"STAY HOME."
Pyramids in Egypt were lit up Monday night to show support for health workers battling the #coronavirus outbreak.
The country has reported at least 40 deaths and 600 cases pic.twitter.com/e6RlFsPsq3
— QuickTake by Bloomberg (@QuickTake) March 31, 2020
NEW: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide has reached 800,000 https://t.co/47MXF0XUJ0 pic.twitter.com/M2aKDIhQnx
— BNO Newsroom (@BNODesk) March 31, 2020
JUST IN: Iran reports 3,111 new cases of coronavirus and 141 new deaths.
A total of 44,606 cases and 2,898 deaths.
— Norbert Elekes (@NorbertElekes) March 31, 2020
Sanitizing and cleaning of #Jerusalem’s Western Wall today. It happens every year but this year even more important because of #Coronavirus pic.twitter.com/BBqtrlebXY
— Ruth Marks Eglash (@reglash) March 31, 2020
Wow
"Some 12,298 health workers have tested positive for #coronavirus in Spain, deputy health emergency chief Maria Jose Sierra said at a news conference on Monday. That is equivalent to around 14% of the country’s 85,195 confirmed cases."#COVID19 threat to #HCWers in ????????— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) March 30, 2020
Italian officials are scolding people on social media and threatening those who try to gather outside during the #coronavirus pandemic. pic.twitter.com/DNu37o4hmc
— AJ+ (@ajplus) March 31, 2020
Sweden took a laissez-faire approach to COVID-19 while their neighbors shut down public life and sealed the borders. It looks like we're finally seeing the results. (Graph is cumulative deaths: Sweden yellow, Denmark red, Norway blue; screenshot from /r/Denmark) pic.twitter.com/Jg1qfqo1Ei
— Connor Harris (@cmhrrs) March 30, 2020
Researchers at Oxford University are planning a safety trial on humans of what is expected to be the UK’s first coronavirus vaccine next month https://t.co/IWocXGEKdZ
— The Times (@thetimes) March 31, 2020
Reported cases of domestic violence rise 32% in one week in France, as coronavirus keeps people at homehttps://t.co/yvYDkVE3gF pic.twitter.com/6JZ9UaK0XS
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) March 31, 2020
Viktor Orban just used the coronavirus to pull a Palpatine https://t.co/R9sufX5OEr
— Adam Serwer? (@AdamSerwer) March 30, 2020
The report warns the coronavirus pandemic will inflict significant economic pain on all countries, and could throw millions in the Asia Pacific region into poverty https://t.co/Z5Psdj2It4
— TIME (@TIME) March 31, 2020
Indian doctors fight coronavirus with raincoats, helmets amid lack of equipment.
Our story, after speaking with a dozen doctors on the front lines.
Photo of torn raincoat below is from Beliaghata Infectious Disease Hospital, Kolkata.https://t.co/DOkCR6zZor pic.twitter.com/1Z7RuKvbU8
— Devjyot Ghoshal (@DevjyotGhoshal) March 31, 2020
More on #socialdistancing as privilege – particularly in India: Millions of Indians live in crowded slums and work in informal sector jobs. How are they supposed to shelter in place? https://t.co/B9LIg4xlDI via @cpuja in @slate
— Andrew Revkin (@Revkin) March 30, 2020
Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Delhi to be used to deal with COVID-19 | Track live updates on #coronavirus here – https://t.co/FNhFtlUkfv pic.twitter.com/XkSB5TUdhm
— Economic Times (@EconomicTimes) March 31, 2020
The Indian Railways' isolation prototypes can accommodate over 3 lakh beds for coronavirus patients#CoronaUpdatehttps://t.co/Ps8BaelP51
— Hindustan Times (@htTweets) March 31, 2020
#KashmirisUnderCOVIDThreat
Why Kashmir lockdown is different from Corona lockdown- u have all the facilities, but kashmiri doctors are still struggling to download information on Coronavirus. So please don’t compare this lockdown with Kashmir… pic.twitter.com/wEIvP2JKkw— ?️°°~ فقط ذوقِ پرواز ہے زندگی~°°?️ (@Ja_Oye_) March 31, 2020
The corona virus is already walking amongst us silently and invisibly. It may not kill you today but will come home with you and finish off the ones you love tomorrow and believe me the boredom and the jokes will disppear when the bodies start piling up. Pls take this seriously! pic.twitter.com/OopuOyUPS2
— Armeena Khan ? (@ArmeenaRK) March 31, 2020
Taiwan rejects the World Health Organization’s claims that it has worked with the island in combating the coronavirus outbreak https://t.co/kckc88b7r7
— Bloomberg (@business) March 30, 2020
Never been more jealous of a curve in my life. Man they nailed it.
