Navy’s Mercy Hospital Ship Off L.A. Now Battling Serious COVID-19 Outbreak Among Crew
It was supposed to help relieve local California hospitals in the fight against coronavirus, but now it may have become a dangerous source of spreading the disease.
The emergency response ship USNS Mercy, docked since last month in the Port of Los Angeles, has been hit with a significant outbreak on board, with seven total crew members testing positive for COVID-19, the Navy said.
The USNS Mercy arrived at the Port of Los Angeles on March 27, 2020. Image via KTLA
All of the infected have now been removed from the ship and put into isolation in an especially worrisome situation given the ship is geared toward housing and caring for vulnerable non-coronavirus patients to take the strain off of area hospitals.
People recently having contact with the newly positive crew members have also been put in isolation off the ship and are being monitored. In total the Mercy has 1,000 military personnel, assisted by a small civilian staff.
The Navy says the rise in infections aboard the Mercy will not stop its mission to receive medical patients: “The ship is following protocols and taking every precaution to ensure the health and safety of all crew members and patients on board,” a statement said. “This will not affect the ability for Mercy to receive patients at this time.”
It must be remembered that an entire nuclear aircraft carrier and its crew of nearly 5,000 was put out of commission off Guam last month amid a growing number of infections. The Theodore Roosevelt now has at least 585 sailors that tested COVID-19 positive, including the death of one sailor.
USNS Mercy previously departing from San Diego, via AP.
Concerning the Mercy, there’s growing concern as to the source of infections which may trace back to major military hospitals in San Diego.
The sailors came aboard after serving at various Navy medical installations, including Naval Medical Center San Diego. The hospital is one of two military medical facilities in San Diego County seeing service members who seek treatment and testing for COVID-19. The other is Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton.
Because some medical staff rotated through the COVID-19 screening area at Naval Medical Center San Diego prior to deploying on the Mercy, one sailor told the Union-Tribune, there is concern on board that the crew brought the virus with them when they left San Diego.
The Navy has actually been the most severely impacted by the pandemic, as numbers showed that were made public prior to the Pentagon clamping down on public Covid-19 military infections reporting.
A similar floating hospital, the USNS comfort in New York, has also witnessed a handful of crew members catch COVID-19, with the Navy reporting at least three at the start of the week. The Comfort was originally intended to house non-coronavirus patients as NYC facilities dealt with rising cases, however, after local hospitals were overwhelmed the ship switched to taking on coronavirus patients.
Cash may well become a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic…
As these COVID-19 lockdowns drag out, more and more individuals and businesses are going cashless (for convenience and in a so-called effort to avoid spreading coronavirus germs), engaging in online commerce or using digital forms of currency (bank cards, digital wallets, etc.). As a result, physical cash is no longer king.
Yet there are other, more devious, reasons for this re-engineering of society away from physical cash: a cashless society—easily monitored, controlled, manipulated, weaponized and locked down—would play right into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners).
To this end, the government and its corporate partners-in-crime have been waging a subtle war on cash for some time now.
What is this war on cash?
It’s a concerted campaign to shift consumers towards a digital mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient.
“The real reason for this war on cash – start with the big bills and then work your way down – is an ugly power grab by Big Government. People will have less privacy: Electronic commerce makes it easier for Big Brother to see what we’re doing, thereby making it simpler to bar activities it doesn’t like, such as purchasing salt, sugar, big bottles of soda and Big Macs.”
Digital currency provides the government and its corporate partners with the ultimate method to track, control you and punish you.
In much the same way that Americans have opted into government surveillance through the convenience of GPS devices and cell phones, digital cash—the means of paying with one’s debit card, credit card or cell phone—is becoming the de facto commerce of the American police state.
Making the case for “never, ever carrying cash” in lieu of a digital wallet, journalist Lisa Rabasca Roepe argues that cash is inconvenient, ATM access is costly, and it’s now possible to reimburse people using digital apps such as Venmo. Thus, there’s no longer a need for cash.
