Covid-19 Stories.

[JackLuis]

Coast Guard: Cruise ships must stay at sea with sick onboard

The U.S. Coast Guard has directed all cruise ships to prepare to treat any sick passengers and crew on board while being sequestered “indefinitely" offshore during the coronavirus pandemic

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The U.S. Coast Guard has directed all cruise ships to prepare to treat any sick passengers and crew on board while being sequestered “indefinitely" offshore during the coronavirus pandemic.

The new rules require daily updates on each ship's coronavirus caseload for vessels in U.S. waters, and come with a stiff warning: Any foreign-flagged vessels “that loiter beyond U.S. territorial seas" should try first to medically evacuate the very sick to those countries instead.

Many South Florida cruise ships are registered in the Bahamas, where hospital capacity is limited and people are still recovering from last year's devastating Hurricane Dorian.

The rules, which apply to any vessel carrying more than 50 people, were issued in a March 29 safety bulletin signed by Coast Guard Rear Admiral E.C. Jones, whose district includes Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Puerto Rico.

 

[KeithD]

Just yesterday, I was wondering how many cruise ships are still out there.

Even before the corona virus outbreak, cruise ships were having trouble with sickness spreading onboard, some of which I attributed to them putting bigger and bigger ships in the water. I thought even then that the era of ship cruising was coming to an end even though they were launching more and more mega ships. Now I definitely think that industry will collapse.

My last cruise was a river cruise last October. We have been going twice a year for some time--although always avoiding the bigger ships. We've probably gone on our last one, although there aren't too many destinations we haven't already cruised to.

 

[JackLuis]

Scientists Are Now Saying That Coronavirus Can Be Spread By Breathing

A terrifying new report by a panel of scientists states that "research shows coronavirus can be spread not just by sneezes or coughs, but also just by talking, or possibly even just breathing." If true, this would be a game changer - and not in a good way.

CNN is reporting that

The chairman of the committee, Dr. Harvey Fineberg, states: "While the current [coronavirus] specific research is limited, the results of available studies are consistent with aerosolization of virus from normal breathing."

Based off of these findings, Fineberg told CNN that he personally plans to wear a mask anytime he goes out to the grocery store. It sounds like we should all be doing the same, to be honest. Fineberg says he will not wear a surgical mask, and he is not encouraging anyone else to either, Rather, he said "I have a nice western-style bandana I might wear. Or I have a balaclava. I have some pretty nice options."

I'm pretty sure the coronavirus is small enough to get through a 'Scarf"! Best bet, three wraps of saran wrap for Rethuglicunts only! You Democrats can just try a hanky.

 

[JackLuis]

Corona beer producer halts brewing over virus

The Mexican brewer of Corona beer said Thursday it was suspending production because of the health emergency in the country over the COVID-19 pandemic.

Grupo Modelo — whose brands also include Pacifico and Modelo — said the measure was in line with the Mexican government’s order to suspend all non-essential activities until April 30 to slow the spread of coronavirus.

“We are in the process of lowering production at our plants to the bare minimum,” the company said in a statement, adding it would complete the suspension in the following days.

Mexico’s government has said that only key sectors such as agribusiness will be able to continue to function.

Okay now panic!

 

[JackLuis]

Coronavirus hot spots are ‘erupting across the South’

Communities throughout the South in America are bracing to be hard hit by COVID-19 coronavirus, Politico reported Friday evening.

“St. John the Baptist Parish, just southeast of Baton Rouge, La., has a population of just over 43,000 — and the highest per capita coronavirus mortality rate in the nation,” Politico reported. “In New York, a 1,000-bed Navy hospital ship is now docked and officials have been setting up makeshift morgues and marshaling thousands of health care workers. But St. John has no hospital within the parish boundaries, and many of its neighboring parishes have no ICU beds.”

“Hot spots like St. John the Baptist are erupting across the South. The virus is also poised to consume the area around Norfolk, Va., a rural county in Tennessee just north of Nashville and parts of southwest Georgia near Albany, according to models assembled by Columbia University epidemiologists. And without the resources of major cities, these areas are poised to see disproportionate suffering, economic hardship and death when cases peak,” Politico explained.

“Hot spots like St. John the Baptist are erupting across the South. The virus is also poised to consume the area around Norfolk, Va., a rural county in Tennessee just north of Nashville and parts of southwest Georgia near Albany, according to models assembled by Columbia University epidemiologists. And without the resources of major cities, these areas are poised to see disproportionate suffering, economic hardship and death when cases peak,” Politico added.

