cautious colin wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 8:48 am https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... s-outbreak

Article in the guardian about the minks

A million minks culled. Wonder what that equates to in dollars/euros? A helluva financial hit no doubt. Another woe for the world economy.

Hong Kong
A senior Hong Kong journalist from SCMP blames citizens' laxist attitudes for the coronavirus comeback in this opinion piece today:

Hong Kong stares into Covid-19 abyss and has only itself to blame
Yonden Lhatoo laments the complacency that has rolled back the city’s exemplary success against the coronavirus and left it battling a resurgent crisis that threatens to overwhelm the public health care system
Yonden Lhatoo
Published: 8:23pm, 18 Jul, 2020

“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure.”
That, in a nutshell, explains why Hong Kong is now struggling to contain a resurgence of Covid-19 infections, the so-called third wave
and the most alarming so far because of the potential it has to overwhelm our city’s health care system if we don’t get a grip on it soon.

To think that just weeks ago this city was the envy of the world for its exemplary efficiency in handling the coronavirus crisis and its remarkable success in putting a lid on the scourge of our times. Not any more. Now we are staring into the abyss again. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.

When our health experts, some of whom are the world’s leading communicable disease specialists, were warning everyone not to let their guard down despite an improving situation that had seen locally transmitted infections whittled down to zero, that’s exactly what we all did and then some

I’m talking about streets filled with haj-sized crowds of shoppers and loiterers, commuters piling into trains and buses like lemmings, beaches packed to the gills with swimmers and sunbathers, bars and restaurants jammed with wining and dining enthusiasts, large social gatherings with people not giving a damn about wearing masks or avoiding handshakes and spraying saliva-filled conversations into each other’s faces at close range – sorry to say, social distancing was happening mostly on paper, not so much in practice.

The government is just as much to blame, a victim of its own success, allowing infection loopholes such as exempting air and sea crews from mandatory quarantine and testing, and, blinkered by falling official statistics, underestimating the risk posed by silent Covid-19 carriers in the community.

Now we pay the price, with Hong Kong back to reporting daily infections in high double digits, and announcing a single-day, near-record of 60 locally transmitted cases even as I write this.

If that’s not worrying enough, health authorities are unable to trace the sources of nearly 40 per cent of the infections so far this month. How do you fight, clueless, against the unknown?

The geographical distribution of cases and details of patients denote that the coronavirus is everywhere and infecting anyone, from vegetable sellers and restaurant staff to bus and taxi drivers, pilots, medical professionals and civil servants.
In full: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/art ... self-blame

It seems this Virus is very difficult but not impossible to manage. We don't require exotic therapies or vaccines to control it:

What should be done to control the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) or more formally severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)?

Here is what is painfully obvious: masks work when all parties wear masks:



This is a graph from a recent study looking at health care facilities + Covid 19 infections in healthcare workers + effect of masking policy:  
On the left no masking policy (cases rising dramatically in healthcare workers) (SEE THE PINK SHADE OF THE GRAPH)
- in the middle 1st universal masking for Healthcare Workers  = incident of Covid 19 disease flattens (SEE THE LAVENDER SHADE OF THE GRAPH) 
- in the 2nd middle universal masking for patients started (SEE THE YELLOW SHADE OF THE GRAPH)
 = EFFECT TAKES ABOUT A WEEK BUT: - in the right side of the graph: SEE THE GREEN PART OF THE GRAPH = incident of healthcare workers with Covid 19 falls dramatically!!
FROM: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/f ... dium=email
Association Between Universal Masking in a Health Care System and SARS-CoV-2 Positivity Among Health Care WorkersXiaowen Wang, MD1; Enrico G. Ferro, MD2; Guohai Zhou, PhD3; et alDean Hashimoto, MD, JD4; Deepak L. Bhatt, MD, MPH1Author Affiliations Article InformationJAMA. Published online July 14, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.12897

What would happen if for 3 to 4 weeks in areas of actively increasing Covid 19 everyone wore a mask? Just imagine!

"For the person assessing personal exposure risk when going out in public, minimizing the number of nonhousehold contacts, maintaining a physical distance of at least 6 ft, and limiting the amount of time around others, especially while indoors and in poorly ventilated areas, are all important considerations. An additional factor in this calculus is the extent that individuals and communities will also be practicing source control by wearing masks."