“More and more retailers and grocery stores are embracing Apple Pay, Google Wallet, Samsung Pay, and Android Pay,”notes Roepe.
“PayPal’s app is now accepted at many chain stores including Barnes & Noble, Foot Locker, Home Depot, and Office Depot. Walmart and CVS have both developed their own payment apps while their competitors Target and RiteAid are working on their own apps.”
So what’s the deal here?
Despite all of the advantages that go along with living in a digital age—namely, convenience—it’s hard to imagine how a cashless world navigated by way of a digital wallet doesn’t signal the beginning of the end for what little privacy we have left and leave us vulnerable to the likes of government thieves and data hackers.
First, when I say privacy, I’m not just referring to the things that you don’t want people to know about, those little things you do behind closed doors that are neither illegal nor harmful but embarrassing or intimate. I am also referring to the things that are deeply personal and which no one need know about, certainly not the government and its constabulary of busybodies, nannies, Peeping Toms, jail wardens and petty bureaucrats.
Second, we’re already witnessing how easy it will be for government agents to manipulate digital wallets for their own gain. For example, civil asset forfeiture schemes are becoming even more profitable for police agencies thanks to ERAD (Electronic Recovery and Access to Data) devices supplied by the Department of Homeland Security that allow police to not only determine the balance of any magnetic-stripe card (i.e., debit, credit and gift cards) but also freeze and seize any funds on pre-paid money cards. In fact, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it does not violate the Fourth Amendment for police to scan or swipe your credit card.
Third, the war on cash is about giving the government the ultimate control of the economy and complete access to the citizenry’s pocketbook.
Fourth, every technological convenience that has made our lives easier has also become our Achilles’ heel, opening us up to greater vulnerabilities from hackers and government agents alike.
Fifth, if there’s one entity that will not stop using cash for its own nefarious purposes, it’s the U.S. government. Cash is the currency used by the government to pay off its foreign “associates.”
Sixth, this drive to do away with cash is part of a larger global trend driven by international financial institutions and the United Nations that is transforming nations of all sizes, from the smallest nation to the biggest, most advanced economies.
Finally, short of returning to a pre-technological, Luddite age, there’s really no way to pull this horse back now that it’s left the gate. While doing so is near impossible, it would also mean doing without the many conveniences and advantages that are the better angels, if you will, of technology’s totalitarian tendencies: the internet, medical advances, etc.
To our detriment, we have virtually no control over who accesses our private information, how it is stored, or how it is used. Whether we ever had much control remains up for debate. However, in terms of our bargaining power over digital privacy rights, we have been reduced to a pitiful, unenviable position in which we can only hope and trust that those in power will treat our information with respect.
Vince McMahon’s XFL Has Shuttered And Filed For Bankruptcy…Again
This time it was supposed to be different.
But it ended the same: with Vince McMahon signing his name on a bankruptcy declaration for the XFL.
The league’s “comeback” season has ended in unceremonious fashion as the coronavirus pandemic has forced the league to once again shutter. The Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing was put into process days after the league laid off its employees and revealed that it had no plans for a 2021 season.
McMahon executed his written consent for bankruptcy as the sole voting member on Sunday, according to Law & Crime. The document, filed for McMahon’s Alpha Entertainment, LLC, reads:
“The undersigned, being the sole voting Member of Alpha Entertainment LLC, a Delaware limited liability company (the ‘Company’), hereby adopts the following resolutions, by written consent, effective as of the date hereof,” the filing began. “WHEREAS, the Company desires and has requested that John Brecker and Vincent K. McMahon each serve as a Liquidating Agent (as defined in the LLC Agreement) of the Company and, in such capacity, to commence a case (the ‘Chapter 11 Case’) under chapter 11 of title 11 of the United States Code (the ‘Bankruptcy Code’) and manage the business and affairs of the Company during the Chapter 11 Case.”
According to the LA Times, the league’s coaches rounded out the list of its largest creditors. “The creditors include seven of the league’s eight head coaches, led by Bob Stoops of the Dallas Renegades ($1 million) and Marc Trestman of the Tampa Bay Vipers ($777,777). Winston Moss, who served as coach and general manager of the Los Angeles Wildcats, is owed $583,333.”