Via Time. https://t.co/sktEp8booM pic.twitter.com/soPhg4iceJ— Ben White (@morningmoneyben) March 30, 2020
CORRECTION : Malaysia is able to do 11,750 tests/day, and the 1,414 tests/day figure is just additional specimens that are able to be tested via the newly approved testing labs
which makes Indonesia’s testing capacity even more shameful https://t.co/pD4Hpkf2wj
— COVID19 Updates in Asia (@SEACoronavirus) March 31, 2020
Thailand said that people who lie about testing #COVID19 positive as a joke for tomorrow’s april fools day will be prosecuted under the Computer Crime Act https://t.co/a0qfYbV8Mo
— COVID19 Updates in Asia (@SEACoronavirus) March 31, 2020
More details:
– Everyone should #StayAtHome
– OK to go out and buy food, medicine, or in an emergency
– Must keep at least 2m (6ft) from othershttps://t.co/HjI7c94Pyg https://t.co/7NS4rLZ6y3— James Pearson (@pearswick) March 31, 2020
Brazil will suspend the release of jobs data as companies have been unable to provide complete information https://t.co/7Ms9c3VMTJ
— Bloomberg (@business) March 30, 2020
La Nonna
Week 4 of self imposed isolation here in Puglia, Italy finally possibly turning a corner. I was reduced to tears early this morning while reading the John Prine post and listening to Joan Baez sing Hello In There. Just pent up anxiety, not so much for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren in the US, knowing that whatever happens we will not be together for good or ill for many months, perhaps another year. Video calls helping for sure. Getting masked and gloved to set out on another grocery run, thank goodness no hoarding or panic buying here, rural Italy still feeding us just fine, it’s asparagus season, 2 eu per kg., frittata tonight. Grazie mille to all bloggers here for helping me maintain a semblance of sanity while staying informed.
Amir Khalid
I doubt that the world is in the mood for April Fool’s Day this year.
Anyway, here are Malaysia’s daily numbers.
OzarkHillbilly
On the bright side, this should reduce the competition for morels this spring.
Jerzy Russian
@Amir Khalid: I am never in the mood for April Fools day. Let’s all go around and tell lies for a day.
Today, March 31, is a holiday in California, not that anyone can tell the difference these days.
Uncle Cosmo
Latest communiqué from my friend Milan in the suburbs of Prague: They are in near-complete lockdown – people can leave home for food & Rx but must be masked. “Olds” get to go to the local supermarkets from 10 am – noon. He continues:
I’ve stayed with him many times & he’s not joking about the lack of storage space. Fortunately there are 2 supermarkets within easy walking distance of his flat.
Click on that link for midday views of Prague like you’ve never seen it before: Deserted. Anyone who’s been there (and fought their way through the tourist mobs most any time of year) will be stunned. It reminds me of the montage late in the movie Before Sunrise – silent stills of places Jesse and Céline visited during the night, empty and gray and drained of their magic in the cold light of dawn.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly: ?Pepperoni and green peppers
Mushrooms, olive, chives,
Pepperoni and green peppers
Mushrooms, olive, chives.?
Baud
@Jerzy Russian:
Trump has ruined lying for everyone else.
Jim Parish
Why is the sign on the Pyramids in English, as opposed to Arabic? Are they aiming at tourists? Are they cycling through different languages?
YY_Sima Qian
@La Nonna: Very glad that Italy seems to have seen the inflection point. If Wuhan and Lombardia can turn the corner even after massive community transmission has started, so can greater Madrid and NYC. The process is long and often feel dark, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. It takes perseverance, rigor and discipline from all levels of government and society.
Amir Khalid
For those not familiar with Indian English, a lakh is 100,000. That is, the Hindustan Times tweet says Indian Railways’ prototype isolation coaches can carry a total of 300,000 beds.
Jim Parish
@Amir Khalid: Thanks. I knew that lakh was used as a large number, but didn’t recall the exact value.
Amir Khalid
@Jim Parish:
What I’m wondering is, why bother with a sign? The tourist sites are surely all closed. Who is going to be at the pyramids to see it?
OzarkHillbilly
This is Amurika. That is what we do every day.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: “Dump has ruined lying.” LOL I never thought of it that way.
“I would lie to you, but then I’d feel like an orange Soviet shitpile mobster manchild who was responsible for thousands of deaths.”
YY_Sima Qian
@Uncle Cosmo: Wow! Charles Bridge without a soul and Old Town Square deserted! I have very fond memories of Prague, despite being overrun with East Asian tourists at the time of my visit.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I like your take better.
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid:
Wheat farmers and aliens?
OzarkHillbilly
So what you’re saying is, we’re screwed.
