Now that’s a cite. Thanks.
Just saw this. Masks purchased by the state of Massachusetts were also “impounded”, per the governor. He didn’t say who impounded them, but I would guess the federal government.
Do they make exceptions for single parents with children too young to leave at home alone?
Yeah, it’s Hart Island, off the Bronx. It serves as the City’s Potter’s Field, for burial of unclaimed bodies. That’s where I thought they would have been burying coronavirus victims. I’ve often seen it from a distance from Pelham Bay Park.
I saw some reference to burying bodies in mass graves “in a city park,” which kind of mystified me. But I see that the island has recently been transferred to the Dept of Parks from the Dept of Corrections, so that explains it. It’s not actually a park.
1,604,718 confirmed infections
95,735 dead
356,660 recovered
In the US:
468,887 confirmed infections
16,697 dead
25,928 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
I expect that we’ll see two milestones passed tomorrow: confirmed infections will surpass 100,000 in a day and the world will have over 100,000 total deaths due to Covid-19.
I also expect the US to pass 20,000 no later than Sunday; we’re close to 2,000 deaths per day now.
I’ve posted before, but Taiwan started ramping up production of masks in January, and now has enough surplus manufacturing that they are giving them to the US and other allies.
They didn’t allow people to send any overseas before but now Taiwanese can send a certain amount to direct relatives who are part of the Taiwanese health care system and can be verified. Before most trips overseas were banned, Taiwanese had limits to how many people could take with them.
They have seized masks which people were trying to ship overseas and also from people taking masks in excess of the limit.
I forgot to mention: the US will prolly pass 500,000 confirmed infections tomorrow.
Taiwan just announced two new cases bringing the total to 382 cases with one additional death for a total of six.
This is in contrast to Australia which has a similar population (25.2 m for Australia and 23.6 m for Taiwan) but 6,152 cases and 53 deaths.
Since Monday (April 6), when Taiwan reported 10 news cases, the number of new cases has steadily declined, with three on Tuesday, three on Wednesday, one on Thursday, and two on Friday.
Taiwan has not had to do as many tests as other countries because it’s been better at contact tracing. The latest numbers show only 43,886 have been tested, which is 185 per 100,000. Far fewer than the States. It doesn’t have to do mass testing because the people who come up in the contact tracing are kept in home quarantine anyway. If there are serious contact with someone sick then they are put in home isolation.
As I’ve posted a number of times, Taiwan was expected to be hit hard. They had the second worse number of SARS cases and the highest death rate.
I hope that other countries will learn from Taiwan and make some large changes. While not everything can be duplicated, it show how much preparation can help.
I have seen some drone footage on the BBC showing the burials at Hart Island referred to here.
The footage shows a number of large derelict buildings on the site and I wondered what they were, and why, in view of the long-standing use of the site as a ‘potters field’ nothing has been done to show a little more respect for the dead. Surely, even or people with no relatives are entitled to that?
The link to the BBC is here but I suspect that it is restricted. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52241221
The derelict buildings were a sanatorium and other things like temporary homeless shelters and Nike defense missiles. The last buildings were abandoned in 1977. (From Wikipedia)
So much for what you “suspect”.
Actually, it is true. Don’t believe me? This is on the NYTimes website this morning. They’re stacking the coffins three deep in that trench.
Jesus. Wept. 
On Good Friday, no less.
I am not sure I understand this one. This shows that worldwide new cases has leveled off around 85K. There was one day (3 Apr) which had more than 100K.
NY Times : experimental drug can be worse than no treatment and might kill you
The BBC has an interesting article about Singapore, which had been held up as a model for it’s response to the crisis, but now is finding itself facing new outbreaks.
They have 1910 cases now.
The other problem is their large number of migrant workers and the packed places they live.
An important point is that you can’t get too complacent.
I apologize. That was rude of me.
Another fast news day in Austria! (It helps that Good Friday is no longer a holiday here. Or rather, it never really was, for most people. But that’s another story.) Anyway, here are some of the biggest stories so far. I may need to post another update later in the day.
