Amerika

Our coverage of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and worldwide instability can be found here and in our archives.

Virus

• New York survey suggests nearly 14% in state may have coronavirus antibodies

  A preliminary survey of New York state residents found that nearly 14% of those tested had antibodies against the novel coronavirus, suggesting that some 2.7 million may already have been infected, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Thursday.

  While noting the small sample size of 3,000 people and other limitations of the survey, Cuomo said the implied fatality rate of 0.5% of those infected was lower than some experts feared.

  “If the infection rate is 13.9 percent, then it changes the theories of what the death rate is if you get infected,” Cuomo told a daily briefing.

  This confirms the California infection rate and CDC predictions from earlier this month.

• Alarmed as COVID patients’ blood thickened, New York doctors try new treatments

  At Mount Sinai, nephrologists noticed kidney dialysis catheters getting plugged with clots. Pulmonologists monitoring COVID-19 patients on mechanical ventilators could see portions of lungs were oddly bloodless. Neurosurgeons confronted a surge in their usual caseload of strokes due to blood clots, the age of victims skewing younger, with at least half testing positive for the virus.

• Gilead drug remdesivir didn’t help coronavirus patients, study finds

  Results from the study leaked out Thursday after the World Health Organization accidentally published them on its website and then removed them. The WHO said the draft study is still going through peer review, according to the Financial Times (paywall), which first reported on it.

  The revelation came just a week after early data from a trial at the University of Chicago Medical Center showed remdesivir was helping patients shake the deadly disease in as little as six days.

  But Gilead isn’t giving up on the drug. The California-based company reportedly said “meaningful” conclusions can’t be drawn from the China study because it had too few patients and was shut down early.

• Family ravaged by coronavirus begged for tests, hospital care, but was repeatedly denied

  “About 33% of the cases of COVID-19 in this entire state of Michigan are in African Americans, and about 40% … of the deaths,” Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, the chief medical executive for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said during a Facebook Live interview April 16 with Detroit’s Civil Rights, Inclusion and Equal Opportunity Department. “And that’s incredibly concerning. We know that African Americans are only about 14% of the entire population.”

• Study Shows 88 Percent Of NY Ventilated Coronavirus Patients Died

  The medical journal JAMA published Wednesday a new study showing 88 percent of COVID-19 patients who received invasive mechanical ventilation in the Northwell Health system lost their lives.

  The JAMA analysis examined 5,700 COVID-19 patients within the Northwell hospitals in New York City, Long Island and Westchester. A total of 320, or 12.2 percent, of patients received ventilation.

  Roughly 80 percent of people on ventilators did not survive before the pandemic began, according to the study.

• Hidden Outbreaks Spread Through U.S. Cities Far Earlier Than Americans Knew, Estimates Say

  Hidden outbreaks were also spreading almost completely undetected in Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle, long before testing showed that each city had a major problem, according to a model of the spread of the disease by researchers at Northeastern University who shared their results with The New York Times.

• COVID-19: Attacks the 1-Beta Chain of Hemoglobin and Captures the Porphyrin to Inhibit Human Heme Metabolism

  At the same time, orf1ab, ORF10, and ORF3a proteins could coordinate attack the heme on the 1-beta chain of hemoglobin to dissociate the iron to form the porphyrin. The attack will cause less and less hemoglobin that can carry oxygen and carbon dioxide. The lung cells have extremely intense poisoning and inflammatory due to the inability to exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen frequently, which eventually results in ground-glass-like lung images.

  Treating it as a blood disease with lung complications might make more sense than treating it as a lung disease.

• Swiss Propaganda Research Society: Facts about Covid-19

  According to data from the best-studied countries such as South Korea, Iceland, Germany and Denmark, the overall lethality of Covid19 is between 0.1% and 0.4% and thus up to twenty times lower than initially assumed by the WHO.

• China’s early patients unable to shed coronavirus

  Those patients all tested negative for the virus at some point after recovering, but then tested positive again, some up to 70 days later, the doctors said. Many have done so over 50-60 days.

