CORONA Main Coronavirus thread

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOGyRC9ZUTM
5:41 min
DHS secretary breaks down efforts to get protective gear to US hot spots
•Apr 9, 2020

Fox News
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf joins ‘The Daily Briefing.’

night driver said:

Doug, remember that "MAFFS is HARD!!"

And MOST folks are within 1 Std Dev of the mean, half above and half below, SO, MAFFS is HARD for most people.

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I’ve been wearing my Maff when I go out...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_Z8OvDlkT0
18:12 min
Coronavirus May Be Peaking In New York, But New Hot Spots Cause Concern | TODAY
•Apr 9, 2020

TODAY
There are signs that Americans’ social distancing is slowing the spread of the coronavirus, but the virus is taking hundreds of lives a day in New York, and the emergence of new hot spots is causing concern. Meanwhile, Thursday’s unemployment numbers are expected to show that an additional 5 million Americans have filed for benefits.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTX3xoLdDlw
10:13 min
Dr. Anthony Fauci: Virus Death Toll May Be ‘More Like 60,000 Than 100,000 To 200,000’ | TODAY
723,379 views
•Apr 9, 2020

7.4K1.4KSHARESAVE




TODAY
Joining TODAY live, Dr. Anthony Fauci says that even though the number of deaths validate that this is a bad week in the coronavirus battle, there are “some glimmers of hope” such as stabilizing numbers of hospitalizations in New York. He says that social distancing and behavior changes are “starting to have a real effect” and that the virus death toll may look “more like 60,000 than the 100,000 to 200,000” initially predicted. He dismisses “conspiracy theories” that coronavirus death tolls are inflated and says he’s “cautiously optimistic” that the country may be able to begin reopening by summer.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqrwt2q9C5E
6:21 min
Why Larry Hogan {Maryland] is proud of fellow governors' response to COVID-19
•Apr 7, 2020

PBS NewsHour
Governors across the country are working together to ensure frontline medical workers receive the protective gear that can keep them from contracting or transmitting COVID-19. Maryland’s Larry Hogan is the chairman of the National Governors Association, and he joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the ongoing effort to “catch up” to the crisis and why he feels proud of how U.S. governors are responding.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EcptPL9o_w
3:48 min
Hogan Tours Convention Center's Coronavirus Field Hospital
•Apr 7, 2020

WJZ
Gov. Larry Hogan toured the Baltimore Convention Center's 250-bed coronavirus field hospital on Tuesday.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgDnrYx0ME0
2:58 min
Work Underway To Converted Miami Beach Convention Center Into Field Hospital
•Apr 8, 2020


CBS Miami
CBS4's Peter D'Oench shares the message from Gov. Ron DeSantis, who visited the site on Wednesday.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqJKD-J8q0o
1:43 min
Miami launches antibody testing to measure spread of coronavirus
•Apr 6, 2020

CBS Evening News
An ambitious testing program by the University of Miami began in South Florida on Monday. The goal is to clear up the chaotic picture of just how widespread the coronavirus is, which in turn should help some governments plan its response. Dr. Jon LaPook has a look.

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs
--------------------------------
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, April 9, 2020
Executive Branch Agencies Recommend the FCC Revoke and Terminate China Telecom’s Authorizations to Provide International Telecommunications Services in the United States

Today, interested Executive Branch agencies[1] unanimously recommended that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoke and terminate China Telecom (Americas) Corp.’s authorizations to provide international telecommunications services to and from the United States. China Telecom is the U.S. subsidiary of a People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-owned telecommunications company.
The Department of Justice led the review of China Telecom’s authorizations, and it based the recommendation on developments since the authorizations were last transferred in 2007, including China Telecom’s failure to comply with the terms of an existing agreement with the Department.
“Today, more than ever, the life of the nation and its people runs on our telecommunications networks,” said John C. Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security. “The security of our government and professional communications, as well as of our most private data, depends on our use of trusted partners from nations that share our values and our aspirations for humanity. Today’s action is but our next step in ensuring the integrity of America’s telecommunications systems.”
In its recommendation, the Executive Branch agencies identified substantial and unacceptable national security and law enforcement risks associated with China Telecom’s operations, which render the FCC authorizations inconsistent with the public interest. More specifically the recommendation was based on:

• the evolving national security environment since 2007 and increased knowledge of the PRC’s role in malicious cyber activity targeting the United States;
• concerns that China Telecom is vulnerable to exploitation, influence, and control by the PRC government;
• inaccurate statements by China Telecom to U.S. government authorities about where China Telecom stored its U.S. records, raising questions about who has access to those records;
• inaccurate public representations by China Telecom concerning its cybersecurity practices, which raise questions about China Telecom’s compliance with federal and state cybersecurity and privacy laws; and
• the nature of China Telecom’s U.S. operations, which provide opportunities for PRC state-actors to engage in malicious cyber activity enabling economic espionage and disruption and misrouting of U.S. communications.

Some of the foregoing relate to China Telecom’s failure to comply with a 2007 Letter of Assurance, which was a basis for the existing FCC authorizations. The Department’s National Security Division, Foreign Investment Review Section, identified those compliance issues through its mitigation monitoring program. As a result, the Executive Branch agencies concluded that the national security and law enforcement risks associated with China Telecom’s international Section 214 authorizations could not be mitigated by additional mitigation terms.
More information concerning the Executive Branch agencies’ recommendation is available on the FCC’s International Bureau Filing System (IBFS), under Docket Number ITC-T/C-20070725-00285. The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration filed the recommendation on behalf of the Executive Branch agencies.
The Department is committed to working with industry to ensure that critical business needs are considered and addressed in a manner that is consistent with the United States’ national security and law enforcement interests. This action was taken under the legacy, ad hoc arrangement of the Departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security, formerly known as Team Telecom, the operation of which was recently formalized by Executive Order dated April 4, 2020, establishing the Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the United States Telecommunications Services Sector. Applications referred by the FCC after the date of the Executive Order will be handled under the process outlined therein.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQl7bwdsYiY
48:51 min
SMALL BUSINESS RELIEF: Trump roundtable with companies helping during Covid-19
•Apr 7, 2020

FOX 10 Phoenix

Squid said:

I’ve been wearing my Maff when I go out...

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Thoe have I--but it makth me thound kinda funny.

Fogth up my glatthes, too.

tno5 said:

my question is, in my neighborhood we have a lot of cats and kittens that go from house to house, hanging out - can cats be carriers of it? do I need to worry when I have three of them hanging out on my front porch or yard. I haven't petted any of them, but all my neighbors do - feed them and pet them.

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Personally, I would not touch them.

Macgyver said:

Biden Cuts Hole In Mask So He Can Still Sniff People's Hair

View attachment 191299

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Photoshop (I bet) but funny as heck anyway!

Michigan
I am really impressed with the stats they are now putting out.

MDHHS adds recovery, hospitalization information to website
By Brooklyne Beatty -April 9, 20200

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) is now providing additional coronavirus statistics to its website.

The MDHHS website will now include information on the number of people recovered. This will be updated weekly, and includes the number of people with laboratory confirmed COVID-19 cases who are 30 days out from their onset of illness.

The site also includes testing data by state preparedness region, which will be updated daily.

Hospital utilization information is also available, which includes the number of emergency department discharges, number of inpatients, number of patients in critical care, and patients on ventilators. This will also be updated on a daily basis.

You can find the latest Michigan coronavirus information by visiting Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.


Here's their available PPE and bed tracking; they have 24,777,416 gloves.

Pentagon says COVID report cited by ABC doesn't exist

• By Rowan Scarborough - The Washington Times
  

Thursday, April 9, 2020
The Pentagon says a supposed intelligence report cited by ABC News on an emerging COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t exist.

ABC said the report was issued in November by the National Center for Medical Intelligence, an arm of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). It supposedly warned of a pandemic of what would be later named COVID-19.

Relying on sources who said they saw the report, ABC News said the warning was briefed “multiple times” to the DIA, the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Trump White House.

The Pentagon said it did an exhaustive search and could find no such document.

Col. R. Shane Day, a physician who heads the medical intelligence unit, issued a flat denial.

“As a matter of practice, the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters,” Col. Day said. “However, in the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists.”

