Adam Schlesinger, and so it goes. ("He was killed by a cell-u-lar phone explosion…")
"James Patterson has a history of helping independent bookstores… On Thursday, he announced #SaveIndieBookstores, a partnership with the American Booksellers Association and the Book Industry Charitable Foundation. Patterson is contributing $500,000 and is urging others to contribute this month."
"Doctors like Gong are seeing many dozens of patients walk through their doors each day, and they're getting a better idea of who is at risk for severe illness. Here's their advice for what to watch out for if you think you or a loved one might have COVID-19."
"New video from inside Mount Sinai Queens shows how dire this situation has gotten… The video shows all the rooms are filled. Usually, the halls are very neat and empty, but now there are patients everywhere because of the pandemic."
"Donald Trump has insisted that the United States 'has to help' two coronavirus-stricken cruise liners approaching Florida amid warnings that more passengers could die on board if the boats are left stranded at sea… On Thursday, Florida officials and federal agencies are expected to decide whether both ships can enter US waters and proceed to Port Everglades from where hundreds of guests will be taken home."
"Spain’s death toll from the coronavirus rose above 10,000 on Thursday after a record 950 people died overnight, but health officials saw a glimmer of hope with the epidemic slowing in terms of proportional daily increases in infections and deaths."
"Facing calls to declare a coronavirus state of emergency, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was derided on social media on Thursday for instead offering people cloth masks, pointing to growing frustration with his handling of the crisis."
"Some devout Orthodox Jewish communities have been slow to follow lockdown orders in Israel, helping drive a surge in coronavirus cases that officials are struggling to contain." Whispers, some of us are also worrying about what happens when this gets into the Amish community here.
"President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered most Russians to stay off work until the end of the month as part of a partial industrial shutdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus." Except you, my Russian friends. Stay safe.
"America’s top doctor appears to have softened his stance over the effectiveness of face masks when it comes to preventing the spread of the coronavirus… U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams had initially advised against the general public wearing face masks, saying they were 'not effective' in preventing people from contracting COVID-19 and amplified the risk of health-care providers being unable to get them." Waits for House of Armani face masks to be on this Summer's runways. A standard procedure/surgical mask will not prevent you from getting a virus, but it may help you to not spread it around so much.
"When she asked hospital administrators why (couldn't wear her own N95 mask), the reasons kept changing. First, Buckalew said she was told it was against hospital policy for health care workers to bring their own gear. Then, she said, administrators told her if she wore her own N95 mask, others would want to wear the masks as well and the hospital didn't have enough. Finally, Buckalew said, it was that CDC guidelines don't require the mask at all times." Whispers, for the first two weeks our policy on masks and visitors was changing on a daily basis. It was so bad, we simply stopped updating our policy bulletin board. Many people wanted to wear at least procedure masks all the time, and we were told no. Now we can't enter the ER without a mask and eye protection, and we believe our procedure next week will be wearing masks 24/7 while in the hospital. The only thing that hasn't changed is we're not to wear masks when we leave or arrive.
"The mayor of Los Angeles urged 4 million residents to wear masks to combat the coronavirus when they walk out in public, even as state health officials shied away from requiring a coverup." But not N95s.
"The worldwide race to protect people against being infected by unwitting coronavirus carriers intensified Thursday, pitting governments against each other as they buy protective gear and prompting new questions about who should wear masks, get temperature checks or even be permitted to go outside."
"But since Trump never admits error, he has had to cover his reversals in a series of lies. In his press conference yesterday, Trump asserted that, when he had insisted the virus had been contained and would be almost harmless, he had merely been trying to give the country 'hope.' Today, when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked about those statements, Vice-President Mike Pence said, 'I don’t believe the president has ever belittled the threat of the coronavirus.'"
"Vice President Mike Pence sought to cast blame on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and China Wednesday when asked why the US was so late in understanding the enormity of the coronavirus pandemic." Totally not our fault.
"Although officials implied that this estimate was based on the administration's own in-house modeling, they did not provide further details about those calculations. Instead, officials discussed a model from an outside group – the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, or IHME — which produced projections very similar to the administration's findings, according to Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the coronavirus task force… NPR contacted two researchers who helped put together IHME's model. We learned of some assumptions made by the model that administration officials did not mention… Here's what those assumptions are and why they matter."
