you for the quick reply, sorry my own was delayed. D’oh that it’s a browser issue. Here’s some screenshots.

        Chrome version 85-blahblah on Windows 10 handles it properly:

        2020-09-14_Win10_GoogleChrome_85-0-4183-102

        Comodo IceDragon version 65-blahblah on Win 10 has the issue I was seeing:

        2020-09-14_Win10_ComodoIceDragon_65-0-2-15

        And Firefox version 80-blahblah on Windows 10 also has the issue:

        2020-09-14_Win10_MozillaFirefox_80-0-1

        I’ll swap browsers in the future, in case it’s not an easy fix. Hope the screenshots help, but let me know if there’s any more information that would be useful.

        Thanks again for the response,

        RS

        4 |
      • Jon StokesStaff RS September 14, 2020

        Thanks! This is what I suspected. I’ll let our devs know.

        5 |