A defense official told The Washington Times, “The center is part of the broader Intelligence Community effort to provide intelligence, expert assessments, and pandemic warning to senior U.S. government leaders, with the critical mission of supporting defense policymakers and U.S. warfighters. NCMI and the Defense Intelligence Agency spent considerable time over the last 24 hours examining every possible product that could have been identified as related to this topic and have found no such product.”

The South China Morning Post reported scientists believe they have found perhaps the first COVID-19 victim on Nov. 17 in Hubei Province, home to Wuhan City, where the virus broke out in December 2019 and spread to the world.

China reported to the World Health Organization in mid-January that the coronavirus wasn’t transmitted human-to-human, an inaccurate statement passed to the public by WHO.

Proposal forces insurance industry to cover massive coronavirus losses

Plan would treat the COVID-19 pandemic like an act of terrorism

• By Dave Boyer - The Washington Times
  Sunday, April 5, 2020

Pressure has been building on the insurance industry to reimburse companies big and small for their losses after a proposal began circulating in Congress that would treat the COVID-19 pandemic like an act of terrorism for insurance purposes.

The Pandemic Risk Insurance Act would require insurers to cover business losses resulting from pandemics. The federal government would serve as a backstop for insurance companies. Some are arguing that the coverage should be offered to companies retroactively as a solution to the massive losses hitting nearly all sectors of the economy during the outbreak.

“If they don’t do this, we’re in very, very big trouble,” said Zachary Finn, director of the risk management program at Butler University. “Business interruption spreads through the economy like a contagion. What’s happening is Congress can’t bail us out fast enough.”

Mr. Finn drafted a proposal for Congress based on a project created by four of his former students to address business losses from a theoretical cyberattack. The measure is modeled on the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002.

The proposal has the backing of House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, California Democrat.

“The circumstances we are facing are unprecedented and will require creative approaches,” she said as House Democrats consider a fourth economic rescue package. “America’s consumers, small businesses and vulnerable populations are suffering. It is time for a policy and fiscal response to address their needs.”

House Republican leaders are hesitant. They say it’s more important to deliver aid to businesses and workers from the just-approved $2.2 trillion “phase three” rescue plan.

“We aren’t involved in any talks along those lines and wouldn’t support retroactively amending [insurance] contracts like some are suggesting,” said a House Republican leadership aide. “We are focused on getting firms support through the mechanisms established in the CARES Act.”

President Trump, asked last week whether insurance companies would be compensated for “extraordinary expenses” incurred during the pandemic, said the administration is talking with insurers. He noted that two major health care insurers have agreed to waive patient co-pays for treatment of COVID-19.

“That’s a lot of money they gave up,” Mr. Trump said. “But we’re discussing that with the insurance companies.”

A coalition of 36 insurance and business trade groups called on the administration and Congress last week to create a recovery fund to supplement the $2.2 trillion economic rescue package, which is providing aid to distressed companies and laid-off workers.

“Without broad-based and expeditious federal action, long-term damage to the financial markets, rampant unemployment, and irreparable harm to communities are almost certain,” the groups wrote. “Although the loan programs instituted by the CARES Act provide a down payment on economic support for Main Street businesses, additional liquidity will be required for impaired industries and businesses to avoid an unprecedented systemic, economic crisis.”

They are proposing another program “funded by the federal government and under the authority of a special federal administrator with the ability to enter into contracts with interested businesses to administer the ‘Recovery Fund’ and facilitate the distribution of federal funds and liquidity to impacted businesses and their employees.”

John Q. Doyle, president and CEO of the global insurance and risk management firm Marsh & McLennan, wrote to congressional leaders, Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow last week to propose a “pandemic risk insurance program” to accelerate the recovery and protect against another pandemic.

“The stakes for businesses, their employees and the economy are simply too high to defer action in addressing pandemic risk exposure,” Mr. Doyle wrote. “The time is now to structure a public-private partnership with input from policyholders, insurers and the federal government.”

Under his proposed plan, “policyholders would absorb initial losses up to specified deductibles.”

“Insurers would then provide business interruption coverage between that threshold and a higher limit,” Mr. Doyle wrote. “The federal government would then backstop the overall program by bearing a portion of the damages above a certain level. Naturally, the precise contours of the program, including trigger points and limits, will need to be developed in close collaboration with these stakeholders and the federal government.”

He said the insurance industry can’t cover the massive crisis on its own.
“Given the magnitude of the COVID-19 exposure and current capital levels in the industry, the private insurance sector does not have the risk bearing capacity alone to manage this peril across the U.S. economy,” Mr. Doyle said. “There are certain risks, like terrorism, that require the full weight of the United States government to manage in partnership with the insurance industry.”

Insurers are fighting the House proposal. The vast majority of property and casualty insurance policies don’t cover losses caused by contagion or losses stemming from government orders for business shutdowns.

“Business income loss from a virus, bacterium or other micro-organism is generally not covered,” said Patrick Shea, co-founder of Tower Program Insurance in Austin, Texas. “If the government shuts your business down, most policies don’t cover it. I don’t see Zurich and AIG and Lexington and all those big carriers saying that they have some vulnerability to pay some of these claims on these big casinos and hotels.”

Lawsuits against insurers already have been filed. The Oceana Grill restaurant in New Orleans filed the first lawsuit late last month over business interruption coverage. It asked a state court to rule that its all-risks policy from Lloyd’s of London should cover its losses if local authorities shut down the establishment.
The New Jersey General Assembly late last month was advancing a measure to authorize coverage retroactively in insurance policies for businesses with fewer than 100 employees. Legislators tabled the proposal after insurance trade groups agreed to devise a voluntary approach to help small-business policyholders cover their losses.

A bipartisan group of 18 House lawmakers asked four major insurance trade associations on March 18 to retroactively recognize financial losses for policyholders relating to COVID-19 under commercial business interruption coverage. The group comprised six Republicans and 12 Democrats.

“During times of crisis, we must all work together,” the lawmakers wrote. They said civil authorities’ shelter-in-place orders should enable businesses to receive compensation from insurers.

“In many commercial property insurance policies, business interruption coverage is triggered when the policyholder sustains ‘direct physical loss of or damage to’ insured property,” their letter stated. “In addition, many commercial property insurance policies provide coverage for business income losses sustained when a civil authority prohibits or impairs access to the policyholder’s premises.”

The insurance trade groups rejected the lawmakers’ request in a letter to Rep. Nydia Velazquez, New York Democrat and chairwoman of the House Small Business Committee.

“Business interruption policies do not, and were not designed to, provide coverage against communicable diseases such as COVID-19,” wrote David Sampson, president and CEO of the American Property Casualty Insurance Association; Charles Chamness, president and CEO of the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies; Bob Rusbuldt, president and CEO of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, and Ken Crerar, president and CEO of the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers.

They said the U.S. insurance industry “remains committed to our consumers and will ensure that prompt payments are made in instances where coverage exists.”

“We recognize the extraordinary challenges our country is facing — our member businesses, our employees, and our families are confronting the same trials,” the trade groups’ letter said. “The U.S. is in the midst of a national crisis that will require federal assistance that provides funding directly to those American individuals and businesses most in need. Our organizations stand ready to work with Congress on solutions that provide the necessary relief as soon as possible.”

But the Risk and Insurance Management Society of New York said it was encouraged by what it called growing momentum for a federal backstop.
“It is encouraging to hear that the federal government recognizes the important role insurance and risk management can have in assisting the countless businesses that have been affected by COVID-19,” Whitney Craig, the group’s director of government affairs, told the publication Business Insurance. “RIMS has already reached out to congressional leaders, offering our support as they attempt to develop a strategy to address the impact of this global pandemic.”

Mr. Finn said he has been working with Ms. Craig to advance his proposal in Congress, and he thinks it will be approved.

“The program would pay exactly as it would have paid if terrorism was the cause,” Mr. Finn said in an interview. “That gives certainty to the market because [the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act is] already there, so it’s stood the test of time politically. I would argue it will save more money in litigation than [insurance companies] would pay, and I would also argue that this is good for their business in the long term.”

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC.

bw said:

I'd prefer a good therapy over a vaccine. I don't trust vaccine and I don't trust the motives of those who make them.

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Same here.

Indiana

Long-term care facilities now required to report COVID cases within 24 hours
by: Brett Kast
Posted: Apr 9, 2020 / 06:40 AM EDT / Updated: Apr 9, 2020 / 06:50 AM EDT

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Thirty-one Hoosiers have now died after contracting COVID-19 at long-term care facilities.

