The cafe at Izu Shaboten Zoo in Shizuoka, Japan uses stuffed Capybaras to enforce social distancing
(Photos by @chacha0rca) pic.twitter.com/g15HTL2IG0
— Spoon & Tamago (@Johnny_suputama) May 21, 2020
24-hour coronavirus update:
??Researchers plan to recruit around 10,000 people for vaccine trials
??South Africa could see up to 50,000 coronavirus deaths
??How South Korea turned an urban-planning system into a virus-tracking databasehttps://t.co/sMDHIXd81R— Reuters (@Reuters) May 22, 2020
#UPDATES US records a further 1,260 deaths from COVID-19, bringing its total to 95,921, with more than 1.6 million cases of the virus, far more than any other nation, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University pic.twitter.com/r9QlkvGSUG
— AFP news agency (@AFP) May 23, 2020
The @WHO has advised governments that before reopening, the percentage of #COVID19 tests that are positive should remain <5% for 14 days. We found that 26 US states don't yet meet this criterion. https://t.co/kcOoZOUhLK pic.twitter.com/TZkjVuRZZp
— Jennifer Nuzzo, DrPH (@JenniferNuzzo) May 21, 2020
The death toll amounts to 12 airliners crashing every day for two months. Yet Americans are hardly awash with shared grief.
Is it too abstract? Incomprehensible?
Our look at an atomized, compartmentalizing country at a grim milestone — w @Noahbiermanhttps://t.co/EjkZDW8Krr
— Eli Stokols (@EliStokols) May 22, 2020
A 50-state, 50-policies approach to #Covid19 is not what the U.S. needs, argues @DrHowardKoh, former assistant secretary for health in the Obama administration. Coronavirus doesn't care about state lines. https://t.co/HrRZ3taF88
— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) May 22, 2020
Exclusive: U.S. plans massive coronavirus vaccine testing effort to meet year-end deadline https://t.co/wiALtsuNrI pic.twitter.com/P5l8l422cR
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 23, 2020
Been playing around with FT's data for an article I'm working on.
This stat blew my mind.
Italy and Spain had among worst outbreaks in Europe. But by day 80, Italy was down 80% from peak, Spain was down 93%.
US (top line in chart) at same point is down only 28% from peak. pic.twitter.com/TC70RCGAD7
— Jeremy TEST/TRACE/ISOLATE Konyndyk (@JeremyKonyndyk) May 22, 2020
Looking at the new case data for many states, we see a pattern: smooth exponential growth from early March to early April. Thanks to distancing, almost all states peak around April 7. Then Trump's reopening campaign starts. By April 22 we see irregular resurgences: the Trump Wave pic.twitter.com/l6pc0wBX5b
— Mark Gubrud (@mgubrud) May 22, 2020
Are we on a longterm COVID plateau? Italy and Spain have seen daily cases drop to 10% or less of their peaks. They peaked less than 2 weeks before the US. Ours have barely fallen at all. Expanded testing accounts for some of that but not all. Not most. https://t.co/HEqcKoRqrT
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 22, 2020
the big difference here of course being that these countries *actually did a lockdown* https://t.co/1rQcZoATKt
— James "Stay In. Make Masks. Test People" Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) May 22, 2020
Steeper fall in fatalities is definitely a good sign and a sign that expanded testing is a major factor (as I discuss). But take NY out of the picture and the steepness isn't as clear. pic.twitter.com/to1MNUUoRN
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 22, 2020
To put ‘herd immunity’ in perspective, every community in the US would likely need to undergo at least 3 or 4 succsive NYC level outbreaks to get to herd immunity. Excited to try? https://t.co/LtWZiztN1Z via @TPM
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 22, 2020
The largest study yet of convalescent serum in coronavirus patients has turned up muddy results https://t.co/wcn9SBN9uH
— NYT Science (@NYTScience) May 23, 2020
China reports no new coronavirus cases for first time https://t.co/b3ZBRQWUrP
— ST Foreign Desk (@STForeignDesk) May 23, 2020
#UPDATE Russia is expected to register a spike in deaths for the month of May, Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said on Friday, as the country battles the coronavirus pandemic https://t.co/vPfroHEHIK pic.twitter.com/8YMtOxdymb
— AFP news agency (@AFP) May 22, 2020
Why is Russia's reported death rate from the coronavirus so much lower than in the US or UK? One reason may be that one out of every three doctors surveyed say they have been told to attribute deaths by covid-19 to another disease. https://t.co/nOcKFdq92R
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) May 22, 2020
Brazil overtakes Russia in coronavirus cases; now second highest https://t.co/6jgc1kEPBK
