COVID-19 day 87 : 📈 671,425 cases; 33,286 deaths : 16 April 2020
China adjusts statistics to account for presumed positive deaths; strawberries languishing in CA; from TX, the elastomeric respirator; White House gives $55 million for N95 masks to bankrupt firm
It’s day 87 since the first case of coronavirus disease was announced in the United States. China adjusts its numbers, too. Food and agriculture still call to me. And then there’s serendipity.
Officials in China have added 1,290 coronavirus deaths and another 325 extra cases to the data on Wuhan. The total number of cases are not reported as 50,333, with 3,869 deaths.
Officials explained that the deaths had initially gone uncounted because in the early stages of the pandemic some people died at home, overwhelmed medics were focused on treating cases rather than reporting deaths and due to a delay in collecting figures from various government and private organizations.
That statement was obvious from news reports at the time.
It’s not just bacon that depends on restaurants. So do berries. Rick Tomlinson, president of the California Strawberry Commission, “estimates that as much as 30% of the berries that are set to be harvested through the peak might not have a home.” That’s 24 million pounds a week, of a highly perishable product, that might need to be trashed.
With three different knocks on my digital door, I thought it must be a good time to raise the painful issue of grief. First up, via Twitter, KNKX public radio in Seattle:
While preparing this Wednesday night, I stumbled on an anonymous “Franciscan blessing.” Its atypical format and immediate challenge not to accept “easy answers” led me to search for the source. Because, hobby horse. Eventually I found it and was grateful I had undergone the search. The author, Sister Ruth Fox, wrote this “originally for graduates of Dickinson State University” in North Dakota.
May God bless you with discontent with easy answers, half truths, superficial relationships, so that you will live from deep within your heart…
Along the way, Dr. Google uncovered something else: A Season of Healing, an ebook published by King of Peace Episcopal Church in 2015. One irony: this church is located in Kingsland, Georgia.
This is a book about grieving, coming to terms with grief. And this disruptive pandemic sheds grief.
Like an early frost, the shock of loss never comes in due season. Whether a surprise, or long anticipated, there is the time before the loss and the time after. A clear delineation in our lives, cutting apart what was, from what will be.
Although published by a church, these 365 readings are not particularly churchy. (Neither am I.) Have a look. You might find some of them useful or know someone who might.
And let yourself grieve.
Thursday, Johns Hopkins reported 671,425 (639,628) cases and 33,286 (30,985) deaths in the US, an increase of 4.97% and 7.43%, respectively, since Wednesday.
That case rate is 202.85 per 100,000; the death rate is 100.56 per million.
One week ago, the case rate was 130.55 per 100,000; the death rate, 44.74 per million.
🤓Recommended reading
Yes, it’s almost a week old. It’s still amazing. I was trying to figure out a hook to share it. Voila, the YouTube clip, below.
🔬Research and medical news
Whereas providing 170 employees with N95 masks daily would cost more than $44,000 per year, the total cost of having them use the elastomeric cartridge masks amounts to around $2,000 per year.
At the Texas Center for Infectious Disease (TCID), employees get an elastomeric respirator on their first day. Not only are they reusable (they must be cleaned each day), “they’re much more effective than N95 masks.” Normally used in factory environments, these masks filter out out 99.97% of particles larger than 0.3 microns. The disposable N95, 95%.
A Tiny Hospital in Texas Might Help Solve the Mask Shortage, Medium elemental, 16 April.
A Chicago hospital treating severe Covid-19 patients with Gilead Sciences’ antiviral medicine remdesivir in a closely watched clinical trial is seeing rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms, with nearly all patients discharged in less than a week.
Early peek at data on Gilead coronavirus drug suggests patients are responding to treatment. STAT News, 16 April 2020.
🎦Recommended viewing (in a depressing or Jon Stewart sort of way)
We are privileged to have DISH DVR, and we rarely watch live TV. So we’ve escaped this monsoon of sameness.
💃🏼Life hack
⓵ Around the country
All 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands have identified COVID-19 cases and all have at least one death.
First it was the west coast governors; then the northeast. Now seven mid-western governors are forming a coalition to plan re-opening: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Colorado: Senior living and nursing facilities have been hard hit by COVID-19, starting in my backyard. Here’s one family’s story in Colorado, where the virus has been detected in at least 80 facilities.
Florida: if you caught that awesome photo of two nurses on Wednesday without credit or a backstory, here it is. A co-worker snapped the photo and social went wild.
⓶ Around the world
The number of affected countries/territories/areas jumped from 29 at the end of February to 208 today. Although early reports tied the outbreak to a seafood (“wet”) market in Wuhan, China, analyses of genomic data suggest that the virus may have developed elsewhere.
China:
⓷ Politics, economics and COVID-19
The timeline. Just Security has developed the most comprehensive timeline of COVID-19 and US policy that I’ve seen, beginning with the joint Obama-Trump transition team exercise for pandemic preparedness held Friday, 13 January 2017.
The Trump administration paid a bankrupt company with zero employees $55 million for N95 masks, which it's never manufactured. Business Insider, 16 April 2020.
The US Navy may reinstate Capt. Brett E. Crozier to command of the USS Theodore Roosevelt. the coronavirus-infected ship docked in Guam.
Posting the title is enough: My Wild, Totally Surreal Experience Covering a Trump Coronavirus Briefing. Politico, 16 April 2020.
What did they know and when did they know it? A long expose on Carnival from Bloomberg documents how the cruise line has led to at least 1,500 customers testing positive and at least 39 fatalities.
Cindy Friedman, an epidemiologist who leads the CDC’s cruise ship task force, “says several of the plagued Carnival ships didn’t even begin their voyages until well after the company knew it was risky to do so.”
⓸ Case count
There is a lag between being contagious and showing symptoms, between having a test and getting its results. The virus was not created in a lab.
🌎 16 April
Globally: 1 991 562 confirmed (76,647- new) 130 885 deaths (7,875 - new)
The Americas: 707 121 confirmed (33,760 - new) 30 245 deaths (2,909 - new)
Johns Hopkins interactive dashboard (11.30 pm Pacific)
Global confirmed: 2,159,450 (2,064,668)
Total deaths: 145,568 (137,078)
🇺🇸 16 April
CDC: 632,548 (605,390) cases and 31,071 (24,582) deaths
Johns Hopkins*: 671,425 (639,628) cases and 33,286 (30,985) deaths
State data*: 665,970 (633,775) identified cases and 30,425 (28,276)
Total tested (US, Johns Hopkins): 3,420,394 (3,261,611)
View infographic and data online: total cases, cases/100,000 and deaths/million.
* Johns Hopkins data, ~11.30 pm Pacific.
State data include DC, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands
See US (state/territory) total cases, cases/100,000 and deaths/million as infographics.
⓹ What you can do
Stay home as much as possible, period.
Digestive problems may be a symptom.
Resources
👓 See COVID-19 resource collection at WiredPen.
📝 Subscribe to Kathy’s Daily Memo :: Daily Memo archives
🦠 COVID-19 @ WiredPen.com
🌐Global news
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