That’s 15% of all COVID deaths in the state, and Tammy Bowman fears her sister could become number 32.

“In a very short time her temperature went from 100.7, and when she arrived at the hospital it was 102.7,” Bowman said.

Until Monday, Tammy’s 68-year-old sister lived at a nursing home in Hendricks County. She had been there just two months. Now she’s in the hospital, with what her sister told us is COVID-19. She also has multiple sclerosis.

“The doctors are not hopeful about my sister, because her MS has compromised her already.,” Bowman said. “But my sister loves people, she’s always fought for the underdog.”

So now Tammy is fighting for her, and for other families.

“Families don’t have any choice about it if they aren’t told that it’s happening and people are just blatantly saying ‘no we don’t have any cases,” Bowman said.

The company that owns the facility told FOX59 they don’t have any positive cases. Now the state is mandating these facilities report positive tests and deaths for both residents and employees.

“We provided a checklist very early on to all of our facilities emphasizing the importance of not only reporting this to your local and state public health officials, but making sure that your residents and their families were notified about the positive cases or deaths that occurred,” said Indiana State Health Commissioner Dr. Kristina Box.

Under the new guidelines, a facility has 24 hours to notify health officials, who say protecting the more than 65,000 Hoosiers living in these homes is the main goal.

“They’re our parents, our siblings, neighbors, sons daughters and friends,” said Dr. Dan Rusyniak, chief medical officer of the Indiana FSSA. “They are our family, and we will do everything we can to help family.”

State health officials also said they’ve tested more than 600 residents at care facilities and jails, and have had nearly 200 positive cases.

Hope the guard recovers.
Texican.....
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NEWS APRIL 08, 2020

A security guard told a man he couldn't enter Walmart over social distancing. The man then rammed his car into the guard.

The guard is fighting for his life in the hospital


A man who worked as a security guard was seriously injured when a man allegedly rammed into him with his car after the guard tried to enforce Walmart's social distancing rules.

The harrowing attack occurred Saturday in Quebec, Canada. The 25-year-old man and his female companion attempted to enter the Walmart when the security guard told them that the store would only allow one person per car into the store.

The man apparently grew enraged and left with his companion. The man then allegedly rammed the guard with his car. The guard ended up on the hood of the car and slammed his head on the pavement when the driver maneuvered to shake him off.

The guard was hospitalized with life-threatening head injuries. The man was later arrested by law enforcement at his home. He was charged with armed assault with a vehicle, aggravated assault, and hit and run. Police say the charges may change if the condition of the guard changes.

The family of the security guard said that he is the father of five children.

Massachusetts DPH: 503 deaths reported out of 18,941 cases of COVID-19 Massachusetts DPH: 503 deaths reported out of 18,941 cases of COVID-19

L.A. Mayor Wants 'Snitches' to Rat Out Their Neighbors... All for a 'Reward'

Beth Bauman
Posted: Apr 04, 2020 9:00 AM
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) is encouraging residents in his city to tattletale on their neighbors who defy his stay-at-home order. Specifically, he's targeting businesses that continue to remain open despite not being considered "essential" (at least by government standards).

“If any non-essential businesses continue to operate in violation of the stay at home order, we’re going to act to enforce the safer at home order and ensure their compliance,” Garcetti said. “You know the old expression about snitches. Well, in this case, snitches get rewards.”

“We want to thank you for turning folks in and making sure we are all safe,” the mayor said during a press conference “Your decision to stay home may mean that there’s one less person who needs a ventilator we do not have.”

Garcetti’s office has already sent the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to 144 of the more than 500 non-essential businesses that failed to follow his order. Of those, four have been sent to the city attorney’s office for misdemeanor charges.

The mayor’s team encouraged residents to submit business violations here, on the city website. It’s unclear what the so-called “rewards” will be (if anything).

The announcement comes after Garcetti formed his "Safer at Home" Business Ambassadors program last month. The program "deploys city workers and volunteers with the mayor's Crisis Response Team to businesses that appear to be out of compliance with the emergency order with a goal of securing voluntary compliance. If voluntary compliance is not achieved, the ambassadors will share information with the city attorney and LAPD for follow-up."


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06Fyg4maLWg&feature=emb_logo
.27 min
Snitches Get Rewards': Garcetti Encourages Community To Report Businesses Violating Safer At Home O
•Mar 31, 2020


CBS Los Angeles
Mayor Eric Garcetti encouraged members of the community to continue reporting businesses that violate the city's Safer at Home order to the city for enforcement.

Oklahoma City Hospital Temporarily Closing Due to Lack of Patients
JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty ImagesHANNAH BLEAU9 Apr 20201407

The INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is temporarily closing most of its facility due to a mass decline in patients, it confirmed on Wednesday.

The postponement of non-emergent surgeries and procedures, according to the hospital’s statement, “has led to a declining census at both facilities.”

Therefore, to better consolidate resources, the bulk of the 238-bed acute-care facility is temporarily shutting down, with the exception of the emergency room and “some Radiology and infusion services,” according to KFOR.

Per the hospital’s statement:

INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center Portland Ave. is an extension of the INTEGRIS Baptist campus with the same leadership team. The postponement of non-emergent surgeries and procedures has led to a declining census at both facilities. In an effort to better consolidate our resources we are temporarily closing the Portland Ave. building with the exception of the emergency room, it will remain open, and limited outpatient services. We fully anticipate that if and when we see a surge of COVID-19 patients in Oklahoma City, we will be reopening this campus.

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Last month, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) issued an executive order postponing all elective surgeries and minor medical procedures through the beginning of April. However, the state is not formally under a statewide stay-at-home order.
As of Thursday morning, Oklahoma had 1,524 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 79 related deaths.

Mnuchin: Economy Could Be Open in May

IAN HANCHETT9 Apr 20209

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said that he believes it’s possible the U.S. economy could be reopened in May.

Host Jim Cramer asked, “Now, do you think, with this, there’s a possibility, if the doctors let us, that we could be open for business in the month of May?”

Mnuchin responded, “I do, Jim. I think as soon as the president feels comfortable with the medical issues, we are making everything necessary that American companies and American workers can be open for business and that they have the liquidity that they need to operate their business in the interim.”

[Mayor] Garcetti Fail: Coronavirus Hits Homeless Housed in Los Angeles Rec Center
ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty ImagesDAVID NG9 Apr 20201,221

In another setback for Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s effort to move homeless people into neighborhood recreation centers, a homeless individual who was sheltered at a rec center in Granada Hills has reportedly tested positive for the Wuhan coronavirus, igniting fears that the virus could start to spread like wildfire among the city’s homeless population.

Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer announced Wednesday that 12 homeless people have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Among those is believed to be an individual who recently stayed at the Granada Hills Recreation Center in the San Fernando Valley.

It is believed to be the first time someone had tested positive for coronavirus at one of the L.A. rec centers converted into homeless shelters under the mayor’s plan.

A deep cleaning is being done of the facility after city officials became aware of the test results on Monday, according to the L.A. Daily News. The shelter had around 40 people staying there. It remains unclear how many people the infected individual came in contact with while staying at the shelter.

One homeless person who stayed at the shelter told the Los Angeles Times that “chaos” broke out in the gymnasium after residents were told about the test result, with at least six people moving out of the venue. “I left everything I had there. I left with the clothes on my back. I said I’m not saying another night in there,” said the man, identified only as “Victor.”

Victor told the Times that the infected man “had been there a couple days and he was coughing the whole time.”

Another person staying at the shelter told the L.A. Daily News that residents of the shelter were not directly informed of who had tested positive. She told the newspaper that a yellow tape had been placed down around the cot that the person was using.

Mayor Garcetti’s plan to move the city’s tens of thousands of homeless people into neighborhood shelters has faced opposition from those who fear the cramped quarters will only help the coronavirus to spread among the city’s transient population and then to the surrounding communities.


Beds are set up in an emergency homeless shelter in a neighborhood recreation center in Los Angeles, California, on March 23, 2020. The city is in the process of opening emergency homeless shelters to offer beds to those who live on the streets in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A resident of the Los Angeles community of Pacific Palisades reportedly filed court papers on Tuesday seeking to stop the city and county from proceeding with the plan, calling it a “dangerously misguided policy” that could jeopardize public health.