• Novel coronavirus attacks and destroys T cells, just like HIV

  To arrive at their findings, published in the journal of Cellular & Molecular Immunology, the team captured a cell infected by the virus, penetrated the membrane, and injected toxic chemicals into the cell. After this, the chemicals killed both the virus and infected cells by tearing them into pieces.

  Surprisingly, the team has found that when the coronavirus and the T cell came into contact with each other, the T cell became prey to the coronavirus, wherein a structure in the spike of the coronavirus triggered the attachment of a viral envelope and the cell membrane. After, the genes of the virus entered the T cell and overwhelmed it, took it hostage, and deactivated its ability to protect the body.

  The team then tried to do the same with the SARS virus, and another coronavirus, but these pathogens were not able to infect T cells. The researchers suspect that the SARS virus, which caused an outbreak in 2002 to 2003, has a lack of a membrane fusion function. The virus can only infect cells that have a particular receptor protein called the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). T cells contain only a few ACE2 receptor proteins.

• Hospital cuts COVID-19 death rates with ‘black boxes’ for sleep disorder

  The clinicians say by treating COVID-19 patients early with their “black boxes”, it has meant there has been less need for the more intrusive and invasive ventilators and they’ve experienced a far quicker recovery rate.

  Dr Mark Forrest told Sky News: “We watched very closely what was happening in other countries, in particular Italy, and learned from them.”

  He said their small team of seven consultants and their respiratory colleagues quickly realised the ventilators were not the “magic bullet solution” to COVID-19.

• New analysis recommends less reliance on ventilators to treat coronavirus patients

  By using ventilators more sparingly on Covid-19 patients, physicians could reduce the more-than-50% death rate for those put on the machines, according to an analysis published Tuesday in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

  Starting this month, a few physicians have voiced concern that some hospitals have been too quick to put Covid-19 patients on mechanical ventilators, that elderly patients in particular may have been harmed more than helped, and that less invasive breathing support, including simple oxygen-delivering nose prongs, might be safer and more effective.

• Getting a handle on asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection

  In the studies that we have summarized in the table, the range of infection rates is wide: from 0.76% for residents of Iceland to 36% for residents of a Boston homeless shelter. It is striking, however, that the proportion of individuals who test positive for SARS-CoV-2, but who have no symptoms of COVID-19, remains consistently high: from approximately 31% to 88%, with a mean of 56%. Because of various limitations in the summarized studies, this likely overstates the overall population mean, which some observers have suggested is around 40%.

• Covid-19 causes sudden strokes in young adults, doctors say

  There’s growing evidence that Covid-19 infection can cause the blood to clot in unusual ways, and stroke would be an expected consequence of that.

  Dr. Thomas Oxley, a neurosurgeon at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, and colleagues gave details of five people they treated. All were under the age of 50, and all had either mild symptoms of Covid-19 infection or no symptoms at all.

  “Our report shows a seven-fold increase in incidence of sudden stroke in young patients during the past two weeks. Most of these patients have no past medical history and were at home with either mild symptoms (or in two cases, no symptoms) of Covid,” he added.

• Thick blood clots in kidneys, lungs and brains of Covid-19 patients scare doctors

  At Mount Sinai, nephrologists noticed kidney dialysis catheters getting plugged with clots. Pulmonologists monitoring COVID-19 patients on mechanical ventilators could see portions of lungs were oddly bloodless. Neurosurgeons confronted a surge in their usual caseload of strokes due to blood clots, the age of victims skewing younger, with at least half testing positive for the virus.

• Coronavirus: First patients injected in UK vaccine trial

  Two volunteers were injected, the first of more than 800 people recruited for the study.

  Half will receive the Covid-19 vaccine, and half a control vaccine which protects against meningitis but not coronavirus.

  The design of the trial means volunteers will not know which vaccine they are getting, though doctors will.

Panic

• How soon can businesses reopen during pandemic? A Texas suburb takes the plunge

  The mayor released instructions with his order that businesses that reopen could only serve customers by appointment, one person per 200 square feet excluding employees. Gyms can host private classes of up to 10 people at a time. Restaurants can offer dine-in service if they have a patio or construct one, with distance between tables.

