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solarbirdThe question will be, when hospitals in the South and southwest are flooded with cases, will they just stop treating COVID-19 patients, letting them die, to keep critical care facilities open for people with other conditions?
I suspect so.
----- 1 -----
Pakistan hospitals struggle as coronavirus cases explode
Country sees multiple consecutive days of record cases and deaths as overworked doctors plead for 'breathing space'.
by Asad Hashim
12 June 2020
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/pakistan-hospitals-struggle-coronavirus-cases-explode-200612084123797.html
Islamabad, Pakistan - Atiqullah did not know what else to do. He spent three days scouring the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar for a ventilator for his 60-year-old father, who had tested positive for the coronavirus and was in a critical condition.
"The doctors were trying their best but we couldn't find a bed in the Intensive Care Unit [ICU]," he told Al Jazeera. "For three days we were trying to get him shifted into an ICU because he was in such a serious condition."
Ultimately, he found a bed in an isolation ward at the Lady Reading Hospital - the city's largest government hospital - but there was still no ventilator available.
"There was no space in any ICU, anywhere in the city, not just at Lady Reading," he said.
Finally, unable to afford to pay for his father to receive treatment at a private healthcare facility, Atiqullah, a 30-year-old hospital orderly, had no choice but to sit at his bedside and watch him die.
----- 2 -----
‘Are you from America?’ Woman has a racist meltdown after being asked to wear a mask
June 11, 2020
By Travis Gettys
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/are-you-from-america-woman-has-a-racist-meltdown-after-being-asked-to-wear-a-mask/
A white woman hurled racist insults at a Latina cashier after being asked to wear a face mask inside a California gas station.
Recent college school graduate Jassel Aguirre was working May 31 at the Arcata Shell station when she asked the woman to cover her face while inside the store to prevent the spread of coronavirus, and the woman hastily covered up with a makeshift mask using a scarf, reported the Lost Coast Outpost.
“She asked to use the restroom, and even though she was not a customer, I allowed it,” Aguirre said. “Exiting the restroom, while still in the store, I again asked if she could please make sure her face was covered while inside because she was no longer doing so, and this was the result.”
----- 3 -----
White House Floats Theory That Mexico Is To Blame For Spike In COVID Cases
By JILL COLVIN and Zeke Miller
June 12, 2020
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/white-house-floats-theory-that-mexico-is-to-blame-for-spike-in-covid-cases
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is floating a theory that travel from Mexico may be contributing to a new wave of coronavirus infections, rather than states’ efforts to reopen their economies.
The notion was discussed at some length during a meeting of the administration’s coronavirus task force in the White House Situation Room Thursday that focused, in part, on identifying commonalities between new outbreaks, according to two administration officials familiar with the discussions.
COVID-19 cases are currently rising in nearly half of states across the country, according to an Associated Press analysis. That includes Arizona, where hospitals have been told to prepare for the worst, and Texas, which now has more hospitalized patients than ever.
----- 4 -----
One of Oregon’s biggest coronavirus outbreaks could take weeks to trace and contain
By SHANE DIXON KAVANAUGH
12 June 2020
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/northwest/one-of-oregons-biggest-coronavirus-outbreaks-could-take-weeks-to-trace-and-contain/
A large coronavirus outbreak on the Oregon coast has quickly overwhelmed the local public health department, offering a glimpse into how even a community well-equipped to combat the virus can struggle to contain a sudden surge.
Health officials in Lincoln County have needed to turn to neighboring counties, a local tribe and even a community college to build up a team of contact tracers big enough to match the more than 100 workers at Pacific Seafood in Newport who tested positive Sunday for COVID-19.
And yet it may still take up to two weeks to identify and reach all of those who came into close contact with the sickened workers, said Rebecca Austen, the health director for Lincoln County.
The delay raises fears that the virus could continue to spread unchecked in the county of 50,000 people.
“To be able to stop the transmission, we need everybody to stay home,” Austen said of people exposed to the virus.
----- 5 -----
Downplaying virus risk, Trump gets back to business as usual
Jill Colvin and Zeke Miller, Associated Press
Updated 9:08 am PDT, Friday, June 12, 2020
https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Downplaying-virus-risk-Trump-gets-back-to-15334763.php
WASHINGTON (AP) — At the White House, aides now routinely flout internal rules requiring face masks. The president's campaign is again scheduling mass arena rallies. And he is back to spending summer weekends at his New Jersey golf club.