Jerzy Russian
@Uncle Cosmo: I love Prague. I have only had two very brief visits, and both times it was “butts to nuts” , as my brother often says when describing crowded places. I am no expert, but I probably heard more than two dozen languages spoken when I was there. So strange to see it practically empty.
YY_Sima Qian
@OzarkHillbilly: I think most places will eventually get there, after faced with the undeniable calamity of the epidemic, but some sooner than others. The longer it takes to get the act together, the longer and darker and more painful the road. All of the nations in Europe and North America had the chance to be Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan (or the non-Hubei provinces in China, for that matter), and missed it. They could have been South Korea, and missed it. In a couple of weeks, places will be regretting that they could have been Wuhan! It’s never too late to respond to an epidemic. A strict lock down will immediately slow transmission, no matter how widespread it is. However, if democratically elected establishment leaders fail to get their act together, at some point charismatic maverick authoritarians will swoop in to fill the vacuum as self-styled saviors.
Jerzy Russian
@Baud: That is objectively funny.
Someone should explain the concept of April Fools Day to him. It might cause his circuitry to fail like Norman’s did when confronting a liar saying he is lying.
Princess
Wouldn’t it make more sense to warn people to stay home on the pyramids in Egypt in Arabic rather than English? or is this just a PR instagram/social media stunt they are doing?
Also, anyone, any website, any news organization who tries an April Fool’s joke on my tomorrow is cancelled by me forever.
Sloane Ranger
Just looking at the BNO chart and assuming it’s accurate, I can’t get over the wide differences in death rates between countries. If these hold and aren’t just a factor of where individual nations are in the progress of the pandemic, researchers are going to spend lots of time trying to find out why this happened. Is it demographics, what actions Governments took or didn’t take and/or when they took them, effectiveness of national health provision, something else? I wonder what the answer will be?
WereBear
According to two prominent doctors in a FNYT op-ed recently, Americans are far too sick to go back to work.
When only 20% of young adults meet the lab markers of “functional metabolism” we can’t lift lockdown any time soon.
Sloane Ranger
@WereBear: I did wonder if comparative health was a factor in China having such a low rate of mortality among children and young people. We all know that obesity leads to other health issues and I suspect that Europe has a higher level of obesity and morbid obesity that China and the US probably has higher rates of both than Europe.
But I’m not a Doctor so what do I know?
YY_Sima Qian
@Sloane Ranger: A combination of factors: Italy and Spain (CFR ~ 10%) have older demographics with higher mortality rates, overwhelmed medical systems not being able to effective treat as many people, as well as lab capacity constrains that forced them to primarily test people who are worse enough to be hospitalized (thus decreasing the denominator). Some of that is happening in NYC right now. At the opposite end of the spectrum, South Korea has a much younger infected population (especially among the members of the cult), and a medical system that was locally stressed but not overwhelmed, and very thorough testing and contact tracing that found most of the mild and some of the asymptomatic cases (increasing the denominator). For a while, South Korea had < 0.5% CFR, as they were finding infected cases to add to the denominator, and few patients had progressed to death to add to the numerator. Now, as SK is adding few cases and more of the active cases are reaching resolution, so CFR has slowly creeped up to 1.6% and still rising, and may end up near 2%. Germany is just SK a month ago, with similar dynamics, at a larger scale.
Within China, Wuhan was a less severe version of Lombardia (CFR ~ 5.6%, also missed many mild cases due to lack of testing capacity before Feb. 12), but only less severe because of a massive effort to convert most of the public hospitals in the city to COVID-19 only with thousands of ICU bed, building 2 temporary hospitals with 2600 ICU beds in two weeks, and adding 16 makeshift facilities for quarantine and medical observation of ~ 20K mild cases. Not to mention the 42K medical personnel from the rest of China to staff these facilities. The rest of Hubei province was a less severe version of Wuhan (CFR ~ 3.5%). The rest of the Chinese provinces (CFR ~ 1%) ranged from a few dozen cases in some, to a few hundred in others, to under two thousand in the worse hit ones. They could bring significant medical resources and expertise to bear for each patient to keep them alive. Hospitals in the province of Jiangsu actually performed double lung transplants on two patients with several co-morbidities, just to keep the CFR 0 for the province. There was an unspoken competition among the provinces.
VOR
I made the mistake of looking in a comments section on a Trump tweet. The consensus among Trumpies seems to be that the death toll from COVID is exaggerated. They claim Blue states are assigning COVID status postmortem so every death, from any cause, is a COVID death. The goal is to make Trump look bad, of course. It’s still all a hoax and hysteria propagated by the MSM to attack the Great Leader.
This is going to get really ugly when the bodies start piling up in Red States and rural areas.
susanna
At a glance, the BNO information is useful and better overall, imo. Yet I’m unable to identify “Who are they?” so far.