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 23, 2020
For those who say it only kills people who’ll die soon anyway. https://t.co/CCSksZzBYE
— Nicolas Veron (@nicolas_veron) May 22, 2020
Germany's confirmed coronavirus cases rise by 638 to 177,850: RKI https://t.co/9aIJynkjH9 pic.twitter.com/drLI3IeWPY
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 23, 2020
Singapore's health ministry confirms 642 more coronavirus cases https://t.co/8tdj7ymIZ3 pic.twitter.com/1MMIkdmamV
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 23, 2020
Indonesia reports 949 coronavirus new cases, 25 new deaths https://t.co/8Tz940rcCO pic.twitter.com/i3Of8sQdow
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 23, 2020
Indonesians are turning to smugglers and bogus travel documents to get around bans on an annual end-of-Ramadan exodus that could send coronavirus cases skyrocketing in the world's biggest Muslim majority nation https://t.co/e16yXIk8uQ pic.twitter.com/xH0U0WcI4U
— AFP news agency (@AFP) May 23, 2020
The #COVID19 pandemic today reached a milestone in #Africa, with more than 100,000 confirmed cases. While numbers have not grown at the same exponential rate as in other regions, countries must continue to scale efforts.
➡️https://t.co/js4pDgmBlm pic.twitter.com/A1SVfvXLpl
— WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) May 22, 2020
Coronavirus in Kenya: 'I buried my cousin on Facebook Live' https://t.co/QUOKLGs6S8
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) May 23, 2020
There have been claims that #COVID19 has acquired mutations leading to more transmissible strains. We formally tested whether this was the case using 15,000 #SARSCoV2 genomes from all over the world:
… and the answer is no, not at all!
(1/5)https://t.co/NxIlUcFDE9 pic.twitter.com/NyHv3eq6BY— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) May 22, 2020
2001: anthrax
2003: SARS
2009: H1N1
2014: Ebola
2015: Zika
2020: Covid
This pandemic is historic, but health security threats are alarmingly common. We must break the reactive cycle of panic and neglect and prepare our public health and medical systems for the next threat.— Caitlin Rivers, PhD (@cmyeaton) May 22, 2020
This is great news, because it's never going to be acceptable after this for people to be asked to *take off* their face masks in public.
I'm very pro-mask now. https://t.co/KVy9V61CIW
— Marshall ? Steinbaum (@Econ_Marshall) May 23, 2020
If you’re worried about wiping down grocery bags or disinfecting mailed packages because of the coronavirus, this CDC guidance might bring some relief. It confirms what the agency has been saying for months. https://t.co/osnlkohmJi
— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 23, 2020
Mike Schultz tells @stephgosk that he hopes his shocking before-and-after photos will warn others that COVID-19 "is serious and can happen to you.”https://t.co/Cjd4ZOr0r2
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) May 22, 2020
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s daily numbers. 48 new cases, 25 of them involving noncitizens, 21 of those among illegal immigrants at a detention centre.44 from local infection. Four “import” cases, in repatriated Malaysians. Total 7,185 cases. 53 more patients recovered, total 5,912 recovered or 82.3% of all cases. Of 1,158 active/contagious cases, 9 are in UCU and five are on ventilators. No new deaths, total 115. Infection fatality rate 1.60%, case fatality rate 1.91%.
DG of Health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah reported that 35 government officers attended the staff meeting on Wednesday at which PM Muhyiddin Yassin was exposed. The officer who tested positive is in hospital for isolation and treatment; the rest are isolating at home like the PM and will be tested before release from isolation.
Baud
It kind of sucks that convalescing Mike Schultz looks better than I do.
RSA
@Baud:I was gonna say that at 5’11, 155# I’m basically Schultz’s “after” picture. Not feeling skeletal…
Barbara
The concept of shared grief seems misplaced. It seems striking that the 1918 flu pandemic did not result in prolonged national grief. You go through a pandemic. It is not something that happens to you. Even so, I think it is a mistake to see deaths as the only important consequence — and the uneven distribution as an advantage as Trump apparently does. Anyone trying to stay safe, or trying to keep a parent safe, is being profoundly affected in a negative way. And the message coming across every day from Republicans is, “You don’t matter.”
raven
@Barbara: “the 1918 flu pandemic did not result in prolonged national grief” What makes you say that?
