11 April coronavirus daily report #8

11 April Pandemicia coronavirus daily report #8

Refrigerated trucks used for temporary corpse storage, New York

Epidemic

A number of extraordinary milestones were passed today, something I never expected to see in this lifetime or any other. The USA passed a half million confirmed cases of COVID-19, and as well became the leader in deaths. The world passed 100,000 deaths in total.

Unfortunately, the USA is so large that as new cases wane in the original sites with global connections - New York, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey and San Francisco - the epidemic is beginning to run away elsewhere – Massachusetts, Los Angeles,Texas, Illinois and the other states.

The USA has a true epidemic. As the world’s largest free-trade and open movement area, the country is so difficult to lock down that the epidemic is likely to rage on for a long time and all the Lower 49 states will be affected. The total will certainly pass a million cases and 30,000 deaths - but is unlikely to go anywhere near the 240,000 deaths suggested by Presidential advisers. It does not need to be stressed that the risk of this has been grossly underestimated by those in charge.

The countries where infections are now rising fast include the middle income countries Turkey, Russia, Chile, Mexico, Columbia and Belarus. In about 20 other countries, cases are rising slowly or are stationary,. There are only about ten countries where the epidemic has indisputably been brought under control. We will discuss these tomorrow.

A 93 year old woman in Turkey has recovered after 10 days of hospital treatment, giving hope to the elderly.

Equipment

China is now producing 116 million masks a day, having ramped up its production from about 10 million a day six months ago. The Chinese community has donated protective equipment and test kits to the most severely affected countries.

Agricultural labour shortage

The British are warning that up to one third of the summer’s food harvest could go to waste without migrant workers to harvest it, under travel restrictions. A severe shortage of general agricultural labour is expected when harvesting begins in a few weeks. Brexit is also causing other problems - the UK did not take up the EU’s offer of ventilators.

Social differences

In France, lockdown is highlighting social differences – a tenth of Paris’ population left for their country houses when it began, while the remainder are crammed often in small apartments. To go out of doors requires a special paper stating the reason, that has to be printed off on a computer that many do not have. In these poorer households, children staying home from school have no access to online classes. The drastic four-week lockdown has accentuated a number of already existing problems. This will be the case worldwide, and many other social problems are emerging for marginalised people.

Fallen medical workers

There are an increasing number of tributes honouring the dead and especially the dedicated medical staff who have given their lives. In Italy alone, 13500 healthcare workers have been infected, and over one hundred doctors have died. In Victoria 157 health workers have tested positive, an eighth of all cases. Pandemicia will give a tribute in a later post.  

What next?

Italy, like Australia, is now looking at what it will do next, being in “the unfortunate position of being two to three weeks ahead of other countries”. It will be watched closely.

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