Three months after President Donald Trump bowed to the realities of a pandemic that put big chunks of life on pause and killed more Americans than several major wars, Trump is back to business as usual — even as coronavirus cases are on the upswing in many parts of the country.
While the nation has now had months to prepare stockpiles of protective gear and ventilators, a vaccine still is many months away at best and a model cited by the White House projects tens of thousands of more deaths by the end of September.
Amid renewed fears of a virus resurgence, financial markets — frequently highlighted by Trump as a sign of economic recovery — suffered their worst drop since March on Thursday. The market opened on the upside Friday morning.
At the White House, though, officials played down the severity of the virus surge and sought to blame it on factors beyond Trump's forceful push to reopen the economy, which he's counting on to help him win reelection.
“I spoke to our health experts at some length last evening. They’re saying there is no second spike. Let me repeat that: There is no second spike," Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said Friday on "Fox & Friends.”
----- 6 -----
Wolf Asks Pennsylvania Supreme Court to Uphold Shutdown
Gyms, bars, beauty salons and theaters can reopen in green phase
By Mark Scolforo and Michael Rubinkam
Published June 12, 2020 • Updated on June 13, 2020
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/health/8-more-pennsylvania-counties-none-in-the-southeast-to-move-to-green-phase/2431149/
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday to intervene in his dispute with legislative Republicans who are trying to end pandemic restrictions he imposed in March to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.
Republican majorities in the House and Senate, with a few Democrats in support, voted this week to end the state’s emergency disaster declaration that Wolf has used to shut down “non-life-sustaining” businesses, ban large gatherings and order people to stay at home.
Wolf asked the state's high court to uphold the shutdown.
He said that his gradual reopening plan is working, pointing to a downward trend in the number of new virus infections in Pennsylvania even as cases rise in nearly half the states.
“Pennsylvania’s measured, phased process to reopen is successful because of its cautious approach that includes factors relying on science, the advice of health experts and that asks everyone to do something as simple as wearing a mask when inside or around others outside the home,” Wolf said in a news release. “We will continue to move forward cautiously.”
----- 7 -----
Despite virus surge, Arizona governor won't require masks
Bob Christie and Terry Tang, Associated Press
Saturday, June 13, 2020
https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Despite-virus-surge-Arizona-governor-won-t-15338014.php
PHOENIX (AP) — Coronavirus infections are surging in Arizona. Hospitalizations are increasing and more people are dying since the state relaxed stay-at-home orders last month.
But in one of the nation’s COVID-19 hot spots, Gov. Doug Ducey is not requiring residents of the Grand Canyon state to wear masks in public, and it seems a good many people agree with him.
In shopping malls, restaurants and the crowded bar scenes of Scottsdale and Tempe, most patrons have disdained the use of cloth face masks that health officials advocate to help slow the spread of coronavirus.
Robert Fowler, a truck driver in Phoenix, wears a mask as required for work but otherwise he goes about mask-free.
“I’m not worried about it,” Fowler said while waiting for a table Thursday at Snooze A.M. Eatery, where the patio was full and only employees were seen donning face masks.
Despite COVID-19 case numbers trending upward, Fowler has no plans to change.
“Everybody’s going to get COVID one way or the other eventually,” he said. “People are gonna do what they want to do regardless.”
----- 8 -----
Study: 100% face mask use could crush second, third COVID-19 wave
By Mike Moffitt, SFGATE
Updated 12:56 pm PDT, Friday, June 12, 2020
https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Study-100-face-mask-use-could-crush-second-15333170.php
We've all heard it many times: Wear a face covering — indoors, outdoors, on trains and buses. At work, in the supermarket and at church.
But now a new modeling study out of Cambridge and Greenwich universities suggests that face masks may be even more important than originally thought in preventing future outbreaks of the new coronavirus.
To ward off resurgences, the reproduction number for the virus (the average number of people who will contract it from one infected person) needs to drop below 1.0. Researchers don’t believe that’s achievable with lockdowns alone. However, a combination of lockdowns and widespread mask compliance might do the trick, they say.
“We show that, when face masks are used by the public all the time (not just from when symptoms first appear), the effective reproduction number, Re, can be decreased below 1, leading to the mitigation of epidemic spread,” the scientists wrote in the paper published Wednesday by the Proceedings of the Royal Society A.
