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2020-05-16 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
Coronavirus roundup


World Leaders Demand Free Coronavirus Vaccine for All
And who, pray tell, do you world leaders intend should pay for this largess? From a different direction, one must wonder how this was handled in the past — the last time such a thing happened being one of the influenzas, or perhaps the Spanish flu pamdemic of 1918ff.
[AnNahar] World leaders past and present insisted on Thursday that any eventual COVID-19 vaccines and treatments should be made available to everyone, free of charge.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Pak Prime Minister Imran Khan
...aka The Great Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality disorders...
were among more than 140 signatories of a letter saying any vaccine should not be patented while the science should be shared between nations.

The World Health Assembly, the policy-setting body of the UN's World Health Organization, holds its annual general meeting next week.

The letter comes amid fury in La Belle France after pharmaceutical giant Sanofi said it would reserve first shipments of any COVID-19 vaccine for the United States.

The French multinational's chief executive Paul Hudson said the United States would get first dibs because its government was helping to fund the vaccine research. His comments drew outrage Thursday from officials and health experts.

The letter ahead of the WHA said it was not the time to leave the task of resolving the pandemic to market forces or let the interests of wealthy companies and governments come before the need to save lives.

New York Orthodox Jews make up HALF of all US plasma donors volunteering blood to help treat COVID-19 patients as the community turns 'tragedy into a superpower'

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news]
  • More than 12,000 donors have signed up to various community programs donating blood plasma since April 4, donor organizers told the New York Times

  • Thousands of Americans who have recovered from coronavirus are donating their blood to plasma clinics so it can be used to treat others

  • Orthodox Jews from New York are 'punching way above their weight' when it comes to donating, one medic said

  • Several grassroots initiatives have sprung up in local New York communities, with the word spreading via synagogues and community newsletters

  • Experts and leaders say the drive comes from the community's traditional close-knit approach and the importance the religion places on human life

  • Borough Park, Williamsburg and Crown Heights in Brooklyn are all home to large Hasidic communities and they have all recorded high virus infection rates

Iran doctors reveal how regime sacrificed thousands to keep COVID-19 stats low
[IsraelTimes] Health staff recount how government ignored them for weeks as hospitals filled up, instructed them to lie about causes of deaths; toll could be up to 10 times higher than reported.

It is no secret that Iran has been hit hard by the coronavirus. Official government figures show that around 100,000 people were infected by the virus and around 6,500 have died. But a report by the research arm of Iran’s parliament said the number of cases could be eight to 10 times higher, making it among the hardest hit countries in the world. The report said the number of deaths could be 80 percent higher than officials numbers from the Health Ministry, about 11,700.

The Iranian government is currently reporting a decline in the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths in many areas, even though local authorities are expanding cemeteries in places like Tehran where the municipal council said it had to add 10,000 new graves to its largest cemetery, Behesht e-Zahra.

Two more migrants quarantined on Lesbos test positive for COVID-19
[AlAhram] Two asylum seekers recently arrived on Greece's Lesbos island, the site of the country's biggest migrant camp, have tested positive for the coronavirus, migration ministry sources said on Friday. The cases, doubling the island's COVID-19 infection tally on to four, were among 70 arrivals there so far during May.

Since March 1, all migrants who reach Lesbos have been quarantined away from the island's camps. Those include the overcrowded Moria facility, hosting more than 17,500 asylum seekers by the latest official count on May 13 and frequently criticised by aid groups for poor living conditions. There have been no documented coronavirus cases there, however.

A wise politician notices the direction the parade is going, making sure to position himself in the front of the column .


Dutch Dog Infected with Coronavirus
[AnNahar] Dutch authorities on Friday reported the country's first coronavirus case in a dog and infections in three cats, but said chances of contamination through pets were minimal.

The eight-year-old bulldog belonged to a COVID-19 patient and appeared to have been infected by its owner, Dutch Agriculture Minister Carola Schouten said. The dog was put down at the end of April.

The three cats were found at a mink farm where the mink were found to have coronavirus in April.

Covid-19: Inside the UK's top-secret military lab
[BBC] Their work is normally highly classified, but military scientists at Porton Down in Wiltshire are now fighting coronavirus.

Some of the same scientists who identified Novichok, the nerve agent used in the Salisbury poisoning, have been helping to analyse Covid-19 and finding ways to protect NHS staff.