Last month, Breitbart News obtained an unconfirmed list of all of the recreation centers where Garcetti planned to house homeless people during the coronavirus pandemic. They include centers in densely populated areas like Hollywood, near the intersection of Cole Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard, and the Fairfax district in Pan-Pacific Park.

Another shelter is located near Watts at Compton Avenue and 109th Street. Other homeless shelters include venues in Westwood, Echo Park, North Hollywood, and Cheviot Hills.

Breitbart has been on the forefront of reporting on the opposition to Mayor Garcetti’s plan, as well as the inconsistencies in city policy, such as the decision to keep open-air farmers markets open during the pandemic.

Mayor Garcetti’s strategy fits with the policy set by Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has said he would like all of the state’s homeless to be moved indoors during the coronavirus pandemic.

marsh said:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIr7CTzgD-g
46:56 min
Coronavirus: CA Gov. Gavin Newsom addresses state's response to COVID-19
•Streamed live 103 minutes ago

KTLA 5
Update: California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other officials were providing updates on the state's response to COVID-19. Motel vouchers for health care workers discounts scaled to pay. CalTravelStore.com HealthCorps 86,516 volunteers now. United Airlines, Southwest, Alaska and Delta Airlines have donated out of state travel and the state has accomodations. Helath care workers who have tested positive and those exposed also can access hotel rooms.

18309 tested positive, 492 deaths (50 yesterday,) 1132 in ICU (drop of 1.9% from yesterday,) 2825 hospitalized. We have bent the curve but it as been stretched so will peak later. We started with 7587 ventilators, now have 11747 ventilators. Hospitals only using 31.89% of their ventilators. (8,000 not in use) This does not include the CA state stockpile. That is why CA was able to lend ventilators to other states (There is a claw back agreement if needed.) They check in daily with every county on what they have and need. They make sure they have 2X as many vents as they need that day and stockpile are regionally prepostitioned and hospitals. Have mutual aid system. Taking care of the smaller hospitals where surge could overwhelm. Goal is to secure 10,000 more ventilators. Bridge ventilators (not built to last forever, step down for those not at same stage of acuity as the regular.)

Capacity of CA to procure hundred of millions of units PPE items for hospital and l system, not include grocery front line and IHSS (In home health service) hundreds of thousands pushed out daily and will increase significantly over next few weeks.

New Batelle mask sterilization system operational April 20.

California Coronavirus COVID-19 Response has resources for domestic abuse. Stay at home is disproportionately impacting women.

Concern of loss of fishing season - not cancelling just want to delay. Inyo and Mono county were concerned they would be inundated by out of area fishermen and they don't have the health care capacity. Are addressing with county health on a county by county basis.

Grappling with special education issues in distance learning. Also broadband access. How do we make up for lost learning time. Looking at summer support.

LBGTQI homeless youth resources and crisis lines

13,900 testing backlog still. Looking how to expand PCR testing and ensure "equity lens" is in place to make sure poor and minorities have access. Antibody tests (serum) community spread and immunity from reinfection. Looking at how to use to guide decision. Other countries re-thinking their use


Project room key - getting people out of congregate situations with infection into separate motel rooms.

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See, I told you people would start to die in the pc states, like California and Chicago, as resources were diverted to illegals, and whatever protected class in favor at the time. Divert resources to homeless queer kids
Seriously? The pc areas of California, Oregon, and Washington state deserve all the pain now headed their way

Watch–Mitch McConnell: Democrats Holding Small Business Aid ‘Hostage’
C-SPAN

SEAN MORAN9 Apr 202014

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on the Senate floor on Thursday that Democrats continue to hold small business aid “hostage.”
The Senate adjourned on Thursday after Senate Democrats blocked McConnell’s measure to approve $250 billion in relief for small businesses.

Democrats claimed that McConnell was not negotiating in good faith and that more money was needed elsewhere.

McConnell explained that the Thursday vote would have simply expanded on what was provided by the $2 trillion CARES Act.

“I’m not talking about changing any policy language that both sides negotiated together. I am literally talking about deleting the number 350 and writing 600 in its place. A completely clean bill,” he said.

McConnell blamed Democrats for delaying the aid as part of a broader move to include more Democrat provisions in a future bill.
He said:

The distinguished Democratic Leader and the Speaker of the House sought to use this crucial program to open broader negotiations on other topics, including parts of the CARES Act where literally no money has gone out the door yet.

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The Democratic leadership has suggested they may hold Americans’ paychecks hostage unless we pass another sweeping bill that spends half a trillion dollars doubling down on a number of parts of the CARES Act, including parts that have not even started to work yet.

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The country cannot afford unnecessary wrangling or political maneuvering. Treating this as a normal, partisan negotiation could literally cost Americans their jobs.

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“We are asking small business owners across America to place their faith in us. We are asking them to keep workers on payroll because Congress, the Treasury, and the SBA will have their back,” McConnell said. “We must not fail them. My colleagues must not treat working Americans as political hostages.”

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said in a statement on Thursday that Democrats are playing “political games” with Americans’ livelihoods. She said:

After hearing from Iowans and seeing the overwhelming response of small businesses across the country, it’s clear we need to bolster the Paycheck Protection Program. We don’t have time for political games; we’re in a crisis. Workers and employers in Iowa and across the country need this relief now more than ever, so let’s put aside the politics and swiftly get this specific additional support for small businesses approved so money can keep flowing, Iowa workers can continue to collect a paycheck, and our state’s small businesses can stay afloat.

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“As a Main Street entrepreneur, it’s sad that Senate Democrats have blocked $250 billion of additional aid for small businesses,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) said in a statement on Thursday. “The PPP fund will soon run out of money and more businesses will close their doors while Democrats block additional relief.”

As a Main Street entrepreneur, it's sad that Senate Democrats have blocked $250 billion of additional aid for small businesses. The PPP fund will soon run out of money and more businesses will close their doors while Democrats block additional relief.Senate adjourns until Monday after Democrats block McConnell's bid to add $250 billion in small business aid
— Senator Mike Braun (@SenatorBraun) April 9, 2020

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“Let’s pass more non-controversial funding for Americans’ paychecks. Let’s do it today. And then let’s continue to work together, with speed and bipartisanship. We will get through this crisis together,” McConnell concluded.

_________________________

Reminder of the "pork" placed in the last bill:

marsh said:

Pentagon says COVID report cited by ABC doesn’t exist

The Pentagon says a supposed intelligence report cited by ABC News on an emerging COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t exist.

m.washingtontimes.com

Pentagon says COVID report cited by ABC doesn't exist

• By Rowan Scarborough - The Washington Times

Thursday, April 9, 2020
The Pentagon says a supposed intelligence report cited by ABC News on an emerging COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t exist.

ABC said the report was issued in November by the National Center for Medical Intelligence, an arm of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). It supposedly warned of a pandemic of what would be later named COVID-19.

Relying on sources who said they saw the report, ABC News said the warning was briefed “multiple times” to the DIA, the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Trump White House.

The Pentagon said it did an exhaustive search and could find no such document.

Col. R. Shane Day, a physician who heads the medical intelligence unit, issued a flat denial.

“As a matter of practice, the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters,” Col. Day said. “However, in the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists.”

A defense official told The Washington Times, “The center is part of the broader Intelligence Community effort to provide intelligence, expert assessments, and pandemic warning to senior U.S. government leaders, with the critical mission of supporting defense policymakers and U.S. warfighters. NCMI and the Defense Intelligence Agency spent considerable time over the last 24 hours examining every possible product that could have been identified as related to this topic and have found no such product.”

The South China Morning Post reported scientists believe they have found perhaps the first COVID-19 victim on Nov. 17 in Hubei Province, home to Wuhan City, where the virus broke out in December 2019 and spread to the world.

China reported to the World Health Organization in mid-January that the coronavirus wasn’t transmitted human-to-human, an inaccurate statement passed to the public by WHO.

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In other words, it was the voices in their heads which gave the "Journalists" the scoop on the non-existent report?

Ilhan Omar: Next Relief Package Must Provide Cash Payments to Non-Citizens

AP Photo/J. Scott ApplewhiteHANNAH BLEAU7 Apr 202013,074

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) on Tuesday proposed legislation that would extend cash benefits from the latest emergency coronavirus relief measure to members of “mixed status” families and stressed that the next stage of relief must extend cash payments to non-citizens.

