Coronavirus 2

[clueliss]

Missouri  stay at home extended to May 6 (and hey, he's an R) (guess that  means we (locally) decided that St. Louis isn't so okay.

 

[Ozlsn]

7 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Belgium has reported the highest number of deaths to date: 417; 127 died in hospitals, and 289 died in care homes

From reading and talking with friends there they are counting all nursing home deaths where a case has been identified as related.  Not sure if they plan on later testing for confirmation. 

7 hours ago, fraurosena said:

The lockdown in Australia has been prolonged with an additional 4 weeks, despite the low number of new confirmed cases in the country. The coming months there will be more tests and there will be more attention to tracing people who have been in contact with an infected person. New plans are being made to restrict regional outbreaks.

 Adding to that - we are also coming into winter, and there are concerns that that may affect things in terms of severe illness from coinfection, and also just needing more beds for flu. (Although being shut down should mean fewer cases of that too.) Also, like almost everywhere, there are huge concerns about reopening too soon and setting off a second wave of infection. I think once more testing establishes prevalence in the community things will change. 

Meanwhile every parent I know is counting the days until school reopens. Heh.

[Ozlsn]

Current Australian stats are still good. Of the 6,523 confirmed cases in Australia, 65 have died and 3,819 have been reported as recovered from COVID-19. More than 391,000 tests have been conducted across Australia.  There have been 55 new cases since 3:00pm yesterday. 

My state has only had one new case in 24 hours. There is cautious speculation that we might start opening schools mid-May. From a public health perspective I am all for caution.

From a trying to work full time and get my child to learn something and not destroy the house perspective... Can we open again next week please??

[clueliss]

Cases surge in Russia (me - does this mean Russia now has tests?)

Wuhan had a 50% increase in deaths due to adjustment (added cases that died at home early on)

Spoiler

 

 

[anachronistic]

My test was negative but I may still have had it, nobody knows.

Half of all cases and deaths in Massachusetts are from group homes and nursing homes. 
 

It is spreading like wildfire in poor and immigrant communities. The largest homeless shelter in Boston tested everyone and found that 36% tested positive but had no symptoms. https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/04/14/coronavirus-boston-homeless-testing

 

[clueliss]

 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

My daughter just stopped by to pick up an important piece of mail they sent here to the house.

She parked in the driveway, I washed my hands, handed her the envelope, physically stopped myself from affectionately tugging on her ponytail and started to cry as she drove away.  I couldn't even get through "I love you, drive safe" without cracking.

I HATE THIS!

I hate that my daughter can't come in my house, that I can't make her breakfast.  I hate that our dogs were crying for her as she sat in her car and they don't understand why one of their favorite humans isn't coming inside.  I hate that I'm sitting here stress crying and having to explain that to one of my sons who doesn't understand the concept of stress crying.  I miss privacy to just cry, or sing, or whatever.  

I hate that my house smells like haggis 4x a day.  

My daughter was having a rough day yesterday and I wanted to take her to dinner but all I could safely do was send her money to order in.

I know others have it much worse.  I know as introverted as I am I'm missing far fewer people than most.  I'm lucky that way.  I'm lucky to be working from home.  I'm lucky that my family is safe despite both my boys being essential workers and still going out there.

And I am lucky I found FJ all those years ago.  I don't know what I would do without you guys...you're my lifeline to sanity these days.  

I love you guys.  

 

 

 

Edited April 17, 2020 by HerNameIsBuffy

[clueliss]

Confessing to an odd source of information here because of the board I'm on and our subject matter.  The twitter account I'm pulling from is the wife of a husband and wife team of christian prophecy watcher types.  (I actually find some of these people to be rather interesting news sources since they're often watching obscure news sources - and this is one of those cases).  While he has a former news background - She has a science (I believe Molecular Biologist) background and shared a lot of medical stuff about Covid19

Hitting More children than we originally expected.

Quote

Sharon K. Gilbert

@sharonkgilbert

·

11m

Holy smokes!

@DrEricDing

have you seen this? The study estimates that for each child who requires intensive care for COVID-19, there are 2,381 children infected with the virus.

Spoiler

 

genetic barcode tracing (which country is showing which version - oh and the US has something that didn't come from China or Italy) (original source Drexel University)

Spoiler

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"José Andrés and his nonprofit aim to reopen hundreds of restaurants while feeding needy people"

Spoiler

As restaurateurs wait to see whether they qualify for small-business loans, as independent operators continue to lobby Congress to save their dying industry, as the White House convenes an economic council that includes several celebrity chefs, World Central Kitchen and its high-profile founder, José Andrés, have launched a pilot program that will feed vulnerable communities across the country while also helping hundreds of restaurants by reopening their kitchens.

