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Category: Health

Social distancing is a social justice issue

Social distancing is a social justice issue

Phillip Picardi writes: The headlines have not been bringing good news. The infection and death rate of COVID-19 (known colloquially as coronavirus) is steadily rising, with the CDC estimating a worst-case scenario of between 160 and 214 million infected people in the United States alone, with the potential for more than a million deaths. To avoid this nightmare scenario, many companies have asked their employees to work from home, live television talk shows have pivoted to skeleton crews and empty…

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Trump finds his MAGA movement fracturing over coronavirus

Trump finds his MAGA movement fracturing over coronavirus

Politico reports: Just two weeks after President Donald Trump rallied conservatives to focus on the threat of socialism, his followers are splitting over the coronavirus pandemic. On one side are those like Bill Mitchell, who dismiss it as nothing worse than the flu, and the drive to eradicate it as “climate change 2.0” — as in, a media-lefty mass hysteria. On the other side are pro-Trump fixtures like Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller, who have been sounding alarms on the…

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The incompetence pandemic

The incompetence pandemic

Politico reports: Welcome to politics’ darkest hour. If the coronavirus outbreak has taught us anything beyond the necessity of careful hygiene, it’s that the first victim of a pandemic is leadership. At no time in the past 75 years has the world been in more need of a “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” moment; and at no time have global leaders so utterly failed to deliver. From Beijing to Brussels, from Rome to Washington, London…

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The UK government only just realised that its coronavirus strategy would ‘likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths’

The UK government only just realised that its coronavirus strategy would ‘likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths’

BuzzFeed reports: The UK only realised “in the last few days” that attempts to “mitigate” the impact of the coronavirus pandemic would not work, and that it needed to shift to a strategy to “suppress” the outbreak, according to a report by a team of experts who have been advising the government. The report, published by the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team on Monday night, found that the strategy previously being pursued by the government — dubbed “mitigation” and involving…

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The United States now faces a crisis that disproves everything the country believes about itself

The United States now faces a crisis that disproves everything the country believes about itself

Anne Applebaum writes: At the moment, many Americans are still convinced that, even in this crisis, our society is more capable than others. Quite a lot was written about the terrifying and reckless behavior of the authorities in Wuhan, China, who initially threatened doctors who began posting information about the new virus, forcing them into silence. On the very day that one of those doctors, Li Wenliang, contracted the virus, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued a statement declaring,“So far…

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Trump-initiated airport chaos provides a case study in how to spread a pandemic

Trump-initiated airport chaos provides a case study in how to spread a pandemic

Cheryl Benard writes: Like thousands of Americans and Europeans scrambling to get to the United States before the travel ban went into effect and flights were canceled, I flew back to the United States from Vienna on Friday. Arriving at Dulles International Airport via London, I encountered a case study in how to spread a pandemic. I had thought I was lucky to get one of the last seats home. And I was confident, because Dulles had been identified by…

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Andrew Cuomo to President Trump: Mobilize the military to help fight coronavirus

Andrew Cuomo to President Trump: Mobilize the military to help fight coronavirus

In a letter addressed to President Trump, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, writes: [Y]ou must anticipate that, without immediate action, the imminent failure of hospital systems is all but certain. According to one projection, as many as 214 million people in our country could be infected over the course of the epidemic. Of those, as many as 21 million people could require hospitalization. This would crush the nation’s medical system. New York State has just 53,470 hospital beds,…

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Trump administration wants to loosen federal rules meant to control infections in nursing homes

Trump administration wants to loosen federal rules meant to control infections in nursing homes

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration has been working to relax regulations governing America’s nursing homes, including rules meant to curb deadly infections among elderly residents. The main federal regulator overseeing nursing homes proposed the rule changes last summer, before the coronavirus pandemic highlighted the vulnerability of nursing homes to fast-spreading diseases. The push followed a spate of lobbying and campaign contributions by people in the nursing-home industry, according to public records and interviews. The coronavirus has killed…

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With unprecedented force and speed, a global recession is likely taking hold