Barbara
@raven: Historians note the lack of any obvious enduring impact. No memorials or remembrance day. It isn’t mourned like a war even though comparable numbers of people died.
raven
@Barbara: hmmmm
Aleta
Thank you Anne Laurie
Mousebumples
Re 1918 flu and prolonged grief, I had read speculation somewhere (citation forgotten) that that was, in part, due to the pandemic happening amidst a world war. Families were already seeing their sons/husbands/brothers die in battle, so they became somewhat inured to the growing body count. ?
Barbara
@raven: It’s just an observation.
terben
From the Australian Dept of Health:
‘As at 3:00pm on 23 May 2020, a total of 7,106 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Australia, including 102 deaths and 6,494 have been reported as recovered from COVID-19.
Over the past week, there has been an average of 9 new cases reported each day. Of the newly reported cases, the majority have been from Victoria.
Of cases with a reported place of acquisition, 62.1% have recent international travel history, including over 1,300 cases associated with cruise ships.
To date, over 1,192,000 tests have been conducted nationally. Of those tests conducted 0.6% have been positive.’
There have been 11 new cases and one death since yesterday. There are now 35 patients in hospital of whom 5 are in ICU and ventilated.
raven
@Barbara: as was mine
RSA
@Barbara:
On an academic library Web site, a search for Spanish flu:
World War I:
Wow.
Dorothy A. Winsor
We got our regular Friday afternoon update on what’s happening with COVID in my retirement community. So far, only the one resident of the memory unit has tested positive. That was about 3 weeks ago. That person was hospitalized and, last I heard, was stable.
Two workers who tested positive a couple of weeks ago are still recovering at home. Another worker in the memory unit building was exposed elsewhere two days after working a shift and tested positive. They’re still asymptomatic and are at home. Over 200 workers have been tested for antibodies. Three tested positive and are awaiting results of further testing. They’re asymptomatic.
The moral of the story is that test-and-trace has been effective so far.
The other moral is that asymptomatic people can be scary as hell
Viva BrisVegas
@Barbara:
WW1 got in the way. Win or lose, the state needs to rationalise the result of any war and it does that through official memorials and commemorations. The state feels no obligation to remember that which does not reinforce the authority of the state.
However, I’ve never seen anything to suggest that the grief felt over the loss of loved ones to the flu virus was in any way inferior to the grief felt over the war dead. It was just more private.
Sure Lurkalot
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s just the opposite of the purple cow ditty…”I’d rather be than see one.”
And please with the recognition that you could be one if you leave the house at all.
WereBear
There was an earlier discussion about how the country’s fear and grief was subsumed in 1920s literature. And yes; the war was both the cause of the world wide exposure, no doubt; and the excuse for not recognizing it as a trauma.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
They decided they are all brown or minorities who deserved to die.
Fuck off and go back to your casino you gambling addict.
Geminid
I heard that Patrick Ewing, the great Georgetown U. and N.Y. Knicks center is in the hospital with Covid-19. He’s now Georgetown’s coach; he’s 57.
debbie
@Barbara:
I’m not sure I agree. Grief is expressed in many ways. Weren’t the devil-be-damned carefree days of the 1920s a reaction to both WWI and the epidemic?
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I was talking about this with my doctor yesterday. She said that one of the more popular antibody tests has a 48% false result rate. It’s still going to be a while until there can be certainty about this.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
On line friend who lives in Africa was telling me most of the deaths are rich people; when the poor realized their was a pandemic they knew they were screwed, walked off their went home to their villages and barracked themselves in until this over. The African Rich on the other hand are stuck in the cities and normally fly to Europe for medical care when they are ill, but now they are stuck with the crappy medical systems in their own countries they’ve been neglecting for decades now.
As for economic for the little people, well as one of my friends put it, better dead broke than dead.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@debbie: Ideally, you’d use the actual test for the virus, but of course, you can’t get those unless you’re already sick, even in a place where lots of vulnerable old people live. So we have to hobble along with what we have.