  He said city leaders took into account Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations, virus tracking by the state and the University of Washington, a model cited by the White House. According to those models, the Colleyville area has reached peak infections with only half of local hospital beds occupied. Tarrant County, with a population of about 2 million, has reported 1,333 infections and 42 deaths, although less than 0.5% of the population has been tested for the virus.

• San Francisco is closing these streets to help with social distancing

  The “slow streets” initiative, similar to the one already rolled out in Oakland, will eventually close a dozen streets around the city to through traffic. Although some cars will still be allowed through — such as residents or emergency vehicles — the goal is to create safer streets for pedestrians to walk in when sidewalks do not allow for six feet of distance between individuals.

• Coronavirus lockdown could have to return multiple times with ‘little notice’

  It says schools, outdoor activities and some businesses could resume as long as people stay two metres apart.

  But gatherings at pubs or “public events” could have to remain banned – and stricter measures could have to return if Covid-19 begins to run rampant again.

  The document adds: “If, after easing any restrictions, the evidence tells us we are unable to contain the transmission of the virus then we will have to re-impose them, possibly returning to lockdown with little notice.”

• Milan announces ambitious scheme to reduce car use after lockdown

  Under the nationwide lockdown, motor traffic congestion has dropped by 30-75%, and air pollution with it. City officials hope to fend off a resurgence in car use as residents return to work looking to avoid busy public transport.

  The city has announced that 35km (22 miles) of streets will be transformed over the summer, with a rapid, experimental citywide expansion of cycling and walking space to protect residents as Covid-19 restrictions are lifted.

  This aims to restrict certain methods, not re-arrange society around including nature among our highest goals (probably: health, culture, genetics, productivity, nature, and gods). Instead of shutting a few streets, limit use of land. After all, the novel coronavirus is part of a series of diseases which we have known about since 2008 that are caused by human intrusion on wildlife, forcing the species into close proximity and enabling transmission of viruses across species lines:

  Newly emerging viral diseases are major threats to public health. In particular, viruses from wildlife hosts have caused such emerging high-impact diseases as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Ebola fever, and influenza in humans. The emergence of these and many other human diseases occurred when an established animal virus switched hosts into humans and was subsequently transmitted within human populations, while host transfers between different animal hosts lead to the analogous emergence of epizootic diseases. The importance of viral host switching is underscored by the recent avian epizootics of high-pathogenicity strains of H5N1 influenza A, in which hundreds of “spillover” human cases and deaths have been documented.

• China rejects Pompeo’s request for access to Wuhan lab

  “There are multiple labs inside of China that are handling these things,” Pompeo said Wednesday at the State Department. “It’s important that those materials are being handled in a safe and secure way such that there isn’t accidental release.

  “We have to make sure that the Chinese Government is handling those materials in an appropriate way not only in the Wuhan Institute of Virology but elsewhere,” he added.

• Half of Europe’s coronavirus deaths were residents in aged care homes

  These figures come less than a week after it was revealed about 2,000 aged care homes in the United Kingdom had recorded an outbreak of the virus.

  The amount of aged care residents who have died in Britain is unknown, as the government has only counted those who have died in hospital.

• Early Antibody Tests May Force Us to Rethink COVID-19 Strategies

  So, while keeping in mind the caveat that these studies are very preliminary, what are the implications if there are many times more infected people in the U.S. than we thought?

  Of course, initially, it means that the virus is much more contagious and much less lethal than has been estimated so far. For these tests to be anywhere near accurate, the virus would have an “R-naught” factor of over 2 but a fatality rate well below 1%.

  At that level of contagiousness, the virus will likely burn through the population until we reach herd immunity – probably regardless of what we do and long before we have a vaccine.

• Coronvirus: Europe ‘wary of confronting China over deaths’

  But several officials in London and Washington say they still believe the picture is not an accurate reflection of the death toll, and that the central government in Beijing knows this. They do not however believe China knows the real figure for certain and is hiding it.

• Coronavirus pandemic is becoming a human rights crisis, UN warns

  In his latest intervention, he warned “the virus is having a disproportionate impact on certain communities through the rise of hate speech, the targeting of vulnerable groups, and the risks of heavy handed security responses undermining the health response”.

• Canada says 1 million K95 masks from China unfit for Covid-19 fight

  Canada’s public health authority says around one million KN95 respirators acquired from China have failed to meet federal Covid-19 standards for use by frontline health professionals.

  China has become the source of around 70 per cent of Canada’s imports of PPE, with much of the rest coming from the US, Britain and Switzerland, a senior Canadian source told POLITICO this week.

• After revision, Franklin County COVID death count drops from 10 to 1

  The death toll in Pennsylvania from the novel coronavirus dropped by more than 200 cases Thursday, with the changes showing stark contrasts in some counties.

  The state removed probable cases from its revised tally of the death toll as it refined its reporting of data. Total deaths on Thursday were listed by the state at 1,421 deaths, down from the 1,622 deaths reported Wednesday.

  Confirmed cases come from a positive test result. Some of the probable cases still are under investigation, which means that additional data still is being gathered.

• Black cats turned into paste and sold as coronavirus remedy in Vietnam

  Charity No to Dog Meat say the practice is centred in the country’s capital Hanoi, but bottles of the ‘remedy’ are also being sold online. One photo purportedly shows the mixture being fed to a baby.

  Graphic footage taken by campaigners shows rows rows of dead cats drying in the sun after being slaughtered. Another video shows a live cat being placed in a cooking pot as boiling water is poured over it.

• APD investigates racist plaques popping up in Atlanta

  Denise Howe is the General Manger of Candler Park Market. She told CBS46 she ran outside and found a plaque that read, “Wuhan Plague” glued to the business’s wall.

  “It said Wuhan Plague, it had a bat on it and a symbol like a biohazard symbol,” Howe explained.

  Another plaque was discovered on a nearby city sign. Then they started popping up on multiple businesses throughout the city. Last week, a plaque of Winnie the Pooh using chop sticks to eat a bat was discovered.

• Harris County Pct. 5 constables hand out PPE in hardest hit zip codes

  According to the Harris County Public Health COVID zip code dashboard on April 22, 77449 had 134 confirmed cases, and 77084 had 128 confirmed cases. So nearby, Katy Park and Bear Creek Park were selected for the drive-thru pickup locations.

  These are neighborhoods with high numbers of Oriental Asians and Asiatics from the middle east.

• Grocers Hunt Meat as Coronavirus Hobbles Beef and Pork Plants

  Covid-19 outbreaks among employees have closed about a dozen U.S. meatpacking facilities this month, including three Tyson Foods Inc. plants this week. Other plants have slowed production as workers stay home for various reasons.

  Grocery executives at retailers including Walmart Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp. worry supplies of some products could run short just as demand is surging.

  The same is happening in Canada. Wet markets, meat processing plants… what is the dead meat connection in this virus?

• Traffic light for bathroom break is new normal in coronavirus Italy

  A yellow and green traffic light system was installed to keep the bathrooms safe. Workers flick a switch as they enter or leave the bathroom and the colour of the light tells those who want to enter if they can or have to wait.

  Employees scan an app onto their smartphones and clip a small white device on to their work clothes.

  It vibrates if they get too close to another worker and simultaneously sends a signal to a computer database.

  Social distancing is insane. This is an airborne virus that you can also get through your eyes or by touching a surface on which it has landed, and then getting that contamination into eyes, mouths, or other mucus membranes. This has nothing to do with how close you are standing to others, and since the aerosolized contamination lingers in the air for a long time after exhalation, having traffic lights on your bog will not do anything helpful. This is security theater. Just wash your hands, wear your mask, and wipe your groceries. And read The Republic.

• Coronavirus: China cases might have been more than four times official figure, says study

  The academics estimate that the proportion of detected infections rose by 7.1 times between the first and second definition, by 2.8 times between the second and fourth and by 4.2 times between the fourth and fifth.

  “If the fifth version of the case definition had been applied throughout the outbreak with sufficient testing capacity, we estimated that by 20 February 2020, there would have been 232,000 … confirmed cases in China as opposed to the 55,508 confirmed cases reported,” the study said.

• Leon Cooperman says the coronavirus crisis will change capitalism forever and taxes have to go up

  “When the government is called upon to protect you on the downside, they have every right to regulate you on the upside,” Cooperman said. “So capitalism is changed.”

  “Quickly if Biden wins, slowly if Trump wins, but taxes have to go up. So things like carried interest, capital gains taxes, the ability to roll over real estate sales tax-free, all that stuff is going to have to be eliminated. For the good, by the way,” Cooperman said.

  Any excuse to backdoor socialism. Somehow the rich always adore socialism, which is basically a monopoly for them over ownership of the means of wealth redistribution. Like being the guy who counts the vote, it is a short term highly intelligent move with disastrous long-term consequences.

• Australia says all WHO members should back coronavirus inquiry

  Morrison’s comments came just hours after a senior Australian government official called on G20 nations to end wildlife wet markets over concerns they pose a threat to human health and agricultural markets.

  The outbreak in China was thought to have started in a wet market in the city of Wuhan. Wet markets are a key facet of China’s daily life, though not all sell wildlife.

  China imposed a temporary ban on selling wildlife on Jan. 23 and is now reviewing its legislation to restrict commercial wild animal trading on a permanent basis.

• The researchers taking a gamble with antibody tests for coronavirus

  They’re couching the results they give to people in careful terms, and expect to adapt their procedures as new information comes to light. But because of the urgent need to get ahead of the outbreak, to prevent more people from dying and allow businesses to reopen, they argue that it’s important to just get going. The United States is the world’s epicentre of COVID-19 — more than 42,000 people have died with the disease in seven weeks.

  If the bets on antibody testing pay off, their initiatives will provide a model that other states can follow. “One thing we have learned is that we can’t let perfect be the enemy of good — we need to act,” says Keith Jerome, director of the clinical-virology department at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, which has built capacity to process 15,000 antibody tests per day. “If we wait for every question to be answered, we won’t be ready for months.”

• Relationships on the rocks due to lockdown

  Relate found 12 per cent of people stuck indoors with their partner were re-evaluating their future together, jumping to 21 per cent among those aged 25 to 34.

  A survey of 2,021 UK adults revealed 22 per cent of men and 31 per cent of women are finding their partner irritating at the moment, and that almost a quarter of couples were having more rows than normal.

  You never knew each other. Dating is about being mutually convenient, not in love.

• Facebook agreed to censor posts after Vietnam slowed traffic

  Commenting on the Reuters report, human rights group Amnesty International called on Facebook to immediately reverse its decision.

  “Facebook’s compliance with these demands sets a dangerous precedent. Governments around the world will see this as an open invitation to enlist Facebook in the service of state censorship,” the group said in a statement on Wednesday.

  Facebook has faced pressure to take down anti-government content in many countries over the years.

  The West has been agitating for censorship power over social media for some time so that it can suppress and conceal the vast failure of our Leftist system. As always, these rules come about in “our best interests” and consist of little more than social media censorship:

  Health Secretary Matt Hancock said internet firms have a “duty of care” to their users and legislation may be needed to enforce this.

  Disinformation campaigns from the controversial anti-vax movement have plagued social media firms in recent years, with Facebook among those blamed for helping fuel the misguided belief in scientifically disproven claims that vaccinations are harmful and can cause autism.

  The issue has become so severe that several vaccine-preventable diseases like measles have seen outbreaks in areas where they were previously almost eliminated.

• David Attenborough hopes working from home becomes permanent after the coronavirus pandemic

  The naturalist and broadcaster is hopeful that people will realise that “you can work very, very well from home, and there is no need to have to endure that terrible journey [to work] packed like sardines in tins going into the middle of the city”.

  The real test, he says, is whether people will give up their overseas holidays to reduce the “carbon dioxide that we are wasting on transport that we don’t need”.

  “That’s the question: Do we care enough to do things that we don’t enjoy as obvious improvements?” he said.

Tags: covid-19, linkpost, panicdemic