With unprecedented force and speed, a global recession is likely taking hold

The Washington Post reports: The United States is suffering the most abrupt and widespread cessation of economic activity in its history, hurtling toward a recession that could mean lost jobs, income and wealth for millions of Americans. Across the country, consumer spending — which supports 70 percent of the economy — is grinding to a halt as fears of the escalating coronavirus pandemic keep people from stores, restaurants, movie theaters and workplaces. The rapid national shutdown already has caused layoffs…

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Singapore was ready for Covid-19 — other countries should take note

Singapore was ready for Covid-19 — other countries should take note

Wired reports: This pandemic—the new disease Covid-19, the virus SARS-CoV-2—is not Singapore’s first epidemiological nightmare. In 2002 and 2003, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, the original SARS, tore out of China and through Asia, killing 33 people in Singapore and sparking wholesale revisions to the city-state’s public health system. “They realized they wanted to invest for the future, to reduce that economic cost if the same thing were to happen again,” says Martin Hibberd, an infectious disease researcher now at the…

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As protective measures against the coronavirus vary county to county, Americans see the cost

As protective measures against the coronavirus vary county to county, Americans see the cost

The New York Times reports: David Norton, who helps to run a community center in this small Rhode Island city, is not a scientist. Neither were the board members who gathered for an emergency meeting last week, to decide whether the risk of contagion meant they should cancel their upcoming events. They sat together — a nurse, a civil servant, a therapist, an insurance executive — and tried to decode the guidance given by state and federal authorities. Rhode Island’s…

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Why a Roman philosopher’s views on the fear of death matter as coronavirus spreads

Why a Roman philosopher’s views on the fear of death matter as coronavirus spreads

Lucretius Carus. Internet Archive Book Images/Flickr By Thomas Nail, University of Denver With the global spread of the new coronavirus, fears about illness and death weigh heavily on the minds of many. Such fears can often result in a disregard for the welfare of others. All over the world, for example, essential items such as toilet paper and hand sanitizer have been sold out, with many people stockpiling them. A first-century B.C. Roman poet and philosopher, Lucretius was worried that…

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This coronavirus is unlike anything in our lifetime, and we have to stop comparing it to the flu

This coronavirus is unlike anything in our lifetime, and we have to stop comparing it to the flu

Charles Ornstein writes: As a longtime health care reporter, I see the unfolding coronavirus pandemic as representing everything I’ve read about — from the early days of epidemiology to the staggering toll of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic — but had not covered in my lifetime. And still, I have been caught off guard by the pushback from top elected officials and even some friends and acquaintances who keep comparing it to the flu. “So last year 37,000 Americans died…

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Infected people without symptoms might be driving the spread of coronavirus more than we realized

Infected people without symptoms might be driving the spread of coronavirus more than we realized

CNN reports: New studies in several countries and a large coronavirus outbreak in Massachusetts bring into question reassuring assertions by US officials about the way the novel virus spreads. These officials have emphasized that the virus is spread mainly by people who are already showing symptoms, such as fever, cough or difficulty breathing. If that’s true, it’s good news, since people who are obviously ill can be identified and isolated, making it easier to control an outbreak. But it appears…

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Gathering in groups right now is selfish and puts the lives of others at risk

Gathering in groups right now is selfish and puts the lives of others at risk

Charlie Warzel writes: The coronavirus and the disease it causes, Covid-19, are spreading across the United States faster than we can track or test. This week the confirmed caseload jumped from 309 to at least 2,170 cases in 49 states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. A testing shortage has experts fearing the true number is likely thousands of cases higher. Public life in America has methodically ground to a halt. This week companies instituted mandatory…

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Trump is breaking every rule in the CDC’s 450-page playbook for talking to the public during a health crisis

Trump is breaking every rule in the CDC’s 450-page playbook for talking to the public during a health crisis

The Washington Post reports: Amid an outbreak where vaccines, drug treatments and even sufficient testing don’t yet exist, communication that is delivered early, accurately and credibly is the strongest medicine in the government’s arsenal. But the Trump administration’s zigzagging, defensive, inconsistent messages about the novel coronavirus continued Friday, breaking almost every rule in the book and eroding the most powerful weapon officials possess: Public trust. After disastrous communications during the 2001 anthrax attacks — when white powder in envelopes sparked…

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