“Unfortunately, as a new enterprise, we were not insulated from the harsh economic impacts and uncertainties caused by the COVID-19 crisis,” the XFL said in a statement.
“It’s done and it’s not coming back,” one person was quoted as saying.
Here’s a look at the XFL during the fonder days of the 2020 season:
Police in Tasmania are using a surveillance helicopter to track down people camping in remote locations in violation of coronavirus lockdown laws.
“Tasmania Police officers conducting aerial surveillance around the state, including on the North-West Coast located several campsites where people were directed to leave and return home,” reports The Advocate.
“When u social distance so well that the cops have to find u by helicopter,” tweeted Twitter user @PetiteNicoco.
17 people across the state were charged with a lockdown offense in a period of just 24 hours over the Easter weekend.
The Westpac Rescue Helicopter “landed near campsites which were viewed from the air” to interrogate campers in the region. Where the chopper couldn’t land, officers were dispatched to the area on foot.
Commander Rob Blackwood called the campers “selfish” for endangering other people during the COVID-19 pandemic despite them literally being around no other people.
“Covert and marked police vehicles, and the Westpac Rescue Helicopter, will continue to undertake patrols around the state, so if you’re away from your primary residence you can expect police to stop and speak to you about your movements,” Tasmania Police said on their Facebook page.
The practice was denounced by many as absurd overkill given that the campers are hardly posing a threat to anybody.
“That seems like a waste of resources,” responded one Twitter user.
“You will do as commanded, even if you’re already doing it in the woods. Compliance is nonoptional. The state knows what is best, citizen,” commented another.
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Second Wave Of Coronavirus Layoffs Claiming Workers Who Thought They Were Safe
When the United States went into a virtual lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, the effects were devastating. Within a three week period, nearly 17 million people have filed for unemployment, while modern day ‘bread lines’ are getting longer each day across the country.
The initial victims of the lockdown were the most financially vulnerable; restaurant workers, retail employees, and other low-paying jobs in industries which were immediately impacted by a lack of foot traffic.
Now, a second wave of layoffs is hitting those who thought they were safe, according to the Wall Street Journal. White collar workers working from home are being laid off by companies suffering from dismal sales. Law firms are cutting hours and eliminating positions as court systems and legal actions have ground to a near-standstill. And goverment who assumed their jobs would be safe are being furloughed amid city and state budget shortfalls. Even healthcare workers who aren’t directly fighting the pandemic are finding themselves without work.
And according to the Journal, there’s more pain in the cards.
The consensus of 57 economists surveyed this month by The Wall Street Journal is that 14.4 million jobs will be lost in the coming months, and the unemployment rate will rise to a record 13% in June, from a 50-year low of 3.5% in February. Already nearly 17 million Americans have sought unemployment benefits in the past three weeks, dwarfing any period of mass layoffs recorded since World War II.
Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist of Oxford Economics, projects 27.9 million jobs will be lost, and industries beyond those ordered to close will account for 8 to 10 million, a level of job destruction on a par with the 2007-09 recession.
Oxford Economics, a U.K.-based forecasting and consulting firm, projects April’s jobs report, which will capture late-March layoffs, will show cuts to 3.4 million business-services workers, including lawyers, architects, consultants and advertising professionals, as well as 1.5 million nonessential health-care workers and 100,000 information workers, including those working in the media and telecommunications.
“The virus shock does not discriminate across sectors as we initially thought,” Mr. Daco said. –WSJ
And where jobs haven’t been lost, hours have been reduced across many sectors:
Tales of economic chaos
The Journal interviewed a diverse sampling of professionals, who shared what they’re seeing within their industries.
“Customers who paid like clockwork for 10-plus years are suddenly late,” said Gary Cuozzo – owner of Connecticut-based web host and developer, ISG Software Group, who says he’s received just a few hundred dollars in accounts receivable in recent weeks from customers which include manufacturers, retailers and nonprofits.
