caulfield12

Looks like Waterloo, IA, will be joining South Dakota with another critical food plant shutdown the way things are trending...I get it, essential services, but you would think by now there would be some type of Federal guideline for when to shut down a plant like this (so as to take it out of the hands of mayors and governors.) You have the usual case of underpaid immigrant workers (some likely undocumented)/African American vs. the Fortune 500 interests and their political contributions, playing out with our nation’s critical food supply as the backdrop. https://wcfcourier.com/news/local/20-officials-call-on-tyson-to-shutter-waterloo-plant-for-coronavirus-outbreak/article_f4fd59a3-36ee-594e-b0cf-11eabdf4a8a9.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

The most incredible thing this week to me was Trump seriously considering adding a two hour radio call in show in addition to the daily briefings on t.v. Which shows just how interested he is in actually solving problems... all along, it has simply been narcissism, the desire to constantly be the center of attention. His primary concern with adding a radio show was 1) losing to Rush in the ratings, 2) being perceived as threatening to the Excellence in Broadcasting empire, lol. Well, nothing should surprise anyone at this point. Steve Bannon all along had been planning extensively with the Mercers to launch their own Trumpian broadcasting network, as it looked increasingly likely they were going to lose in 2016. Voters, so far, say they are erring on the side of caution, as public health experts have urged. In a Pew survey released this week, roughly two-thirds of respondents said they are worried about their state easing restrictions too quickly — twice the number of those who are concerned it won’t happen fast enough. Just over two-thirds of voters said they expect it to be at least a month before Americans should start returning to work and life as normal, with just 9 percent mentioning the one- or two-week gap Trump has suggested could happen, according to a Harris poll released this week. Among Republicans, 61 percent said it should be at least a month before Americans start returning to work and life as normal. https://www.yahoo.com/news/advisers-warn-trump-economy-push-232900771.html

First instructions for new normal at Chinese schools (seniors returning May 6th for the first time since mid-January.) Staggered lunches. 3 mandatory temperature checks per day. 3 mask changes per day.

How can South Korea and Germany manage the same feat for 1/10th the cost, or roughly $10 per test? Very simple solution. The Federal government (not states, since they can’t magically create money out of thin air like Treasury) subsidize the cost, or the US will suffer billions more in economic damages when no corporations can assume the liability risk of going back too early without adequate testing systems in place to protect the workers. For antibody tests, the cost is even cheaper. The cost for a technician to (non)profitably analyze one test in 15 minutes would be roughly $160/hour or $40 for 15 minutes? So they need to charge the equivalent of roughly $300-325 hour to break even? Antibody blood tests have been used for about two decades in other disease-tracking initiatives, including for HIV in rural Africa, Ho said in a video call sponsored by the group Committee of 100. The kits cost $1 to $6 each, he added, depending on the volume purchased. Some US companies are already selling antibody tests to other countries. The California biotech company Biomerica sells COVID-19 antibody tests for less than $10 in Europe and the Middle East, according to Reuters. Chembio Diagnostics, a medical-device company based in New York, is sending its antibody tests to Brazil and plans to study them in the US, Reuters reported. https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-antibody-blood-test-covid-19-2020-3

There’s another issue at play here. I have a friend (chemistry teacher) who used to work at my school in China and now back in California waiting to get his teaching credentials in order and for fall semester hiring to take place. He works temporarily in a grocery store doing stocking/inventory for something like $15/hr. Meanwhile, you have lots of people who are getting $832/week for unemployment, plus they’ll be getting an extra $600 per week on top of that. That works out to something like $6000 per month, $24,000 for four months max....$36/hr or $72,000 for a full year. How can we justify paying those actually at risk half or in many cases 1/3rd as much those essential workers (looking at you Wal Mart and Amazon)? How can we give Ruth’s Chris steakhouses a $20 million small business loan when they are sitting on something like $60 million in reserves? That’s really pushing it to define that as anything resembling a “small business.” I think it’s 500 employees or less...?

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/public-health/2020/04/17/17-in-a-homeless-shelter-test-positive-for-coronavirus-dallas-county-says/ 38 test positive for Covid in Dallas homeless shelter...as many as 200 staffers and shelter residents have been exposed, the county’s health director said. More than 160 have been taken to hotels.