Trumpers reap the whirlwind.

 

[JackLuis]

4-3-20
USA
277,522 Cases

+361 New Cases

7,403 Deaths

+11 New Deaths

12,283 Total recovered

 

[JackLuis]

VIDEO: Wild scene unfolds as shoppers tackle and restrain man who coughed on supermarket produce

Reckless disregard and vandalism! Vigilantes respond!

 

[JackLuis]

Boeing is no longer manufacturing airplanes after closing its last factory ‘until further notice’

Boeing announced Monday it is suspending production of its 787 Dreamliner aircraft “until further notice” due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on workers and suppliers.

Shuttering the South Carolina plant on Wednesday halts production at the last of the aviation giant’s US commercial aircraft facilities.

Boeing, which employs more than 161,000 people, the vast majority in the United States, already suspended activity indefinitely at its factories in Washington state.

 

[JackLuis]

Box Scores for 4-6-20

USA
367,650 Total Cases

+646 New Cases

10,943 Total Deaths, so far

+72 New Deaths

19,810 Total Recovered, so far

 

[JackLuis]

UK PM Johnson receives oxygen support in ICU but is not on ventilator

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in intensive care on Tuesday after receiving oxygen support when his coronavirus symptoms worsened, leaving his foreign minister to lead the government’s response to the accelerating outbreak.

Johnson’s personal battle with the virus has shaken the British government just as the United Kingdom enters what scientists say is likely to be one of the most deadly weeks of the pandemic, which has killed 70,000 people worldwide.

While Britain has no formal succession plan should a prime minister become incapacitated, Johnson had asked Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to deputise for him “where necessary,” Downing Street said..

Earlier on Monday, Johnson had said he was in good spirits and Raab had told a news conference that the prime minister was still running the government, although Raab also said he had not spoken to him directly since Saturday.

Raab takes the helm at a pivotal time. The official death toll in the United Kingdom currently stands at 5,373, and last week the health minister said the deadliest peak for deaths was projected to be Easter Sunday, April 12.

I assume hundreds pray for his recovery.

 

[JackLuis]

Wall Street traders ‘horrified’ after firm orders them back to their offices unless they have a doctor’s note

According to a report from Bloomberg, managers working for JP Morgan Chase & Co. were both stunned and horrified after higher-ups sent them an email on April 2, telling them to get their staffers back on the trading floor despite the shutdown of all non-essential businesses by the government.

Based upon emails seen by Bloomberg’s Michelle F Davis, Max Abelson and Donal Griffin the employees were given the return to work order on the same day that the number of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 went over 1 million worldwide.

“More than 100 employees were on the message chain seen by Bloomberg, and some were horrified. It came soon after an outbreak of COVID-19 inside JPMorgan’s Madison Avenue headquarters, in which at least 16 people tested positive on a single trading floor,” the report states. “Some employees complain they’re getting conflicting messages from middle and senior managers about coming into offices, where billions of dollars of profit are at stake, and that they would rather follow the advice of government officials to hunker down at home.”

"Some of you may die, but that is a price that We are willing to pay for Capitalism"

 

[JackLuis]

Mayor ’embarrassed’ after he orders cops to round up social distancing violators — and they find his wife at a bar

An Illinois mayor told his city’s police department to round up people violating stay-at-home orders in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak. During their patrols this Sunday, they stumbled on his wife who was hanging out at a local bar, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

Alton Mayor Brant Walker posted on Facebook that one of the people cited in the roundup was his wife, Shannon Walker.

“My wife is an adult capable of making her own decisions, and in this instance she exhibited a stunning lack of judgement,” he wrote. “She now faces the same consequences for her ill-advised decision as the other individuals who chose to violate the “Stay At Home” order during this incident.”

"But, It's so boring, at Home Alone!"

 

[JackLuis]

Submerged by debt: Emerging economies at risk from virus

The COVID-19 pandemic has piled pressure on the finances of many emerging countries, leading to calls for some debt payments to be postponed or cancelled altogether.

Last month, Lebanon declared a default on debt payments, and this week Argentina said it would delay payment of almost $10 billion in debt.

Many emerging economies were already in dire straits before anybody had heard of COVID-19.

But Wait there's more!

“Investors anticipate the coronavirus shock to growth will be much bigger to emerging countries than developed ones,” Dembik told AFP.