Part of its Chefs for America relief operation, World Central Kitchen’s new program promises to pay the costs to prepare 1 million meals at more than 400 restaurants nationwide, which are among the hundreds of thousands of independent eateries that have been devastated by the coronavirus outbreak. According to a recent James Beard Foundation survey of more than 1,400 owners of mostly independent restaurants, operators have, on average, laid off 91 percent of their hourly workforce and nearly 70 percent of their salaried employees. These workers are, quite likely, among the 22 million people who have filed for unemployment insurance, representing a level of job loss not seen since the Great Depression.

WCK’s program hopes not only to provide jobs to some of the unemployed hospitality workers, but also to feed those people who have lost their paychecks or who are otherwise vulnerable during the pandemic. The Washington-based organization has hired workers in covid-19 hot spots, from New York City to New Orleans to the San Francisco Bay area, to identify communities in the greatest need of food: homeless people, low-income families, children without access to school meals, seniors who don’t feel safe venturing outside their front doors. WCK is also coordinating with delivery services, such as Uber Eats and Postmates, to bring hot meals to these communities.

“This is only a drop in the water,” Andrés said in a phone interview with The Washington Post. WCK hopes to expand to more restaurants in more cities across the country as funding becomes available.

With news that the Small Business Administration’s $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program is already tapped out, Nate Mook, chief executive of WCK, said the nearly $1 trillion independent restaurant industry cannot wait on an aid package that may never arrive for many owners and, even if it does, may not provide the necessary relief.

“The only thing that’s really going to save the system is the system going back to work,” Mook told The Post. “The restaurants going back to work. The staff going back, getting a paycheck. The restaurants buying from the suppliers that are also impacted by this. You got to get the whole machine going again because you can’t just have these Band-Aid solutions.”

WCK will pay restaurant owners $10 to $20 per meal and guarantee to cover hundreds of meals a day for a fixed period. The restaurateurs will know exactly how much money to expect and can use the funds to rehire staff, order the ingredients and prepare the meals. WCK will handle all other logistics. By providing the restaurants business, Mook said, “they can operate as they normally would.”

One of the restaurants now essentially serving as a relief kitchen is Reem’s California, the acclaimed Middle Eastern bakery and cafe in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood. Palestinian-Syrian chef and restaurateur Reem Assil said her kitchen is “serving anywhere from 200 to 500 meals a day, and growing, to vulnerable populations and first responders” in the neighborhood. She has had to modify her usual offerings to accommodate the lower price points offered by WCK. She said it was too early to tell whether the influx of business from the WCK partnership will help Reem’s California, whose sales dipped more than 80 percent since the coronavirus hit the Bay Area.

“It’ll probably bring us back up to more than 50 percent” of the restaurant’s pre-virus sales, she said.

Tom Colicchio, the activist-chef behind the Crafted Hospitality restaurant group and the head judge and executive producer of “Top Chef,” wasn’t sure that, at the current per-meal price, a partnership with WCK would do much to save his restaurants in a high-overhead market like New York City.

“Once you factor in rent and overhead and all that stuff, I don’t think it’s going to do it,” Colicchio said in an interview with The Post. “One thing that it does is it keeps the supply chain moving, which is good, because you’re buying food.”

“Where it’s helpful,” Colicchio added, “is feeding a lot of people. If it’s going to keep restaurants solvent, I don’t know.”

Neither Mook nor Andrés views the program as a panacea to the problems faced by the restaurant industry during the pandemic. They see it as a model that can be shown to government leaders who could decide to fund it or expand upon it with similar programs.

“Our hope is that we can show that this works and get the powers that be, in our state governments and our federal governments, to recognize that this is a solution,” Mook said. “We have people we need to feed. We have restaurants that we need to put back to work, and we’re showing that this is doable, that it’s scalable.”

The covid-19 outbreak has forced countless restaurants to pivot their business models or shut down entirely. It has forced World Central Kitchen to pivot, too. The organization, founded in 2010 after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, has learned how to safely feed people in a pandemic. WCK has fine-tuned its protocols in the weeks since the group started serving meals to the quarantined staff and passengers aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan, Mook said. At its large-scale feeding operation at Nationals Park, all workers must pass a temperature check before reporting to their stations. They must also wear masks and gloves and practice social distancing.

“Obviously, this is not saving restaurants,” said Andrés about the new partnership. “But between doing nothing and having them closed and doing something and being part of the community, what side of the history do you want to be?”

“Right now, I am doing it. I don’t need the approval of anybody. I know it’s needed,” Andrés continued. “We’re doing it because if I had to wait for somebody to tell me that we need to do this, already there would be a lot of hungry people.”

Asked whether he might eventually join the WCK program, Colicchio said: “Right now, if I knew that 10 of my cooks had covid, had a mild case and now they are over it and they have antibodies, that the science says they’re not going to get reinfected, I would have them in tomorrow doing this.

