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Category: Health

U.S. airport screeners, health workers plagued by fear and anger as coronavirus spreads

U.S. airport screeners, health workers plagued by fear and anger as coronavirus spreads

Reuters reports: As coronavirus cases exploded across the world, federal medical workers tasked with screening incoming passengers at U.S. airports grew alarmed: Many were working without the most effective masks to protect them from getting sick themselves. Screeners with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked their supervisors this week to change official protocols and require stronger masks, according to an internal document reviewed by Reuters. On Friday evening, they learned their worst fears were realized: Two screeners,…

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Trump’s immigration policies may put people at risk of coronavirus

Trump’s immigration policies may put people at risk of coronavirus

The Guardian reports: Since 2017, Donald Trump has pushed a hardline immigration agenda that has sown confusion, fear and distrust among immigrant communities. Now, as the world deals with a public health emergency in the shape of the coronavirus outbreak, experts worry his immigration policies may put everyone at risk. There is a widespread fear that the president’s policies have sown such fear of deportation and wariness of any contact with US authorities among immigrants – who also have greater…

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‘As diagnostic testing ramps up, it will become clear that this is everywhere’

‘As diagnostic testing ramps up, it will become clear that this is everywhere’

Nature reports: Rohit Shankar left the virology laboratory at 2 a.m. on Wednesday, and was back at the lab bench by 7 a.m. the same day. “It’s okay,” he says, “I had a doughnut and a coffee.” Shankar, a medical scientist, and his colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle are poised to exponentially drive up the number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus disease COVID-19 around the city, in western Washington state. That’s because this week, they began…

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Virus testing blitz appears to keep Korea death rate low; plan to quarantine 16 million sparks chaos in Italy

Virus testing blitz appears to keep Korea death rate low; plan to quarantine 16 million sparks chaos in Italy

Bloomberg reports: Highly contagious and manifesting in some with little or no symptoms, the coronavirus has the world struggling to keep up. But when it comes to containing the epidemic, one country may be cracking the code — by doubling down on testing. South Korea is experiencing the largest virus epidemic outside of China, where the pneumonia-causing pathogen first took root late last year. But unlike China, which locked down a province of more than 60 million people to try…

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How the Trump administration squandered time instead of confronting the coronavirus crisis

How the Trump administration squandered time instead of confronting the coronavirus crisis

The Washington Post reports: This portrait of the precious weeks that President Trump and his administration frittered away in trying to deal with the coronavirus is the result of interviews with 16 current and former administration officials, state health officials and outside experts, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid assessments. Public health experts and officials faced a deluge of challenges, almost from the beginning. First there were the problems with the initial coronavirus test…

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‘I didn’t know people died from the flu,’ said Trump, apparently ignorant of his own family history

‘I didn’t know people died from the flu,’ said Trump, apparently ignorant of his own family history

The Washington Post reports: In Atlanta on Friday, President Trump talked about the number of people infected with the novel coronavirus in other countries vs. the United States. He also compared coronavirus disease with influenza. “Over the last long period of time, you have an average of 36,000 people dying” a year, the president said, gesturing toward National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony S. Fauci, who nodded confirmation. Trump continued: “I never heard those numbers. I would’ve…

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Trump’s strategy for combating coronavirus was destined to fail

Trump’s strategy for combating coronavirus was destined to fail

Time magazine reports: The Trump Administration’s strategy to combat COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, began with a relatively simple focus: keep it out of the United States. In service of that goal, the White House issued drastic travel restrictions, imposed mandatory quarantines, and repeatedly told the public that these steps were working. “We have contained this. I won’t say airtight but pretty close to airtight,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said in a television interview on Feb. 25, echoing Trump’s…

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Strong evidence that America is botching coronavirus testing

Strong evidence that America is botching coronavirus testing

The Atlantic reports: It’s one of the most urgent questions in the United States right now: How many people have actually been tested for the coronavirus? This number would give a sense of how widespread the disease is, and how forceful a response to it the United States is mustering. But for days, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has refused to publish such a count, despite public anxiety and criticism from Congress. On Monday, Stephen Hahn, the commissioner…

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The pattern that epidemics always follow