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/f ... dium=email

Editorial
July 14, 2020
Universal Masking to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Transmission—The Time Is Now
John T. Brooks, MD1; Jay C. Butler, MD1; Robert R. Redfield, MD1
Author Affiliations Article Information
JAMA. Published online July 14, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.13107

Rtrac wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 11:25 pm Here is what is painfully obvious: masks work when all parties wear masks:

and obvious for months

but people must have their 'freedom'

Global report: nearly a quarter of people in Delhi have had coronavirus, study finds
Antibodies found in more than 23% of Indian capital’s residents; Trump admits virus getting worse; Victoria reports record Australian daily tally
Published on Wed 22 Jul 2020 06.34 BST

Almost a quarter of people in the Indian capital of Delhi have been infected with the coronavirus, according to scientists, raising fears there could be many more cases in the country of 1.3 billion people.

Random testing of more than 20,000 people in Delhi by India’s national disease control centre found that 23.48% had antibodies to the virus. Adjusting for false positives and negatives, it was estimated that 22.86% of the population had been infected, Sujeet Kumar Singh, who heads the institute, said on Tuesday.

Delhi, which has a population of 29 million, has officially reported 123,747 cases and 3,663 deaths, AP reported. The study, however, indicates more than 6.6 million likely cases, with most not identified or tested.

More than 1 million in India have already been infected with the disease, which is spreading quickly through the country’s population. Latest figures from Johns Hopkins University showed that there were 37,000 new cases on Monday, only a slight fall on Sunday’s record high of more than 40,000.

It is the third worst-affected nation in the world, behind the United States (3.9 million cases) and Brazil (2.16 million). But compared to those two countries and to global averages, the percentage of the Indian population that has died from the virus is significantly lower. The national death toll rose to 28,084 on Tuesday, with the number of recoveries at 724,577.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... tudy-finds

In the Netherlands they found on one single night 37 people visiting a bar were infected with the Corona virus. Research showed all infections happened af after 11 PM when the bar had to close its’ doors and windows because of the noise.

More and more evidence seems build up it’s not the (lack of) distancing but the confined spaces causing infection. Let’s round up the outside sitting areas of bars Police! Great thinking.

Stiliko wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 3:36 pm
A million minks culled. Wonder what that equates to in dollars/euros? A helluva financial hit no doubt. Another woe for the world economy.

That's a blow, as I was just planning on buying my new lady friend a nice fur coat

US daily coronavirus deaths surpass 1,000 for first time since June
US death toll at more than 142,000 while Trump admits Covid-19 crisis will ‘get worse before it gets better’

Wed 22 Jul 2020 18.58 BST
Daily deaths due to Covid-19 on Tuesday surpassed 1,000 for the first time in the US since the start of June, as Donald Trump admitted the crisis would “get worse” before it got better.

The seven-day average for the number of deaths in the country has been slowly rising this month, according to multiple data analyses, and went past the 1,000 mark on Tuesday, taking US fatalities to more than 142,000. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has forecasted that the country will reach 150,000 deaths by early August.

The peak number of people hospitalized at once was 59,000 on Tuesday, according to the Covid Tracking Project, reaching numbers that were last seen in April when the virus was spreading rapidly in the US north-east.

At the White House’s renewed coronavirus daily press briefing late on Tuesday, the president said that the virus “will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better”, an admission in line with what public health experts have been saying for months. Trump still praised the US response to the pandemic, saying it has been “better than most”.

Trump also acknowledged in his prepared remarks that “whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact”. But when taking a question from a reporter, Trump took a softer stance, saying “in theory, you don’t need the mask” but implied he was getting more comfortable wearing them.

While Trump took an unusually sober tone during the press briefing, which are slated to continue daily, Dr Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious diseases expert told CNN he was not invited to the briefing. Fauci was once a praised fixture of the daily briefings but has recently been under attack by Trump and his allies, seemingly for taking the president’s spotlight.

Public health experts such as Fauci have warned for weeks that the US will see the consequences of ending shutdown orders too soon. As states along the south saw surges in new infections, experts said those states will ultimately see an uptick in deaths.

That fear is becoming a reality as deaths in those states reached almost record highs on Tuesday. Texas saw 131 deaths while Florida and Arizona both saw 134 deaths – the second-highest numbers yet seen for the states. Public health officials said that ICU beds in those states are nearly at capacity with a surge in hospitalizations amid the spikes.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ly-average