Gary Cuozzo, owner of ISG Software Group, stopped drawing a salary to keep his business afloat.
Cuozzo says he stopped drawing a salary several weeks ago and has filed for unemployment – ‘essentially volunteering’ while working from home so his business can remain afloat.
“We have no software projects,” he said. “Everything is on hold.”
Those employed in industries where working from home is feasible are facing widespread layoffs, said ZipRecruiter labor economist Julia Pollak. The recruiting site itself laid off more than 400 of its 1,200 full-time employees at the end of March.
A survey of visitors to the job-search site found 39% employed in business and professional services reported they were laid off, nearly the same rate as respondents in retail and wholesale trade. (Active job seekers are more likely to be laid off than the average American.) Among the respondents who still had jobs, many in white-collar industries said their hours were cut. –WSJ
“Any company that had been planning to open a second location, that hired an architect, an office designer, and contractor—they’re not opening that location this year and those people now won’t have jobs. Any company planning to go public this year, that hired accountants, consultants, PR professionals—they’re laying off all those teams,” said Pollak, the economist.
Hospitals have been cutting elective surgical procedures and routine care across the country in order to free up resources (while many have been filmed virtually empty, and nurses have enough time on their hands to make tiktok videos all day).
“In a sense we kind of sacrificed that revenue for a public-health interest,” said Manchester, NH cardiologist Daniel Philbin of the New England Heart and Vascular Institute. “The hospital systems really are facing an incredible crunch because of this—the longer the curve gets pushed out, the more they face difficult decisions about employment.”
Emily Hill thought her job as a dental assistant was safe, being in an in-demand field and employed through the military. She worked as a contractor at a dental clinic on Fort Hood in Texas.
“I always felt untouchable,” she said. “This really puts you in your place.” –WSJ
Law firms, meanwhile, have been cutting staff and slashing pay due to a stark lack of business, as courts are virtually paused and new deals – which typically require lawyers – just aren’t happening.
“Law firms are not going to be the top of the priority,” said Timothy Lupinacci – CEO of 700-layer firm Baker Donelson, which has some 20 offices in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic region. They’ve reduced compensation for staff and associates by 20%.
Meanwhile, New York City-based Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, a 400-attorney firm specializing in financial services has slashed salaries by 25% – and partners aren’t currently getting paid at all.
Economic analysts, meanwhile, are basically all over the place when it comes to predicting when the labor market will bounce back, as it all depends – of course – on when this much-promised vaccine will materialize, and when the economy can ‘open back up’ successfully.
The biggest wild card in the jobs outlook is how long it will take for jobs to bounce back, which depends heavily on how long the pandemic and social-distancing measures last. The consensus among the economists surveyed by the Journal is for employment to return to its February 2020 level in 27 months, but views varied widely.
Economist Amy Crews Cutts, of AC Cutts & Associates LLC, expects the labor market to take 5½ years to fully bounce back. The sheer scale of job cuts so far, even if they don’t worsen further, are “an extraordinary number of jobs to reverse and put back into the economy,” she said.
Still, post-lockdown prospects aren’t great either according to some – as many industries are going to enter their own cyclical recessions (or worse).
“Industries that are subject to cyclical cycles, like finance, real estate and manufacturing, are likely to have layoffs,” said Moody’s Analytics economis Adam Kamins, who thinks that about half the jobs lost to the pandemic will be regained by the end of the summer.
“The lockdown may be over, but there’s likely to be a prolonged period of stagnation.”
NY Fed Head Trader: “The Scale Of Our Asset Purchases Has Been Unparalleled”
In remarks delivered before the Foreign Exchange Committee of the NY Fed, Lorie Logan, who is the head of the Fed’s open markets, i.e., the head trader of the world’s biggest hedge fund, commented on the Fed’s unprecedented intervention, and takeover, of capital markets, saying that “the scale of these purchases has been unparalleled, totaling about $1.6 trillion in the past four weeks“, something we showed last week when laid out the hundreds of billions in weekly purchases in the past 4 weeks, eclipsing the intervention during the financial crisis by orders of magnitude, as follows:
April 8: $$272BN
April 1: $557BN
March 25: $586BN
March 17:$356BN
Then again, hearing it from the person who made it all possible is so much more fulfilling.