The modeling indicated that when lockdown periods are combined with 100% face mask use, disease spread is vastly diminished, preventing resurgence for 18 months, the time frame that has frequently been cited for developing a vaccine. It also demonstrated that if people wear masks in public, it is twice as effective at reducing the R number than if face coverings are only worn after symptoms appear.
The masks don’t have to be top-of-the-line surgical or respirator masks. Homemade coverings that catch only 50 percent of exhaled droplets would provide a “population-level benefit,” they concluded.
As has been well-publicized, wearing a mask primarily protects others from yourself, rather than the other way around. It is not a sign that you consider others a danger.
----- 9 -----
Florida fired its coronavirus data scientist. Now she’s publishing the statistics on her own.
By Marisa Iati
June 12, 2020 at 7:24 pm Updated June 13, 2020 at 9:26 am
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/florida-fired-its-coronavirus-data-scientist-now-shes-publishing-the-statistics-on-her-own/
Tension built for days between Florida Department of Health supervisors and the department’s geographic information systems manager before officials showed her the door, permanently pulling her off the coronavirus dashboard that she operated for weeks.
Managers had wanted Rebekah Jones to make certain changes to the public-facing portal. Jones had objected to – and sometimes refused to comply with – what she saw as unethical requests. The department offered to let her resign. Jones declined.
Weeks after she was fired in mid-May, Jones has now found a way to present the state’s coronavirus data exactly the way she wants it: She created a dashboard of her own.
“I wanted to build an application that delivered data and helped people get tested and helped them get resources that they need from their community,” Jones, 30, said of the site that launched Thursday. “And that’s what I ended up building with this new dashboard.”
White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx praised Florida’s official coronavirus dashboard in April as a beacon of transparency. But Jones said the site undercounts the state’s infection total and overcounts the number of people tested – facts that bolstered officials’ decision to start loosening restrictions on the economy in early May, when the state had not met federal guidelines for reopening.
I suspect so.
- Pakistan hospitals struggle as coronavirus cases explode
- ‘Are you from America?’ Woman has a racist meltdown after being asked to wear a mask
- White House Floats Theory That Mexico Is To Blame For Spike In COVID Cases
- One of Oregon’s biggest coronavirus outbreaks could take weeks to trace and contain
- Downplaying virus risk, Trump gets back to business as usual
- Wolf Asks Pennsylvania Supreme Court to Uphold Shutdown
- Despite virus surge, Arizona governor won't require masks
- Study: 100% face mask use could crush second, third COVID-19 wave
- Florida fired its coronavirus data scientist. Now she’s publishing the statistics on her own.
----- 1 -----
Pakistan hospitals struggle as coronavirus cases explode
Country sees multiple consecutive days of record cases and deaths as overworked doctors plead for 'breathing space'.
by Asad Hashim
12 June 2020
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/pakistan-hospitals-struggle-coronavirus-cases-explode-200612084123797.html
Islamabad, Pakistan - Atiqullah did not know what else to do. He spent three days scouring the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar for a ventilator for his 60-year-old father, who had tested positive for the coronavirus and was in a critical condition.
"The doctors were trying their best but we couldn't find a bed in the Intensive Care Unit [ICU]," he told Al Jazeera. "For three days we were trying to get him shifted into an ICU because he was in such a serious condition."
Ultimately, he found a bed in an isolation ward at the Lady Reading Hospital - the city's largest government hospital - but there was still no ventilator available.
"There was no space in any ICU, anywhere in the city, not just at Lady Reading," he said.
Finally, unable to afford to pay for his father to receive treatment at a private healthcare facility, Atiqullah, a 30-year-old hospital orderly, had no choice but to sit at his bedside and watch him die.
----- 2 -----
‘Are you from America?’ Woman has a racist meltdown after being asked to wear a mask
June 11, 2020
By Travis Gettys
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/are-you-from-america-woman-has-a-racist-meltdown-after-being-asked-to-wear-a-mask/
A white woman hurled racist insults at a Latina cashier after being asked to wear a face mask inside a California gas station.
Recent college school graduate Jassel Aguirre was working May 31 at the Arcata Shell station when she asked the woman to cover her face while inside the store to prevent the spread of coronavirus, and the woman hastily covered up with a makeshift mask using a scarf, reported the Lost Coast Outpost.