An individual must have a Social Security number to receive the cash benefit portion provided in the CARES Act — a requirement that has been met with heavy criticism from several members of the Democrat Party, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Her fellow “Squad” member agrees, with her press release lamenting that the bill “leaves out many noncitizens and mixed status families—even if members of the family are citizens.”

As a result, Omar introduced the Recovery Rebates Improvement Act which “fixes the major error by expanding the special rule for the military in the CARES Act.” However, Omar also called for comprehensive legislation in the next relief package to “ensure that all noncitizens, whether holding a SSN or not, can access these relief payments.”

“It is absurd and cruel that a taxpaying, mixed status couple or family could be excluded from this relief,” Omar said in a statement.

“Over 140,000 Minnesotans live in mixed status families of some form. As currently written, many Minnesotans who are in this country legally or part of a mixed status family will not receive any stimulus money, even if one of them has a social security number but the other does not,” she explained:

It is absurd and cruel that a taxpaying family with mixed immigration status could be excluded from this relief during this pandemic.
Today I introduced a bill and led a letter to address this major error.
All Americans need our help right now. Coronavirus In Minnesota: Omar Pushes For Relief Checks For Mixed-Status Families
— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) April 7, 2020

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Per the release:

The CARES Act provides a one-time stimulus payment of $1200 for most adults and $500 for children under the age of 17. In order to receive payment, the CARES Act requires identification in the form of a Social Security Number (SSN). Under current statute, married couples filing jointly with any non-SSN identification will not be eligible for the stimulus payment.
…
The Recovery Rebates Improvement Act will expand the eligibility requirement to ensure joint tax filers with one SSN will receive payment and provide more people with vital economic assistance. Comprehensive legislation is needed in the next package to ensure that all noncitizens, whether holding a SSN or not, can access these relief payments.

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She also sent a letter to the Department of Treasury, urging it to address the eligibility requirements to “clarify how certain taxpayers and dependents can actually receive these payments.”

Three House Democrats, Reps. Lou Correa (CA), Judy Chu (CA), and Raúl Grijalva (AZ), introduced a measure to amend the CARES Act, extending the cash benefits to ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers) taxpayers, which includes those residing the country illegally.

“The Leave No Taxpayer Behind Act amends the CAREs Act to ensure that all taxpayers are eligible for their $1,200 relief check,” the release states, adding that “every individual taxpayer irrespective of citizenship status should receive government assistance.”

marsh said:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqrwt2q9C5E
6:21 min
Why Larry Hogan {Maryland] is proud of fellow governors' response to COVID-19
•Apr 7, 2020

PBS NewsHour
Governors across the country are working together to ensure frontline medical workers receive the protective gear that can keep them from contracting or transmitting COVID-19. Maryland’s Larry Hogan is the chairman of the National Governors Association, and he joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the ongoing effort to “catch up” to the crisis and why he feels proud of how U.S. governors are responding.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EcptPL9o_w
3:48 min
Hogan Tours Convention Center's Coronavirus Field Hospital
•Apr 7, 2020

WJZ
Gov. Larry Hogan toured the Baltimore Convention Center's 250-bed coronavirus field hospital on Tuesday.

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Gee, if this PBS puff piece was really true then we wouldn't be dealing with THOUSANDS OF INFECTED HEALTHCARE WORKERS, AND HUNDREFS OF THEM WHO DIED BECAUSE F%%^^ ASSES LIKE THIS CLOWN DIDN'T DO THEIR JOBS. BALTIMORE IS IN GOOD SHAPE?.STFU you lying pos!!!

Squid said:

I’ve been wearing my Maff when I go out...

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You do realize in some cultures Squid is considered to be edible Sushi?

Krayola said:

Personally, I would not touch them.

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Yes indeed cats, including Tigers and Lions can be infected by people. Search the Brooklyn Zoo story about the infected zoo cats. Dogs are okay, but cats, especially feral ones are not.

Red Baron said:

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs
--------------------------------
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, April 9, 2020
Executive Branch Agencies Recommend the FCC Revoke and Terminate China Telecom’s Authorizations to Provide International Telecommunications Services in the United States

Today, interested Executive Branch agencies[1] unanimously recommended that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoke and terminate China Telecom (Americas) Corp.’s authorizations to provide international telecommunications services to and from the United States. China Telecom is the U.S. subsidiary of a People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-owned telecommunications company.
The Department of Justice led the review of China Telecom’s authorizations, and it based the recommendation on developments since the authorizations were last transferred in 2007, including China Telecom’s failure to comply with the terms of an existing agreement with the Department.
“Today, more than ever, the life of the nation and its people runs on our telecommunications networks,” said John C. Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security. “The security of our government and professional communications, as well as of our most private data, depends on our use of trusted partners from nations that share our values and our aspirations for humanity. Today’s action is but our next step in ensuring the integrity of America’s telecommunications systems.”
In its recommendation, the Executive Branch agencies identified substantial and unacceptable national security and law enforcement risks associated with China Telecom’s operations, which render the FCC authorizations inconsistent with the public interest. More specifically the recommendation was based on:

• the evolving national security environment since 2007 and increased knowledge of the PRC’s role in malicious cyber activity targeting the United States;
• concerns that China Telecom is vulnerable to exploitation, influence, and control by the PRC government;
• inaccurate statements by China Telecom to U.S. government authorities about where China Telecom stored its U.S. records, raising questions about who has access to those records;
• inaccurate public representations by China Telecom concerning its cybersecurity practices, which raise questions about China Telecom’s compliance with federal and state cybersecurity and privacy laws; and
• the nature of China Telecom’s U.S. operations, which provide opportunities for PRC state-actors to engage in malicious cyber activity enabling economic espionage and disruption and misrouting of U.S. communications.

Some of the foregoing relate to China Telecom’s failure to comply with a 2007 Letter of Assurance, which was a basis for the existing FCC authorizations. The Department’s National Security Division, Foreign Investment Review Section, identified those compliance issues through its mitigation monitoring program. As a result, the Executive Branch agencies concluded that the national security and law enforcement risks associated with China Telecom’s international Section 214 authorizations could not be mitigated by additional mitigation terms.
More information concerning the Executive Branch agencies’ recommendation is available on the FCC’s International Bureau Filing System (IBFS), under Docket Number ITC-T/C-20070725-00285. The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration filed the recommendation on behalf of the Executive Branch agencies.
The Department is committed to working with industry to ensure that critical business needs are considered and addressed in a manner that is consistent with the United States’ national security and law enforcement interests. This action was taken under the legacy, ad hoc arrangement of the Departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security, formerly known as Team Telecom, the operation of which was recently formalized by Executive Order dated April 4, 2020, establishing the Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the United States Telecommunications Services Sector. Applications referred by the FCC after the date of the Executive Order will be handled under the process outlined therein.

Executive Branch Agencies Recommend the FCC Revoke and Terminate China Telecom’s Authorizations to Provide International Telecommunications Services in the United States

oday, interested Executive Branch agencies unanimously recommended that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoke and terminate China Telecom (Americas) Corp.’s authorizations to provide international telecommunications services to and from the United States. China Telecom is the U.S...

www.justice.gov

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Please find some loop hole or another to get rid of WalMart, too. After seeing them go the full jack boot thug route up to and including closing their garden centers at a time when Americans desperately need those things- it is obvious who their Master is, and it IS NOT Lady Liberty.

We can do nicely without them.

Idaho is also starting to ramp up with 6 deaths just like Oregon. Oregon still has done only 25,000 tests, which means the tidal wave is still out there. 70 plus F, sunny. and you would never know the looming disaster is out there. Lots of ambulances the last day or two. Mentally I'll homeless wandering around downtown, violence and chaos, along with the media shills lying their butts off. It is building slower out here, but it is building.

CALIFORNIA COUNTY FINING RESIDENTS $1,000 FOR NOT WEARING FACE MASKS IN PUBLIC
BY JEFFERY MARTIN ON 4/7/20 AT 5:57 PM EDT

Trump Extends Social Distancing Guidelines Until April 30, Says Coronavirus Deaths To Likely Peak In 'Two Weeks'

Residents in Riverside County, California, are now required to wear face coverings and could face a fine of $1,000 per violation per day if the mandate, which went into effect Sunday, is ignored.

Recent data from the Riverside University Health System indicated 946 confirmed positive cases of coronavirus within the county with 25 deaths attributable to the illness.