Logan than explain why the Fed decided it was in America’s best interest to nationalize the capital markets, saying that “supporting smooth market functioning does not mean restoring every aspect of market functioning to its level before the coronavirus crisis. Some aspects of liquidity—especially aspects related to transactions costs and market depth—are importantly affected by fundamental factors such as how the current extraordinary uncertainty about the economic outlook influences trading behavior. These aspects of market functioning may not return all the way to pre-crisis levels for some time, even as our purchases slow.”
That’s the spin, the reality is that liquidity is collapsing in the Treasury market because of the Fed’s purchases, which is soaking up so many bonds it now owns up to 50% and in some cases more, of any given Cusip, especially those with longer maturities.
Lorie Logan, Head of Market Operations
Logan then had some disappointing words for those who are hoping the Fed will push the VIX back to 10: “supporting smooth market functioning” does not “mean eliminating all volatility. In well-functioning markets, prices will respond rapidly and efficiently to new information.” Except, of course, when the information is negative and the Fed has to buy everything that is being sold as it just did in the past 3 weeks. But then again, this is the same Fed which thinks the US population is too dumb to understand what is going on.
Some words of advice for Ms. Logan: the people are no longer dumb and they understand precisely what the Fed is doing. Perhaps to preempt the populist anger that will soon target the Fed itself, Logan then elaborated by saying that “during the unprecedented disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, a great deal of new information arrives every day about the outlook for specific markets, such as housing, and for the economy as a whole. These changes in the outlook should move the Treasury and agency MBS markets irrespective of the Federal Reserve’s purchases.”
Right, they “should”, which is probably why the Fed had has been the buyer of first, last and only resort, and why even the $7 trillion BlackRock is no longer even shy to admit that the only trade in this farce of a market (as Howard Marks discussed) is to front- or back-run the Fed: “We’ll Just Buy Whatever Central Banks Are Buying“‘
Finally, in one desperate attempt to deflect the coming shitstorm that will – we hope – finally end the Fed, Logan tried to deflect blame stating that “today’s crisis is different, having originated outside the financial system, in an enormous challenge to public health.” Which is, of course, also a lie, because had companies not spent $4 trillion on buybacks in the past 4 years and instead had allocated the money to a “fat tail” fund, none of the insanity observed in the past month would have happened.
As if a whole new level of pandering to the unwashed peasants, the NY Fed head trader then went so far as to lie that the Fed had learned some lesson in all of this:
Yet the lesson of the previous crisis still applies, and the Federal Reserve has taken it to heart in responding to the recent stresses in funding markets, Treasury and MBS markets, and credit markets.
Translation: last time we bailed out just the banks and people were angry. This time we “learned our lesson”, and in addition to bailing out the banks and the mega corporations that are now swallowing all of America’s small and medium businesses whole, we will pretend to be bailing out main street by handing out taxpayers a check for $1,200 per month. Enough to pay about a third of the rent thanks to the latest massive housing bubble that the Fed has inflated.
But in the end none of this matters. What does matter? Why getting stocks to new all time highs of course:
By acting quickly and forcefully to support all of these markets at once, we have been able to stabilize market conditions.
Well that’s just wonderful, because who cares about a second depression and the total collapse in cash flow if bonds are trading at par in a complete disconnect with fundamentals, and TSLA is up 100% in the past week because the company can no longer pay its rent.
Lorie’s conclusion:
Many challenges surely lie ahead for the economy and financial markets. But the past month demonstrates that the Federal Reserve will use its tools aggressively to keep markets working so that credit can flow to households, businesses, and state and local governments throughout our economy.
Translation: the Fed will buy as many trillions more as it needs to completely disconnect all prices from fundamentals and create a Potemkin Village economy so vast, the USSR will be spinning in its grave.