[ul]
[li] We lead with the most inconsequential but probably most interesting coronavirus topic: the nationwide shortage of yeast. According to an article in today’s Standard, it’s true that there has been an increased consumer demand for yeast in recent weeks, and especially in the run-up to Easter, when people would be baking more even if they weren’t shut in by the pandemic. However, there is a greatly reduced industrial demand for yeast, since all the cafés and restaurants are closed. Overall, these two factors balance each other out, and there is not any shortage of yeast in the country. So why is it impossible to find in supermarket shelves? The reason is that there is a shortage of consumer packaging for yeast. Supermarket yeast is normally sold in 42-gram foil-wrapped packages, whereas the yeast sold to bakeries and restaurants comes in 500-gram packages. Yeast producers have run out of the 42-gram packaging, and can’t make more packages fast enough to meet the new demand.[/li]
[li] In the bizarre-but-true department: Tyrol has announced plans to use retrofitted snow cannons to efficiently disinfect large areas such as stadiums and train stations.[/li]
[li] OK, now on to more serious news. Two weeks ago it was feared that the health care system could soon be overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. Since then, the situation has stabilized, though the health minister is still wary. A further 1000 intensive-care beds have been made available for coronavirus patients, though recently the number of coronavirus patients requiring intensive care has been going down.[/li]
[li] The nationwide mandatory self-isolation regulations will be extended until the end of April; full details were published last night. In accordance with previous announcements, the regulations have been both loosened and tightened in certain respects. They’ve been loosened in that it’s now permitted to leave one’s home to patronize those shops and businesses that have been permitted to reopen. But they’ve been tightened in that the wearing of masks or other face coverings will be a legal requirement while shopping and using public transport, including taxis. (Children under the age of seven are exempt from this requirement.) A new restriction, not previously announced (to my recollection), is that everyone will now be legally required to maintain a distance of one metre from others on public transit. It’s further been announced that those shops and businesses that have been permitted to open their doors again on 14 April must restrict their business hours to within the period of 07:40 to 19:00.[/li]
[li] The science ministry today discussed preliminary results from its wide-ranging statistical study of the prevalence of coronavirus in the country, using tests on a large, representative sample of the population. The results indicate that the true number of infected individuals in Austria at the beginning of April was probably around 28,500 (or at 95% confidence, somewhere between 10,200 and 67,400). This represents about 0.33% of the country’s totaly population. By contrast, the number of infections confirmed by tests on 6 April was 8,500, so the total number of infections was more than three times the number of confirmed infections. But the total is still far too small to support the notion that herd immunity will be reached any time soon (or at all). Further results of the study will continue to be made available as and when they become available, probably until the end of April.[/li]
Austria is the first country in continental Europe to have conducted such a wide-ranging study. Germany and Estonia have now announced their intentions to do something similar. Of course, Iceland, with its very small population, was able to conduct tests on all its inhabitants some time ago.
You can also read an English-language report on the Austrian study from The Guardian.
[li] On the use of antibody tests to confirm whether a person has already been infected, the science minister says that the government would like to make these more widely available. The problem is that the accuracy and sensitivity of these tests has yet to be established, and many of them require blood to be drawn by trained medical personnel. (Some other tests can use capillary blood that can be obtained non-professionally with a pinprick.)[/li]
[li] Current statistics: 13,494 confirmed infections, 319 deaths, 6064 recovered. The number of confirmed infections is growing at a rate of 2.2% per day, with a doubling time of about 29 days. Since 3 April, the daily rise in recovered patients has been greater than the daily rise in new confirmed infections.[/li][/ul]
Those are both excellent things to hear and very encouraging.
Cuomo says NY is flattening curve, but many questions remain - “For the first time since the coronavirus pandemic ramped up in New York, the change in ICU admissions is in the negative, and overall hospitalizations continue to trend downward.”