Further Discussion About Covid-19 and the Covid-19 Crisis 2020

Welcome back to A2K.

No you didn't. I asked if the American media is still focusing on Covid-19 or not.

I don't know. What's your take?

Oh I see. So you're going to be selfish and not answer the question. Bug off.

He's suggesting the answers are out there, listen to some news. Its not bad advice.

Yes, the news outlets are still reporting on the health crisis, as they should considering most places are closed or have limited openings.

Currently, there is focus on the protests and riots over in Minneapolis that have happened in the last few days.
You can go to any major news site for more information.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world

I don't mind looking up obscure news pieces like scientists finding ways to read dreams, but it is not at all difficult to find general news, especially if you can access online daily.

I gave you the best advice possible.
Rather than me furnishing you with all the information, I made clear that with your phone, your smartphone, you could visit the Google play store and download a news app or even a few. Then you can see and read all the latest stats and any updates, including what your city and state might be doing with regard to where they are in the reopening process.

I advised that you purchase a low cost radio. You wailed about having a HiFi system but not knowing if it still operates. I advised that you plug it in.

People have furnished you with hundreds, even thousands of answers over the years. You have a tendency to snivel that you want more. Or something different.

As a grown adult with access to the internet, you can find many items for yourself. It will be worth it. If not for the sake of this song, but, for the sake of your own peace of mind.

And now a musical interlude...

Coronavirus Rips Into Regions Previously Spared


As the West settles into a grinding battle with the disease, the virus surges across the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and South Asia.

By Declan Walsh

June 4, 2020
Updated 7:14 p.m. ET

CAIRO — For months, one enduring mystery of the coronavirus was why some of the world’s most populous countries, with rickety health systems and crowded slums, had managed to avoid the brunt of an outbreak that was burning through relatively affluent societies in Europe and the United States.

Now some of those countries are tumbling into the maw of the pandemic, and they are grappling with the likelihood that their troubles are only beginning.

Globally, known cases of the virus are growing faster than ever with more than 100,000 new ones a day. The surge is concentrated in densely populated, low- and middle-income countries across the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and South Asia.

Not only has it filled hospitals and cemeteries there, it has frustrated the hopes of leaders who thought they were doing everything right, or who believed they might somehow escape the pandemic’s worst ravages.

“We haven’t seen any evidence that certain populations will be spared,” said Natalie Dean, an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida. For those not yet affected, she said, “it’s a matter of when, not if.”
ImageGrave diggers burying a coronavirus victim at the Vila Formosa cemetery in São Paulo last week.
Grave diggers burying a coronavirus victim at the Vila Formosa cemetery in São Paulo last week.Credit...Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

Several of the newly hit countries are led by strongmen and populists now facing a foe that cannot be neutralized with arrests or swaggering speeches. In Egypt, where the rate of new confirmed infections doubled last week, the pandemic has created friction between President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and doctors who have revolted over a lack of protective equipment and training.

In Brazil, the total death toll surpassed 32,000 on Thursday, with 1,349 deaths in a single day, dealing a further blow to the populist president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has continued to minimize the threat.

“We are sorry for all the dead, but that’s everyone’s destiny,” he said Tuesday.

In Bangladesh, natural disaster helped spread the disease. Cyclone Amphan, a deadly storm that tore through communities under lockdown there last month, helped drive cases up to 55,000.

This week Bangladeshi authorities reported the first death from Covid-19 in a refugee camp, a 71-year-old Rohingya man from Myanmar — an ominous sign for wider worries about the plight of vulnerable people huddled in hundreds of such camps in the world’s most fragile countries.

The upswing marks a new stage in the trajectory of the virus, away from Western countries that have settled into a grinding battle against an increasingly familiar adversary, toward corners of the globe where many hoped that hot weather, youthful populations or some unknown epidemiological factor might shield them from a scourge that has infected 6.5 million people and killed almost 400,000, over a quarter of them in the United States.
Image
The Sadarghat ferry terminal in Dhaka, Bangladesh, last week. Cases surged in the country after a deadly cyclone tore through the country.
The Sadarghat ferry terminal in Dhaka, Bangladesh, last week. Cases surged in the country after a deadly cyclone tore through the country.Credit...Rehman Asad/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Some countries now being overrun by the virus seemed to be doing the right thing. In Peru, where President Martín Vizcarra ordered one of the first national lockdowns in South America, over 170,000 cases have been confirmed and 14,000 more deaths than average were recorded in May, suggesting there were many more virus fatalities than the official count of about 5,000.