@Sure Lurkalot: We know so little. Thanks, Trump.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Popular Culture claims it’s solely because of WWI. The twenties are also the rise of racism, ethnic nationalism, isolationism. socialism, the suburbs and car culture. All of those take another spin if thinks of it terms of the population experiencing a pandemic.
debbie
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
PBS recently reran the American Experience episode about the 1918 flu. Believe me, grief at the loss of loved ones was very evident.
hueyplong
My Canadian grandfather had an older brother who was shot in no-man’s land at Passchendaele and a younger sister who contracted the influenza. He survived, she didn’t.
A decent guess is that everyone is correct. Less public grieving over those lost to the pandemic, but equal private grieving.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@debbie: Well, here is my personal family history – My great grandfather had a reputation for being a lonely guy, that was because between the Spanish Flue and a Typhus epidemic in Pittsburgh him and his mother were the only survivors of that family. On the other hand grief passes, he got married and started another family so he had his kids to focus on.
Probably the difference between the Spanish Flue and WWI, in war society takes your child from you and send them to die, so the there is someone to blame and resent for the death (what was the line one mother of one the dead at Iwo Jima wrote to the Commandant of the US Marine Corps “It took us eighteen years to raise him and you eighteen months to finish the job”). Pandemics are just an act of nature.
different-church-lady
Why the fuck do we have a hedge fund CEO telling us what public health policy ought to be?
Barbara
@debbie: The absence of collective grief, like the kind of grief that arose after 9/11. That is what the first few snippets were about. I am saying it might not really be as remarkable as they seem to think and that it does not mean that we don’t have collective negative feelings about the pandemic, but that pandemics are a different experience from war. Of course individuals are grieving their losses intensely.
Gvg
Apparently a great grandmother of mine died in a flu camp. She contracted it and was isolated in this official city camp by the authorities. Massachusetts. She died a couple of weeks later and my grandfather and his sister were raised by their fathers sister who was rather strict. Great grandfather had to work to eat so he couldn’t take care of the kids too. Many families couldn’t make some arrangements and children were given up to orphanages. According to my father, his dad never criticized his Aunt Bertha even though others did. He hardly saw his dad while growing up. Dad has become a family historian and sent me a reminder email about it a couple of weeks ago.
My grandmother who became his wife was in one of those orphanages until adopted when she was 5. It wasn’t because of the flu, but they were scary places and she was very afraid of rats.
i think the flu didn’t hit all places equally, just like this one actually. That may explain some of the difference in stories. My father found a lot of background info on a book about that specific home towns history.
Nicole
Interesting about surveillance and face masks- you think, every time I sigh and enter my passcode into my phone when I’m outside, I would have thought about that sooner. I would love to see a Venn Diagram of folks who complain about the surveillance state overlapping with those who are refusing to wear a mask in public because freedumb.
Uncle Cosmo
What you’re overlooking is the state of medicine and public health ca. 1918. The role of bacteria in causing disease had been established starting in the 1860s (Pasteur, Koch, et al.), but there were no effective treatments for the diseases they caused until 1910 (Salvarsan, for syphillis), and the first appearance of what we would recognize as antibiotics in the early 1930s (sulfa drugs). Viruses were discovered starting in the late 1890s – and there were no effective pharmaceutical treatments for any viral illness until the 1960s.
Why does this matter? At the time of the Spanish flu pandemic, humans were subject to a whole megashitload** of potentially fatal infectious diseases. The main public health response were avoidance (e.g., Vibrio cholerae in water supplies) and prevention (vaccines). If you came down with one of these diseases, the only treatments available were symptomatic and/or palliative, e.g., aspirin (marketed worldwide by Bayer starting in 1899) to reduce fever. You sat with your child, or parent, or grandparent, kept them bundled up, fed them chicken soup, put cold compresses on their foreheads, prayed – & hoped their internal defenses (the poorly-understood immune system) would eventually shake off the illness. If they didn’t – you buried them.
The point: People died from infectious diseases in those days, and this was widely known and accepted, even if deaths were not widespread or common. (I.e., everyone knew someone who had died or who had a relative or close friend who had died – two degrees of separation max.) What was notable about the Spanish flu was its transmissibility and the speed of death in later waves, particularly of young, healthy adults.
