Why is "flattening the curve" no longer in the narrative? Why is it "zero cases or bust" now?
Flattening the curve was to allow herd immunity to occur while not overwhelming the medical system in the process. Somehow that turned into no one being 'allowed' to be at risk of catching it and damn the economy and an individual's right to a livelihood.
It's not like the virus suddenly showed itself to be much worse than expected and the world reacted through shutting down. If anything, it turned out to be less a threat that the world first imagined yet the battle to beat it intensified regardless.
Zero cases is impossible, even if a vaccine was available and globally distributed. Are we going to react this way every time a new virus floats along? There will be another, and another, and another.... as long as there are humans on this planet there will be viruses to infect them. It's the natural order. Remember survival of the fittest? It's how humans got to become the dominate species on the Earth. People got sick, the weak died and the strong lived to pass on their genetics. To expect the entire human population of the world to run and hide whenever something like this pops up is insane. We may as well just pack up modern society right now and retreat back into the caves...
once again, herd immunity doesn't work. try google, you'll find hundreds more stories like this:
Denmark Vs Sweden: Herd Immunity’ Is a Failed Response to Coronavirushttps://moderndiplom...to-coronavirus/ KELOWNA, B.C. — Health officials are reporting eight cases of COVID-19 linked to public gatherings in Kelowna, British Columbia, during and around the Canada Day long weekend.
The Interior Health Authority says people who attended private gatherings, restaurants and bars from June 25 to July 6 in downtown and waterfront areas of the city may have been exposed to the illness.
Six of the eight cases are people who don't live in the region and public health contact tracing is underway.
Officials are urging anyone who took part in such gatherings during this time period to closely monitor themselves for symptoms.
https://www.timescol...ront-1.24168736 British Columbia’s Public Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has received national recognition for ability to lead the province through the worst public health crisis of the century so far.
On Thursday July 9, Dr. Henry was awarded the 2020 Canadian Public Relations Society President’s (CPRS) Award for Outstanding Public Relations and Communications Management.
“Dr. Henry, you have stood out as one of the most talented and effective communicators throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, helping to keep us safe with a consistent message and voice that instills public confidence and calm,” said CPRS President Victor Vrsnik in a statement.
“In the midst of the largest crisis of our generation, you have exemplified how important it is for leaders to be effective communicators, to be transparent with the latest information, and to motivate a change in behaviour in our day-to-day lives to protect the health and safety of British Columbians.”
https://www.victoria...uring-pandemic/Filling middle seats on airplanes doubles the risk of catching COVID-19, according to an MIT study
https://www.business...sk-study-2020-7High blood sugar elevates COVID-19 mortality risk: Chinese study
https://www.channeln...-study-12923916 In early March, there wasn't much clinical guidance on the non-respiratory effects of COVID-19, so Gupta decided to coalesce findings from studies that were just beginning to appear in the literature with what the physicians were learning from experience.
Gupta, along with senior author Donald Landry, MD, Ph.D., chair of medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, organized senior co-authors, and Gupta, along with two other colleagues, Mahesh Madhavan, MD, a cardiology fellow at CUIMC, and Kartik Sehgal, MD, a hematology/oncology fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School, mobilized clinicians at Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and Mount Sinai Hospital, among other institutions, to review the latest findings on COVID-19's effect on organ systems outside the lungs and provide clinical guidance for physicians.
Their review—the first extensive review of COVID-19's effects on all affected organs outside the lungs—was published today in Nature Medicine.
"Physicians need to think of COVID-19 as a multisystem disease," Gupta says. "There's a lot of news about clotting but it's also important to understand that a substantial proportion of these patients suffer kidney, heart, and brain damage, and physicians need to treat those conditions along with the respiratory disease."
https://medicalxpres...fects-lung.htmlhttps://www.nature.c...1591-020-0968-3 Researchers at the University of Sydney and Centenary Institute are repurposing an existing tuberculosis vaccine to see if it can be used in a new way against COVID-19 to develop a novel vaccine.
The vaccine candidate, which Australian researchers have called BCG:CoVac, combines the vaccine for tuberculosis, Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) with major components of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is the pathogen that causes the COVID-19 disease.
The study is part of a collaboration between the University of Sydney and the Centenary Institute to examine the immune response created by new vaccine candidates, including BCG:CoVac.
https://medicalxpres...ons-covid-.htmlBeijing's nursing homes maintain zero COVID-19 infections
http://www.ecns.cn/n...zt5331205.shtmlThe World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday that the "unknown pneumonia" reported in Kazakhstan could be COVID-19
http://www.ecns.cn/n...zt5331104.shtml DHAKA: Thousands of beds for coronavirus patients in Bangladesh are lying empty despite the country struggling with a rising caseload as people are too scared to enter hospitals, officials and sufferers say.
Some patients have bluntly told health workers they would "rather die at home than die in a hospital", an official for a medical charity told AFP.
Bangladesh has registered about 180,000 COVID-19 infections, and around 3,000 new cases are being added each day, while the death toll stood at 2,275 by Friday (Jul 10).