That is because those which are oil exporters are being struck by the plunge in global crude prices while those that fashioned themselves as holiday destinations are confronted by a collapse in tourism.

And as the pandemic unfurled institutional investors pulled enormous amounts of dollars from emerging and less developed countries to place the funds in less volatile markets.

“In March, capital withdrawn from emerging countries was four times more than in 2008-2009. That is huge,” Marcilly noted.

 

[JackLuis]

Ten times as many New Yorkers are dying in their homes than normal and they aren’t being tested for COVID-19

As of this writing, 12,242 people have died in the United States as a result of COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Over 5,000 of those losses were in New York, which has become the global epicenter of the pandemic.

But we don’t actually know what the true toll from this disease is. The actual number of deaths is higher–possibly much higher.

In New York City, somewhere around 20-25 people die at home on a typical day. But according to City Council Member Mark Levine, who chairs the health committee, between 200 and 215 are dying at home every day at present. As Levine wrote on Twitter, only those “who are known to have a positive coronavirus test have the disease listed as the official cause on their death certificate.”

Gothamist reports that the city Medical Examiner’s office “is not testing dead bodies for COVID-19. Instead, they’re referring suspected cases to the city’s health department as ‘probable.’” And those “probable” COVID-19 deaths aren’t included in the tallies.

 

[domroger]

FFS what is going on ,just one fuck up after another

 

[Fuzzy1975]

FFS what is going on ,just one fuck up after another

This is what happens when you fire your Pandemic response team 2 years before they are needed....

An estimated additional 180 - 195 deaths per day occurring at home in New York City due to COVID-19 are not being counted in the official figures. "Early on in this crisis we were able to swab people who died at home, and thus got a coronavirus reading. But those days are long gone. We simply don't have the testing capacity for the large numbers dying at home. Now only those few who had a test confirmation *before* dying are marked as victims of coronavirus on their death certificate. This almost certainly means we are undercounting the total number of victims of this pandemic," said Mark Levine, Chair of New York City Council health committee [source]

A study by disease modelers at the University of Texas at Austin states that "Given the low testing rates throughout the country, we assume that 1 in 10 cases are tested and reported. If a county has detected only 1 case of COVID-19, there is a 51%
chance that there is already a growing outbreak underway" [source]

 

[JackLuis]

Conservative Supreme Court justices’ tortured reasoning in the disastrous Wisconsin case is a thin excuse for their true purpose

In the disastrous ruling handed down Monday night from the conservative justices, the Supreme Court said its move to sharply limit voting access for Tuesday’s Wisconsin election was based on the details of a “narrow, technical question.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. The unsigned opinion contained such a thinly reasoned and transparently frivolous defense of the court’s decision that there’s little doubt that the outcome, not the legal arguments, was all that mattered.

The case focused on the question of whether a lower district court’s ruling that Wisconsin voters could mail in absentee ballots as long as they were received by April 13 would stand. The court’s five conservatives decided to reverse the lower court and determined that ballots would have to be sent in or cast in person by April 7 or not be counted at all.

The problem with this ruling is that, with the coronavirus pandemic raging and Wisconsin under a stay-at-home order, many more voters in the state had requested absentee ballots. Many had not yet received them and feared they would not receive them by election day. If they were required to cast their ballots by April 7, they may be faced with either posing a danger to themselves or others by voting in person or forfeiting their right to have a say in the election.

Supreme or Extreme Court? That is the question.

 

[JackLuis]

Election supervisors warn Florida is heading for disaster if it doesn’t change its voting laws

On Tuesday, Politico reported that election officials in Florida are warning GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis that the state desperately needs changes to its election laws — or the coronavirus pandemic could cause a “presidential election meltdown.”

“The county officials — who issued the red alert on the same day Wisconsin held a disastrous primary amid widespread fears and irregularities due to the coronavirus — said the changes are needed to accommodate more absentee ballot voters, who could be scared away from the polls if the coronavirus outbreak persists into the August primary or the November general election,” wrote Gary Fineout.

Among the changes requested by supervisors is to allow 22 days of early voting, with polls open all the way up until Election Day.

DeSantis, who has come under fire for his delays in issuing a statewide shelter-in-place order, has not yet responded to these requests.

Flori-Duh!

