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| Mass grave in Manaus, Brazil |
20 May Pandemicia coronavirus report #23
Epidemic
There is no sign of the global epidemic slowing - daily cases have been steady or rising slightly at about 100,000 since 12 April, probably representing capacity in the supply of tests rather than any flattening. Confirmed cases will reach 5 million tomorrow.
The Americas have over 2 million cases, with 1.5 million of these in the USA. Russia has passed 300,000 cases, but looking like it has at last reached inflection. Brazil and UK are over 250,000 cases, Turkey over 150,000 cases, India and Peru over 100,000 cases (but probably a lot more).
Israel and Japan have suppressed their epidemics, joining an elite group of countries. Taiwan has had no new cases since 7 May, while China has had only single digits for a month. A number of island states have had no new cases for six weeks - plus Papua New Guinea, Laos, Cambodia, Eritrea and the Guianas. Vietnam has had a small cluster of new cases.
A worker in the Netherlands has caught COVID from a mink.
Antibodies in the blood of a person who recovered from SARS 17 years ago appeared to attack the current coronavirus. The SARS antibody from that person was good at binding and disabling the “spike protein” on the virus. We have always had a minor suspicion that the low rate of infection in East Asia might be connected to earlier coronavirus outbreaks there.
At least 1500 veterans have died of coronavirus at US Veterans Affairs hospitals and State-run homes. However 28 states are not reporting these numbers.
The Americas have over 2 million cases, with 1.5 million of these in the USA. Russia has passed 300,000 cases, but looking like it has at last reached inflection. Brazil and UK are over 250,000 cases, Turkey over 150,000 cases, India and Peru over 100,000 cases (but probably a lot more).
Israel and Japan have suppressed their epidemics, joining an elite group of countries. Taiwan has had no new cases since 7 May, while China has had only single digits for a month. A number of island states have had no new cases for six weeks - plus Papua New Guinea, Laos, Cambodia, Eritrea and the Guianas. Vietnam has had a small cluster of new cases.
A worker in the Netherlands has caught COVID from a mink.
Antibodies in the blood of a person who recovered from SARS 17 years ago appeared to attack the current coronavirus. The SARS antibody from that person was good at binding and disabling the “spike protein” on the virus. We have always had a minor suspicion that the low rate of infection in East Asia might be connected to earlier coronavirus outbreaks there.
At least 1500 veterans have died of coronavirus at US Veterans Affairs hospitals and State-run homes. However 28 states are not reporting these numbers.
Tropics
The Brazilian city of Manaus, deep in the Amazon, has 2.2 million people and is Brazil's "wild west". It ships goods down the Amazon and is also a major cocaine trafficking hub, notorious for daily homicides and prison massacres. has described the situation as a "horror movie", with bodies piling up in refrigerated trucks, mass graves being dug with backhoes outside cemeteries and a healthcare system that has collapsed. "It is humanly impossible to dig so many graves". There are only 172 official CV deaths, but 340 occurred from 20-23 April alone. Families are not coming forward to claim the bodies of their relatives, possibly through fear of infection. Video footage has shown corpses lying on beds in a hospital alongside live patients undergoing treatment. Another shows a line of vans waiting to deliver bodies for burial.Bali in Indonesia usually receives half a million tourists a month, many from China, and was targeted as a likely hotspot. However it has had only 235 cases and 4 deaths. Indonesia has one of the worst testing regimes in the world, and data are not transparent. Bali has had only 1300 tests conducted, and the numbers may be artificial - but deaths are much harder to disguise. Various doubtful theories are being proposed as to the low numbers.
Response
Chloroquine, touted by President Trump as a treatment, appears to be not only ineffective but actually increases risk for some patients.
Many US states reopening have no contingency plans or benchmarks and the ad-hoc US response continues.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have both issued stark warnings that a vaccine will not come soon enough and the world needs to adapt to live with the coronavirus.
Many US states reopening have no contingency plans or benchmarks and the ad-hoc US response continues.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have both issued stark warnings that a vaccine will not come soon enough and the world needs to adapt to live with the coronavirus.
Equipment
The PPE market is full of shady operators, fraud and profiteering. One dealer joked the market for preferred medical N95 masks was in perfect balance: "you have buyers with no money and sellers with no product". Medical workers across the United States are rationing masks, recycling them and treating infected patients without them. An epidemiologist said, “In past disasters, the federal government, with its enormous buying power, took the lead in procurement. This time, federal inaction forced states into competing with each other for these scarce products.”
The
Department of Health and Human Services in the USA and the private sector had either
“coordinated the delivery of or are currently shipping” 86.1 million N95
respirators. The government has lined up contracts to obtain another 600
million masks in the coming months, partly from U.S. manufacturers - such as
Honeywell and 3M - that have ramped up domestic factory production.