South Africa, Africa’s economic powerhouse, banned sales of tobacco and alcohol as part of a strict lockdown in March, yet now has 35,000 confirmed infections, the highest on the continent. Even so, President Cyril Ramaphosa eased the restrictions last week, citing economic concerns.

The pandemic’s new direction is bad news for the strongmen and populist leaders in some of those countries who, in its early stage, reaped political points by vaunting low infection rates as evidence of the virtues of iron-fisted rule.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whose delivery of a planeload of medical aid to the United States in March was seen as a cocky snub, is grappling with the world’s third-largest outbreak, with 440,000 cases that have enraged the public and depressed his approval ratings to their lowest in two decades.
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For Mr. el-Sisi of Egypt, the outbreak has posed a rare challenge to his preferred narrative of absolute control.

Although Egypt’s 30,000 cases are far fewer than those of several other Arab countries — Saudi Arabia has three times as many — it has by far the highest death toll in the region and its infection rate is soaring.

Last Sunday the government recorded 1,500 new cases, up from about 700 just six days earlier. The next day the minister for higher education and scientific research warned that Egypt’s true number of cases could be over 117,000.
Image
Egypt has counted 30,000 coronavirus cases, but experts believe the actual number is much higher.
Egypt has counted 30,000 coronavirus cases, but experts believe the actual number is much higher.Credit...Mohamed Hossam/EPA, via Shutterstock

Some hospitals are overflowing and doctors are up in arms over shortages of protective equipment that, they say, has resulted in the deaths of at least 30 doctors. Outrage crystallized last week around the death of Dr. Walid Yehia, 32, who had been denied emergency treatment at the overwhelmed Monira general hospital where he worked.

Fellow doctors at the hospital went on strike for a week to protest his death. The main doctors union issued a statement accusing the government of “criminal misconduct” and warning that Egypt was veering toward “catastrophe” — strong words in a country where Mr. el-Sisi has jailed tens of thousands of opponents.

Last week, Mr. el-Sisi railed on Twitter against unspecified “enemies of the state” who attacked government efforts to combat the virus. Earlier, Egypt’s public prosecutor warned that anyone spreading “false news” about the coronavirus faced up to five years imprisonment.

Doctors at several hospitals said they had been threatened by Mr. el-Sisi’s feared security apparatus for daring to complain. The doctors interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal or arrest.

When doctors at the Mansheyat el Bakry hospital threatened to strike last month to protest the lack of training and protective equipment, they received a warning from a hospital senior manager: Anyone who failed to turn up for work the following day would be reported to the National Security Agency, which human rights groups have accused of torture and other abuses.

Reached by phone, the manager, Dr. Hanan el-Banna said the message was part of “normal disciplinary measures.” Then she denied that she had sent it.

A spokesman for Egypt’s Health Ministry did not respond to questions about the message, or other complaints from doctors.
Image
Medical workers disinfecting surgical instruments at the 6th of October Central Hospital, in Giza, Egypt, which has been transformed into an isolation hospital for coronavirus patients.
Medical workers disinfecting surgical instruments at the 6th of October Central Hospital, in Giza, Egypt, which has been transformed into an isolation hospital for coronavirus patients.Credit...Menna Hossam/Picture Alliance via Getty Images

The power of the virus was brought home to Mr. el-Sisi in the early stages of the pandemic, when two senior generals died from Covid-19. Yet his government has frequently seemed determined to put a Panglossian spin on how well it is being handled.

In one widely circulated recording, a weeping woman says that her ailing father was refused treatment at several hospitals. In another, a man with coronavirus symptoms remonstrates with hospital security guards who turn him away. “Take your complaint to the police,” they tell him.

Even if Egypt’s doctors were not muzzled by their government, Western-style social distancing would be nearly impossible in a chaotic, densely populated city of 20 million people like Cairo where many families survive on day jobs. Mosques, churches and airports remained closed, but the decision to relax a night curfew during the holy month of Ramadan — ostensibly to allow people to break their daily fast together — may have accelerated the spread of the virus, experts say.

Many low- and middle-income countries, now grappling with surging cases, are also struggling to balance public health against the realities of poverty-stricken societies, said Ashish Jha, professor of global health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“At some point the lockdown becomes intolerable,” he said. “The human cost to day laborers, many of whom are already barely surviving, is enormous.”