And when that H1N1 virus burned itself out in the global population, people breathed a huge sigh of relief, got on about their lives – & in all likelihood never spoke of it for fear that if whatever malevolent transcendent entity had sicced it on the world heard one speaking of it, They might send it back for a return engagement.
** Technical term, equal to 1,000,000 shitloads.
The Moar You Know
Just want to state the obvious: somehow, they got Fauci. These fucking people. They just keep digging until they find your secrets and then they either ruin you or you go along. It’s the one thing this administration is really good at.
Calouste
To put the life expectancy reduction numbers for Bergamo (8 years for men, 5.6 years for women) in perspective, the Spanish flu lowered the life expectancy in the US by 12 years. And of course we don’t know much yet about the long term effects for COVID-19 survivors, so those numbers are likely to go up
WaterGirl
@The Moar You Know: I don’t understand this reference to Fauci. What did I miss?
MoCA Ace
Yes they are… excited for us to try.
Shalimar
It is tourist season in the Florida panhandle. People apparently had enougb time to make reservations since the re-opening. Busiest weekend of the year so far, and at least twice as much traffic as we have had since Spring Break fizzled halfway through.
Chief Oshkosh
@different-church-lady:
So that we never forget that, as a class, they’re basically sociopaths? Just a guess.
J R in WV
@Shalimar
What with all this reopen The Nation for business shit, these people are going to kill hundreds of thousands more people this spring. I’m personally glad most Democrats (like all my friends and close neighbors) are using masks and staying home a whole lot. We are that much less likely to die or need hospital care.
Stay safe as you can !!!
J R in WV
@Chief Oshkosh:
“sociopaths!”
Well put, Chief, well said ~!!~ And half of them fail at it !
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@different-church-lady: That was my first thought on reading that headline. Ummm Nope, I’ll listen to the doctors thanks. I work with dozens of doctors. COVID-19 scares the crap out of most of them. 2 just had babies as this thing was starting. They are working from home since mid-March…
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Uncle Cosmo: we are (in the U.S.) at least some of us are very privileged and so very ignorant of all the diseases people used to have to live with (and still do were vaccinations are not available). My sister was born in the mid-50s. She caught the measles at 2 and nearly died, my parents were so happy when a polio vaccine and then a measles vaccine became available. I was born in 61, as soon as they could get me the shot, they did. My mother was born at the end of the 20s in very rural New England, when she was about 8 the entire family came down with scarlet fever. Her 2 month old sister came very close to dying. My grandmother was left motherless at 2 when her 18 year old mother died in childbirth.
Bill Arnold
@different-church-lady:
Why the fuck do we have a hedge fund CEO telling us what public health policy ought to be?
Because he is selfish and greedy and wealthy, and greed and selfishness are good, as proven by wealth.
chopper
that’s cause italy and spain shutdown country-wide, for weeks and weeks. our federal executive, OTOH, are idiots.
Another Scott
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Thanks for the report. :-(
Too much of the MSM reporting on COVID-19 takes all the official numbers as being objective and true and a reflection of reality. We know they’re not in far too many cases.
I hope someone is figuring out how to keep track of “excess deaths” in a more real-time way. That’s probably the only way we’re going to know how bad this thing really is, and if/when it’s over. At least until there’s universal, accurate, testing (which I don’t expect for may years, if ever).
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
lists USA data by state starting in 2017, but they say much of the 2020 data is incomplete… :-/ (I haven’t tried looking at it in detail yet – the spreadsheet is huge.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Carlo
@MoCA Ace: Talk of herd immunity to COVID19 is scientifically illiterate.
For an epidemic of this infectivity (R0>3) herd immunity occurs at about 70% of the population infected.We know that even NY isn’t close to that number, because the infection fatality rate (IFR) is >0.1%, and not enough people died in New York.
But it gets stupider: herd immunity is _not_ the end of the epidemic, it is merely the moment when the infected fraction begins to decline, because recoveries+fatalities now outpace new infections. The epidemic still keeps going until new infections go to zero. By which point, for R0>3, about 95% of the population has been infected. Essentially everybody gets the virus.
With IFR>0.1%, that means that if we try for herd immunity without a vaccine, about one person in 1000 walking around today is a COVID19 fatality. In the US that’s over 300,000 dead. Any smug son of a bitch who suggests that we should do this deserves an epic ass-kicking.