"Snowy, slick conditions led to a massive multi-vehicle crash on the Kennedy Expressway (in Chicago) Wednesday morning."
"More than 2 million coronavirus cases have been reported globally, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The United States accounts for about 30% of those cases, with more than 600,000 nationwide."
"President Donald Trump's decision to withhold funding to the World Health Organization pending a review of its handling of the coronavirus pandemic is 'as dangerous as it sounds,' Bill Gates said Wednesday." I didn't need a "smart" person to tell me that. We all get that the president is trying to deflect criticism of his ignoring the problem until too late, and is willing to throw the entire world under the bus to try and burnish his image.
"The virus has since swept from one nursing home to another across the country, leaping between patients and staff. Carers at the Ambassador nursing and rehabilitation center in Detroit, home to about 150 long-term elderly residents, were disturbed as the symptoms spread… 'We didn’t have any protective gear,' a nursing assistant, who did not wish to be publicly identified out of concern over losing her job, told the Guardian. 'We had residents with symptoms and nothing to protect ourselves with … The management didn’t seem like they really cared.'" Diseases like the seasonal flu burn through nursing homes (and daycare centers) like wild fire, and until now that seemed to be an expected cost of doing business.
"California is in the 'optimistic phase' of the outbreak where they move from the surge phase to the suppression phase, Newsom said during a briefing on Tuesday. Officials have been mulling over how to ease restrictions for weeks, according to Newsom, and the announcement pulled back the curtain, making the private conversations public." Uh huh. Sure. Yeah, I think we're still heading through the "surge" phase, but whatever.
"Over the past few days, I’ve been reading the major plans for what comes after social distancing. You can read them, too. There’s one from the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, the left-leaning Center for American Progress, Harvard University’s Safra Center for Ethics, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer… I thought, perhaps naively, that reading them would be a comfort — at least then I’d be able to imagine the path back to normal. But it wasn’t. In different ways, all these plans say the same thing: Even if you can imagine the herculean political, social, and economic changes necessary to manage our way through this crisis effectively, there is no normal for the foreseeable future." Here's the thing, any plan to collect movement and contact data is a fucking marketing gold mine. Even if whatever organization is trustworthy enough to collect and not share it, the data pile is a huge honey pot. Every commercial hacker worth their salt will be trying to get it (and we might see corporate sponsored black-hat hacking come into the open). I'll also point out the line, "… even if the test has a high false-negative rate…" because it's becoming apparent that the current US testing does produce a number of false-negatives (currently blamed on "testing too early", but after a patient has symptoms).
"At least 5,400 nurses, doctors, and other health care workers responding to the coronavirus outbreak in the United States have been infected by the disease, and dozens have died, according to a BuzzFeed News review of data reported by every state and Washington, DC. However, the true number is undoubtedly much higher, due to inconsistent testing and tracking." Our current policy at the hospital is if you start showing symptoms, you are to self-quarantine at home, and use more precautions with patients. You will not be tested, however. That may change now that we have in-house testing (just this week), but I haven't read that update in the daily policy/procedure updates. I will also point out there are huge differences between hospitals on the use of PPE. Also note for the states that do at least some reporting breaking out healthcare workers our infection rate is running between 10-25% of all cases in the state.
"Speaking Tuesday in the Rose Garden of the White House, President Donald Trump denied making a comment he did make. He criticized the World Health Organization for the same thing he has done before. He wrongly suggested he was the only national leader to impose travel restrictions on China. He claimed he was 'authorizing' governors to lift coronavirus restrictions even though this power always belonged to governors. He falsely claimed, again, that 'nobody ever thought' there would be a crisis like this. And he repeated some of his favorite false claims about his tariffs on China." Fact checking, once thought to be the dry ground of intellectuals is now the daily fodder for reporting. And reporters are finally gaining memory to push-back in real time.
"While President Donald Trump commands the spotlight at White House coronavirus briefings – sometimes overshadowing and contradicting federal experts – America's governors often take a different tact, letting state epidemiologists and public health officials lead the way." Well, most state governors aren't as much of a narcissist as the president. Also, they're closer to the ground, as it were. They are also mostly politicians and know if they don't deliver, they will be out of office. Unless you're in Florida. Also, the presidential presser isn't actually meant to be informational, but instead is both a stand-in for the president's political rallies and his ego needs inflating as well as being a venue to show his supporters how tough he is with "the media."
"UnitedHealth, the largest U.S. health insurer, on Wednesday beat quarterly profit expectations, boosted by strength across its businesses, and maintained its 2020 outlook while it continues to assess the impact of COVID-19." Don't worry, that cost will come due soon enough.
"Bank of America said Wednesday that first-quarter profit slumped 45% as the company set aside $3.6 billion for loan-loss reserves because of the coronavirus pandemic."
"We could call this fading era, 'The Time of the Unicorn.' Unicorns were not just a number, they represented a kind of dream of a mythical startup investment that could make an early investor rich forever. Unicorns, as many pointed out, were getting suspiciously common." I know it seems impossible to the younger crowd, but history is littered with broken dreams of better technology, better services, fantastic products, all of which don't even survive memory. But don't worry, "The big money will be okay."
"South Korea has been holding an election unlike any other… Voters wore masks and stood at least 1m apart. They had their temperature taken, disinfected their hands and wore plastic gloves… Only then were they given their voting slip and allowed to head into the booth to cast their ballot."
"The U.S. government has started sending coronavirus stimulus payments to millions of Americans… Many people, however, are already griping that they had not yet seen their payments." Many rich people are griping they haven't gotten it yet. Actually I've heard more griping about the Payroll Protection loans way more. But you know those poors, it's never good enough. But the article reminds you to make sure your bank account information and address are updated/correct, and points to the website where you can apply if you normally don't submit a tax return (mostly senior citizens and students).
Why government needs "fixing". After nearly 4 decades of conservative ideology, most government infrastructure is showing it's age. Like many state's unemployment systems. "States have been starved of funding they need for running their unemployment insurance systems, money that under the 1935 Social Security Act is supposed to come from the federal government. According to a 2017 presentation by the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, the federal funding available for state unemployment insurance agencies to upgrade their technology, pay workers, and cover other administrative expenses has been falling steadily for the past 25 years, dipping roughly 30 percent below mid-1990s levels." You may remember the attempt to upgrade the IRS that failed because the current computers used were unable to interface with new technology and it was "too expensive" to rebuild from the ground up. Note it's not getting any cheaper the longer we wait. Also, please note, this is not for government not knowing the problems, it's because most of them either don't have the courage to do what is necessary, or the political ideology is driving the demand that government is to remain broken.
"Dozens of Facebook pages run by residents and emigres from the Balkan nation of Kosovo have been pushing inauthentic, and at times inflammatory, “blue lives matter” and other American-themed content, a months-long Snopes investigation has found. The pages, some of which have existed since 2014, have grown an audience of more than 2 million followers, primarily Americans, using pro-police and pro-military content, as well as nostalgic memes and illegitimate giveaways."
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