"While more and more Riverside County residents are getting COVID-19, not everybody's getting the message," said Riverside County public health officer Dr. Cameron Kaiser in a statement Saturday. "It started with staying home, social distance and covering your face. But now we change from saying that you should to saying that you must."

"This is a valid order and enforceable by fine, imprisonment or both," said Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco in a Monday video statement. "However, I need to make it perfectly clear to all residents of Riverside County we will not be setting up a police state and this is not a declaration of martial law in Riverside County."

"While this order does have potential criminal and civil consequences, that is the last thing I want to happen while we deal with this crisis," Bianco added.
Bianco said he preferred that county residents abide by the facemask mandate voluntarily. No vehicular checkpoints or driver stoppages are planned because a resident is not wearing a facemask.

"We will not be stopping you while you're on a walk with your kids or while you're out running or hiking," Bianco said.

Newsweek reached out to the County of Riverside for comment.

Residents of Riverside County, California, may be fined up to $1,000 for not wearing a face mask in public places.GETTY

California Governor Gavin Newsom said during a Tuesday news briefing that he believes the state will see the most coronavirus-related deaths in May, not in the middle of April as some studies have indicated.

Although Newsom announced 15,865 positive cases of coronavirus in California, which represents a 10.7 percent increase over Monday, Newsom also said the curve within the state was rising more slowly than initially projected.

"Our modeling shows that we're not at peak in a week or two, that we are seeing a slow and steady increase, but it's moderate." Newsom said. "It's moderate again because of the actions all of you have taken in terms of the physical distancing."

While physical distancing has been a mainstay of the coronavirus advice coming from the White House, the wearing of face masks in public is only a recommendation from the CDC.

"CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission," read the CDC website.

Medical-grade face coverings, such as N95 respirators or surgical masks should be reserved for health care workers.

President Donald Trump said Friday that he would not wear a face mask despite the CDC's recommendation.

"Somehow, sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful resolute desk, the great resolute desk, I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don't know," Trump said. "Somehow, I don't see it for myself. I just don't."

TREASURY SECRETARY STEVE MNUCHIN SAYS DONALD TRUMP IS LOOKING AT AREAS OF U.S. WHERE ECONOMY CAN BE REOPENED
BY EDDY RODRIGUEZ ON 4/7/20 AT 1:27 PM EDT

Steven Mnuchin speaks in the press briefing room with Donald Trump, Mike Pence and Administrator Jovita Carranza of the Small Business Administration during the Coronavirus Task Force briefing on April 2. Americans have filed 10 million unemployment claims in the past two weeks, according to Forbes.WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY

Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin said Tuesday that President Donald Trump is looking at areas in the country where the economy can be reopened.

"I think everything I hear from the medical professionals in many places is we're close to the worst point and beginning to peak. I think then things are going to get better. I know the president is very much looking at how we can reopen parts of the economy. There are parts of the country, like New York, where obviously this is very, very concerning. There are other parts of the country where it's not," Mnuchin said in an appearance on FOX Business Network.

Mnuchin said he hopes the shutdown will not go on longer than eight weeks, which is the length of time small businesses can pay their employees when they take out a loan from the federal government loan program provided under the CARES Act.

"All these small businesses need to do is pay their employees. If they're closed and there's no work to do, they don't have to come in. They just pay them so as soon as they're ready to open, they have their employees.… They didn't have to get unemployment," Mnuchin said, adding that the amount of people who could benefit for this program account for "50 percent of the private economy.

"I can assure you the president has instructed us to get this money into the economy fast."

Americans have filed 10 million unemployment claims in the past two weeks, according to Forbes. The numbers are due to businesses closing down as a result of stay-at-home orders put in place in response to the new coronavirus pandemic. Businesses Insider compiled a list of major companies that have either furloughed or laid off thousands of employees. including Marriott International, General Electric and Macy's.

Trump has said that he does not want the cure to be worse than the disease, meaning that the measures put in place to protect Americans from contracting the new coronavirus should not be worse than the impact of the virus itself.

"We built the greatest economy in the world. I'll do it a second time. We got artificially stopped by a virus that nobody ever thought possible," the president said Monday during his daily coronavirus press briefing.

There are over 370,000 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus in the United States and over 11,000 deaths attributed to the virus, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

From: U.S. County Coronavirus (COVID-19) Interactive Map and Tracker at 715 pm CST.

CONFIRMED CASES - 465,732
↑ 7% (+30,716 past 24 hrs)

DEATHS - 16,538
↑ 12% (+1,745 past 24 hrs)

RECOVERED - 25,410
↑ 6% (+1545 past 24hr)

By State:
NY 161799 Cases 7067 Deaths
NJ 51027 Cases 1709 Deaths
MI 21504 Cases 1076 Deaths
CA 19710 Cases 544 Deaths
MA 18941 Cases 503 Deaths
PA 18300 Cases 345 Deaths
LA 18283 Cases 702 Deaths
FL 16364 Cases 354 Deaths
IL 15079 Cases 462 Deaths
TX 11208 Cases 212 Deaths
GA 10566 Cases 379 Deaths
CT 9784 Cases 380 Deaths
WA 9639 Cases 456 Deaths
IN 6351 Cases 245 Deaths
CO 6202 Cases 226 Deaths
MD 6185 Cases 138 Deaths
OH 5512 Cases 213 Deaths
TN 4634 Cases 94 Deaths
VA 4042 Cases 109 Deaths
Other 3742 Cases 28 Deaths
NC 3736 Cases 76 Deaths
MO 3432 Cases 93 Deaths
AZ 3018 Cases 89 Deaths
WI 2886 Cases 111 Deaths
SC 2793 Cases 67 Deaths
AL 2703 Cases 70 Deaths
NV 2456 Cases 81 Deaths
MS 2260 Cases 76 Deaths
UT 1977 Cases 13 Deaths
RI 1727 Cases 43 Deaths
OK 1686 Cases 80 Deaths
DC 1523 Cases 32 Deaths
KY 1341 Cases 73 Deaths
OR 1321 Cases 44 Deaths
IA 1270 Cases 29 Deaths
MN 1240 Cases 50 Deaths
ID 1232 Cases 18 Deaths
DE 1209 Cases 23 Deaths
AR 1119 Cases 21 Deaths
KS 1116 Cases 42 Deaths
NM 865 Cases 16 Deaths
NH 819 Cases 21 Deaths
PR 683 Cases 33 Deaths
VT 628 Cases 23 Deaths
NE 568 Cases 14 Deaths
ME 560 Cases 16 Deaths
WV 524 Cases 5 Deaths
SD 447 Cases 6 Deaths
HI 442 Cases 6 Deaths
MT 354 Cases 6 Deaths
ND 269 Cases 5 Deaths
AK 235 Cases 7 Deaths
WY 230 Cases 0 Deaths
GU 128 Cases 4 Deaths
VI 45 Cases 1 Death
MP 11 Cases 2 Deaths


Sad.

Texican....

WHERE TO FIND WALGREENS DRIVE-THRU CORONAVIRUS TESTING SITES IN LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, TEXAS AND MORE
BY EMILY CZACHOR ON 4/7/20 AT 12:54 PM EDT

Walgreens will administer COVID-19 tests at 15 new drive-thru locations across seven states by the end of this week, the company announced Tuesday.

Similar to the drive-thru operation that opened in Chicago several weeks ago, Walgreens' forthcoming test stations are expected to open outside existing stores across Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee and Texas.

Although exact addresses have not yet been released, the drugstore chain said it is partnering with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish a list of specific locales, which will conceivably be made available to the public at some point over the next few days.

In an April 7 statement detailing its plans, Walgreens explained that the sites intend to serve "hot spot markets" and will be determined by data pinpointing areas where COVID-19 diagnosis rates are accelerating. Patients hoping to receive a test will be required to register online via an assessment tool expected to launch "soon" on Walgreens' mobile app and desktop site. If an appointment is scheduled, the portal will direct individuals to designated testing sites.

"Walgreens remains committed to working with federal, state and local governments, as well as industry partners to meet the needs of the communities we serve across the country during the pandemic," said Walgreens' president Richard Ashworth in a statement Tuesday. "We're continuing to do everything we can, both with our own resources and also by partnering with others, to serve as an access point within the community for COVID-19 testing."