One last point: to keep track of just how “well” the Fed is doing in its true endgame mission – to crush the dollar and hyperinflate away the debt – just keep an eye on gold. It will tell you all you need to know.
New Study Exposes More Evidence That Summer Won’t Stop The Coronavirus
One of the public’s last great hopes as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases nears the 2 million mark is that the onset of summer in the northern hemisphere will help defeat the virus as warmer temperatures make life for the virus more hostile, hampering the virus’s ability to spread.
However, it’s looking increasingly likely that the novel coronavirus is stronger than its predecessor, SARS, when it comes to resisting intense heat. One recent study of additional steps that could be taken to protect lab technicians handling samples of the virus found that samples of the virus can survive when exposed to temperatures as high as 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit).
That would seem to preclude the onset of summer as a potential ‘miracle cure’, while also suggesting that the outbreaks in Africa and South America might be worse than they appear, since the theories that high temperatures slow the virus’s spread don’t appear nearly as convincing.
According to SCMP, the French scientists who conducted the experiment had to heat samples of the sample, strains of the virus mixed with various animal proteins (to mimic real-world conditions in the test tube), to nearly 90 degrees Celsius (210 degrees Fahrenheit) to completely kill the virus.
Professor Remi Charrel and colleagues at the Aix-Marseille University in southern France heated the virus that causes Covid-19 to 60 degrees Celsius (140 Fahrenheit) for an hour and found that some strains were still able to replicate.
The scientists had to bring the temperature to almost boiling point to kill the virus completely, according to their non-peer-reviewed paper released on bioRxiv.org on Saturday. The results have implications for the safety of lab technicians working with the virus.
The team in France infected African green monkey kidney cells, a standard host material for viral activity tests, with a strain isolated from a patient in Berlin, Germany. The cells were loaded into tubes representing two different types of environments, one “clean” and the other “dirty” with animal proteins to simulate biological contamination in real-life samples, such as an oral swab.
After the heating, the viral strains in the clean environment were thoroughly deactivated. Some strains in the dirty samples, however, survived.
The French researchers found that using the higher temperature could help solve the problem, heating the samples to 92 degrees Celsius (~210 degrees Fahrenheit) for 15 minutes could render the virus completely inactive. However, using these high temperatures as part of disinfection protocols for lab technicians could severely fragment the virus’ RNA, potentially scrambling the results of more sensitive tests.
It’s just the latest curve ball that the coronavirus has thrown at researchers since the outbreak began in Wuhan.
Mining companies with operations in Quebec are wasting no time jumping back into action after the provincial government announced Monday night that mining is now considered an essential service and operations can restart Wednesday.
While miners in Quebec will be heading back to work, the government has also put in place new work policies. According to the new provincial guidelines, mining companies will have to reduce the number of fly-ins and fly-outs from their mining sites and they are encouraged to use more local workers.
Under a new work regime, miners will see their time at work sites extended to 28 days instead of 14.
To maintain social-distancing guidelines, companies will also have to use more chartered planes and shuttle buses to transport their workers
It has not taken mining companies long to react to the news. On Tuesday, Yamana Gold Inc. announced that it was going to restart operations at the Canadian Malartic mine in Abitibi, Canada’s largest gold mine. Yamana operates Malartic in a 50/50 joint venture with Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd.
“The resumption of mining activity will occur over a period of several weeks with full attention to the health and safety of returning employees, contractors and suppliers,” Yamana said.
Along with Malartic, Agnico Eagle said that it is also restarting operations at its LaRonde Complex and Goldex mine.
Eldorado Gold Corp. also said in a statement Tuesday that it is preparing to restart operations at its Lamaque mine in northern Quebec.
“We are pleased to resume operations at Lamaque,” said George Burns, president and chief executive officer of Eldorado.
“With the safety measures we have put in place at all our sites, we are confident that we can adapt our business and continue to create long-term value for our stakeholders.”
Some of the new safety protocols Quebec companies will implement include temperature checks, mandatory social distancing, enhanced sanitation and disinfecting.
