They hope. . . . If regulatory hurdles can be cleared, he said in a Thursday interview, the vaccine could start to become available in November . . .
Spanish flu probably originated in Kansas. It got the name because Spain's press wrote about the King getting it. Spain wasn't in the war. The countries at war buried the story of their armies being decimated by the Kansas flu.
ACLU white paper on pandemic preparedness from 2008. See discussion starting at p.19. (And, yes, I know a coronavirus is not the flu). Current Pandemic Flu Plans: Dangerously Counterproductive . . . . . . Although most of the verbiage in these plans is vapid and virtually without content, and based on assumptions that will inevitably turn out to be mistaken, the one commonality they all possess is reliance on coercive actions such as quarantine and forced treatment. This is despite the fact that such measures are generally acknowledged by experts to be either completely ineffective or only potentially marginally effective in the case of flu . . . https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/asset_upload_file399_33642.pdf
Here's a National Governors' Association pandemic preparedeness paper, also from 2008. How well do we appear to have done in implementing the suggestions? . . . five broad areas in which new or improved policies, procedures, capabilities or strategies are needed to improve overall pandemic preparedness. They include: • Workforce policies. Every sector of the economy and government will be impacted by the availability of workers during a pandemic. States and the private sector should develop and test policies affecting the willingness and ability of personnel to perform their duties, whether in traditional or alternative settings. They also should work collaboratively to develop policies that allow sick workers to stay home during a pandemic and effectively balance the need of some workers to care for sick (or healthy) family members for extended periods of time with the requirements of government and private sector continuity of operations plans. • Schools. Additional attention on the range of issues facing the K-12 and higher educational systems is necessary. States should ensure that federal guidance on school closure and reopening is widely disseminated to improve coordination with local authorities, and they should develop public communication strategies to begin educating communities about the purpose and limitations of school closure, associated issues and expected impacts. Colleges and universities have particular challenges that also must be addressed. Page 2 – Pandemic Preparedness in the States: Progress and Opportunity • Situational awareness. Awareness of the presence or absence of disease at the local, state and national levels is essential to the proper implementation of mitigation strategies in order to realize optimum public health benefits while minimizing negative side effects. However, no system currently exists to provide state officials with a clear picture of the situation in their states, in neighboring states or in other parts of the country. States should ensure that all agencies are included in information-sharing networks that will be used during a pandemic. The private sector also should be integrated into those networks, and systems should be developed that provide state officials with ready access to information on disease activity, availability of critical supplies, deployed response assets, and other essential data. • Public involvement. To a significant degree, the public has so far been left out of discussions about pandemic preparedness. States should engage the public in deliberations about, and encourage the public to inform decisions on, school closures, the availability of essential services, including healthcare, and other issues with difficult ethical dimensions. • Public-private sector engagement. The interdependencies of the public and private sectors require that policies designed to control the spread of disease at the community level be developed in a collaborative fashion to ensure coordination and to avoid or resolve potential conflict. States in particular should reach out to small business to ensure they are adequately prepared for pandemics and are aware of the resources available to them. To better understand the full range of a pandemic’s potential economic impacts, states should conduct economic impact analyses that indentify the sectors that are most critical to the state economy. Those analyses should serve as the basis of strategies to mitigate the effects of a pandemic of government operations and on day-to-day economic activities. [Emphasis added] https://transition.fcc.gov/pshs/doc...nors_Association_PANDEMIC_ASSESSMENT_0809.pdf
Dispatches from the insanity. Still no confirmed case of coronavirus in Buffalo or Erie County, but only 19 people have been tested thus far. https://buffalonews.com/2020/03/12/...hout-any-confirmed-coronavirus-cases-locally/
The paper of record (today, 3/12/20, when MLS suspended its season): Sick People Across the U.S. Say They Are Being Denied the Coronavirus Test In a health care system that is already difficult to navigate, some patients describe Kafkaesque quests for tests. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/us/coronavirus-testing-challenges.html
This is the thing that worries me the most. How many cases are we missing or letting roam about without knowledge of how contagious they are?
Tons. It looks like people can be infectious without showing any symptoms. Thus, we can spread the virus without knowing that we are infected. This is problematic. Stolen from CNN: Mmmmmm. Gives you warm fuzzies, no? My wife travels for work and is in SJC several times a month. My daughter was down there recently too! I'm hoping that if I keep my mouth full of whiskey I won't get infected. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/11/politics/tsa-health-care-part-time/index.html Go Humans!! - Mark
Making the tests difficult or impossible to obtain is a brilliant strategy for making our 'numbers' look good. Remember - the folks running our government's healthcare bureaucracy are the same folks who gave us the market crashes in 2001 and 2008, and as long as people aren't able to get tested, they can point at the little numbers and feel proud of themselves...
I agree and I disagree with you on this. It's not racist to call it the Wuhan Virus, but, perhaps Chris Hayes just decided to follow the advice of the WHO on this and their guidelines for naming infectious diseases. https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2015/naming-new-diseases/en/ "“This may seem like a trivial issue to some, but disease names really do matter to the people who are directly affected. We’ve seen certain disease names provoke a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities, create unjustified barriers to travel, commerce and trade, and trigger needless slaughtering of food animals. This can have serious consequences for peoples’ lives and livelihoods.” And from the NYT, "The 2009 swine flu, or H1N1, outbreak originated in Mexico and led to accusations of racism against the Latino community. The illness was not transmitted through pigs, but China, Russia and other countries still banned pork imports. In Egypt, health officials ordered a mass slaughtering of hundreds of thousands of pigs, which were raised almost exclusively by the country’s Christian minority."
Looks like Roche is addressing the availability problem. New test is 10x faster. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...e-for-coronavirus-test-that-s-10-times-faster
People in this country are avoiding Chinese and other Asian restaurants. As stupid as that is, this crap happens. We’re seeing an uptick in racist behavior directed at Asian Americans. Freaking brilliant that! It’s not that I think people on this forum are stupid, but a fair fraction of the national population is. Go Quakesfans!! - Mark
Not to beat a dead horse, but ... https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/12/us/disease-outbreaks-xenophobia-history/index.html
Just sitting here in my room at the Hard Rock, Atlantic City getting ready for a nice walk on the boardwalk which is timely because since we arrived last night I’ve already devoured two White House subs...looks like the suns coming out, travel is a breeze, I was ambivalent about coming but glad I went ahead with it. Bummed we aren’t playing Philly though.
CNN was among the biggest offenders in describing the virus in geographical and/or ethnic terms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=5eZtCq1aj2g&feature=emb_logo
I'm not sure about 2001, but 2008 had nothing to do with healthcare and everything to do with regulating financial activity... And the folk "running things now" are nothing like the ones running things back then... Spend some time with "The Fifth Risk"
A link to the article mentioned above. Access is free though you have to give an email address. They are actively updating it so it makes little sense to copy it here. https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca