Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

The REPUBLICAN Governor of Maryland wrote an article for the Washington Post about the administration's response and it is a sorry picture of dysfunction and incompetence.

"Then a caravan of Maryland National Guard trucks escorted by the Maryland State Police drove the tests from the airport to a refrigerated, secure warehouse at an undisclosed location. The federal government had recently seized 3 million N95 masks purchased by Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker. We weren’t going to let Washington stop us from helping Marylanders.

"This should not have been necessary. I’d watched as the president downplayed the outbreak’s severity and as the White House failed to issue public warnings, draw up a 50-state strategy, or dispatch medical gear or lifesaving ventilators from the national stockpile to American hospitals. Eventually, it was clear that waiting around for the president to run the nation’s response was hopeless; if we delayed any longer, we’d be condemning more of our citizens to suffering and death. So every governor went their own way, which is how the United States ended up with such a patchwork response. I did the best I could for Maryland. Here’s what we saw and heard from Washington along the way."

 

he’s a republican in a Traditionally democratic state So it’s partially self preservation, but still funny to see.

 

Why is it funny? A governor doing a good job? The people he works for think he is. This was the end of May.

"Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s approval rating has surged amid the coronavirus, a new Gonzales poll released Tuesday found. The poll, which included 810 registered voters who are likely to vote in the fall, showed Hogan’s approval rating to be 78 percent, up eight percent from a poll released in early March.

The Republican governor’s approval rating was higher among Democrats than among members of his own party: 82 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of independents and 71 percent of Republicans thought Hogan was doing a good job."

 

it’s funny watching Trump’s lifeboat have people continually jump overboard and leave him no one left to eat. Because you know he would.

 

I'm sure the guy is a RINO/moderate, but still interesting that he has an even higher rating from democrats than GOP. Sometimes doing a good job is just doing a good job.

Unfortunately, the reverse would never happen because the deranged right wing media hammers home idiocy like this.

 

Potentially really good news

Hopes for a coronavirus vaccine this year have been boosted by a reported breakthrough in Oxford's human trials

 

Ohio’s Gov Mike DeWine (R) addressed the state yesterday. If was a combination of sober warning and locker room pep talk. I found the talk moving and persuasive and watched it a second time. Here are the highlights:

• Government orders are not as important as what each of us does in the days ahead
• "I'm asking you, wherever you live, to wear masks when in public. Some may question the wisdom of masks, but as we said when I was a prosecutor: 'The jury is back, The verdict is in.' There is broad consensus in medical, health and business communities that masks are critical."
• Masks are not enough. He pleaded with us to make good decisions about gathering together so we can protect the economy and save lives.
• "We are all tired of being cooped up. But we have to ask ourselves, what's better? Knowing you did all you could or taking risks?"
• He said we’ve sacrificed before for the future; now is the time to step up again. Inconvenience now could mean someone being alive later.
• He closed with a verse from the Bible, Galatians 6:9 -- "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."

I cannot imagine the pressure of balancing saving lives and saving the economy. Seven counties are under mandatory masks: Columbus, three around Cleveland, and three from Dayton to Cincinnati. In those counties I have still seen people without masks. It seems to me the will of the people has to control this even more than the will of the government.

Just in case anyone's interested, here is the link. It's 20 minutes long.

The Ohio Channel

Warning: he does call out Florida and says we are heading down the same path if we don't get with the plan. Also, some might find it too rah-rah, but that's the nature of locker room speeches.

BTW, the person who does the signing for the deaf has to be the most expressive person I've ever seen.

 

Hogan has never been a Trump supporter.

 

So that explains his high approval rating. Makes perfect sense.

 

Same Russian group that hacked the DNC now trying to hack covid research

UK, US, Canada accuse Russia of hacking virus vaccine trials

LONDON (AP) — Britain, the United States and Canada accused Russia on Thursday of trying to steal information from researchers seeking a COVID-19 vaccine.