Meanwhile, Iamgold Corp. said it will restart its Westwood Gold Mine in Quebec on Wednesday.
“Ramp-up activities will take approximately one week, with employees being trained on new procedures and sanitary measures, including adjusted work schedules and transport, physical distancing and protective equipment,” Iamgold said.
“Protecting the health and safety of our workforce is critical for the successful resumption of mining activities at Westwood.”
Quebec mines were shut down March 23 as the Quebec government closed all non-essential services to try to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. As of April 13, 360 people have died in Quebec as a result of the coronavirus.
The government’s decision to allow miners to operate again comes at a good time for the sector, according to some analysts. Gold prices have broken through critical resistance and are trading near fresh seven-year highs. June gold futures at last traded at $1,768.60 an ounce, up 0.41% on the day.
Meanwhile, mining companies are enjoying lower input costs as energy prices have not seen a sustained recovery after falling to an 18-year low last month. May West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices last traded at $21.46 a barrel down more than 4% on the day.
White House Leaks Draft Plan To Reopen American Economy
As President Trump declared that he would leave the process of reopening the economy up to the states (with input from federal officials, of course), the Washington Post was releasing a ‘leaked’ report outlining a plan drafted by CDC and FDA that’s essentially a guide for local officials about how to go about reopening the economy.
And in contrast to the ‘guidelines’ released by the governors of California and Oregon, which seemed to imply that the process of reopening the economy could take as long as the rest of the year, if not longer, the administration plan offers a somewhat more realistic timetable.
The plan has been seen and discussed by members of the White House coronavirus task force. But remember, this is only a piece of what is supposed to be a more comprehensive framework that each governor can adjust to their liking. A federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity with WaPo said the final plan will have 8 parts; this document represents only 2 of them.
The first part of the phased reopening would focus on schools, daycares and places where “children are cared for.”
The plan lays out three-phases: Preparing the nation to reopen with a national communication campaign and community readiness assessment until May 1. Then, the effort, through May 15, would involve ramping up manufacturing of testing kits and personal protective equipment and increasing emergency funding. Then staged reopenings would begin, depending on local conditions. The plan does not give specific dates for reopenings but specified “not before May 1.”
The first priority, according to the CDC response document, is to “reopen community settings where children are cared for, including K-12 schools, daycares, and locally attended summer camps, to allow the workforce to return to work. Other community settings will follow with careful monitoring for increased transmission that exceeds the public health and health care systems.”
The process of a managed reopening will take much longer than 30 days: in fact, the administration expects there will be “some level” of government involvement until a vaccine is finally developed.
The document also says that during phased reopenings, it is critical to strictly follow recommendations on hand-washing and wearing face coverings in group settings.
The plan also carries this warning: “Models indicate 30-day shelter in place followed by 180 day lifting of all mitigation results in large rebound curve – some level of mitigation will be needed until vaccines or broad community immunity is achieved for recovering communities.”
A tiered approach is outlined in the document: a “moderate exposure” phase-in for former “hotspots” like New York” and a “low exposure” plan that will take things back to normal more quickly in communities where the virus never really spread widely. In the “moderate” track, schools could reopen, but with certain social distancing rules like no sports, and no assemblies.
To move ahead with reopening, communities must meet the following standards:
Incidence of infection is “genuinely low.”
A “well functioning” monitoring system capable of “promptly detecting any increase in incidence” of infection.
A public health system that is “reacting robustly” to all cases of covid-19 and has surge capacity to react to an increase in cases.
A health system that has enough inpatient beds and staffing to rapidly scale up and deal with a surge in cases.
Interestingly, the plan mentions that app-supported surveillance will be essential for contact-tracing efforts that the plan says are absolutely essential to help suppress any residual outbreaks that might occur.
The document calls for the CDC to establish a Covid-19 Response Corps to help state and local health departments with key public health functions, including contact tracing, which involves locating people who may have had contact with someone infected with the coronavirus.