The new sites will distribute ID NOW COVID-19 tests, produced by laboratory Abbot Diagnostics and described as "rapid point-of-care" assessments by HHS in a recent statement advocating for its usage. Walgreens pharmacists will issue tests at all drive-thru locations and deliver results immediately. According to the company's Tuesday announcement, Abbott's tests can produce positive results in roughly five minutes and negative results in roughly 13 minutes.

Because of this, Walgreens anticipates each site will be able to administer as many as 3,000 tests per day.
A COVID-19 test kit is administered at a drive-though testing center in Wales on April 7.MATTHEW HORWOOD/GETTY

Those who are approved for testing and meet eligibility requirements outlined by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention will receive their drive-thru evaluation free, Walgreens added in its statement. The company's Chicago location, which was not accessible to the general public, offered these services to first responders, health care employees and anyone over the age of 65.

As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 369,000 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed across the United States, resulting in at least 76,000 deaths and 292,000 recoveries, according to Johns Hopkins University and Medical. New York has diagnosed the highest number of infections—almost one-third of the nation's total—followed by New Jersey, Michigan, California, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Washington and Texas. CVS, Target and Walmart have opened drive-thru centers as well, after U.S. President Donald Trump met with company executives in early March and asked for assistance to expand test administration.

marsh said:

The Calif. tribal members I know and used to represent on the county level have a high incidence of diabetes. (I don't know about hypertension, but my tribes have almost annual exposure to heavy smoke from wildfires.) I was wondering if there were indications that native Americans, from the navaho experience, were particularly prone to the disease like blacks seem to be.

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From my observations watching their carts at the local Farmington, nm Sam's and walmarts, they tend to eat predominately cheap carbohydrates and drink way too much soda and booze. I am sure type 2 diabetes is off the charts...just like the blacks. Anecdotally, the Gallup, NM and west end Farmington Walmarts haven't carried Auguson farms storage food in the 5 years I have been in the area but the candy aisles are the biggest I have ever seen. Take it for what it's worth and stating what I see doesn't make me a racists....so piss up a rope John Reb!

Coronavirus may 'reactivate' in cured patients, Korean health authority says
A man speaks to a nurse during at a testing booth outside Yangji hospital in Seoul on March 17, 2020.PHOTO: AFP

APR 9, 2020, 1:13 PM SGT
SEOUL (BLOOMBERG) - The coronavirus may be "reactivating" in people who have been cured of the illness, according to Korea's Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

About 51 patients classed as having been cured in South Korea have tested positive again, the KCDC said in a briefing. Rather than being infected again, the virus may have been reactivated in these people, given they tested positive again shortly after being released from quarantine, said Mr Jeong Eun-kyeong, director-general of the KCDC.

"While we are putting more weight on reactivation as the possible cause, we are conducting a comprehensive study on this," Mr Jeong said. "There have been many cases when a patient during treatment will test negative one day and positive another." A patient is deemed fully recovered when two tests conducted with a 24-hour interval show negative results.

The KCDC will conduct an epidemiological probe into the cases, he said.
South Korea was one of the earliest countries to see a large-scale coronavirus outbreak, but the country has recorded 200 deaths and a falling new case tally since peaking at 1,189 on Feb 29. One of the world's most expansive testing programmes and a tech-driven approach to tracing infections has helped the country contain its epidemic without lockdowns or shuttering businesses.
South Korea reported 39 new cases on Thursday (April 9) for a total of 10,423.

Fear of re-infection in recovered patients is also growing in China, where the virus first emerged last December, after reports that some tested positive again - and even died from the disease - after supposedly recovering and leaving hospital. There's little understanding of why this happens, although some believe that the problem may lie in inconsistencies in test results.

Epidemiologists around the world are in a race to find out more about the virus that causes Covid-19. The pathogen's rapid global spread has recently seen the focus shift to patients who contract the virus but display few or atypical symptoms. South Korea has been at the forefront of tracking these cases, which are causing particular concern in China, where the epidemic is showing signs of coming under control.

Seeker22 said:

Please find some loop hole or another to get rid of WalMart, too. After seeing them go the full jack boot thug route up to and including closing their garden centers

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Dunno if they did that around here, but when we saw how the wind was blowing we bought seeds and started our own.

marsh said:

Mnuchin Says Trump Looking at Areas of U.S. Where Economy Can Be Reopened

Mnuchin also said he hopes the shutdown does not go on longer than eight weeks.

www.newsweek.com

TREASURY SECRETARY STEVE MNUCHIN SAYS DONALD TRUMP IS LOOKING AT AREAS OF U.S. WHERE ECONOMY CAN BE REOPENED
BY EDDY RODRIGUEZ ON 4/7/20 AT 1:27 PM EDT

Steven Mnuchin speaks in the press briefing room with Donald Trump, Mike Pence and Administrator Jovita Carranza of the Small Business Administration during the Coronavirus Task Force briefing on April 2. Americans have filed 10 million unemployment claims in the past two weeks, according to Forbes.WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY

Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin said Tuesday that President Donald Trump is looking at areas in the country where the economy can be reopened.

"I think everything I hear from the medical professionals in many places is we're close to the worst point and beginning to peak. I think then things are going to get better. I know the president is very much looking at how we can reopen parts of the economy. There are parts of the country, like New York, where obviously this is very, very concerning. There are other parts of the country where it's not," Mnuchin said in an appearance on FOX Business Network.

Mnuchin said he hopes the shutdown will not go on longer than eight weeks, which is the length of time small businesses can pay their employees when they take out a loan from the federal government loan program provided under the CARES Act.

"All these small businesses need to do is pay their employees. If they're closed and there's no work to do, they don't have to come in. They just pay them so as soon as they're ready to open, they have their employees.… They didn't have to get unemployment," Mnuchin said, adding that the amount of people who could benefit for this program account for "50 percent of the private economy.

"I can assure you the president has instructed us to get this money into the economy fast."

Americans have filed 10 million unemployment claims in the past two weeks, according to Forbes. The numbers are due to businesses closing down as a result of stay-at-home orders put in place in response to the new coronavirus pandemic. Businesses Insider compiled a list of major companies that have either furloughed or laid off thousands of employees. including Marriott International, General Electric and Macy's.

Trump has said that he does not want the cure to be worse than the disease, meaning that the measures put in place to protect Americans from contracting the new coronavirus should not be worse than the impact of the virus itself.

"We built the greatest economy in the world. I'll do it a second time. We got artificially stopped by a virus that nobody ever thought possible," the president said Monday during his daily coronavirus press briefing.

There are over 370,000 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus in the United States and over 11,000 deaths attributed to the virus, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

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Our economy is so integrated I don't see how they can successfully resurrect just part of it to much success. I guess we shall see.

Troke said:

Our economy is so integrated I don't see how they can successfully resurrect just part of it to much success. I guess we shall see.

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Think about the local small businesses. Keeping them alive is important.

Doctors rethinking coronavirus: Are we using ventilators the wrong way?

Caitlin Dickson
,
Yahoo News•April 8, 2020

Across the country, hospital administrators, doctors and public officials are pleading for ventilators, as the spread of coronavirus is making growing numbers of patients dependent on the machines that pump oxygen into their lungs to keep them alive. The subject comes up at almost every White House briefing on coronavirus, and the administration has even proposed an emergency effort to retool automobile factories to make more of the devices.

In New York, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., Gov. Andrew Cuomo has largely focused his energy on efforts to bolster the state’s dwindling stockpile of ventilators, while officials in a number of other states have begun developing or updating guidelines for how to ration ventilators in the event of a shortage.

But while hospitals and health care workers grapple with the grim reality that they may soon be forced to deny potentially life-saving treatments to certain patients due to a lack of supplies, some doctors are raising questions about how ventilators are currently being used on coronavirus patients — and whether they may actually be doing more harm than good. Early reporting on coronavirus deaths from China, Italy and the U.S. show that more than half — and as many as two-thirds — of COVID-19 patients who are placed on ventilators don’t survive.

“What we’re doing now is not working, and I think making the same mistake over and over is a sign of stupidity,” Dr. Paul Marik told Yahoo News. “If it’s not working, we’ve got to look for something else.”

Marik is promoting a treatment of his own devising, a combination of corticosteroids and high-dose ascorbic acid, or vitamin C, as a first-line therapy for patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Marik is a respected clinician, chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School. The protocol is controversial and untested, but the theory behind it illuminates a growing shift in thinking about the disease that may have important implications for how it is treated.

