Bloomberg is covering this on their TV news network just about every 15 minutes. And Daily online.
Meanwhile – this month in the United States – hundreds of people a week are dying from the flu. Do you think NYC’s former mayor is missing something in his sense of proportion.
Donald Trump said the US has a plan to handle the outbreak of a deadly new virus from China after the Center for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed the first case in the country earlier this week.
“We have it totally under control,” the president said on Wednesday. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control.” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-coronavirus-china-wuhan-disease-outbreak-airport-screening-travel-a9296926.html
“It’s going to be fine”, he told CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/22/trump-on-coronavirus-from-china-we-have-it-totally-under-control.html
Amid coronavirus outbreak, Trump proposes slashing CDC budget : The proposal cuts funds for preparedness, infectious disease, and chronic conditions. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/amid-coronavirus-outbreak-trump-proposes-slashing-cdc-budget/
Trump Claims Coronavirus Will “Miraculously” Go Away by April https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/02/donald-trump-coronavirus-warm-weather
“On Monday, the death toll from the coronavirus topped 1,018, with World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warning that recent cases of infected patients who had never visited China could likely be the “tip of the iceberg.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/10/coronavirus-who-warns-spread-by-people-who-had-not-visited-china-could-be-tip-of-the-iceberg
“There have been some concerning instances of onward 2019nCoV spread from people with no travel history to [China],” Ghebreyesus tweeted, using the virus’s provisional scientific name. “The detection of a small number of cases may indicate more widespread transmission in other countries; in short, we may only be seeing the tip of the iceberg.”
More than 3,000 new cases were reported over the previous 24 hours, raising the number of infections to 40,171. The increase follows a sharp decline in new cases reported on Sunday – fewer than 2,700, which led to optimism that prevention methods such as a strict quarantines were working.
💀 “Amid an alarming surge in cases with no clear link to China, infectious disease experts believe the flulike illness may soon be impossible to contain. The language coming from the [World Health Organization’s] Geneva headquarters has turned more ominous in recent days as the challenge of containment grows more daunting.” Given the long incubation period, this seems pretty likely.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/24/is-this-week-that-trump-panics-about-covid-19/
💀 “The coronavirus death toll is still rising, but US interest in the outbreak is plummeting” https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-death-toll-rises-american-interest-wanes-2020-2
💀 “Trump Has Already Hamstrung The U.S.’s Coronavirus Response : The White House is expected to request funds from Congress this week—but its disorganized response, and past cuts, may have complicated efforts to tackle the crisis.” https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/02/trump-has-already-hamstrung-the-us-coronavirus-response
💀 “Stocks fell sharply on Monday as the number of coronavirus cases outside China surged, stoking fears of a prolonged global economic slowdown from the virus spreading.” https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/24/us-futures-coronavirus-outbreak.html
💀 “As coronavirus fears hit financial markets, U.S. bond yields are tanking, pushing mortgage rates that loosely follow the 10-year Treasury yield toward an eight-year low. They could sink even lower.” https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/24/coronavirus-fears-could-push-mortgage-rates-past-4-year-low.html
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 2:42 PM – Feb 24, 2020:
“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
On Monday afternoon the second highest ranking person in Trump’s Department of Homeland Security decided to go look at an online map of the spread of the coronavirus, apparently despite having access to the resources of the United States government).
Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli @HomelandKen 12:35 PM · Feb 24, 2020:
“Has the Johns Hopkins map of the coronavirus stopped working for other people, or just me?” https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli @HomelandKen 12:39 PM · Feb 24, 2020
“I just tried again, and it looks like Johns Hopkins put the information behind a membership wall of some kind. Seems like bad timing to stop helping the world with this (previously) useful resource. Here’s hoping it goes back up soon.”
Mr. Cuccinelli’s is also Trump’s Principal Deputy Director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Cuccinelli
See Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by Johns Hopkins CSSE (interactive and updated maps) https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Other resources:
CDC Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Situation Summary (updated information provided as it becomes available, along with updated guidance) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/summary.html
WHO Coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) situation reports https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/
WHO daily updates regarding the current outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
China announced Friday that it is swiftly building a 1,000-bed hospital dedicated to patients infected with a new virus that has killed 26 people, sickened hundreds and prompted unprecedented lockdowns of cities during the country’s most important holiday.
On the eve of the Lunar New Year, transportation was shut down in at least 13 cities home to more than 36 million people. The cities are Wuhan, where the illness has been concentrated, and 12 of its neighbors in central China’s Hubei province.
“To address the insufficiency of existing medical resources,” Wuhan is constructing a hospital modeled after the Xiaotangshan SARS hospital in Beijing, Wuhan authorities said in a Friday notice. The facility will be a prefabricated structure on a 25,000- square-meter (270,000-square-foot) lot, slated for completion Feb. 3. https://apnews.com/09be6cd295bc66a335e6686da6bbbffb
“China battles coronavirus outbreak: All the latest updates” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/china-battles-coronavirus-outbreak-latest-updates-200124063503577.html
Wuhan coronavirus lockdown: ‘We’ve got enough food to last 10 days’ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51236450
“Coronavirus:10 days of hospital building in 60 seconds” (BBC News 2/2/20)
“Time-lapse footage taken from above shows the construction of Huoshenshan hospital in Wuhan city, which has been built to deal with coronavirus patients.