Health experts in recent days have called for federal and state officials to help expand capacity throughout the country for the labor-intensive work of tracing people who have come into contacted with infected patients, because local health departments lack the necessary staff, money and training. The plan also says that solutions for “app-based case and contact investigations will be necessary for augmenting the actions of public health workers and for greatly increasing the important role of slowing covid-19 transmission in the community.”
Tech experts and companies such as Google and Apple are developing software that uses cellphones and apps to track people’s movements. Once someone is confirmed as infected with the coronavirus, public health workers could go back and trace people the infected person has come into contact with. But the invasive nature of cellphone tracking and apps have raised sharp concerns about civil liberties.
The document calls for a workforce of 670 to support communities to do contact tracing as part of a surge staff, not nearly large enough based on plans from other groups.
Now we wait for the “more detailed” “finalized” plan. Will it arrive before May 1? That will be an important cue looking forward.
Doctors Believe 49ers Super Bowl Loss ‘Saved Lives’ As Party Of The Century Would’ve Followed
Back on Super Bowl Sunday, February 2, which at this point seems like ages ago and an alternate reality away, few Americans would have imagined that just a couple months later the United States would become the global epicenter for COVID-19 infections and deaths — now fast closing in on 600,000 confirmed cases. Few would have anticipated nearly the entire national economy on “pause” with no clear end in sight.
However, the Wall Street Journaldetails how the University of California San Francisco’s Covid-19 command center swung into action on that very day, at a moment the 49ers were blowing their ten-point lead over the Kansas City Chiefs in the fourth quarter, as Bay Area doctors prepared to respond to the city’s first cases of coronavirus, among the earliest in the nation.
On the morning following the 49ers devastating 30 to 21 loss, the first two patients confirmed with the virus were taken to UCSF’s hospital. Should the 49ers have held on to the win, the party of the century would have exploded in the streets.
Image via Bay Area News Group/The Mercury News
“There could have been hundreds of thousands of fans on the streets of San Francisco at a Super Bowl parade a few days later,” the WSJ writes. However, the gut-wrenching loss for local fans may have in reality been a godsend, given as WSJ continues:
Some experts who have studied the Bay Area’s containment of the virus have reached a surprising conclusion about these simultaneous events of Super Bowl Sunday: San Francisco likely won when the 49ers lost.
The WSJ report recalls both the September 1918 Philadelphia WWI parade at a moment the deadly Spanish Flu was about to be unleashed on the city – killing at least 4,500 within a mere week of the 200,000 strong parade – as well as the much more recent Mardis Gras festivities which is believed to be the main cause in sending New Orleans case numbers soaring as the southern US epicenter.
The chair of UCSF’s department of medicine, Dr. Bob Wachter emphasized that despite that it will likely “go down in the annals as being a brutal sports loss,” it remains that it is “one that may have saved lives”.
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“It is certainly hard to imagine a more high-risk situation,” the head of UCSF’s Covid-19 command center, Dr. Niraj Sehgal, told the Journal.
Little did sports fans or the city more broadly know that at that very moment the area’s first cases were popping up, also at a moment national numbers were still very low and in the earliest stage.
“There were only a handful of known U.S. patients with the virus on Super Bowl Sunday, but Santa Clara County reported its second case that morning, and neighboring San Benito County later that day confirmed person-to-person transmission of the virus between a man who’d recently traveled to Wuhan, China and his wife,” the WSJ underscores.
Dejected fans watch as 49ers blew their lead, via SF Chronicle.
There’s speculation that had the 49ers won that day, possibly up to 2 million people would have packed the streets, bars, and public venues. “A Super Bowl victory parade may have done what Mardi Gras seems to have done in New Orleans,” one sports writer said.
The potential for disaster was there. A super bowl win for the city would no doubt have brought “together hundreds of thousands — and potentially millions — of screaming, hugging and beer-sharing fans on crowded streets… ideal breeding grounds for respiratory illnesses. And the timing of this Super Bowl parade could’ve made it a super-spreading event.”
“It made us all feel a bit better about the 49ers’ loss,” Dr. Bob Wachter concluded.
