Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) Thread - 2020 Breaking News

[Rick_Kitchen]

@thorny_locust

He seems to think the primary problem is liability, and that exempting them from liability will make the whole problem go away. As if the only problem with having your workers die were that the survivors might sue.

I don’t see how he can order individual workers to show up. He certainly can’t order them not to get sick.

Can the consumers sue if they get sick from eating meat packed by sick workers?

[elfkin477]

@Snowboarder_Bo

Nearly 70 dead in ‘horrific’ outbreak at veterans’ home

Sadly, it’s not too surprising. There was a story in late March, back when the home failed to alert anyone at the state or the city about the first several deaths, saying that patient zero was allowed to hang out with people in the common areas even after they knew he was a pending positive…

[madsircool]

@Rick_Kitchen

Can the consumers sue if they get sick from eating meat packed by sick workers?

You cant catch the virus from properly stored and cooked food.

[TokyoBayer]

@Darren_Garrison

You are right that Bo is right that I was right before I was wrong.

You are right about that. I wanted to be right, but I was afraid of being left out.

[dtilque]

@TokyoBayer

I’m afraid you are right.

@Darren_Garrison

You are right that Bo is right that I was right before I was wrong.

@TokyoBayer

You are right about that. I wanted to be right, but I was afraid of being left out.

You guys writing some song lyrics or something?

[Snowboarder_Bo]

3,138,686 total cases
218,000 dead
956,016 recovered

In the US:

1,035,765 total cases
59,266 dead
142,238 recovered

Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:

@Snowboarder_Bo

3,064,837 total cases
211,609 dead
922,397 recovered

In the US:

1,010,507 total cases
56,803 dead
138,990 recovered

Others have noted the fact that today, the US surpassed all of the military deaths, from combat and otherwise, suffered during all the years of the Vietnam War (58,209).

Tomorrow the US will pass the low-ball estimate for possible Covid-19 deaths (60,000).

[Snowboarder_Bo]

Chapel Hill family’s dog tests positive for COVID-19 in Duke University study

“To our knowledge, this is the first instance in which the virus has been detected in a dog. Little additional information is known at this time as we work to learn more about the exposure,” MESSI principal investigator Dr. Chris Woods said in a statement.

Dr. Heather McLean is a Duke Health pediatrician who lives with her family in Chapel Hill. Her husband is an ER doctor. They, as well as their human son, all tested positive for the virus.

McLean said her family experienced very mild symptoms. She said the same was true of Winston, the family’s pug. Winston lost his appetite for a day, but other than that, he appeared healthy.

The McLeans have two dogs and one cat. Winston is the only pet that tested positive for COVID-19.

As part of the study, the family will continue to be tested. McLean said her family thought it was important to do what they could to help researchers better understand this new virus.

[kayaker]

@Alley_Dweller

The former would be a little ironic, since aren’t most meat plant workers illegal aliens?

I’ve toured one poultry processing plant. The workers were all legal visitors from Puerto Rico, brought to the continental US and living in on site dormitories. They worked here on one or two year contracts, then returned to their homes, replaced by the next group. Truly horrible work.

[Johnny_L.A]

@kayaker

I’ve toured one poultry processing plant. The workers were all legal visitors from Puerto Rico…

For accuracy, you might have said ‘The workers were all U.S. citizens from Puerto Rico.’ Whether poultry workers are here illegally or not seems like a topic for another thread. To stay on-topic, I just want to mention this:

But poultry workers are… six times as likely to contract a workplace illness as other private sector employees.

[kayaker]

@Johnny_L.A

For accuracy, you might have said ‘The workers were all U.S. citizens from Puerto Rico.’

I tried to dance around saying anything like that. The company brings workers from Puerto Rico to Lancaster County, PA because it is easy to do. Most of the workers are Puerto Rican, hence US citizens, but there are always a few people who have left another place, say Jamaica, gone to Puerto Rico, and have forged paperwork.

[TroutMan]

In Oregon, there were 245 excess deaths from Mar 16-Apr 19 compared to the average over the last five years. During that same period, there were 78 deaths officially attributed to COVID-19.

Take it with a grain of salt - it is unlikely the true death toll from the virus is 3x the official count. This was a simple calculation, and there are sure to be other factors (aging population, non-COVID deaths due to avoiding hospitals and medical care). But I think it demonstrates that when statisticians look back at the data, the estimates of people who died from COVID will be much higher than what we are seeing now.

[PastTense]

@thorny_locust

He seems to think the primary problem is liability, and that exempting them from liability will make the whole problem go away. As if the only problem with having your workers die were that the survivors might sue.

No. The problem is that if a governor, mayor, county executive, state or local public heath department sees dozens of new cases of Covid-19 at a local meatpacking plant it is likely that one of them will try to shut the plant down for several days. Trump’s regulation will prevent this from happening.

[DrDeth]

again, without comment:

Trolls and bots are flooding social media with disinformation encouraging...

Trolls and bots are flooding social media with disinformation encouraging states to end quarantine…An analysis from Bot Sentinel, a bot tracking platform, found that bots and trolls have been stoking sentiments online that have fueled the protests, using hashtags like #ReopenAmericaNow and #StopTheMadness…Inauthentic accounts are amplifying disinformation and inaccurate statistics and sharing false information as a reason to reopen the country," Bouzy says. “Many of these accounts are also spreading bizarre conspiracy theories about Democrats using COVID-19 as a way to take away American freedoms and prevent Americans from voting.”

