Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

I was promised a recession.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / COVID-19 Coronavirus Update – Sunday / Monday, May 17-18

COVID-19 Coronavirus Update – Sunday / Monday, May 17-18

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17Comments

  1. 1.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s daily numbers: 47 new cases, 26 from local infection and 21 imported infection; total 6,941 cases. 44 more patients recovered, total 5,615 or 80.9% of total cases. Of 1,213 active cases, 13 are in ICU of whom 6 are on ventilators. No new deaths, total deaths still at 113. Infection fatality rate 1.63%, case fatality rate 1.97%.

  2. 2.

    Amir Khalid

    At his daily media briefing, DG of Health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the R0 number in Malaysia is holding steady at around 0.3, and new cases are still in two digits after the conditional easing of the movement control order. The concern now is to monitor these two statistics and observe public compliance during the Eid festival season which is coming at the end of this week.

  3. 3.

    Sloane Ranger

    In regard to Prof. Ravi’s graphs, they are misleading as far as the UK is concerned as our government doesn’t publish recovery figures. Why? I haven’t been able to find out and I wish I could. In point of fact, the PM, several other Ministers and the Prince of Wales have all recovered and presumably there are many more in the same happy position. So it doesn’t make sense to me.

    On a different note, a man is coming to do the annual service of my burglar alarm tomorrow. I am really worried about it but if he doesn’t come I lose my guarantee.

    I have been in touch with the company and they say he will be masked, we must keep 6 feet between us at all time and I must provide facilities for him to wash his hands on both entering and leaving the house. I plan to let him use the bathroom and provide him with a towel he can put into a plastic bag after use. After he’s gone I will decant the towel into the washing machine w/o touching it and disinfectant everything he touched or might have touched. Any other ideas people?

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The 2 worst counties to be in in Misery right now are not among those surrounding STL or KC (where most cases are), but are in oustate MO: Buchanan Co. (570.16 cases per 100K) and Saline Co (1074.47 cases per 100K). You get 3 guesses as to what major industry calls them home and the first 2 guesses don’t count.

  5. 5.

    WereBear

    NY did a Phase 1 opening on Friday, where construction and manufacturing workers could return. Governor Cuomo got COVID_tested during his briefing yesterday. The ASL translator was hilarious as he translated the verbal exchanges.

    Makes me want to learn it. I got some exposure in high school through a friend, and learned the alphabet at one time.

  6. 6.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Sloane Ranger: Prepare a pair of surgical gloves for him, if you have them. Make sure both you and him cover your hairs. Have him use paper towels to dry his hand. Open all of your windows to keep the place well aerated. Disinfect every surface he touched after he leaves. Prepare a pair of booties for him to cover his shoes. Wear glasses, if you have them.

  7. 7.

    Sloane Ranger

    @YY_Sima Qian: Thanks. I don’t have all the equipment you mention but I can certainly open the windows and do the disinfecting. And I wear glasses as standard so that’s not a problem!

  8. 8.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Sloane Ranger: Remember to disinfect your glasses! You can use plastic bags or wraps in place of booties. Or ask him to take off his shoes, if possible.

  9. 9.

    Ohio Mom

    I was also going to say “open the windows.” Make your house as much like the outdoors as possible.

    Needless to say, this hack isn’t going to be useful in six months.

  10. 10.

    Geo Wilcox

    This from an article on the ProMed site:

    “The last part of the sentence is asserting/affirmative that the virus originated in bats in China. This is a common mistake done in the media. The origin of the virus is yet unclear, and although the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2 have indeed been found in Asian _Rhinolophus_ species, the divergence between the SARS-CoV-2 and its closely related virus in bats is estimated to have occurred decades ago (Refs 1, 2). The host of the most recent common ancestor of SARS-CoV-2 and the closely related bat viruses is yet unknown, although, of course, it can be hypothesized it was a bat (e.g., a _Rhinolophus_ species), but this remains a hypothesis, not an established fact. So we are still missing decades of evolution of SARS-CoV-2. There are many unknowns/uncertainties in this emergence, and it would be very important to make these clear and not jump to conclusions too quickly.”