The three nations alleged that hacking group APT29, also known as Cozy Bear and said to be part of the Russian intelligence service, is attacking academic and pharmaceutical research institutions involved in coronavirus vaccine development.
………………………………………………………….
Cozy Bear, also known as the "dukes," has been identified by Washington as one of two Russian government-linked hacking groups that broke into the Democratic National Committee computer network and stole emails ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The other group is usually called Fancy Bear.


Russian spies 'target coronavirus vaccine'

But one cyber-security expert said the Russians were unlikely to be the only ones involved in such a campaign.

"They have lots of people, we have lots of people, the Americans have even more people, as do the Chinese," commented Prof Ross Anderson from the University of Cambridge's Computer Laboratory.

"They are all trying to steal this kind of stuff all the time."

 

Totally serious. Please fill in the spaces between the dots so I can understand.

 

Yeah to say they're comparable to the US is funny. If that's the way you want to live your life, go have at it.
Emerging COVID-19 success story: South Korea learned the lessons of MERS

The work of the EIS officers was further facilitated by legal changes that followed the 2015 MERS outbreak. When necessary, the officers were permitted to draw on four major types of information in addition to patient and doctor interviews:

• Facility visits, including pharmacies and medical facilities
• Cellular GPS data from cell phones
• Credit card transaction logs
• Closed-circuit television

This information was combined with interviews and cross-checked with other data to identify contacts and take appropriate containment measures.

 

It's certainly good news that the medical community has found more effective ways to treat COVID-19. It's good news, but it's not a panacea, especially if we can't get the infection rate under control. In Arizona, an emergency has already been declared allowing hospitals to triage COVID patients. There are already patients getting shipped out of state and others waiting hours in ER waiting rooms until an ICU bed opens.

What this means is if there in an influx of COVID-19 patients, hospitals will pick and choose who gets what care and when. It means if there are 50 patients but only 40 ICU beds, the 10 lowest rated patients won't get the care they need. If on average, these 10 patients had a 20% survival rate, that's 2 more dead than there would be if the hospital had the capacity to treat all patients.

Arizona is at 90% capacity for ICU beds, mostly because Phoenix had an old hospital that closed a few years ago that was retro-fitted for COVID, and other hospitals have added ICU floors. Hospitals haven't yet fully committed to triage of COVID patients, but they can't that far from that tipping point.

 

I've had many debates with people about it on FB... they are actual people.

 

Yeah, they are actual people, but they are getting bad information and choosing to believe it because it's what they want to believe.

 

Yeah, I suppose if we'd be willing to sell out our freedom, we could have contained the virus better. Considering my risk of death is about 0.0001%, I'm glad we didn't sell out our freedom.

 

I spent far too long yesterday trying to explain how labs in Florida not reporting negative covid tests doesn't affect the numbers of positive cases, and trying to explain what +% rate means.... ..
Sadly it was an erroneous tweet from Candice Owens that started the whole thing

 

Obviously they are actual people in the photograph, but there is a genesis to their stupidity. It wouldn’t be surprising to learn some malign actors seeded some of these “anti-mask” groups, Unfortunately there are plenty of crazies out there to parrot those messages. I’m not saying there aren’t some organic ones either, there are certainly enough misguided idiots out there (the Georgia gov, the guy in FL suing to try and block every mask mandate, infowars types, etc.).

 

Only your death rate matters?

Sad that wearing a mask to save fellow human beings is selling out our freedom.

 

As I've already explained, to which nobody had a plausible rebuttal, the anti-mask thing really picked up steam amongst my sphere with the protests. IMO, the government shot themselves in the foot credibility-wise by looking the other way on the protests. When you start ordering people around to do things, you really have to be careful not to use a double-standard and that's exactly what they did. Both Democrat and Republican governors alike were too afraid to call it out or enforce their own ordinances. The irony of the protests was that considering how disproportionately the virus is affecting the AA community, the protests probably killed more AA's from viral spread than the actual number of AA's killed in the past year by white cops.