“I actually had this conversation with my chefs yesterday, saying, ‘Start reaching out to people. See if anybody was sick,’ ” he added. “As we move along, maybe in the next couple of weeks, I may ask my staff if they’re willing. I’m not going to compel them to come in. Then we’ll see what happens.”

I hope his group can save more restaurants and their employees.

[CTRLZero]

This book was my MIL's MIL's book.  I noted the publication date was around the time of the Spanish flu pandemic.  From the handwritten notes in the book and scattered newspaper clippings, it appears that this book was heavily relied on for health care advice in the then-remote Canadian town she lived in.  It's interesting to me how people were desperate to try anything to keep themselves and their children healthy.  Just like today (well, except for the distancing deniers).  (Note:  The book is 4" thick.)

 

Spoiler

 

[clueliss]

I only thought I was done - local news shared this - Jump of 400 cases in Missouri (largest one day jump so far) - per Johns Hopkins

 

[fraurosena]

Update time.

• Latest numbers from the Netherlands:
  • there are 30.449 confirmed cases; 1.235 new
  • there are 3.459 deaths; 144 new
  • there wre/are 9465 hospitalisations; 156 new
  • there are 1.258 coronapatients in the ICU
• In Belgium, a corona patient will on average infect 0.8 other people. "This means that the epidemic is shrinking in our country," said virologist Steven van Gucht. The reproduction number, the so-called R-value, lay between 2 and 3 before Belgium issued their restrictive measures.
  The number of suspected and confirmed corona deaths rose with 313 to 5163; 114 of them died in hospital, 199 died in care homes. The number of new hospitalisations and ICU-patients is still going down: 320 people were hospitalised, 399 went home; the number of ICU patients went down by 42.
• The number of new confirmed cases is the highest since April 9. There were 5252 new cases, bringing the total in Spain up to 188.086. There have been 19.478 corona related deaths. Spain is one of the worst hit countries in Europe. 
• Like Belgium, German corona patients are infecting less than one other person (0.7). 
  Germany has forbidden large events until August 31. Now there are fears that the yearly Octoberfest -- the largest beer festival in the world -- is in danger of being cancelled. "I am very, very sceptical," said Markus Söder, prime minister of Bavaria, where the Octoberfest is held. "At the moment I can hardly envision such a large event even being possible." A decision will be made in the coming two weeks. 
• Musea and other cultural institutions in Austria will be allowed to re-open in the second half of May, according to vice-chancellor Werner Kogler. Vienna has lessened the restrictive measures last Tuesday. Many smaller shops in the country are allowed to open their doors again. Large events such as festivals are still forbidden until August 31.
• The Chinese economy shrunk by 6.8% in the first quarter compared to the first quarter of last year. In comparison to the last quarter of last year the shrinkage was almost 10%. The national bureau for statistics in China, that has been measuring economic growth figures since 1992 has never recorded a shrink of the economy before. The shrinkage is a direct consequence of corona-measures shutting down factories, malls and transport-centres in January. Although Chinese authorities have cautiously been reducing many restrictive measures in the past month, the restart of the economy is slower than expected. There are still a couple of travel restrictions in place and many small businesses are remain closed. Added to that is the fact that many other countries have also issued corona-measures, leading to collapsing world trade and a lowered demand for Chinese products.
• Google reports that large numbers of hackers and cyber-criminals are taking advantage of the corona virus. Each day, Gmail has about 18 million mails with harmful links and attachments and mails with phishing attempts, in which the senders say something about the corona virus. There are also 240 million spam mails about the virus every day. Google says that 99.9% of all spam, phishing and malware is being blocked before the user receives them.
  Some mails are supposedly sent by the WHO asking for donations, or asking to open an attachment with important information about the virus. In other mails, people are requested by 'human resources' to fill in a form in order to keep being able to work from home.
• Danish hairdressers, driving schools and other small businesses will be reopening next Monday.
• Michael Cohen, Trump's erstwhile fixer, will be freed from jail early because of the corona virus. A number of convicts and guards in the prison where he is being held have tested positive for the virus. All prisoners, including Cohen, will be sent home. After a 14 day quarantine Cohen will be allowed to spend the remainder of his three year sentence under house arrest. 
• The European Parliament wants the European leaders to discuss a form of euro- or corona-bonds next week. Parliament has voted for a resolution in which the leaders are called to find the finances for these bonds. This money should be deployed as a kind of Marshall plan to aid the ailing economies in the EU. The resolution is calling these bonds 'recovery bonds'. Apart from the money from these new loans, the recovery fund should contain financing from the new European budget. The European budget does not have consensus yet, mainly because Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and Germany won't agree to pay more to Brussels.
  The European Parliament also sharply condemned the impingement of the rule of law in Hungary. 
• More than 1000 of 2300 crewmen of the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle have been infected with the corona virus. Dozens of sailors have been hospitalised, one of which in the ICU. The Charles de Gaulle returned back to its home port of Toulon in Southern France two weeks early on Sunday. It's unknown how the virus entered the ship. The first cases were confirmed at the beginning of April. 

