Amerika

Virus

• How UV light may protect us from the coronavirus

  Ultraviolet germicidal radiation is one of the methods presented by the CDC, and UV light has generated great interest from the public. It’s already used in hospitals to disinfect contaminated surfaces.

• New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo orders all people to wear face coverings in public

  Cuomo’s order came nearly two weeks after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its national coronavirus guidelines to recommend wearing face coverings in public places “where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain … especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.”

• Scientists in Boston, Australia and Netherlands About to Start Trial of BCG Vaccine Against COVID-19 Despite WHO Saying It Won’t Help

  While there is experimental evidence suggesting BCG may have non-specific effects on the immune system that can help ward off other pathogens—including those responsible for malaria—the WHO stresses “these effects have not been well characterized and their clinical relevance is unknown.”

• Coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths worldwide per one million population as of April 15, 2020, by country

  COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus that had not previously been identified in humans. The first case was detected in the Hubei province of China at the end of December 2019. Thousands of new cases are being reported each day, and because the illness has only recently been detected, it is not known exactly how the virus is spreading from person to person. However, the outbreak of the SARS coronavirus, which began in 2002, is thought to have spread via cough and sneeze droplets.

• New study suggests COVID-19 hopped from dogs to humans. Here’s why you should be skeptical.

  He found a coronavirus that primarily infects the canine intestine, and thus inferred that the dog gut might contain adequate ZAP levels to drive viral evolution in this way.

  “Only canids seem to have the tissue generating low-CpG CoVs during my study,” Xia said. If a precursor to SARS-CoV-2 breached the canine intestine, then this would have “resulted in rapid evolution of the virus” to lose CpG sites and become better equipped to infect humans, he wrote in the paper.

• Anti-malarial treatment hailed by Trump has no benefit for coronavirus patients, French researchers find

  Researchers compared more than 180 patients – some receiving hydroxychloroquine treatment and others who were not treated with the drug – and found their outcomes were almost identical.

• Critics question Swedish approach as coronavirus death toll reaches 1,000

  The Public Health Agency announced a death toll of 1,203 people from Covid-19 on Wednesday, a rate of 118 per million inhabitants, compared with 55 in Denmark and just 13 in Finland, both of which imposed strict early lockdowns to curb the virus’s spread.

  Sweden’s per-million tally is also significantly higher than the 42 recorded in Germany – but remains lower than the UK’s rate of 182 (as of Tuesday) and far below Italy’s 349 and Spain’s 399.

• Bhopal’s 5 Covid-19 fatalities were 1984 gas tragedy survivors

  On March 21, some organisations working for the welfare of gas tragedy survivors wrote to the state and central authorities concerned, saying an overwhelming number of gas victims suffer from respiratory, cardiovascular, kidney problems and cancer as a result of exposure to the toxic gas that leaked at the Union Carbide factory here in 1984.

• Fujifilm says significantly boosts capacity for COVID-19 treatment Avigan

  Fujifilm Holdings Corp of Japan said it has expanded manufacturing capacity to “significantly increase” the production of its anti-flu drug Avigan which is being tested as a treatment for COVID-19.

• ‘Cough chamber’ shows 2 metres of physical distancing not enough: Western University researchers

  The findings show that droplets from a cough can reach a person standing six feet away in just three seconds.

  “Even when you are 2.5 metres (eight feet) away, the airflow in the cough can still be moving at 200 millimetres a second,” explains the researcher behind the cough chamber, Eric Savory, who also collaborated with virologists at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto.

Freakout

• US to halt funding to WHO over coronavirus

  “Had the WHO done its job to get medical experts into China to objectively assess the situation on the ground and to call out China’s lack of transparency, the outbreak could have been contained at its source with very little death,” he told reporters.

  “This would have saved thousands of lives and avoided worldwide economic damage. Instead, the WHO willingly took China’s assurances to face value… and defended the actions of the Chinese government.”

• China’s ‘mask diplomacy’ wins support in Eastern Europe

  China was criticized in the West for its early mishandling of the crisis due to politically motivated foot-dragging while the virus raced through a province and its capital, Wuhan. Now it is seeking to change perceptions through “mask diplomacy” — a mix of soft power policy, political messaging and aid shipments — to portray Beijing as a generous and efficient ally.

• Humans Have Themselves to Blame for Covid-19

  Outbreaks are becoming more frequent for a very simple reason: There are more people coming into contact with wildlife species, as agriculture, forestry, mining and oil exploration activities have pushed into previously unpopulated areas, destroying animals’ natural habitats. The high-risk zones for new infections turn out to lie mostly in tropical regions — where biodiversity is high — undergoing significant land-use change.

• Document reveals why Canada sent protective equipment to China as COVID-19 threat was growing

  The Conservatives have lambasted the Liberal government for its donation, contending it left Canadian hospitals and health-care workers short of critical supplies.

  The memo says officials were in a rush to nail down that decision so the supplies could be shipped via a flight chartered to repatriate Canadians stuck in Wuhan, the epicentre of the viral outbreak.

• Coronavirus social distancing may be needed until 2022: Harvard researchers

  Researchers found that too-strict social distancing could actually drag things out by slowing the formation of herd immunity. In one scenario that assumed 20 weeks of strict control measures and extensive social distancing, a resurgence followed the lifting of control measures that was nearly as bad as the peak of an uncontrolled epidemic.

  Read the full study.

• Sources believe coronavirus originated in Wuhan lab as part of China’s efforts to compete with US

  Documents detail early efforts by doctors at the lab and early efforts at containment. The Wuhan wet market initially identified as a possible point of origin never sold bats, and the sources tell Fox News that blaming the wet market was an effort by China to deflect blame from the laboratory, along with the country’s propaganda efforts targeting the U.S. and Italy.

• The U.S. has thrown more than $6 trillion at the coronavirus crisis. That number could grow.

  All told, the U.S. government has committed more than $6 trillion to arrest the economic downturn from the pandemic. The moves appear to have calmed stock market investors but may not be enough to hold the economy together if the health crisis drags through the summer.

• Did Xi Jinping Deliberately Sicken the World?

  Hearing the World Health Organization (WHO) repeat and praise the Party line while giving short shrift to health advice until quite recently has alarmed many. Seeing Beijing sell defective wares and claim it as humanitarian aid has angered many more. Spreading disinformation during the crisis and hinting at using life-saving goods for leverage (original here) — while denying even the faintest hint of wrongdoing — I suspect have ruined China’s reputation for some time to come. In short, China’s good offices have been reserved almost entirely for burnishing its image at the world’s expense, while calling it “the greatest kindness and good deeds.”

• Artist David Hockney says smokers are immune to coronavirus

  The lifelong puffer points to research in China that found disproportionately fewer smokers in the hospital battling COVID-19 compared to the number of smokers in the general populace — although other studies have found the opposite is true.

• Projectile pooper pleads guilty for not staying home

  “She then proceeded to pull the dress she was wearing up, exposing her body underneath and again started projectile defacating all over the office,” the report reads. “[The officer] backed up into the corner in the office to avoid the flying feces and called for backup. The female continued to hold her dress up and kept yelling and screaming at everyone around. After she put her dress down, she kept saying that she had the Coronavirus and wanted treatment.”

Tags: covid-19, linkpost, panicdemic