SO has everyone hit the point of, "What day is it?"
"The United States Senate, after days of discussions with the White House, on Wednesday passed an unprecedented emergency bill that would send some $2 trillion in aid to businesses, workers, state and local governments and a healthcare system overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic."
"Senators unveiled the full text of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, on Wednesday evening after days of blockages and negotiation between leaders in Congress and the White House. The approximately $2 trillion proposal arrives as the coronavirus spreads throughout the US and measures to restrict contagion rapidly slow economic activity."
"On Wednesday, Ocasio-Cortez told CNN she is not ruling out asking for a recorded vote, which would force lawmakers to return to Washington and vote in-person, something that most members of Congress are eager to avoid amid the coronavirus pandemic."
"At least 13 patients have died from Covid-19 at Elmhurst Hospital in New York, a statement from a spokesman said, as one of the hardest hit states sees a surge in cases… The deaths of the patients took place over the last 24 hours, but NYC Health and Hospitals/Elmhurst said in a statement that number is consistent with the number of Intensive Care Unit patients being treated there."
"Amid growing fears that the United States could face a shortage of ventilators for coronavirus patients, state officials and hospitals are quietly preparing to make excruciating decisions about how they would ration lifesaving care." There's only one thing worse as a healthcare provider than having a patient die during your care, and that's having to make the decision that lead directly to their death. However, there are moments worse than that, like realizing you prioritized the wrong patient because of an unknown.
"Quartz spoke with eight ethicists, all of whom agreed that in such dire situations, those who have the best chance of surviving get priority. Despite the unanimity, all agreed that this decision is far from easy and should not be taken lightly." A little on the ethics surrounding these decisions.
"The United States has reached a grim milestone as the number of deaths linked to coronavirus passed 1,000 in the country on Thursday, according to a count by NBC News." With some in-depth look at the number in NY.
"'I believe that (Germany is) just testing much more than in other countries, and we are detecting our outbreak early,' said Christian Drosten, director of the institute of virology at Berlin's Charité hospital."
"Gov. Tate Reeves signed an executive order early this evening superseding a patchwork of local bans on public gatherings in Mississippi and other heightened restrictions that several municipalities across the state have ordered or considered in the wake of COVID-19’s spread inside Mississippi. The state reached 320 official cases today, up 300 percent since 80 known cases on Friday." Of course he's a Republican. Did you really need to ask? Actually the governor issued his own "stay at home" order, which superseded any local order, but added a shit-ton load of more industries to the "essential" category and said restaurants should keep open but limit dine-in numbers. (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)
"The strategies are among hundreds of tactics and key policy decisions laid out in a 69-page National Security Council playbook on fighting pandemics, which POLITICO is detailing for the first time… The Trump administration was briefed on the playbook’s existence in 2017, said four former officials, but two cautioned that it never went through a full, National Security Council-led interagency process to be approved as Trump administration strategy." A playbook the White House failed to follow.
"Unbeknownst to the entire space physics community, 34 years ago Voyager 2 flew through a plasmoid, a giant magnetic bubble that may have been whisking Uranus’s atmosphere out to space. The finding, reported in Geophysical Research Letters, raises new questions about the planet’s one-of-a-kind magnetic environment."
"Australia's Great Barrier Reef has suffered another mass bleaching event - the third in just five years… Warmer sea temperatures - particularly in February - are feared to have caused huge coral loss across the world's largest reef system." We're boned.
"New Unemployment Insurance claims are pouring into state labor departments at a pace that’s so unprecedented it’s quite literally off the charts… The surge is so large that there's basically no way to forecast what’s next for the economy since we’ve never seen layoffs occur at this pace in the past. It’s a scary situation that underscores the extent to which this recession is not the same as the 2008 Great Recession — it might be worse."
"A record 3.28 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week as the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the country. The Labor Department's report Thursday was one of the first official indicators of how many people have suddenly been forced out of work nationally." While most reports of "record shattering" are merely hype, this one is truly record shattering. The previous record was 695,000 in 1982. "The staggering jobless claims figure was well above the levels seen during the darkest days of the Great Recession, and the worst isn't over yet, economic forecasters say."
"Mark Zandi… is the chief economist at Moody’s, an analyst highly regarded by both political parties, and generally not prone to hyperbole. Yet when I spoke with him on the phone yesterday, he immediately reached for the metaphor of a devastating natural disaster to describe the toll that the pandemic will take on American commerce—the businesses it will destroy, the jobs it will wipe out, the retirement nest eggs it will crack and shatter… Yet what is scariest about the new economic projections is that they are probably too rosy." And that article is almost a week old now.
So just what is the Dow doing with the news of 3+ million people out of work (and those are just the ones who were able to file unemployment claims), the worst 1 week increase in unemployment since we've started keeping track and the news of a potential deal on the corporate bailout with some scraps of money to help those unemployed? Yeah, just what you would think. As of this writing it's up over 1000 points.
"The remains of a Kentucky teen who went missing in 2010 have been found in Ohio, police said."
"According to the FBI, Wilson had 'taken the necessary steps' to acquire materials needed to build the bomb. He was being monitored at all times by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force 'in order to protect public safety.'" The FBI kills a man while attempting to arrest him in Kansas City. He's a quiet boy who hung out with his grandmother, according to neighbors. It's always the quiet ones. (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)
"Former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran 13 years ago, has died in custody there, according to statement from his family… Levinson, the longest-held hostage in US history, disappeared in 2007 on the Iranian island of Kish."
"The U.S. ambassador to London has said China had endangered the world by suppressing information about the coronavirus outbreak thus allowing it to spread far beyond the Communist republic’s borders."
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