@HerNameIsBuffy, that really sucks. I can imagine how awful you must be feeling right now. I hope you had a good cry and are feeling little better for it. Don't let anyone, even your own offspring, stop you from letting your feelings out. If they don't understand, well, tough for them. But I'm betting if you tell them you just need it to stay sane in these insane times, they actually will understand. They might think it weird, but kids think their parents are weird anyway, so nothing new there, right?

Anyway, my virtual hug is being sent your way. 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is nice:

 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

37 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

I hope you had a good cry and are feeling little better for it.

I did and I do .  He wasn't rude about it at all, just after all this time the concept of my needing a good cry to feel better still befuddles him.  Just one of those moments...I blame the haggis!

 

[clueliss]

What part of stay the heck home if you are sick don't people get? (Springfield MO area)

 

[Coconut Flan]

This should be a crime or at least a work place violation.  Suspend some people for coming to work sick and it will stop.

[Smee]

I appreciate that it’s a huge problem and needs to stop, but we don’t know the details and I’ve heard enough stories of workplace abuse on here to wonder. If the employer said he’d be fired for missing work, or he had no sick leave and was living paycheck to paycheck, then I understand the decision to keep going in during the early days of milder symptoms. It’s a messed up society when someone has to choose between feeding their family, losing their house, or working while sick. But that’s the reality for too many people. I’d want to know what the employer has done to make work-from-home possible or provide sick leave before I jumped to punishing the employee.

[Ozlsn]

If you've built up a culture of "soldier on through illness, work until you drop" then it can be hard to shift that. Especially if you factor in sick leave complications. 

I mean we have sick leave mandated and we've still had people come in and work with mild symptoms because they thought it was just a cold. And then of course they pass it on (sigh). 

[Coconut Flan]

They come in and infect five other people and there goes the productivity.  Yes, when I was working I preached stay home if you're sick I don't want it and will be out two days for every one that you are sick.  I admit I converted a few managers.  I'm possibly a bit more vocal on this one due to my messed up immune system.  I get a bit testy with people who shop and go to church sick or especially people who take their sick children to church.  

[clueliss]

I don’t have the link or the numbers, but I read an analysis of a timeline related to a care facility in Kansas City Kansas ( with multiple deaths).  1 sick employee.  Went to get tested.  There was a disconnect because the health department had no information on where the person worked.  The facility didn’t find out until the person got positive confirmation of their test.  By the time the facility found out, they had at least four patients/residents with symptoms.  

[JMarie]

long but eye-opening

https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/nurses-safety-concerns-hospitals-supply-shortages-coronavirus-20200416.html

[Princess Lee]

I’m just throwing thus out there as I’m at a loss and desperate for help.... we have had our work hours drastically reduced due to covid  (8 hours a week from my normal 40) NYS so we opted to do partial unemployment to supplement our hours... we have capability to work from home but again limited hours.  Filling out the online application for unemployment when it got to the PAU  section it has no way to enter your hour reduction but it appears that if you choose yes  that you can telecommute you’re not eligible for the PUA at all. I’ve googled everything I could think and that does appear like that is correct  but it’s under the section of the people who typically don’t qualify for unemployment IE self employed.   Anybody have a clue if you can telecommute even though reduced hours you’re not eligible for PUA?   Also can you send me the link to the info. Asked my boss and have heard nothing back and I need to file ASAP.  Again any link that answers reduced hours and telecommute. This link has the section I am referring https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/articles/2020/brad-hoylman/unemployment-insurance-benefits-faq-new-york-state-department

[Ozlsn]

5 hours ago, clueliss said:

I don’t have the link or the numbers, but I read an analysis of a timeline related to a care facility in Kansas City Kansas ( with multiple deaths).  1 sick employee.  Went to get tested.  There was a disconnect because the health department had no information on where the person worked.  The facility didn’t find out until the person got positive confirmation of their test.  By the time the facility found out, they had at least four patients/residents with symptoms.  

Ok I do not understand going to get tested and not notifying work immediately. Yes, even before you have results. That's really poor form.

[Coconut Flan]

5 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

Ok I do not understand going to get tested and not notifying work immediately. Yes, even before you have results. That's really poor form.

That would probably be grounds for termination in the facility where my mom lives.

[nst]

Good news - she doesn't have it. 

and @HerNameIsBuffy sending virtual hugs.  I know I quip but the pain you have i am so sorry. I at least get to hang out with my parents. I will send good thoughts your way.