Marik’s theory is based on an idea that is becoming widespread among researchers: that the cause of death for a significant number of COVID-19 patients, especially younger ones, is severe inflammation of the lungs resulting from an overly vigorous immune-system response. By administering anti-inflammatory drugs early and regularly after a patient is admitted to the emergency room, Marik believes he can prevent this complication, known as a “cytokine storm.”

In those cases, “it’s not the virus that’s killing the host, it’s the host’s response to the virus,” said Marik. Coronavirus is highly contagious and can cause fatal disease in some patients, but immune reactions to the infection varies dramatically from person to person.

“People who are doing fine don’t need steroids, it’s the people who get sick from the storm,” Marik said. “Corticosteroids are really effective in downregulating that storm.”

Marik has been touting the anti-inflammatory properties of vitamin C and steroids since 2017, when he first released the results of a somewhat controversial study claiming that intravenous vitamin C, hydrocortisone and thiamine are an effective treatment for sepsis. The treatment failed in a larger study whose results were published in January, but he believes it may still hold promise for COVID-19.

Marik’s protocol is untested, and his advocacy of vitamin C is very much a minority view. It is absolutely not something people can or should try for themselves; the corticosteroids are administered intravenously. One doctor who has been treating COVID-19 patients at a New York-area hospital says there’s no reason to believe it would work. Marik acknowledged that the World Health Organization has advised against the use of corticosteroids to treat viral pneumonia in patients with COVID-19 (except in clinical trials) citing previous studies on other viral diseases like SARS and MERS, which found insufficient evidence that the drugs were effective.

But Marik’s view encapsulates a growing suspicion among doctors treating COVID-19 that the disease has some novel features that may require a unique approach.

In addition to early anti-inflammatory treatment, the protocol followed by Marik and his colleagues includes alternatives to using a ventilator, a machine that delivers oxygen under pressure directly into the trachea by means of a tube inserted through the mouth. This requires deep sedation and prevents the patient from talking. He favors a technique called high-flow nasal cannula therapy, which delivers humidified and heated oxygen through nostril tubes, a less invasive procedure than intubation, and suggests positioning the patient on the stomach to improve oxygenation.

The goal is to delay, or avoid entirely, the need for the patient to go on a ventilator.

“Plenty of patients will need to go on a ventilator, you can’t help it, but you want to do whatever you can to prevent [that],” said Marik, adding that “fewer patients that go on ventilators, frees up [more] for those who really need them.”

For those who need to be intubated, however, Marik and his colleagues are also recommending a different, gentler approach than the high-pressure ventilator settings typically used for patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which Marik and others believe may actually be causing damage to the lungs of patients with COVID-19.

“It’s becoming a vicious cycle,” said Marik. “The ventilator is causing lung injury, which causes them to stay on the ventilator longer, and basically is depleting the supply of ventilators for people who need them.”

Marik and his colleagues are not the only ones who believe a new approach may be needed to treat this new disease.

While health care providers in the U.S. have been able to glean some insights about the coronavirus from the earlier experiences of doctors in China and Italy, there is much about this completely new disease that remains unknown. As a result, doctors have been forced to treat patients for an illness they don’t fully understand, relying on conventional wisdom in scenarios that have proven thoroughly unconventional.

One example of this, some doctors argue, is the use of ventilators for coronavirus patients.

In a video posted to YouTube on March 31, which has been widely circulated and discussed among doctors on the front lines of fighting COVID-19, Cameron Kyle-Sidell, an emergency medicine doctor at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, explains how, like most health care workers around the U.S., when he first started providing critical care for coronavirus patients in March, he was under the impression that he would be treating patients with a “viral pneumonia infection that would progress into acute respiratory distress syndrome.” It’s based on this understanding, he explained, that doctors in New York and elsewhere have been using ventilators to treat coronavirus patients who suddenly become unable to breath on their own, in the same way that they would treat respiratory failure in people with ARDS.

However, over the course of nine days, Kyle-Sidell says he concluded that the lung disease developing in patients with COVID-19 was nothing like the typical presentation of ARDS.

“COVID-19 lung disease, as far as I can see, is not a pneumonia and should not be treated as one,” said Kyle-Sidell. “Rather, it appears as if some kind of viral-induced disease most resembling high altitude sickness. It is as if tens of thousands of my fellow New Yorkers are on a plane at 30,000 feet and the cabin pressure is slowly being let out. These patients are slowly being starved of oxygen.”

He now believes the treatment method being widely adopted for those suffering from coronavirus-induced lung disease is based on “a false paradigm.”

“I fear,” he said, that using ventilators “to increase pressure on the lungs in order to open them up, is actually doing more harm than good, and that the pressure we are providing to lungs, we may be providing to lungs that cannot take it, and that the ARDS that we are seeing may be nothing more than lung injury caused by the ventilator.”

“COVID-positive patients need oxygen, they do not need pressure,” he argued. “They will need ventilators, but they must be programmed differently.” Kyle-Sidell could not be reached by Yahoo News, but he reiterated his observations and concerns in an interview with John Whyte, the chief medical officer at WebMD, published on the medical news site MedScape on Monday.

Other doctors in the U.S. and Italy have made similar observations about the difference between typical ARDS and loss of oxygen that appears to develop rapidly in COVID-19 patients.


A woman arrives at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn on Sunday. (Bryan R. Smith / AFP/Getty Images)
On March 30, the American Thoracic Society published a report titled “Covid-19 Does Not Lead to a ‘Typical’ Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome,” based on the findings of three physicians treating patients with COVID-19 pneumonia and acute respiratory failure at an intensive care unit in northern Italy. The authors note that “while the clinical approach to these patients is the one typically applied to severe ARDS, namely high Positive End Expiratory Pressure (PEEP) and prone positioning,” patients with COVID-19 pneumonia present an atypical form of ARDS. Specifically, they observed a wide disparity between these patients’ “relatively well preserved lung mechanics and the severity of hypoxemia” or low levels of oxygen.

The authors of the report concluded that “all we can do ventilating these patients is ‘buying time’ with minimum additional damage: the lowest possible PEEP [a measure of air pressure within the lungs] and gentle ventilation. We need to be patient.”

“It’s a basic concept of medicine: You treat patients based on the disease they have, not for disease you think they have or the disease you want them to have,” said Marik, expressing frustration that top health officials in the U.S. have not responded to his own calls to consider a different approach to treating patients with COVID-19.

“It pains me to see all of these patients dying and I know they don’t have to die,” he said.

While doctors like Marik and Kyle-Sidell are pushing to change the way ventilators are used to treat coronavirus, others are drawing attention to the possible long-term physical and neurological damage caused by the current method of treatment.

In a New York Times op-ed over the weekend, Dr. Kathryn Dreger, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at Georgetown University, urged coronavirus patients and their loved ones to consider the brutal and lasting toll ventilators can cause before they become “sick enough to need them.”

For many COVID-19 patients who, she explains, must be “put into a medically induced coma before being placed on a ventilator,” the treatment itself can cause significant damage to the heart, kidneys or brain that may be permanent, or even fatal.

“Even among the Covid-19 patients who are ventilated and then discharged from the intensive care unit, some have died within days from heart damage,” wrote Dreger. For those who survive, “the amount of sedation needed for Covid-19 patients can cause profound complications, damaging muscles and nerves, making it hard for those who survive to walk, move or even think as well as they did before they became ill. Many spend most of their recovery time in a rehabilitation center, and older patients often never go home. They live out their days bed bound, at higher risk of recurrent infections, bed sores and trips back to the hospital.”

Dreger clarified that she is not suggesting “we shouldn’t use ventilators to try to save people,” but rather that Americans should consider these facts and figure out out what they would want for themselves and their loved ones now, before it’s too late.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWaq8HoEROU
1:57 min
FROM NYC DOC: SHOULD COVID-19 VENTILATOR PROTOCALS BE CHANGED!!!
•Apr 1, 2020


Cameron Kyle-Sidell
Patients need OXYGEN NOT PRESSURE!!! The ventilators may be causing lung damage because of PRESSURE. Needs to be immediately investigated. 100,000 - 250,000 Americans at risk of lung injury. Change can happen.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3ka8lo_fZ8
1:32 min
NYC DOC: COVID19 - A New disease requiring NEW treatment
•Apr 5, 2020


Cameron Kyle-Sidell
NYC death surpassing 9/11. COVID19 is like nothing we have seen before. We must admit this is a new disease. It all starts from there!