According to Chinese authorities, construction began on 24 January, with the hospital due to open on 3 February.” https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-51348297/coronavirus10-days-of-hospital-building-in-60-seconds
“Following the first confirmed coronavirus death outside China, the country’s defense military on Sunday deployed 1,400 medical personnel to staff a new hospital in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak of the novel virus that’s now killed more than 300 people and sickened more than 14,000 in China alone.” https://www.foxnews.com/health/coronavirus-china-1400-military-doctors-nurses-wuhan-hospital-philippines-death “Upon direct order of Chinese President Xi Jinping, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force on Sunday began airlifting 1,400 medical staff as well as 58 tons of medical supplies to Wuhan, located in China’s Hubei province, the Chinese defense ministry said in a statement. Many of the military doctors and nurses chosen for the job have experience treating either the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 or Ebola in West Africa in 2014.
They are to join the 450 military personnel already in the city. The Chinese military took control of the newly constructed Huoshenshan Hospital on Sunday after it was constructed in less than 10 days. It is expected to open Monday and includes 1,000 beds, intensive care units and sections for diagnosis and infection control, China’s state news agency Xinhua reported. Chinese state media has been live broadcasting the construction of a second makeshift hospital in the city, the Leishenshan Hospital, which is expected to be in operation by Wednesday, the Bangkok Post reported. That facility is to include 1,300 beds.”
“The makeshift hospitals replicate a step regarded as instrumental in Beijing’s fight 17 years ago against Sars. In April 2003, Beijing built a similar, 1,000-bed facility in the town of Xiaotangshan. That facility, named the PLA Sars hospital, treated almost 15% of the country’s Sars patients in two months. https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/1849064/new-wuhan-hospital-set-to-open-monday China’s National Health Commission announced on Saturday that a further 45 people in China had died and 2,590 had been infected. All of the dead, and 1,921 of the new cases, were in Hubei province. The total number of cases nationwide had reached 14,380, with a national death toll of 304, the commission said.
“In Pictures: Inside Wuhan’s fast-built hospital : New 1,000-bed facility dedicated to treating people infected with coronavirus in Chinese city begins receiving patients.” https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/pictures-wuhan-fast-built-hospital-200203080542994.html
“Twitter on Friday permanently suspended the right-leaning finance blog Zero Hedge after it published a conspiracy theory suggesting that a Chinese scientist might be responsible for the deadly coronavirus outbreak.
…The Zero Hedge post questioned the involvement of a virology institute in Wuhan, the city where the outbreak began. It listed the name, photograph and contact information for a researcher at the institute, and called on readers to “pay [him] a visit” if they want to “find out what really caused the coronavirus pandemic.”
The article, as well as other Zero Hedge posts making unfounded claims about the coronavirus, were shared thousands of times on social media.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/01/twitter-zero-hedge-coronavirus/
Zero Hedge: “Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?” https://www.zerohedge.com/health/man-behind-global-coronavirus-pandemic
“A study published Friday in the medical journal JAMA found that 41% of the first 138 patients diagnosed at one hospital in Wuhan, China, were presumed to be infected in that hospital.
This is big news. In plain English, it means that nearly half of the initial infections in this hospital appear to have been spread within the hospital itself. This is called nosocomial transmission. (Doctors use big words to hide bad things: Nosocomial means caught it in the hospital.)
What’s more, most spread doesn’t appear to have been the result of a so-called “super-spreader event,” in which a single patient transmits infection to many other people. In these events, a procedure such as bronchoscopy — where a doctor inserts a tube into the patient’s lungs — can result in many infections.
This would be a concern, but not nearly as much as what appears to have happened: Many health care workers and many patients got infected in many parts of the hospital. What’s more, since there’s a broad spectrum of infection and only patients who were sick were tested, it’s quite likely that there was even more transmission in the hospital.
So, like SARS and MERS — other coronaviruses — before it, the Wuhan coronavirus is spreading in hospitals.” Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and former commissioner of the New York City Health Department. He is currently president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, a global non-profit initiative funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and part of the global non-profit Vital Strategies. https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/08/health/coronavirus-hospital-infections-frieden/index.html
JAMA February 7, 2020: “Clinical Characteristics of 138 Hospitalized Patients With 2019 Novel Coronavirus–Infected Pneumonia in Wuhan, China” https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2761044
How one man spread coronavirus from Singapore to UK via the Alps, without setting foot in China : British citizen passed on virus to at least 11 others after catching it at conference in Southeast Asia. Authorities are now trying to track down passengers who took the same flight as he did from Geneva back to the UK https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3049933/how-one-man-spread-coronavirus-singapore-uk-alps
UK ‘superspreader’ may have passed coronavirus to nearly a dozen people in 3 countries https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-uk-superspreader.html