The amazing thing is how just 4-6 weeks of Covid arriving late (r) totally changed this year’s election. Biden if the race was interrupted indefinitely after Nevada never gets his momentum going. The entire race then hinges on health care and economic inequality (just imagining Sanders’ reaction to the aforementioned anecdote about private lab testing not being profitable enough.) Now, the Biden/Trump race hinges on Democratic governors, Trump “mistakes,” a “return to decency/empathy” and restoring normalized diplomatic relations with the rest of the world. Even the economic/unemployment numbers can be blamed on “coastal elites” shutting down the country and trying to take away our unique rights/freedoms, conspiring to prolong the shutdown in order to deny reelection. Those Dem governors and Crazy Joe Biden simply don’t want America to succeed, they instead want to turn America into a socialist nanny state like the EU. The big question here (blaming governors or taking credit for only successes, like the stock market now “only” being down 18% instead of mid 30’s) is whether 30-40% of the country in the middle of the spectrum politically actually buy what is being sold. Normally, it’s impossible during a presidential election year to narrow the blame to just governors or Congress when the economic success or (relative degrees of) failure begins and ends at the top of the ticket.

This risk is particularly acute in places of detention, such as prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers, as well as residential institutions for people with disabilities and nursing facilities for older people, where the virus can spread rapidly, especially if access to health care is already poor. States have an obligation to ensure medical care for those in their custody at least equivalent to that available to the general population, and must not deny detainees, including asylum seekers or undocumented migrants, equal access to preventive, curative or palliative health care. Asylum seekers, refugees living in camps, and people experiencing homelessness may also be at increased risk because of their lack of access to adequate water and hygiene facilities. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/19/human-rights-dimensions-covid-19-response So you have these rural issues...whereas SF, LA, Seattle...are worrisome for their own set of reasons, especially homeless populations. Vietnam veterans. Nursing homes are obvious. Prisons in Illinois have already been discussed. Heck, just the 30+ million group of those without any health insurance or a preexisting relationship with a local physician. Those without regular checking or savings accounts for direct deposit. When this is all over, investigating statistics in Europe among refugee/displaced groups, human trafficking victims...it’s going to exhibit quite emphatically how particularly vulnerable these poor populations really are in a health crisis. And how dramatically those groups can impact entire communities. But one can guarantee that’s the exact topic that will never be discussed or even raised in a coronavirus briefing “We’ll have to get back to you.”

Right. These are the kind of calculations the insurance industry typically makes. If you’re a school administrator, it’s certainly much easier to take the conservative approach of keeping the school closed (of course, you have economic impacts in states like Iowa where education sector is the leading employer)...and then doing as much proactive outreach as possible with meal delivery services, food banks, churches, charity groups, etc. This in one huge area for a win-win...if you can contract with local restaurants to keep them with enough revenue opportunities to keep them open, while not paying prohibitively high prices that garner negative headlines. There are also numbers of high quality food warehousers/distributors who no longer are able to sell to higher end restaurants, at least not at the previous rates. Most of these are in urban areas, but it’s another area worth looking into if both sides are willing to compromise on pricing.

South Dakota is mostly accounted for by that Smithfield plant...and related infections. That said, each of one those governors being pointed out as now having “solved this thing” (like Asa Hutchinson in Arkansas), are going to end up killing increasing numbers of their state residents out of sheer stubbornness. Maybe they believe their electoral prospects are so secure (or not in an election year), they can get away with almost anything, but that’s certainly not the case with Kim Reynolds in Iowa. Georgia, Texas and Florida will be three of the leading indicators, and, as noted, that won’t start to show up in the statistical noise until the second week of May in all likelihood.

Another obvious element to consider is the need to reopen schools in order to reopen the country...or day care centers, at the very least. Trump seemed to project a belief that some states would be bringing students back in May, and that just doesn't make a lot of sense...when most districts would be theoretically closing in late May or early June. Are they going to push all those kids into mandatory summer school to catch up? It makes sense from a nutritional standpoint, perhaps, in poorer or rural districts. But who do you bring back first? Middle schoolers? High schoolers have the ability to stay at home (theoretically!), but sending KG and primary/elementary carries that risk because of the high level of transmission in that age group...passing it quickly to others and then families/relatives. Some are considering staggered...where you have JR/SR and then FR/SO on alternate days. What are the social distancing rules? How easy to maintain six feet? What about PE and recess? Cafeteria? There are so many considerations here...pushing kids back into school for just 2-3 weeks of “benefit” (their parents both being able to go back to work) doesn’t seem worthwhile. Granted, a lot of white collar jobs are flexible and allow for the majority of workers to function reasonably well through teleconferencing and stay ay home or only the most essential workers (let’s say 30%) returning to work, and you can even stagger or rotate that until you’re relatively confident in the efficaciousness of such a strategy.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/trump-administration-writing-death-sentence-220200223.html Unless you love particularly chain restaurants, and consider Ruth’s Chris a small business despite their deep pockets, or typically dine on foie gras with fellow 1%ers...most of our beloved local favorite eating options are going to eventually be wiped out.