[psychonaut]

Today in Austria:

[ul]
[li] The chancellor and vice-chancellor convened a press conference today to present the government’s new economic policy for leading Austria out of the coronavirus crisis. There are three main priorities: tax relief for workers; economic support to preserve and create jobs; and investment in climate protection, digitalization, and regionalization. No implementation details have been provided as of yet.[/li]
[li] The limits on customer density in the shops have been relaxed. Previously, shops could admit only one customer for every 20 m² of floor space. As of 1 May they will be able to admit one customer for every 10 m² of floor space.[/li]
[li] Schools have not yet reopened for classroom instruction, though they remain open to care for children of essential workers. Attendance is slowly growing, but remains low at 2.7%.[/li]
[li] Current statistics: 15,352 confirmed infections, 580 deaths, 12,779 recovered.[/li][/ul]

[thorny_locust]

@PastTense

No. The problem is that if a governor, mayor, county executive, state or local public heath department sees dozens of new cases of Covid-19 at a local meatpacking plant it is likely that one of them will try to shut the plant down for several days. Trump’s regulation will prevent this from happening.

Shutting down a plant with dozens of new cases of covid-19 is not a problem, let alone the problem. It’s an attempted solution to a problem. The actual problem is that if the plant remains open even more people people will become horribly sick and some of them will die. In addition, people who work in the plant will become infectious, whether or not they become significantly ill, and they’ll infect other people who don’t work in the plant.

[Broomstick]

And, eventually, the people who work at the plant will become either too sick to work, or dead, or too afraid to go into the plant and then what? Trump assumed the problem was with the liability the owners might have had if workers were maimed or killed, he completely neglected to consider that at some people those workers might decide that being unemployed was better than gasping your last after a month on a ventilator. As I said… and then what? What is Trump planning to do if no one is willing to work in such a processing plant? I’ll you what he’s planning - he not planning anything, he’s not thinking about it, he hasn’t even considered it.

I foresee eating more beans in my future…

[Skywatcher]

The BBC is reporting that the US economy has shrunk by nearly 5%. Given that the latest figures only cover the first couple of weeks of people staying home, chances are it’s going to get worse.

[RioRico]

Members of the Professional Class That the Government Doesn’t Work for Them Either

[Relief programs] don’t work in the sense of reliably delivering relief to everyone who is eligible for the programs and needs them. You can’t get unemployment benefits until you register for unemployment, and many people can’t register for unemployment, even if they’re calling the office hundreds of times a day, because state systems are overloaded. You can get your stimulus if the IRS already has a direct deposit account number for you—but if you didn’t get a refund this year or last year, it doesn’t have that number, and the website where you’re supposed to be able to enter it often just returns a message that says “payment status not available.” The same applies for small-business loans: Those who are eligible are supposed to apply through their existing banks, but your bank (or your boss’s bank) may not have even posted information on its website about how to apply before announcing that the window for applications had closed.

The system was designed to appear useful, not to actually help people. Hey ex-professionals, welcome to the underclass!
__

Coronavirus ‘acts like no pathogen humanity has ever seen,’ say doctors

How exactly is coronavirus killing us? …It’s weird seeing everyone compare COVID-19 to the flu, when there are reports coming in of patients dying of exploding hearts and glitching cytokines.
<snip>
It’s not unheard of, of course, for a disease to express itself in complicated or hard-to-parse ways, attacking or undermining the functioning of a variety of organs. And it’s common, as researchers and doctors scramble to map the shape of a new disease, for their understanding to evolve quite quickly. But the degree to which doctors and scientists are, still, feeling their way, as though blindfolded, toward a true picture of the disease cautions against any sense that things have stabilized, given that our knowledge of the disease hasn’t even stabilized. Perhaps more importantly, it’s a reminder that the coronavirus pandemic is not just a public-health crisis but a scientific one as well. And that as deep as it may feel we are into the coronavirus, with tens of thousands dead and literally billions in precautionary lockdown, we are still in the very early stages, when each new finding seems as likely to cloud or complicate our understanding of the coronavirus as it is to clarify it. Instead, confidence gives way to uncertainty.

Strokes. Kidney failure. Rapid clotting. At-home deaths uptick. Down the rabbit hole.

[ThelmaLou]

From the first quotation above:

…the website where you’re supposed to be able to enter it often just returns a message that says “payment status not available.” …

True. But if you go back every day or multiple times per day, eventually the site will let you enter your deposit information. Of course, I still haven’t gotten my deposit, but I just wanted to correct this particular statement.

Carry on.

[monstro]

@ThelmaLou

From the first quotation above: True. But if you go back every day or multiple times per day, eventually the site will let you enter your deposit information. Of course, I still haven’t gotten my deposit, but I just wanted to correct this particular statement.

Carry on.

Some people are discovering that that the system isn’t that intelligent. If you abbreviate your street address the wrong way (Ave. rather than Ave, for instance), the system won’t recognize you.