"In the latest sign of how dramatically the coronavirus pandemic is altering the social landscape, even the liberal San Francisco Bay Area this week banned reusable grocery bags as a sanitary measure, dismaying recycling advocates who say durable sacks should still be allowed at stores."
"Hobby Lobby reclosed all of its Ohio stores Wednesday night after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the Ohio Attorney General."
"Esper did not say who is recommending a full military shutdown and it's not entirely clear what provoked his comment. Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman, in an email to NPR, denied there was any exaggeration in Esper's remarks at the White House… 'There were a number of comments online and in articles on the [USS Theodore Roosevelt] stating or implying that since we are "not at war" we should just stop all our military activity and pull everyone off the ships and stop our training,' Hoffman wrote." Many people are saying… Our civilian leadership of the military is showing signs of paranoia. This is not good.
"A California man faces federal charges after officials allege he ran a train 'at full speed off the end of rail tracks' near the U.S. Naval Ship Mercy, the 1,000-bed floating hospital that arrived in the Port of Los Angeles last week amid the coronavirus pandemic… Eduardo Moreno, 44, of San Pedro was charged Wednesday with one count of train wrecking after the Tuesday incident… Moreno told police he believed the Mercy had 'an alternate purpose related to COVID-19 or a government takeover,' according to the DOJ." So he tried to ram the ship with his train. I wondered when the Jade Helm people would come out of the woodwork again.
"Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, will get a security detail amid increased threats to his security, according to multiple reports."
"NASA is bringing the universe straight to your living room with new internet and social media special, NASA at Home… The space agency is offering it to help families cooped up at home because of the coronavirus… Many of the materials needed are most liklely(SIC) already at home like tape, paper clips and straws." Reimagining the scene from Apollo XIII where in the workrooms at NASA directors are dumping out the junk drawer and stating, "This is all we have to work with. Failure is not an option."
"NASA's next great observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, has fully deployed its primary mirror for the first time, marking another milestone on its journey to space."
"More than 12,000 people have applied to join what NASA is calling the 'Artemis Generation,' a new class of astronauts to help the agency return humans to the moon and reach outward to Mars. It's the second highest number of applications the agency's astronaut corps has ever received, NASA officials said."
Who says it's all bad news? "The Commerce Department said Thursday that the gap between what the U.S. buys and what it sells abroad dropped 12.2% to $39.9 billion in February, the lowest since September 2016. Exports fell 0.4% to $207.5 billion. Imports skidded 2.5% to $247.5 billion." Trump makes good on his promise to reduce our trade deficit, and it only took a global pandemic to get it back to where it was in the Obama administration. Congrats!
"World stocks were mixed on Thursday, as the death toll from coronavirus rose and economic pain deepened, with another record week of jobless claims expected in the United States."
"The torrent of Americans filing for unemployment insurance skyrocketed last week as more than 6.6 million new claims were filed, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That brings to 10 million the total Americans who filed over the past two weeks."
"On Wednesday, the auto industry started reporting its sales results for the first quarter of 2020. The industry's prospects weren't looking amazing even before the worst disease pandemic in more than a century, and 2019 saw new car and truck sales fall by 1.3 percent in the US. But those results look positively rosy compared to Q1 2020."
"Millions of essential workers are showing up for their jobs at warehouses, food processing plants, delivery trucks and grocery checkout lines. Work that is often low-paid, and comes with few protections, is now suddenly much more dangerous… America has a new appreciation for these workers." But there are still no high-level calls for these people to be paid a living wage. "But (John Logan, a professor and director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University) notes that companies' policy changes are temporary, just for the duration of this crisis. It's an open question whether all this new appreciation will last."
"As the new coronavirus spreads across Europe, ravaging economies and killing thousands, governments and the European Union are focusing much of their economic rescue efforts on containing a boom in joblessness, particularly by helping companies not fire workers."
"After getting pushback from members of Congress over a requirement that Social Security recipients file abbreviated tax returns to receive their coronavirus stimulus payments from the federal government, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin dropped the requirement on Wednesday evening."
"Trump emphatically has faced real opposition, and reveled in it, on his path to power. But he has met earlier chapters of adversity, in politics and business, with reliance on traits—bluster, defiance, implacable self-promotion—that, however unorthodox, served him quite well in the old context… Now the context has changed but—so far—Trump has not, or to the extent he has tried it, has not lasted more than a few hours at a time." That's been predicted before. I'm not sure they're factoring in the rank ignorance or cynicism of the president' supporters.
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