Anyone here able to clarify?
Thank you!
YY_Sima Qian
@susanna: New agency in the Netherlands
SFAW
@VOR:
I can envision (at least) two types of responses from the RWMFs when that happens:
1) “Well, at least more of those damn urban-types died than we did.”
2) “The Lie-berals and the MSM are the reason Dear Leader was prevented from saving us, so let’s start shooting them.”
3) “But her e-mails.” [OK, technically, that would be coming from the FTFTFNYT et al., not the run-of-the-mill RWMFs.]
Another Scott
@YY_Sima Qian: I saw a report that one of the reasons why Spain’s infection rate is so high is because of mass rallies during and around International Women’s Day (Sunday March 8).
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43324406
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Fair Economist
@La Nonna: Glad you are hanging in there, and now I’m going to look for some asparagus!
This is hard on us, but I was just thinking that similar confinements used to be the norm in rural areas in far northern climates – but they didn’t have the internet. So while it feels rough, we should come out OK in the end – and the “Spring” will feel wonderful!
Betty
@Jim Parish: I assume the English is addressed to social media. They also have some messages addressed to Egyptians if you watch to the end.
Fair Economist
Imperial College has a paper out estimating the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions in Europe.
Takeaway messages:
Interventions are worth it. 20,000-120,000 lives saved at present. This number will increase very rapidly in the near future as the lives potentially lost explodes into the millions.
Virus is more infectious than generally thought, with an R0 of 3.86, as opposed to 2.5-3.0 in the existing “paper consensus” (including the previous IC paper). Control may be more difficult. If we’re lucky, this is because masks are widely used in China where most earlier data came from, but not in the West.
Stay at Home orders barely adequate for control and inadequate for suppression. The Italian March 11 “Lockdown” (really more a stay at home order) is estimated to have reduced R0 to around 1 – meaning the epidemic will continue at a steady level (although error bars are large). Suppression needs it to shrink. This was later extended to more of a lockdown on March 21, and that will probably be adequate (my conclusion; not in the paper) – but that’s more than any state is doing in the US.
One speculative hope on my part is that stay-at-home orders (or lockdowns) may deliver more benefit over time. Initially stay at home reduces transmission between households, but increases transmission within it. After one or two transmission intervals, though, either everybody in each household will have caught it, or none will have it. At this point the benefit to prolonged stay at home will increase.
YY_Sima Qian
@Fair Economist: 75 – 80% of transmissions in Wuhan were within household, after the lock down. Wuhan had to convert arenas and conferences centers into makeshift facilities for quarantine and medical observation/treatment of mild cases, to really knock down the curve and shorten the duration of the epidemic. Quarantine of suspect cases and close contacts are also critical. These isolation and quarantine measures were also successfully employed in South Korea. Self-isolation of mild cases is not enough.
joel hanes
@OzarkHillbilly:
morels
Oh, man.
Back in 1971 when the Iowa elms were standing dead in on the hillsides, a friend took me out to a pasture where we found, between the wide-spaced skeletal trees, enough morels to fill two grocery bags and still leave most of them unpicked.
Sliced, dusted with flour, fried in butter …
charon
“I wonder what the answer will be?”
@Sloane Ranger:
Check out this piece, see the sort of advice the Administration is getting and listening to:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-contrarian-coronavirus-theory-that-informed-the-trump-administration?irclickid=1nG2cDz78xyORC7wUx0Mo3cjUki0spWoES1TzA0&irgwc=1&source=affiliate_impactpmx_12f6tote_desktop_Viglink%20Primary&utm_source=impact-affiliate&utm_medium=27795&utm_campaign=impact&utm_content=Subscribe%20to%20The%20New%20Yorker%20Now%20and%20Get%2012%20issues%20for%20%246%20%2B%20Free%20tote%21&utm_brand=tny
MoCA Ace
Any thoughts on which red state starts dumping bodies in unmarked graves by cover of darkness to keep the numbers down and own the libs?
I think this snark.
J R in WV
@joel hanes:
Sad but true that morels are really common around reall big dead trees, abandoned orchards, they appear to especially like dying fruit trees. They grow underground and the roots of the trees are their food source. The ‘shrooms we fry and eat are just the sporulating bodies with which they reproduce.
hotshoe
@Jerzy Russian:
Lord, I live here and I didn’t even know.
Cesar Chavez Day
Since it’s a state legal holiday, state offices and schools would have been closed for it, if they weren’t already closed for Covid-19.
But in this valley ranching/crop growing little town, City Hall is still open. About one minute ago I saw two workers leaving City Hall for lunch break (but not too close together — they had to speak loudly to talk to each other — so maybe at least a little of the state’s keep-your-distance campaign is sinking in for the good ol’ boys and girls around here.