“She asked to use the restroom, and even though she was not a customer, I allowed it,” Aguirre said. “Exiting the restroom, while still in the store, I again asked if she could please make sure her face was covered while inside because she was no longer doing so, and this was the result.”
----- 3 -----
White House Floats Theory That Mexico Is To Blame For Spike In COVID Cases
By JILL COLVIN and Zeke Miller
June 12, 2020
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/white-house-floats-theory-that-mexico-is-to-blame-for-spike-in-covid-cases
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is floating a theory that travel from Mexico may be contributing to a new wave of coronavirus infections, rather than states’ efforts to reopen their economies.
The notion was discussed at some length during a meeting of the administration’s coronavirus task force in the White House Situation Room Thursday that focused, in part, on identifying commonalities between new outbreaks, according to two administration officials familiar with the discussions.
COVID-19 cases are currently rising in nearly half of states across the country, according to an Associated Press analysis. That includes Arizona, where hospitals have been told to prepare for the worst, and Texas, which now has more hospitalized patients than ever.
----- 4 -----
One of Oregon’s biggest coronavirus outbreaks could take weeks to trace and contain
By SHANE DIXON KAVANAUGH
12 June 2020
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/northwest/one-of-oregons-biggest-coronavirus-outbreaks-could-take-weeks-to-trace-and-contain/
A large coronavirus outbreak on the Oregon coast has quickly overwhelmed the local public health department, offering a glimpse into how even a community well-equipped to combat the virus can struggle to contain a sudden surge.
Health officials in Lincoln County have needed to turn to neighboring counties, a local tribe and even a community college to build up a team of contact tracers big enough to match the more than 100 workers at Pacific Seafood in Newport who tested positive Sunday for COVID-19.
And yet it may still take up to two weeks to identify and reach all of those who came into close contact with the sickened workers, said Rebecca Austen, the health director for Lincoln County.
The delay raises fears that the virus could continue to spread unchecked in the county of 50,000 people.
“To be able to stop the transmission, we need everybody to stay home,” Austen said of people exposed to the virus.
----- 5 -----
Downplaying virus risk, Trump gets back to business as usual
Jill Colvin and Zeke Miller, Associated Press
Updated 9:08 am PDT, Friday, June 12, 2020
https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Downplaying-virus-risk-Trump-gets-back-to-15334763.php
WASHINGTON (AP) — At the White House, aides now routinely flout internal rules requiring face masks. The president's campaign is again scheduling mass arena rallies. And he is back to spending summer weekends at his New Jersey golf club.
Three months after President Donald Trump bowed to the realities of a pandemic that put big chunks of life on pause and killed more Americans than several major wars, Trump is back to business as usual — even as coronavirus cases are on the upswing in many parts of the country.
While the nation has now had months to prepare stockpiles of protective gear and ventilators, a vaccine still is many months away at best and a model cited by the White House projects tens of thousands of more deaths by the end of September.
Amid renewed fears of a virus resurgence, financial markets — frequently highlighted by Trump as a sign of economic recovery — suffered their worst drop since March on Thursday. The market opened on the upside Friday morning.
At the White House, though, officials played down the severity of the virus surge and sought to blame it on factors beyond Trump's forceful push to reopen the economy, which he's counting on to help him win reelection.
“I spoke to our health experts at some length last evening. They’re saying there is no second spike. Let me repeat that: There is no second spike," Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said Friday on "Fox & Friends.”
----- 6 -----
Wolf Asks Pennsylvania Supreme Court to Uphold Shutdown
Gyms, bars, beauty salons and theaters can reopen in green phase
By Mark Scolforo and Michael Rubinkam
Published June 12, 2020 • Updated on June 13, 2020
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/health/8-more-pennsylvania-counties-none-in-the-southeast-to-move-to-green-phase/2431149/
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday to intervene in his dispute with legislative Republicans who are trying to end pandemic restrictions he imposed in March to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.
Republican majorities in the House and Senate, with a few Democrats in support, voted this week to end the state’s emergency disaster declaration that Wolf has used to shut down “non-life-sustaining” businesses, ban large gatherings and order people to stay at home.
Wolf asked the state's high court to uphold the shutdown.
He said that his gradual reopening plan is working, pointing to a downward trend in the number of new virus infections in Pennsylvania even as cases rise in nearly half the states.