The pattern that epidemics always follow

Karl Taro Greenfeld writes: You are reading this because of your ancestors’ immune system. The odds of your predecessors surviving the myriad microbes that have stalked humanity every step of its march toward becoming Earth’s dominant species were incalculably long. More Homo sapiens have probably died from infectious disease than all other causes combined. Only in the past 150 years, owing to nutritional and medical advances, have we emerged from living in constant worry that a cough or fever or…

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As coronavirus spreads to 18 states, Trump minimizes the health threat

As coronavirus spreads to 18 states, Trump minimizes the health threat

The Hill reports: Patients in 18 states have tested positive or are presumptively positive for the spreading coronavirus as public health officials race to get ahead of the growing worldwide epidemic. Officials in Nevada, New Jersey, Tennessee and Texas said they had identified new cases in the last 24 hours, adding to an outbreak that has infected at least 162 people nationwide. There are worrying signs that the number of cases is poised to grow. [Continue reading…] Politico reports: President…

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What can the coronavirus teach us?

What can the coronavirus teach us?

Bill McKibben writes: There’s nothing good about the novel coronavirus—it’s killing many people, and shutting millions more inside, with fear as their main companion. However, if we’re fated to go through this passage, we may as well learn something from it, and it does strike me that there are a few insights that are applicable to the climate crisis that shadows all of our lives. Some of these lessons are obvious: giant cruise ships are climate killers and, it turns…

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The rich turn to concierge doctors, yachts, and chartered planes in the hope of avoiding the coronavirus

The rich turn to concierge doctors, yachts, and chartered planes in the hope of avoiding the coronavirus

The New York Times reports: The new coronavirus knows no national borders or social boundaries. That doesn’t mean that social boundaries don’t exist. “En route to Paris,” Gwyneth Paltrow wrote on Instagram last week, beneath a shot of herself on an airplane heading to Paris Fashion Week and wearing a black face mask. “I’ve already been in this movie,” she added, referring to her role in the 2011 disease thriller “Contagion.” “Stay safe.” Ms. Paltrow did not pose with just…

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Why hand-washing really is as important as doctors say

Why hand-washing really is as important as doctors say

U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Jerome M. Adams, center, demonstrates hand-washing to U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, left, and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, right, in Rocky Hill, Conn., March 2, 2020. AP Photo/Jessica Hill By Michelle Sconce Massaquoi, University of Oregon As the threat from the coronavirus grows, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health officials are stressing the importance of hand-washing. Prevention becomes essential to stopping the spread of the virus because there is no vaccine…

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Coronavirus pummels Iran leadership as data show spread is far worse than reported

Coronavirus pummels Iran leadership as data show spread is far worse than reported

The Washington Post reports: The coronavirus outbreak sweeping through Iran has delivered a jarring blow to the senior ranks of its government, infecting about two dozen members of parliament and at least 15 other current or former top figures, according to official reports. Among those sickened have been a vice president, a deputy health minister, and an adviser to the head of the judiciary, and the virus has struck at the pinnacle of power, killing an adviser to Supreme Leader…

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Italy to close all schools and universities through March 15 as coronavirus death toll rises

Italy to close all schools and universities through March 15 as coronavirus death toll rises

NBC News reports: Italy’s government on Wednesday announced it will temporarily close the nation’s schools and universities due to the coronavirus outbreak. State-run RAI radio and the ANSA and LaPresse news agencies reported earlier Wednesday that Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte had agreed on the closure during a Cabinet meeting. Education Minister Lucia Azzolina later said the school closures would be in effect from March 5 through March 15. Earlier Wednesday, Italy had the dubious honor of being the worst-affected country…

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How profit makes the fight for a coronavirus vaccine harder

How profit makes the fight for a coronavirus vaccine harder

Stephen Buranyi writes: Coronavirus appears to be with us for the long haul. Despite the unprecedented attempts at isolation and containment, with about 50 million people locked down and economic activity virtually halted in China, cases have spiked in recent weeks. Sixty-seven countries are now reporting a total of more than 8,000 infections outside China. The World Health Organization has been wary of using the word pandemic, but last week it advised countries to prepare as if one were imminent….

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