FDNY and Long Island EMS have been ordered not to transport patients who can not be resuscitated to hospitals
What is happening in France? They have had over 1300 new deaths today. That is nearly twice as much as any other country. Have their hospitals reached the saturation point?
It’s true, and I wasn’t expecting it so soon. Say goodbye to freedom
They seem to have a fairly low per-capita infection rate, so it’s unlikely that they’re at capacity.
I’d venture to guess that it’s delayed reporting of numbers, minus information to the contrary.
They were not previously reporting deaths in elderly care homes, so they have now started to include those figures. Sounds like they haven’t accounted for all of those yet so their numbers will be continue to be inflated for a short time.
Which is another way of saying “don’t bring corpses to the hospital.” I don’t know about New York, but some places have a rule where someone isn’t dead until an official says that they are dead, and an obvious corpse has to be carried to the hospital to become officially dead there.
^ This is why no one ever dies in a Las Vegas casino resort.
What’s new in Austria?
[ul]
[li] Medical[/li]
[list]
[li] The government is proactively testing a sample of 1500 workers in key jobs, including doctors, care workers, and supermarket staff, in part to estimate what proportion of the general population are infected but asymptomatic. So far 1161 of these tests have been carried out; 6 of them (0.52%) were positive for coronavirus. So perhaps the number of unreported cases in the population at large is not as great as some people fear.[/li]
[li] Until today, coronavirus tests in Vienna were required to be carried out by doctors. The rules have now been changed to allow paramedics to carry out the tests, freeing up doctors for duties more demanding of their medical expertise.[/li]
[li] The health ministry is analyzing the spread of the virus. It has so far identified 40 distinct clusters of infected people, the first of which originated with holidaymakers returning from Italy.[/li]
[li] 140,000 people have installed the Red Cross’s “Stopp Corona” app. This app monitors users’ movements; whenever a user tests positive for coronavirus, a message is sent to all other users who were recently in close proximity asking them to get tested themselves.[/li]
[li] Some time ago I reported that the main convention centre in Vienna was being converted into a hospital for coronavirus patients. (Similar makeshift hospitals were being set up in other cities.) Today the hospital received its first patients.[/li][/ul]
[li] Political[/li]
[ul]
[li] The rate at which new cases are being confirmed continues to fall. The chancellor said on 24 March that the restrictions on movement might be eased once the doubling period for new cases falls to 14 days. So far it looks like this goal might be soon reached. However, the country’s health minister today seemingly walked this back a bit, saying that the true goal was getting a replication factor of less than one, and that it is too early to claim that we can currently see the light at the end of the tunnel.[/li]
[li] Tomorrow parliament is expected to pass a third major aid package. Among its provisions:[/li][list][li]If any tenant is unable, due to the coronavirus crisis, to pay the rent on their home between 1 April and 30 June, then this will not be considered a legally enforceable ground for the landlord to terminate their rental contract. Tenants will have until the end of the year to pay the rent (with a maximum of 4% interest).[/li][li] Media companies will receive financial aid. Publishers of newspapers and magazines will receive a one-time grant of €4 for every issue sold in 2019.[/li][li] Municipal governments will be granted greater authority to pedestrianize streets. This will allow people to spread out more when going for walks. Many streets are devoid of automobile traffic these days anyway.[/li][/ul]
[li] Previous aid packages from the Austrian government have arranged to pay 80% of furloughed employees’ salaries. Now the EU at large is stepping up with a further €100 billion for this purpose, to be distributed among EU countries in proportion to need.[/li]
[li] The Czech Republic has announced that it will extend its border closure with Austria to at least 24 April.[/li]
[li] Following an enabling act in Hungary that handed prime minister Viktor Orbán dictatorial powers indefinitely, 14 EU countries have signed a declaration in support of democracy and the rule of law and opposing the unchecked use of emergency powers. The declaration does not name Hungary specifically, though the situation there is very obviously the impetus. Austria is conspicuously absent from the list of signatories.[/li]
[li] I earlier reported that federally operated gardens were to reopen in Vienna. This hasn’t yet happened due to ongoing disagreements between the federal and state governments.[/li]
[/list]
[li] Miscellaneous[/li]
[ul]
[li] According to a recent poll by a market research institute, 38% of Austrians are coping well with the mandatory self-isolation regulations (down from 47% last week). Nonetheless, 97% report that they will abide by the restrictions. When asked what they are doing more of during these times of self-isolation, 49% said cleaning, 45% said cooking, 18% fitness, and 13% cuddling and having sex.[/li]
[li] Current statistics: 11,129 confirmed infections, 158 dead, 1749 recovered. According to Worldometer, Austria ranks #7 among countries (excluding microstates) in confirmed cases per capita and #14 in deaths per capita. The country has conducted 92,190 coronavirus tests. The national health advice hotline received nearly half a million calls in March.[/li][/ul]
[/list]
It’s a reporting change. From Worldometers:
I had the same thought- naturally I don’t want the passengers to suffer, but yeah, you don’t want to pay US taxes, but when the chips are down you want the US infrastructure there for you.
That also describes the vast majority of Americans, IME.
Well, the passengers are the ones who would have paid the price if DeSantis hadn’t realized what a PR disaster it would be.
Just don’t let Congress get away with writing laws that let the cruise companies pull this sort of dodge.
In my local shop, the only type available is “recycled”.
There’s a dozen cruise ships hanging around Australia, with no place to dock. I think they have all discharged passengers, and are now crew only. I hope that they have moved the crew out of quarters, and into individual cabins.
The state premiers are all “We don’t want them, make them go home.” Which is understandable, but at the same time represents the worst and least attractive aspect of self-interested nationalism. We were happy to have them when they were visiting Australian ports with 2000 ~ 3000 passengers. Now they’ve just got poor people from the Philippines, all should go back to their poor countries to be sick and die there.
I understand some / many of these ships are registered under Australian flags or are Australian owned?
Hmmm…
What will be interesting when the dust settles on this is which countries are measuring how, deaths vs infections vs tests done to see what and who has handled the crisis well