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/antibody-research-indicates-coronavirus-may-far-more-widespread-155200568.html Santa Clara (CA) antibody test results suggest real rate of infection is 50-80X higher than officially published numbers. Fwiw...

Just curious. Have there been any protests yet in Indiana, Massachusetts and Ohio? Those are three states (so far) with GOP governors aligning with the “out to destroy America because they hate success/liberal cabal Dem governors” on the two coasts and now Heartland/Rust Belt. What about protests against governors in Texas, Georgia and Florida for being too aggressive in reopening? There’s definitely shaping up to be a battle in SD with Kristi Noem, who ironically came to power over a “fake estate/death tax” backstory that was wholly inaccurate (her father made a simple mistake in financial planning that would have wiped out any tax liability for the family farm.)

And they would have quickly saved thousands and thousands of HIV (and Ebola) patients around the world with generic-pricing of drugs at the beginning of those international crises. Ooops. Apparently the threat of Bernie Sanders taking over the world, of encroaching socialism...forced Sen. Kelly Loeffler to make all of her insider stock trades, mimicking a bad Ayn Rand novel subplot. You would think that Joe Biden was a member of SDS out of the 1960’s throwing Molotov cocktails and organizing violent protests when actually he’s about the most conservative Democrat nominated in recent memory. "This was a political attack designed to take away from the issue at hand. And to use this outbreak to play politics. We have addressed this and taken extraordinary measures to make sure that we can't be attacked for our success. This gets at the very heart of why I came to Washington, to defend free enterprise, to defend capitalism. This is a socialist attack. We have taken extraordinary measures, and I am focused solely on working for Georgians. I have been doing that seven days a week, around the clock. And it's my honor to be here and serve, and that's why I stepped out of the private sector.” https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/politics/kelly-loeffler-stock-coronavirus/index.html

Who pays the price when they turn out to be wrong? Definitely not the President, Trump children or Fox News headliners like Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham. I don’t want an authoritative response like here in China, but they at least have the technological means through cell phone app tracking and contract tracing to be able to pinpoint who was/is responsible for putting themselves, their families and others at risk. Even if all the GOP governors were to issue back to work orders, roughly 60-65% would be unwilling to go back voluntarily. Good luck firing them or taking away their unemployment benefits. Let’s not forget a situation was created to reward a significant percentage of employees more money for staying at home to prevent exactly these types of my health and that of my family vs. economic survival decisions. This policy was agreed to by both the Senate and the President. https://www.biospace.com/article/gilead-shutters-covid-19-trial-in-china-stocks-drop-3-percent-/ Abrahams interprets all this to suggest limited efficacy of the drug, writing, “We continue to believe that while remdesivir showed a promising signal of activity in the recent open label compassionate use published data, the fact that no data has been revealed from the truncated severe study in China—the only randomized study thus far—despite today’s update also indicated it had enrolled a reasonably robust number of patients (n=237), suggests any benefits observed were likely inconclusive and maintains our view that the likelihood of remdesivir demonstrating substantial activity remains at best 50/50.” The limited data on the 53 patients receiving the drug on compassionate use basis had no controls and, as a result, made it difficult to draw any definitive conclusions. The study of the 53 patients in the U.S., Europe and Canada who required respiratory support showed that about two-thirds benefited from the drug.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1185711.shtml Here’s another important story. A Chinese intl. student returning from university in Miami was hospitalized, released, quarantined in Beijing for two weeks, then had to go back to the hospital 19 days after the original quarantine had started and was ultimately diagnosed with Covid (also managed to get his entire family sick.) They’re starting to rethink adjusting the normal 14 day timeframe to 21 days. Beijing is still pretty much more locked down than Wuhan, even. They haven’t allowed a single flight or high speed train to go between the two cities, either.