The hopes of some countries that they could somehow avoid the pandemic are likely to be dashed, he added.

“In the early days, people were seeing patterns that were not really there,” he said. “They were saying that Africa would be spared. But this is a highly idiosyncratic virus, and over time the idiosyncrasy goes away. There is no natural immunity. We are all, humanity-wise, equally susceptible to the virus.”

Experts say that Mr. el-Sisi’s obsession with showing that he is beating the pandemic may have encouraged some Egyptians to drop their guard — a phenomenon similar to that in the United States, where some Americans have taken comfort in President Trump’s breezy reassurances.

Unfortunately, such heedlessness can have dire consequences.

In March, Mohammed Nady, 30, an employee at the Sheraton hotel in central Cairo, posted a video to Facebook dismissing the virus as an American-engineered conspiracy to humiliate China.

A few weeks later, he posted a second video from the hospital announcing that he had contracted the coronavirus.

A third clip showed him in bed, struggling to breath. “I am dying,” he said. “I am dying.”

He died in April, three days before his father also died from the disease.

Reporting was contributed by Nada Rashwan in Cairo, Michael Cooper in New York, Manuela Andreoni in Rio de Janeiro, and Mitra Taj in Lima, Peru.

Declan Walsh is the Cairo bureau chief, covering Egypt and the Middle East. He joined The Times in 2011 as Pakistan bureau chief, and previously worked at The Guardian. @declanwalsh

If that is the case, why has the curve flattened in areas where there has been a large number of cases already?

If many people are still not infected, but yet the virus has spread to many more than when it first began, then shouldn't the risk of contracting an infection be higher than when it started?

Wow. I'm surprised this thread is still open. I thought it was locked a while ago.

Does anyone here have any word on when the Covid-19 crisis going to be over? Has anyone make any breakthrough discoveries on how to combat the virus? Has anyone come up with any vaccines or cures yet?

I see handfuls of people driving and walking around without masks or face coverings of any kind when I go out in public.

I still get a little annoyed by the fact I have to remember to bring a mask with me and keep it on when I enter certain facilities.

I recently had some bloodwork done at my local physician's office. I was watching some videos in the lounge area while I was waiting to be called and I saw some videos that looked like propaganda PSAs about Covid-19. They were talking about measures to protect yourself against Covid-19.

I asked the lady administering my bloodwork if she had any word on when the Covid-19 crisis is coming to an end. I told her I feel like I'm in a bad propaganda movie or a bad sci-fi movie.

It depends on the country. New Zealand is getting ready to reopen. In South America it’s not even peaked yet.

Most estimates of a vaccine are between six and eighteen months.

Public health notices are not propaganda.

There are areas here in the US that have rebounding numbers of cases particularly for some reason in the meat packing plants and we are just on the cusp of seeing the effect of spring break, plus the added effect of all 50 states having protests and demonstrations for the last police shooting in Minneapolis.

Its far from being provably over.

The Lancet study was.

I didn't say they were.

It seems like a hoax or conspiracy of some sort, but you have to assume it's real until it is revealed as a hoax, which may be never; e.g. because it really is real and not a hoax.

So assuming it's real, there is no reason the spread should be slower than when it first started, i.e. because it has spread between then and now, so the number of active cases should be larger and the number of people who have never been infected is still large.

Yes you did.

More Federal over reach. Next they'll be distributing small pox infected blankets and Roundup contaminated bottled water.


Authorities seized thousands of dollars of masks intended to shield protesters from COVID-19
Source: Salon

The U.S. Postal Service told a Black Lives Matter-affiliated group that face masks it sent to protect protesters from the new coronavirus were seized by law enforcement, according to a new report.

The Movement for Black Lives bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of masks they planned to distribute to protesters marching against George Floyd's death and police brutality across the country, HuffPost reported. But the first shipment of 2,000 masks sent from Oakland to Washington, St. Louis, New York City and Minneapolis never left the state.

The USPS tracking numbers indicate that the masks were "Seized by Law Enforcement," according to HuffPost's Ryan Reilly, and urged the group to "contact the U.S. Postal Inspection Service for further information."

The Oakland custom printing shop Movement Ink said on Instagram that they have not been told why the shipment was seized.

Read more: https://www.salon.com/2020/06/05/authorities-seized-thousands-of-dollars-of-masks-intended-to-shield-protesters-from-covid-19-report/

Did they contact the Postal Inspection people? If not, why? Is Salon incapable of following up on a story?