Canada
moved more quickly to manage the crisis. Early on, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau focused
on the logistics of shipping and manufacturing - and Canada has had a
relatively trouble-free equipment supply situation despite having an equally bad epidemic.
Reopening
Latvia (11, 19), Lithuania (7, 59) and Estonia (4, 64) have all had a good innings, and have created a "Baltic States" inter-movement bubble [daily new cases and total deaths in brackets].
Two churches in Georgia and Texas, states that have been at the forefront of reopening, have now closed their doors again. Catoosa Baptist Tabernacle in Ringgold, Ga., resumed in-person services and later decided to suspend them after several families became infected despite the church’s social-distancing and cleaning precautions. Houston-based Holy Ghost Parish has cancelled services indefinitely after one of its priests died and five other members tested positive for the virus.
Two churches in Georgia and Texas, states that have been at the forefront of reopening, have now closed their doors again. Catoosa Baptist Tabernacle in Ringgold, Ga., resumed in-person services and later decided to suspend them after several families became infected despite the church’s social-distancing and cleaning precautions. Houston-based Holy Ghost Parish has cancelled services indefinitely after one of its priests died and five other members tested positive for the virus.
Geopolitical
A coalition of over 100 countries has supported Australia's call for an 'independent inquiry'. This has now been phrased in less provocative language and is to be conducted within WHO.
China has agreed to this less confrontational proposal. It seems unlikely anything new will emerge, but it could definitely be useful to identify the zoonotic hosts of the virus, if that is possible.
It is something of a long shot, but one must consider the possibility that the disease originated elsewhere than Wuhan and was simply picked up there because a local epidemiology centre was on the ball. The existence of a unique European basal variant C does make this a possibility. An animal in Europe, a mink, has passed COVID-19 to a worker. Searching old pneumonia cases in France in December has revealed one COVID infection and affected countries should push back a search into October.
49 out of 50 state governors in the USA have a higher approval rating for their handling of the crisis than President Trump. The only lower rating was Gov George Kemp of Georgia.
China has agreed to this less confrontational proposal. It seems unlikely anything new will emerge, but it could definitely be useful to identify the zoonotic hosts of the virus, if that is possible.
It is something of a long shot, but one must consider the possibility that the disease originated elsewhere than Wuhan and was simply picked up there because a local epidemiology centre was on the ball. The existence of a unique European basal variant C does make this a possibility. An animal in Europe, a mink, has passed COVID-19 to a worker. Searching old pneumonia cases in France in December has revealed one COVID infection and affected countries should push back a search into October.
49 out of 50 state governors in the USA have a higher approval rating for their handling of the crisis than President Trump. The only lower rating was Gov George Kemp of Georgia.
Economy
France and Germany have announced a 500 billion euro recovery plan, which will borrow and provide grants to affected businesses.
Japan is on course for its deepest postwar slump, slipping into recession for the first time in five years. GDP already fell by over 10% since October, and a further double digit fall in this quarter is likely. Toyota expects an 80% drop in operating profits.
Uber has had an 80% fall in demand in the USA and has laid off a further 3000 employees and has closed its artificial intelligence lab and 40 offices. It has already sacked 3700. The uptick in Uber Eats has not been enough to compensate for the loss in rides. Apparently it has never made a profit.
Uber has had an 80% fall in demand in the USA and has laid off a further 3000 employees and has closed its artificial intelligence lab and 40 offices. It has already sacked 3700. The uptick in Uber Eats has not been enough to compensate for the loss in rides. Apparently it has never made a profit.
Retail demand in Australia fell by 18% in April, the largest fall on record, whichh follows the 9% surge in March as people stocked up for lockdown. The shift is mostly driven by food (which is still up 5% on April 2019).
Australians reported being subjected to a barrage of cold calls and “pushy” texts from consultants after losing work during the coronavirus pandemic. Consultants said they are being told to secure work for a set number of people each month – despite record job losses and a 65 per cent drop in job postings.
Darwin Awards
Fool some of the people all of the time
One in eight Australians believe Microsoft founder Bill Gates is somehow responsible for the coronavirus and the 5G wireless network is to blame for spreading the disease, the Essential poll released on 19 May showed.
One in five people believe the media and government are exaggerating the death toll to scare the population. Two in five think the virus was engineered and released from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which the Prime Minister has repeatedly said there is no evidence to support.
An overwhelming majority of respondents (77 per cent) said the outbreak in China was much worse than reported in official statistics from Beijing. The survey of 1073 people follows small protests across Australia led by 5G conspiracy theorists and
anti-vaxxers.
In the USA,
In the USA,
In Haiti, people are threatening to burn down the homes of those suspected of having the disease. “This epidemic is a tinderbox in the process of burning and will explode in the coming weeks". There have been few deaths but daily new cases have reached 100.
Environment
Global CO2 emissions have fallen by an unprecedented 17 percent.
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