Literally every disaster movie ever made starts with the government ignoring a scientist. A critical difference between the parties is this, Corlette says: Democrats believe that “the healthy should subsidize the sick—the young, the old—because we all get older and sicker at some point in our lives. “On the flip side,” she continued, “if you look at what’s underpinning many of the more conservative health-reform ideas … [it’s that] what people pay toward their insurance or their care should reflect their level of risk.” ..... The biggest paradox in the health-care fight was that the Republican efforts to unravel risk-sharing hurt the material interests of their electoral coalition. The reason is that all their plans raised costs on older people with greater health needs at the same time as their base was becoming older and whiter. Their plans lowered prices for younger people, who now lean reliably toward the Democrats. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/what-covid-19-debate-has-common-aca-fight/608797/

Wuhan Update Pretty much no changes here. My wife has been working for almost three full weeks, and she was just required to do a nose swab (very painful) and blood test this past WED. The government has recently announced they are not going to pay for foreigners’ Covid-19 treatment, so we are looking at getting supplemental insurance that would cost about $500-600. Without it, the full cost for treatment here might be something like $25-40,000. Planes, subway and buses are now running, but still at only about 30-40% capacity of normal levels. Are waiting on official announcement about school reopening and social distancing guidelines, as most classrooms are pretty cramped to accommodate 30-35 students. Mock exams scheduled the week of May 11-15. Just found out Grade 10/11 might not be back until May 18. Rumors we might go 1-2 weeks longer until end of June, we normally have only IB, AP, A Levels exams from May through early June (exam supervision), but 11th graders will now go until end of June since their official exams were all cancelled (AP has online version and shortened format.) Some schools are going into July or only paying 50% of normal salaries so we’re pretty fortunate so far. Still plenty of questions about asymptomatic transmission and those who were originally recovered getting sick again (S. Korea). Chinese applications to US schools could fall 15-25% next year, so there is growing concern on the part of teachers unable to return to China that their positions could be cut in order to save money, especially after students return in May and online classes are suspended. SAT will be offered online in US, probably not Asia. Students thinking about Boston area are already freaking out about Boston U. making contingency plans for Jan 2021 start, fall classes online.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/16/world/coronavirus-response-lessons-learned-intl/index.html How Taiwan, Germany, South Korea and Iceland got it right A total of 141 people who had apparently recovered from Covid-19 have tested positive again, South Korea's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said on Thursday. KCDC deputy director Kwon Joon-wook said the agency did not know what caused the people to retest positive and was investigating. Most experts think it's unlikely that somebody will be re-infected for the coronavirus soon after recovering. It's possible that issues with testing – or varying amounts of viral RNA in the body, which the tests look for – could explain why people tested positive after testing negative. Kwon also said that the government is studying cultivated samples from the patients to determine whether the cases could be contagious. Kwon said the study will take about two weeks from today. “Our KCDC workers are working day and night to collect samples and conduct studies,” Kwon said. cnn.com

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) authoritatively declared on Wednesday night that the American people understand that the economy needs to be reopened very soon and that when that happens, the deadly coronavirus is “gonna spread faster.” Appearing on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, Kennedy—whose home state has been one of the hardest hit during the COVID-19 pandemic—insisted that social distancing restrictions need to be quickly reversed because “very soon, the can (car) is going to run out of road.” After asserting that the world economy would soon collapse if the United States isn’t opened up in the near future, the Louisiana lawmaker went on to claim that nationwide shutdowns “did not stop the spread of virus.” “I wish it had,” he added. “But it’s too late for that. The shutdown slowed the spread of the virus at enormous cost, but it still spread.” https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-senator-gotta-reopen-country-020943247.html As U.S. discouraged mask use for public, White House team raced to secure face coverings from Taiwan for senior staff The Washington Post By Carol D. Leonnig, Elizabeth Dwoskin and John Hudson In mid-March, a National Security Council team rushed to address what they saw as a threat to the U.S. government’s ability to function amid the advancing pandemic: a lack of masks to protect enough staff on the White House complex. Alarmed by the small cache and the growing signs of an acute shortage of protective gear in the United States, a senior NSC official turned to a foreign government for help, according to people familiar with the situation. The effort resulted in a donation of hundreds of thousands of surgical masks from Taiwan, which had plentiful domestic production and had sharply curtailed the spread of the coronavirus on the island. The bulk of Taiwan’s goodwill shipment went to the Strategic National Stockpile, but 3,600 masks were set aside for White House staff and officials, administration officials said. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/16/politics/donald-trump-economy-coronavirus-pain/index.html CNN reported Wednesday that governors and state health officials feel misled by the White House about a rapid, toaster-size testing device made by Abbott Laboratories and unveiled as a "whole new ballgame" by the President. The federal government distributed the machines nationwide last week -- but accompanied them with only enough test kits to test around 115 people in each state. Medical experts are warning that hospitals still lack sufficient tests to diagnose the sick, let alone to cover the rest of the population. "We have made quite a bit of progress in the last few weeks. We are still not anywhere close to testing everyone who needs to be tested," said Dr. Jennifer Lee, an emergency room physician, on CNN's "The Situation Room." "Let's stop pretending that three million tests is enough. We need the capacity to do millions of tests if not per day, per week," Lee said, adding that sometimes a hospital might have sufficient tests kits but lack swabs, or labs might lack supplies to process the tests so that doctors can make a diagnosis