“Pennsylvania’s measured, phased process to reopen is successful because of its cautious approach that includes factors relying on science, the advice of health experts and that asks everyone to do something as simple as wearing a mask when inside or around others outside the home,” Wolf said in a news release. “We will continue to move forward cautiously.”
----- 7 -----
Despite virus surge, Arizona governor won't require masks
Bob Christie and Terry Tang, Associated Press
Saturday, June 13, 2020
https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Despite-virus-surge-Arizona-governor-won-t-15338014.php
PHOENIX (AP) — Coronavirus infections are surging in Arizona. Hospitalizations are increasing and more people are dying since the state relaxed stay-at-home orders last month.
But in one of the nation’s COVID-19 hot spots, Gov. Doug Ducey is not requiring residents of the Grand Canyon state to wear masks in public, and it seems a good many people agree with him.
In shopping malls, restaurants and the crowded bar scenes of Scottsdale and Tempe, most patrons have disdained the use of cloth face masks that health officials advocate to help slow the spread of coronavirus.
Robert Fowler, a truck driver in Phoenix, wears a mask as required for work but otherwise he goes about mask-free.
“I’m not worried about it,” Fowler said while waiting for a table Thursday at Snooze A.M. Eatery, where the patio was full and only employees were seen donning face masks.
Despite COVID-19 case numbers trending upward, Fowler has no plans to change.
“Everybody’s going to get COVID one way or the other eventually,” he said. “People are gonna do what they want to do regardless.”
----- 8 -----
Study: 100% face mask use could crush second, third COVID-19 wave
By Mike Moffitt, SFGATE
Updated 12:56 pm PDT, Friday, June 12, 2020
https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Study-100-face-mask-use-could-crush-second-15333170.php
We've all heard it many times: Wear a face covering — indoors, outdoors, on trains and buses. At work, in the supermarket and at church.
But now a new modeling study out of Cambridge and Greenwich universities suggests that face masks may be even more important than originally thought in preventing future outbreaks of the new coronavirus.
To ward off resurgences, the reproduction number for the virus (the average number of people who will contract it from one infected person) needs to drop below 1.0. Researchers don’t believe that’s achievable with lockdowns alone. However, a combination of lockdowns and widespread mask compliance might do the trick, they say.
“We show that, when face masks are used by the public all the time (not just from when symptoms first appear), the effective reproduction number, Re, can be decreased below 1, leading to the mitigation of epidemic spread,” the scientists wrote in the paper published Wednesday by the Proceedings of the Royal Society A.
The modeling indicated that when lockdown periods are combined with 100% face mask use, disease spread is vastly diminished, preventing resurgence for 18 months, the time frame that has frequently been cited for developing a vaccine. It also demonstrated that if people wear masks in public, it is twice as effective at reducing the R number than if face coverings are only worn after symptoms appear.
The masks don’t have to be top-of-the-line surgical or respirator masks. Homemade coverings that catch only 50 percent of exhaled droplets would provide a “population-level benefit,” they concluded.
As has been well-publicized, wearing a mask primarily protects others from yourself, rather than the other way around. It is not a sign that you consider others a danger.
----- 9 -----
Florida fired its coronavirus data scientist. Now she’s publishing the statistics on her own.
By Marisa Iati
June 12, 2020 at 7:24 pm Updated June 13, 2020 at 9:26 am
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/florida-fired-its-coronavirus-data-scientist-now-shes-publishing-the-statistics-on-her-own/
Tension built for days between Florida Department of Health supervisors and the department’s geographic information systems manager before officials showed her the door, permanently pulling her off the coronavirus dashboard that she operated for weeks.
Managers had wanted Rebekah Jones to make certain changes to the public-facing portal. Jones had objected to – and sometimes refused to comply with – what she saw as unethical requests. The department offered to let her resign. Jones declined.
Weeks after she was fired in mid-May, Jones has now found a way to present the state’s coronavirus data exactly the way she wants it: She created a dashboard of her own.
“I wanted to build an application that delivered data and helped people get tested and helped them get resources that they need from their community,” Jones, 30, said of the site that launched Thursday. “And that’s what I ended up building with this new dashboard.”
White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx praised Florida’s official coronavirus dashboard in April as a beacon of transparency. But Jones said the site undercounts the state’s infection total and overcounts the number of people tested – facts that bolstered officials’ decision to start loosening restrictions on the economy in early May, when the state had not met federal guidelines for reopening.