    This virus has been “trying” to get into humans for a long time.  Since we are the most efficient vehicle for viral transmissions, I’d say Mission Accomplished, SARS-CoV-2.

  11. 11.

    terben

    From the Australian Dept of Health:

    As at 3:00pm on 18 May 2020, a total of 7,060 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Australia, including 99 deaths and 6,389 have been reported as recovered from COVID-19.

    Over the past week, there has been an average of 16 new cases reported each day. Of the newly reported cases, the majority have been from Victoria.

    To date, over 1,062,000 tests have been conducted nationally. Of those tests conducted 0.7% have been positive.’

    There have been 15 new cases since yesterday and one death. There are 46 people in hospital and of those, 12 in ICU.

  12. 12.

    YY_Sima Qian

    3 new domestic confirmed cases in China yesterday. 2 are from Jilin city in Jilin Province. One case is reported by Changyi District, which previous had not reported infections; the case is a close contact of an existing case from Chuanying District, and was proactively traces and tested. The second is reported by Shulan, also a close contact of an existing case, and proactively traces and tested.

    The third case is reported by Shanghai, an export from the city of Qianjiang in Hubei Province. The person just arrived at Shanghai two days ago in search of work, and was tested per standard procedure (should have been tested before the case left Hubei, as well). Since Qianjiang has not reported any confirmed or asymptomatic cases for quite some time, it is always concerning if the first sign of infection is an export to elsewhere. This is a confirmed case, so not one of those true asymptomatics with apparently very limited infectivity, or self-healed but still shedding viral fragments.

    In Wuhan, it appears the samples collected in the 100% mass screening will be pooled 5 or 10 samples to a batch, and tested by batch. If any batch produces a positive result, then the persons whose samples are pooled will be contacted for follow up testing. Originally we were supposed to be able to check our results on an APP, but that is now no longer the case. We also cannot use this test result for traveling outside of the city. New PCR test is will required for that purpose. Pooling samples is likely the reason for the latest guidance.

  13. 13.

    Sloane Ranger

    @YY_Sima Qian: Thanks again and to Ohio Mum as well.

    I will ask him to take off his shoes. A lot of workmen around here do this as standard anyway, even before the Apocalypse.

    I’ll let you know how it goes. On a different note,  I’ve just cut my own hair!

    I consulted with my cousin who’s a trained hairdresser (retired). She wasn’t particularly encouraging but she said if I MUST do it, take a little off at a time and cut the bare minimum overall. I may be biased but I think I did OK. I’ll leave it to my hairdresser to criticise my skills when better times return.

  14. 14.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Sloane Ranger: My wife cut my hair during the lock down, the first time ever she cut anyone’s hair. The result was… not completely disastrous.

  15. 15.

    ziggy

    I was very disappointed to see that they did not make tiny little masks for the hamsters. I’m sure someone on BJ could have whipped those up. Regardless, an interesting study.

  16. 16.

    Amir Khalid

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    I have been cutting my own hair for years: a crude buzzcut every so often, with the trimmer on the 3mm spacing. The results have also been not completely disastrous, even though I usually miss a few random tufts of hair.

  17. 17.

    Bill Arnold

    @ziggy:

    I was very disappointed to see that they did not make tiny little masks for the hamsters.

    Me too, but if they had, the anti-maskers would still say that it’s only an animal model and “therefore” not generalizable to humans.
    No problem. We’re doing the natural experiments in various jurisdictions. A study that determined mask wearing levels by sampling store video surveillance in a large collection of jurisdictions, and counted deaths would be straightforward and hard to argue with. (Might be complicated to untangle from the effects high-compliance 2-meter social distancing, but doable.)
    With a sufficiently large number of deaths, we’ll have our science, hopefully read for wave 2, and for the next pandemic.

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