 

[hogjack]

Parents Naming Babies "Covid" Has Increased 2,000%

 

[JackLuis]

Republican ex-lawmaker with coronavirus scolds Wisconsin GOP for forcing voters to risk their health

On CNN Tuesday, former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA), who is himself dealing with a bout of COVID-19, chastised the Wisconsin GOP for doing everything in their power to block the state elections from being moved — and forcing many voters to stand in line and risk exposure to the virus to cast their ballot.

“I have to tell you, here in Pennsylvania we have a Democratic governor and Republican legislature,” Dent told host Don Lemon. “They postponed the election here from April 28 until June 2. Without any controversy. Everybody agreed it was the right thing to do and they moved on. I’m surprised Wisconsin took this risk, knowing they don’t have to.”

In Wisconsin there are Badgers in college and there are Cheese heads in the Legislature!

Cheese inside their heads, not on their heads.

 

[JackLuis]

Dr. Birx: People who don’t stay home will bring us a second wave of coronavirus

Speaking to Susana Guthrie on TODAY this Wednesday, White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said there are encouraging signs that parts of the U.S. are starting to flatten their curves, but people who still insist on going out could bring the virus back for a second wave.

Birx said that due to California and Washington state starting social distancing early, their curves are “persistently flat and that’s very encouraging.”

New York and New Jersey, meanwhile, had a “logarithmic rise in the number of new cases,” she said.

The Left Coast Leads, while Trumpublicunts force people to die!!!!!!!

 

[JackLuis]

‘What a clown’: MSNBC’s Morning Joe nukes Wisconsin GOP leader for touting ‘incredibly safe’ voting during pandemic

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough blasted Wisconsin Republicans for ramming through a primary election during the coronavirus pandemic as part of an ongoing voter suppression scheme.

The state’s GOP House speaker, Robin Vos, appeared on video wearing full medical protective gear telling Wisconsinites that voting was perfectly safe, and the “Morning Joe” host unloaded on him.

“What a clown,” Scarborough said. “That actually is the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly in full-on protective gear. This guy who looks like he’s in a hazmat suit telling Wisconsin voters that they were, quote, ‘incredibly safe’ to go out.”

Scarborough said the lines of voters wearing masks, gloves and other items to risk their lives to vote was perhaps the most horrific thing he’d seen in U.S. politics.

Less horrific than Mitch's visage? I think NOT!

 

[JackLuis]

A nurse bought protective supplies for her colleagues using GoFundMe — then the hospital suspended her

Olga Matievskaya and her fellow intensive care nurses at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in New Jersey were so desperate for gowns and masks to protect themselves from the coronavirus that they turned to the online fundraising site GoFundMe to raise money.

The donations flowed in — more than $12,000 — and Matievskaya used some of them to buy about 500 masks, 4,000 shoe covers and 150 jumpsuits. She and her colleagues at the hospital celebrated protecting themselves and their patients from the spread of the virus.

But rather than thanking the staff, hospital administrators on Saturday suspended Matievskaya for distributing “unauthorized” protective gear.

Making the Administrator look incompetent is forbidden! First rule of Trump Club.

 

[JackLuis]

US Democrats seek billions more for hospitals, states to fight virus

Top US Democrats said Wednesday they want an additional $500 billion to battle the coronavirus crisis, doubling the Trump administration’s request to help small businesses and imperiling the rapid approval of emergency aid lawmakers sought this week.

Leaders from both parties have indicated their intention to move swiftly to boost the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC that he and President Donald Trump expected Congress to pass the emergency legislation by Friday.

I mean Why Not? As long as we are going to bust the budget, why not blow it all to hell? Helping the People is what it is about, Corporations are People my friend!

 

[JackLuis]

‘Death is a welcomed friend’: Pastor calls on Christians to defy coronavirus lockdown — even if it kills them

Pastor Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge spoke to TMZ this Wednesday, saying that if his church members die from coronavirus, they’ve done so in the name of religious freedom.

Spell was charged with violating an executive order that bans churches from holding large gatherings, but showed his defiance last Tuesday by holding a service that was attended by over 1,000 people. Speaking to TMZ, Spell said that true Christians would be willing to die from coronavirus, adding that those who “prefer tyranny over freedom do not deserve freedom.”

“The bible teaches us to be absent from our bodies so we can be present with the Lord,” Spell said. “So like any revolutionary, or like any zealot, or like any pure religious person, death looks to them like a welcomed friend.”

WTF! "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome Priest?"