Handling the coronavirus crisis

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Republicans expect to move their national convention from Charlotte, N.C., to Jacksonville, Fla., a shift planned after President Trump told officials in North Carolina that he did not want to use social distancing measures aimed at halting the spread of the coronavirus, according to three senior Republicans.  

Republicans Weighing New Convention Options as They Eye Move to Jacksonville - The New York Times

• But..
  

People attending an upcoming Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, have been told they cannot sue if they contract coronavirus. The sign-up page for the president’s upcoming rally includes a disclaimer about the possibility of contracting the disease.

Coronavirus live news: Trump rally attendees told they cannot sue if they contract Covid-19 | World news | The Guardian

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One month ago, I asked epidemiologist Tara Smith if she was worried about states loosening their stay-at-home orders, despite most not meeting the government’s criteria for doing so. “I am really fearful that by June 1 or June 15, after we’ve seen a couple weeks to a month of [state reopenings], that our cases are going to be climbing,” said Smith, a professor at the Kent State University College of Public Health. Well, here we are. It’s June 12, and Covid-19 hospitalizations are rising in Arizona, the Carolinas, Utah, Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee, and perhaps Florida. Those states are also seeing higher numbers of positive Covid-19 tests, as well as increases in the percentage of tests that come back positive. This indicates that the higher case counts aren’t simply due to more widespread testing finding milder cases. Call it a reopening backfire. But really: No expert thought that reopening this quickly was going to work in the first place.

New Covid-19 spikes are “totally predictable”: Some state reopenings have backfired - Vox

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Indeed, in a recent paper (Brzezinski et al. 2020b), we find that lockdown policies have been economically more efficient than staying open in the US. To obtain these results, we combine microeconometric methods with an epidemiological model that allows for societal and political response to the virus in order to estimate the costs and benefits of lockdown policies.
Our argument builds on two pillars:

• First, we find that the additional economic costs due to lockdowns are relatively low, once accounting for the voluntary response that would occur in the absence of such policies. This is in line with forecasts for 2020, which predict similar contractions in most developed countries (European Commission 2020) even if they did not impose lockdown measures, like Sweden. It also aligns with earlier research that showed credit card consumption only marginally less in Sweden, than in neighbouring Denmark, which did lock down (Andersen et al. 2020). Research on unemployment data from the US further suggests that only one fourth of the claims has been caused by lockdowns (Baek et al. 2020).
  
• Second, the medical benefits of a lockdown are high because of the high hospitalisation rate of COVID-19. Taken together, our findings indicate that lockdown measures generate efficiency gains in terms of medical expenditures that offset the comparatively small economic losses caused by lockdown policies.
  

Voluntary social distancing and lockdowns in the US | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal

• Turns out, lockdowns tend to produce a net economic benefit because the additional economic cost are relatively low as many people voluntarily stay home anyway
  
• And the medical benefits are relatively large
  
• Indeed, comparing Sweden (without lockdown) with its neighbors (strict lockdowns) one sees that Sweden has done much worse in terms of infections and deaths, but hardly better in economic terms.
  

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Thailand has recorded 58 deaths, while Malaysia has confirmed 120. Vietnam, which has won praise for its response, has not recorded a single fatality. Public awareness has been key in countries that have had such relative success, said Dale Fisher, professor at the National University of Singapore and chair of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network at the World Health Organization. Clear messaging, he adds, is essential. “When you have any country with a weak leadership then people get confused. They’re not sure what to do and who to believe, and then you legitimise ignorance,” said Fisher.

Experts say that by acting quickly, and by drawing on well-established systems in place following the Sars epidemic in 2002, health departments in many south-east Asian countries have avoided the explosion in community transmission seen elsewhere. In Cambodia, 2,900 health workers were trained and deployed throughout January and February. “They implemented aggressive rapid detection and contact tracing,” said Dr Li Ailan, WHO representative to Cambodia..

Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam... How some countries kept Covid at bay | World news | The Guardian

• Despite having much less time to prepare and being much closer to China, much poorer countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and even very poor Cambodia have avoided what much richer countries could not..
  
• Quick action and clear communication were essential ingredients.
  

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Republican lawmakers are downplaying concerns that a Donald Trump indoor rally planned for Tulsa, Oklahoma, for next weekend could contribute to the spread Covid-19, amid an increase in cases in the city.The Trump campaign is asking supporters to sign a waiver that makes clear the campaign is not responsible if anyone gets ill from crowding with thousands of others in an enclosed space. There was a new high in daily increases for Oklahoma and Tulsa county on Saturday, while the rolling average of daily increases continues to rise. About the same number of people are being tested. On Friday the Tulsa health department said the outbreak was linked to indoor gatherings. Hospitalizations and the percentage of tests coming back positive have been steady in the state.

Republicans insist Trump Tulsa rally won't spread coronavirus – despite local concern | Coronavirus outbreak | The Guardian

• Older people, locked together indoors and screaming, it doesn't get more risky than that..
  

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Dr Rebekah Jones was fired by the Florida department of health in May. She said she was sidelined after she refused to manipulate data regarding the severity of Covid-19, which would have restricted the state’s plan to reopen its economy. According to Jones’s own online database, Florida’s Community Coronavirus Dashboard, only one of 67 counties meets state criteria for easing social restrictions. Jones’s dashboard also shows a higher number of coronavirus cases than the Florida DoH site, with 83,720 positive cases and 3,022 deaths compared with 75,568 cases and 2,931 deaths. Jones said the difference was due to a difference in counting technique. “DoH publishes total cases, not positive people,” her website says.