Sure, there were supposedly 6000 in the poll, but only 1600+ have been processed. There were 25 additional results classified as “borderline.” And there was no second test done after two additional weeks. These antibody tests have already been proven to be inaccurate (especially the Chinese ones), so while 1,000 is enough for a political poll about candidate preference as a snapshot in time, would still like to see more. Median income in Telluride is $63,000. Show me the results in Pueblo or Grand Junction, not a ski resort town with presumably better health care resources and far fewer workers in blue collar or public facing/service positions. Show me an area of Colorado with a high density or concentration of people, where the average salary is closer to $35-40,000. http://zipatlas.com/us/co/zip-code-comparison/median-household-income.htm Telluride would be roughly 50 out of 481 in terms of average salaries/community. Placerville is #35, the closest I could find. The test that Mei Mei Hu and Reese donated to the Telluride community is an antibody test developed by COVAXX, a newly formed subsidiary of their New York-based United Biomedical. It’s one of more than 30 commercially available tests without Food and Drug Administration approval under flexible rules adopted to address the COVID-19 pandemic. So far only one antibody test has received official FDA approval — a test made by Cellex, which uses just a pinprick of blood and produces results in about 15 minutes. .... It’s absolutely my goal to make this standard for how we get the country back to a new normal,” Reese had said before the test was suspended. “If we tested everyone in the whole country and were prepared to do it twice, you would know exactly when you would be back at functioning — everybody back at work.” Reese isn’t alone in his excitement. Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman invested an undisclosed amount of capital into COVAXX through his Pershing Square Foundation, and bestselling author and XPrize founder Dr. Peter Diamandis is listed as part of the COVAXX leadership team on the company’s website. Diamandis presents a fawning interview with Hu and Reese in a widely shared YouTube video, which does not disclose his relationship with the company. Neither responded to requests for comment. https://khn.org/news/a-colorado-ski-community-planned-to-test-everyone-for-covid-19-heres-what-happened/

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-antibody-tests-colorado-stalled-new-york-lab-2020-4 But they’re still missing at least 75% of the test results...due to, you guessed it, coronavirus infections in lab workers all the way across the country in NY, where the results are actually being analyzed. Hard to extrapolate from numbers of 1000-2000, unless you randomly tested another 50-100 communities across Colorado. Not to mention there seem to be significant error ranges with these antibody tests (back to Ed Yong/The Atlantic article.)

The problem is waiting 2-3 MORE weeks limits the range of options pretty dramatically. We might end up simply reacting again, instead of trying to get ahead of the curve. We have totally different health care systems, underlying conditions/co-morbidities, ratios of beds/doctors/respirators/nurses...population demographics. How many major cities do you have outside of Stockholm? And Sweden is at 12000 cases and 1200 deaths...so you’re waiting x number of days, and how much longer to be able to scientifically assess the data? What about the different medications they’re using? Taiwan right now is the best case study...and they at least have three major metropolitan areas on a densely populated island. Sweden might relate more to the South, Heartland and near west/Rockies in terms of pop density, but the two coasts, Illinois, Texas, LA, Michigan, Ohio, are different animals. https://www.thelocal.se/20200310/timeline-how-the-coronavirus-has-developed-in-sweden Well, here’s the latest accessible info on Swedish numbers.

So the theory is that if there are less tests, fewer people will know they’re sick...or what they have exactly, causing them to be more likely to stay at home and heal themselves (thus avoiding hospitals being overwhelmed)? That potentially works on keeping deaths and case numbers down (many will also delay going to hospital when their cases become too acute, quickly die, and not be counted), but definitely has the opposite effect on reopening. No symptoms, no test? Of course, the other problem is having to go to the doctor FIRST in order to get tested. Secondly, lots of studies are showing indisputable evidence of patients being the most contagious at least 3-5 days before exhibiting any physical symptoms...which is why we had that 5.7 figure of new infections caused by asymptomatic super spreaders. So there are obviously immense flaws in this not testing. Trump doesn’t want to run a Wal Mart parking lot test center, fine. But that doesn’t change issues of availability, accuracy and lack of testing reagents due to worldwide demands. Remember, a couple of weeks ago, the government was promising to pay for testing and many insurance companies were waiving co-pays for hospitalizations...what happened to that?