Coronavirus (non political)

Singapore Was Ready for Covid-19—Other Countries, Take Note (https://www.wired.com/story/singapore-was-ready-for-covid-19-other-countries-take-note/)

SARS was the warning shot that should have woke us up, it didn't. And now it's painfully obvious how unprepared our health care system is to deal with a pandemic. Not only the health care system but how about 25% of the workforce with no paid sick leave.

Where is all this shit coming from? Its obvious China doesn't give a flying fuck about anything...shit hole country

Where is all this shit coming from? Its obvious China doesn't give a flying fuck about anything...shit hole country

Why They're Called 'Wet Markets' — And What Health Risks They Might Pose (https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/31/800975655/why-theyre-called-wet-markets-and-what-health-risks-they-might-pose)

At least 10 people were killed in the collapse of Chinese hotel that was being used to isolate people who had arrived from other parts of China hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak, authorities said Sunday.

The sudden collapse of the building in the southeastern city of Quanzhou on Saturday evening trapped 71 people, China’s Ministry of Emergency Management said.

The ministry said that 38 had been rescued and 23 were still missing. Most of the rescued were taken to hospitals for treatment, some with serious injuries

The cause of the collapse was under investigation, and the owner of the building was put under police control, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2020/03/09/coronavirus-chinese-quarantine-site-collapses-10-dead-23-missing/4999110002/


At first I thought China took it down ... now that im thinking about it, Im guessing the hotel owner did. Perhaps get insurance money .... but no one would stay at his hotel after this so the hotel was going to be a total loss and he had to figure out a way to make the best of it .. financially for him.

man....Italy is in bad shape

Also supported my local Chinese food place for lunch today. They weren’t busy.

Also, can confirm all TP out at local store.

Singapore Was Ready for Covid-19—Other Countries, Take Note (https://www.wired.com/story/singapore-was-ready-for-covid-19-other-countries-take-note/)

They have a population about 3/4 of NY City very hard to compare.

They have a population about 3/4 of NY City very hard to compare.

bottom line is they had a plan and were able to get ahead of things vs scrambling as we've done along with others

I agree testing has been an issue...here and well everywhere. Federal government, red tape, bureaucracy, etc...its really not shocking. My problem is from the NYT article where Seattle clinics had the data it was here but was denied to escalate the issue based on regulation. Regs will bite you in the ass.

The stores are fucking crazy ,.................people need to calm the fuck down!

The U.S. government's response to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak has been "much, much worse than almost any other country that's been affected," Ashish Jha, who runs the Harvard Global Health Institute, told NPR on Thursday. "I still don't understand why we don't have extensive testing. Vietnam! Vietnam has tested more people than America has." Without testing, he added, "you have no idea how extensive the infection is," and "we have to shut schools, events, and everything down, because that's the only tool available to us until we get testing back up. It's been stunning to me how bad the federal response has been."

There are a lot of reasons why the U.S. lags other countries in testing for the new coronavirus — defective early tests by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the decision not to adopt an effective German test adopted by the World Health Organization — but Politico's Dan Diamond told Fresh Air's Terry Gross on Thursday that politics also seems to have played a role, along with mismanagement and infighting between, for example, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Seema Verma, the Medicare chief.

In January, Azar "did push past resistance from the president's political aides to warn the president the new coronavirus could be a major problem," Diamond said, but he "has not always given the president the worst-case scenario of what could happen. My understanding is [Trump] did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent weeks, and that's partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear — the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential re-election this fall."

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta discussed America's "sad" testing failure, the "provincial" decision not to use the WHO test, and other missteps and positive moves with Stephen Colbert on Thursday's Late Show. You can watch that below.

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-reportedly-rejected-aggressive-coronavirus-121835790.html

To be fair .... I read that the US also turned down WHO's test kit offers for 2 prior epidemics and the CDC was able to produce their own testing kits for those.

Of course, that was with a fully funded and staffed CDC .....

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The cuts started in 2018, as the White House focused on eliminating funding to Obama-era disease security programs. In March of that year, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, whose job it was to lead the U.S. response in the event of a pandemic, abruptly left the administration and his global health security team was disbanded.

That same year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was forced to slash its efforts to prevent global disease outbreak by 80% as its funding for the program began to run out. The agency, at the time, opted to focus on 10 priority countries and scale back in others, including China.

Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus outbreak and its impact on global business.

Also cut was the Complex Crises Fund, a $30 million emergency response pool that was at the secretary of state’s disposal to deploy disease experts and others in the event of a crisis. (The fund was created by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.)

Overall in 2018, Trump called for $15 billion in reduced health spending that had previously been approved, as he looked at increasing budget deficits, cutting the global disease-fighting budgets of the CDC, National Security Council (NSC), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Health and Human Services (HHS) in the process.

The effects of those cuts are being felt today. While the CDC announced plans to test people with flu-like symptoms for COVID-19, those have been delayed and only three of the country’s 100 public-health labs have been able to test for coronavirus. The administration’s request for additional funding came roughly two weeks after officials said HHS was almost out of funding for its response to the virus.

https://fortune.com/2020/02/26/coronavirus-covid-19-cdc-budget-cuts-us-trump/