The BBC's Defence Correspondent Jonathan Beale has been given exclusive access to the site.
Posted by trailing wife 2020-05-16 03:57|| || Front Page|| [7 views ]  Top

#1 Hospitalizations, Daily Cases Stable in Texas After Phased Reopening
Posted by Frank G 2020-05-16 10:51||   2020-05-16 10:51|| Front Page Top

#2 AM I the first to think of a non-racyssist name fopr the WuFlu - "Bat Flu"?

Shirley not!
Posted by Bobby 2020-05-16 12:25||   2020-05-16 12:25|| Front Page Top

#3 Texas fears losing oil-rich lands in Chinese takeover of weakened energy companies
Posted by Skidmark 2020-05-16 12:32||   2020-05-16 12:32|| Front Page Top

#4 Colorado amends coronavirus death count - says fewer have died of COVID-19 than previously reported
Posted by Skidmark 2020-05-16 12:33||   2020-05-16 12:33|| Front Page Top

#5 As US coronavirus death toll mounts, so does the belief by some that it is exaggerated
Posted by Skidmark 2020-05-16 12:35||   2020-05-16 12:35|| Front Page Top

#6 Thousands expected at Texas 'Go Topless' Jeep festival, making social distancing tough, officials say
Posted by Skidmark 2020-05-16 12:39||   2020-05-16 12:39|| Front Page Top

#7 CDC director says that all 12 of their models predict US coronavirus deaths will accelerate in coming weeks and toll will exceed 100,000 by June
Posted by Skidmark 2020-05-16 13:48||   2020-05-16 13:48|| Front Page Top

#8 ^Toll will exceed 100,000 by June even without an acceleration.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-05-16 13:51||   2020-05-16 13:51|| Front Page Top

#9 One in three patients who fall severely ill with coronavirus develop deadly blood clots that trigger heart attacks, strokes and organ failure, leading scientist says
Posted by Skidmark 2020-05-16 13:53||   2020-05-16 13:53|| Front Page Top

#10 
Toll will exceed 100,000 by June even without an acceleration.
Sun seekers defy beach ban in New York City as crowds in New Jersey flock to reopened coastline and flout social distancing measures as temperatures soar
Posted by Skidmark 2020-05-16 13:54||   2020-05-16 13:54|| Front Page Top

#11 Toll = with or from?
Posted by Lex 2020-05-16 13:59||   2020-05-16 13:59|| Front Page Top

#12 Kinda a tired mantra, Lex.

He died from drowning.
No he didn't, he died from falling in the water!
Posted by Skidmark 2020-05-16 15:37||   2020-05-16 15:37|| Front Page Top

#13 Yeah, tiresome indeed: we're tired of recycled BS data.
Posted by Lex 2020-05-16 16:24||   2020-05-16 16:24|| Front Page Top

#14 This is why we're so tired of being subjected to ridiculously inconsistent, wildly inaccurate guesstimates of how many deaths were actually caused by COVID: because the people doing the counting are over-counting, and applying attribution logic that was not applied in previous years to any other infectious disease.

The last word belongs to retired NHS pathologist Dr. John Lee, who below explains why the Johns Hopkins data is unreliable, if not actually garbage:

How to understand - and report - figures for "COVID Deaths"

Dr. John Lee
The Spectator (UK version)
29 March 2020

Unfortunately nuance tends to be lost in the numbers quoted from the database being used to track Covid-19: the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. It has compiled a huge database, with Covid-19 data from all over the world, updated daily – and its figures are used, world over, to track the virus. This data is not standardised and so probably not comparable, yet this important caveat is seldom expressed by the (many) graphs we see. It risks exaggerating the quality of data that we have.

The distinction between dying ‘with’ Covid-19 and dying ‘due to’ Covid-19 is not just splitting hairs.

Consider some examples: an 87-year-old woman with dementia in a nursing home; a 79-year-old man with metastatic bladder cancer; a 29-year-old man with leukaemia treated with chemotherapy; a 46-year-old woman with motor neurone disease for 2 years.

All develop chest infections and die. All test positive for Covid-19. Yet all were vulnerable to death by chest infection from any infective cause (including the flu). Covid-19 might have been the final straw, but it has not caused their deaths.

Consider two more cases: a 75-year-old man with mild heart failure and bronchitis; a 35-year-old woman who was previously fit and well with no known medical conditions. Both contract a chest infection and die, and both test positive for Covid-19.

In the first case it is not entirely clear what weight to place on the pre-existing conditions versus the viral infection – to make this judgement would require an expert clinician to examine the case notes. The final case would reasonably be attributed to death caused by Covid-19, assuming it was true that there were no underlying conditions....
Posted by Lex 2020-05-16 17:00||   2020-05-16 17:00|| Front Page Top

21:30 trailing wife
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