But medical experts say the real figures are likely much higher because so little testing has been carried out.
https://www.channeln...pitals-12923738In another Covid-19 disparity, Black and Hispanic Americans are dying at younger ages than white Americans
https://www.statnews...eaths-under-65/ HOUSTON — Houston hospitals have been forced to treat hundreds of COVID-19 patients in their emergency rooms — sometimes for several hours or multiple days — as they scramble to open additional intensive care beds for the wave of seriously ill people streaming through their doors, according to internal numbers shared with NBC News and ProPublica.
At the same time, the region’s 12 busiest hospitals are increasingly telling emergency responders that they cannot safely accept new patients, at a rate nearly three times that of a year ago, according to data reviewed by reporters.
The increase in ambulance diversions, coupled with the spike in patients being held indefinitely in emergency rooms, are the latest indicators that Houston hospitals are straining to keep up with a surge of new coronavirus patients. ProPublica and NBC News have previously reported that a public hospital in Houston ran out of a medication to treat COVID-19 patients and that a spike in at-home deaths from cardiac arrest suggests that the death toll from the coronavirus may be higher than official statistics show.
On Thursday, 3,812 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in the region, including more than 1,000 in intensive care units, a record since the pandemic began. At the same time, since Texas officials have not issued another stay-at-home order to slow the virus’s spread, hospitals are also still seeing a steady flow of patients in need of care as a result of car accidents, violent crime and heat-related medical emergencies.
long
https://www.propubli...-waiting-in-ersU.S. Texas Governor Greg Abbott warned Friday of another economic shutdown if the fast spread of COVID-19 is not contained.
"The worst is yet to come as we work our way through that massive increase in people testing positive," Abbott told local TV station KLBK.
http://www.ecns.cn/n...zt5331084.shtml Organizations listed as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) received millions of dollars in government-backed Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, according to data from the Small Business Administration.
The Center for Media and Democracy was the first to report on the loans, which went to six nonprofits for a total of somewhere between $2,350,000 and $5,700,000. (The SBA has only disclosed loan amounts in ranges — not exact sums.) The groups will not need to repay the government if they put the money towards payroll and other operational expenses. (Disclosure: Salon received a PPP loan to keep our staff and independent journalism at 100%.)
The loans, which came through in early to mid April, predate the recent nationwide social justice upwelling by several weeks. Since receiving the funds, a number of the organizations have advanced their policy and ideological interests, lobbying the federal government and writing and publishing articles.
The organizations include the anti-Muslim hate group Center for Security Policy; two anti-immigrant hate groups, the Center for Immigration Studies and the Federation for American Immigration Reform; and three organizations designated as anti-LGBTQ hate groups, the American Family Association (AFA), Liberty Counsel and the Pacific Justice Institute.
The largest loan went to the American Family Association, which was allotted between $1 million and $2 million to support 124 jobs.
In an April 27 interview with Fox News’ Ed Henry, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said PPP funds were intended to support companies with 10 employees or fewer.
https://www.rawstory...andemic-relief/ Nearly 7,000 Floridians are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, according to new county-by-county data released Friday by the state Agency for Health Care Administration.
The data, which for the first time breaks down the number of people in the hospital with coronavirus, was promised by the state two weeks ago.
*snip*
Up to now, Florida has been one of only three states to withhold current COVID-19 hospitalization data from the public. Experts have criticized the state for not releasing the data, which is a valuable metric for epidemiologists and researchers in assessing the spread of the disease. Hospitalizations provide a glimpse of what was happening two weeks ago when people were being exposed to the virus.
“Hospitalizations are a measure of severity [of the epidemic],” said Dr. Jason Salemi, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida College of Public Health, in a recent interview. “It not only can demonstrated the impact on people, but also on our health systems and how many cases they’re starting to see.”
https://www.orlandos...lkz4-story.htmlAtlanta mayor rolls back city's reopening: 'Georgia reopened in a reckless manner'
https://thehill.com/...d-in-a-reckless State Sen. Del Marsh, the president pro tempore of the Alabama Senate, was asked by a reporter on Thursday whether he was concerned over the surge of the disease in the state amid a record-high 2,164 new confirmed cases.
"I'm not as concerned as much as the number of cases — and in fact, quite honestly — I want to see more people, because we start reaching an immunity as more people have it and get through it," Marsh said. "I don't want any deaths, as few as possible . . . so those people who are susceptible to the disease, those with pre-existing conditions, elderly population — those folks, we need to do all we can to protect them. But I'm not concerned."
Marsh was appointed by Gov. Kay Ivey, a fellow Republican, to serve on the state's coronavirus task force in March, The Daily Beast reported.
The comments from Marsh, who has no medical background, were starkly different from the warning issued by hospital officials in the state after the state's ICU capacity approached 90%.
"I think this is probably the most frightening part of this: None of these numbers reflect the effect of the Fourth of July," Dr. Don Williamson, the president of the Alabama Hospital Association, told local news outlet WBRC. "There is major movement in the wrong direction, and really these movements have accelerated and that's the most concerning part of this."
Studies have increasingly cast doubt on the idea that herd immunity is possible without a vaccine.
https://www.salon.co...e-get-infected/
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