“Additionally, cases are not currently created for those who receive positive antibody test results, and so DoH excludes them from that total. We show the total number of people who have definitive lab results showing they have or have had Covid-19 regardless of the type of test.” Florida recorded record levels of new coronavirus cases over the weekend, ABC News reported. On Sunday, the state health department reported a second consecutive day of more than 2,000 new cases. According to data from the Washington Post, in June Florida experienced its highest seven-day average of coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic..

Scientist produces own Florida Covid-19 count after being fired by state | US news | The Guardian

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Orange County California’s health officer, Dr. Nichole Quick, said masks were required in public places and at businesses and… The anti-maskers went wild. They revealed Quick’s address. She needed security. And then she resigned.
This is over wearing a mask. You see Americans can’t wear masks, it inhibits their FREEDOM!
As for protecting you from their germs…fuggedaboutit. It’s all narcissism all the time. Health? That’s no big deal. After all, we don’t crack down on school shootings, or even red-heavy country concert shootings. There are just a few bad apples out there, after all, guns don’t kill people, people kill people!
“Even With 10-Day Waiting Period, Suicide by Gun Risk Surges After Purchase”: nyti.ms/2MO0msl

Now let me get this straight… If these people didn’t buy a gun they’d still commit suicide? I don’t buy it. Then again, I don’t have a gun, so the joke is on me. You see the business of America is business. And it can’t be hobbled. Oh, there have been tons of stories that the lockdown worked:
“Lockdowns worked, new research finds. Scientists estimate coronavirus measures stopped at least 60 million infections in the US and 3 million deaths in Europe.”: bit.ly/3dR3y2d

But now everybody’s sick of being cooped up inside, they want to party! It’s like the doctor saying you broke your leg and you need to wear a cast for six weeks, but you’re sick of the itch and you remove it after four. Huh? Then again, who is to trust doctors, they’re all about the money, it’s best to trust web research and your friends, after all the medical industrial complex is out to get you..

Reopening - The Big Picture

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Latin America is the world’s new coronavirus epicenter, but Uruguay – a small South American nation of 3.5 million people – has so far avoided the devastation raging across the rest of the region. As of June 14, the country had 847 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 23 deaths. By population that’s 244 cases and 7 deaths per 1 million inhabitants, well below neighboring Brazil, with 4,001 cases and 201 deaths per million; and Chile, with 9,118 cases and 174 deaths per million. Uruguay moved swiftly in March to enact social distancing, testing and community tracing, though President Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou never decreed a lockdown. Offices and shops are open for business, and Uruguayan children will return to school by June 29 even with winter and flu season coming to the Southern Hemisphere..

Uruguay quietly beats coronavirus, distinguishing itself from its South American neighbors – yet again

• Another successful country, it isn't rocket science..
  

[Admin]

Despite the inertia and dysfunction that plagued the early stages of the US government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, the situation could still have been somewhat rescued if Donald Trump had merely backed the efforts of his own administration, public health experts say. Instead Trump has shown little active leadership and frequently undermined government efforts and advice aimed at curbing the virus by encouraging reopening protests and refusing to wear a face mask.

As America pushes ahead with reopening businesses and allowing public gatherings even as Covid-19 infections have jumped to alarming new highs in a number of states, missed opportunities have severely undermined the recovery phase of a pandemic that has already claimed 120,000 lives in the US. On 16 April, the White House issued guidelines to states on how to safely restart normal life again. Many epidemiologists saw them as flawed – too broad, still not backed with a robust system of testing and tracking infected people to prevent a resurgence of the virus – but it was at least something consistent to work to at a delicate stage of the pandemic.

Instead, Trump announced “we’re in the process of winning now” and the next day responded to protests demanding an immediate reopening by tweeting “LIBERATE MICHIGAN”, “LIBERATE MINNESOTA” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA”. From calling himself a wartime president fighting an invisible enemy, Trump, having seen some initial progress and a modest rebound in the stock market, vacated the battlefield, observers say.

An official close to the pandemic effort, who did not want to be named, said the federal response has been a “shitshow” with a leadership vacuum that Dr Deborah Birx, coordinator of the coronavirus taskforce; Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law; and Mike Pence have all tried to fill. “Trump had a plan from Dr Birx and if he had asked for a little more patience from the public we’d have a very different situation to now,” said Andy Slavitt, former acting head of Medicare and Medicaid Services. “But he was unwilling to do that. He couldn’t wait.

How Trump's missteps undermined the US's recovery from pandemic | US news | The Guardian

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It is more than three months since South Korea’s coronavirus infection rate peaked. In that time political leaders and health experts around the world have credited the government of President Moon Jae-in for teaching important lessons in the swift deployment of mass testing and aggressive contact tracing to counter what was for a time the worst Covid-19 outbreak outside of China...  South Korea has recorded just over 12,000 infections and fewer than 280 deaths while avoiding a national lockdown

A warning from South Korea: the ‘fantasy’ of returning to normal life | Free to read | Financial Times

• Lessons from South Korea which the US is flagrantly ignoring