First Newsome and now Cuomo. It’s nice to see some bi-partisan support, it’s what we need. And I’ll admit, I’m no fan of either, especially Cuomo, but these two and other governors are really stepping up.
Europe is now the “epicentre” of the global coronavirus pandemic, the head of the World Health Organization says.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged countries to use aggressive measures, community mobilisation and social distancing to save lives.
“Do not just let this fire burn,” he said.
His comments came as several European countries reported steep rises in infections and deaths. Italy has recorded its highest daily toll yet.
There were 250 deaths recorded over the past 24 hours, taking the total to 1,266, with 17,660 infections overall.
Spain, the worst-affected European country after Italy, reported a 50% jump in fatalities to 120 on Friday. Infections increased to 4,231.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says a state of alert will come into effect there on Saturday for two weeks.
Why Europe could be worse off than China
The number of cases of coronavirus reported every day in Europe has surpassed China at its peak.
But Europe is in a worse position.
The overwhelming majority of China’s cases were in one place, Hubei province and those were largely concentrated in one city, Wuhan.
It was dealt with by an authoritarian government that imposed the biggest quarantine in human history.
While there are hotspots in Europe, this is an outbreak across a continent and different countries are adopting very different strategies for dealing with coronavirus.
All these figures are based on cases that have been detected, but scientists fear there could be large outbreaks going on unnoticed in countries that don’t have the tools to spot them.
President Trump has suspended all travel from mainland Europe. If this sounds excessive you clearly haven’t been paying attention to just how bad things have got with the coronavirus in parts of the continent.
Northern Italy, especially, is experiencing horrors more redolent of a Medieval plague than of an advanced economy in the 21st century.
This thread, reportedly from a doctor working in an Accident and Emergency department in a Northern Italian hospital, gives a grim taste:
The current situation is difficult to imagine and numbers do not explain things at all. Our hospitals are overwhelmed by Covid-19, they are running 200% capacity
We’ve stopped all routine, all ORs have been converted to ITUs and they are now diverting or not treating all other emergencies like trauma or strokes. There are hundreds of pts with severe resp failure and many of them do not have access to anything above a reservoir mask.
Patients above 65 or younger with comorbidities are not even assessed by ITU, I am not saying not tubed, I’m saying not assessed and no ITU staff attends when they arrest. Staff are working as much as they can but they are starting to get sick and are emotionally overwhelmed.
In other words, many of Italy’s hospitals are overwhelmed. Every day they are having to make terrible Sophie’s Choice style decisions about which patients to save and which ones should be condemned to death — because they simply don’t have enough staff or equipment to keep them all alive.
Unless Trump takes drastic action — presuming it isn’t already too late — then this is the fate that awaits America too.
That’s why he was absolutely right to act in this dramatic way and for at least two good reasons.
First, political: it’s imperative — especially for those of us who believe that a second Trump term is America’s only hope — that by the year-end, when with luck the pandemic will have passed or at least diminished, President Trump emerges as a man who handled this crisis decisively and effectively. It would be just too awful if, despite his many achievements, Trump ended up handing the election to Joe Biden because of a public perception that he’d been dilatory in protecting America from the 21st century’s answer to the Black Death.
Second, geopolitical: Trump is right to shut off continental Europe because — in plague terms — it is the equivalent of one of those diseased carcasses that besieging armies used to fling with their ballistas over the city walls.
This is a consequence of its open borders policy. Under the European Union’s Schengen Agreement — one of the bloc’s defining features and by their own reckoning, greatest achievement — there is almost complete freedom of movement across national borders. Which means that everyone from gun- and drug-smugglers to terrorists to coronavirus victims can travel from one end of the continent to the other, with individual states virtually powerless to protect their own borders or citizens.
For those parents who haven’t already converted to home schooling to remove their children from public school those cesspools of leftist indoctrination
COVID-19 is in the news with new cases reported every day. The list of schools, colleges, and other institutions suspending their efforts is also adding up. But there’s one education sector that may get away with minimal disruption: homeschoolers. Families that take responsibility for their kids’ education have a distinct edge in terms of flexibility and adaptability when it comes to unexpected events like … well … a worldwide pandemic that has people on edge.
“Closing schools and using internet-based teleschooling to continue education” was the scenario envisioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Dr. Nancy Messonier in a February 25 press conference. “You should ask your children’s school about their plans for school dismissals or school closures. Ask if there are plans for teleschool.”
Teleschool? Homeschoolers are so on that. Or if they’re not into teleschooling, they have a stack of books and papers, kitchen-counter science experiments, video lectures … The list goes on, and much of it adds up to the “social distancing measures” of which teleschooling is supposed to be part.
What’s “social distancing”? As Messonnier noted, social distancing is “designed to keep people who are sick away from others.” That means breaking up large gatherings where germs can be shared and spread.
Discouraging gatherings is an important move from a public health perspective, but it’s enormously disruptive to businesses, government bodies, and organizations that are designed around assembling large numbers of people in one place. That means big challenges for, among other institutions, traditional brick-and-mortar schools. Homeschoolers, however, have an edge because their efforts are not inherently constructed around large gatherings.
That doesn’t mean that homeschoolers never get together. Contrary to accusations from critics, family-based education is not an inherently solitary venture.
Homeschooling often involves group lessons that take advantage of specialized expertise, collaborative projects, field trips with homeschooling associations, sports teams, and more—which means that homeschoolers have changes to make in a time of pandemic, too, in terms of reducing or eliminating outings and activities. But that doesn’t mean cutting down on education; these days, there are loads of relatively easy work-arounds for homeschooling families.
If you’re new to family-based education, and especially if you’re busy with your own remote work, you may find it best to go with a comprehensive online program, like a virtual publicly-funded charter school or tuition-charging private school.
Virtual private schools are available anywhere in the United States, while the availability of charters depends on your local laws. Arizona, where I live, maintains a list of virtual charter schools, but you’ll need to do a bit of research for your own state.
Besides full schools, the Internet is a treasure-trove of learning materials that don’t require you to trek to a bookstore, a lecture hall, or even to wait for package delivery. Classic literature is available for free in electronic format through Project Gutenberg, Khan Academy has long since expanded beyond its original mission of delivering math lessons, the American Chemical Society gives away a complete chemistry curriculum, and a variety of lesson plans are freely available from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Edsitement. If you’re interested, I’ve prepared a downloadable list of resources.
I’ve never met a conference software that I’ve loved—video sometimes freezes, audio drops out, and connections fail. That said, my son has used both Blackboard and Zoom in the course of his lessons, and he and his peers as young as 10 or so took to it naturally, even troubleshooting glitches as needed. Conferencing software will accommodate presentations, feedback, shared screens, and other means of simulating a classroom across distances and without putting students in one place to share germs. Teachers and students can even transfer files back and forth.
Skype is an excellent stand-by for online meetings with teachers. Yes, your kids can be verbally quizzed in a foreign language across that platform while the teacher looks on to check for cheat sheets or other shortcuts. The kids might then receive messaged feedback through the same software.
For teamwork on projects, I think working online may be more effective than getting a bunch of kids together in one room. Recently, I got to listen to a bunch of 14- and 15-year-olds collaborate on a script for a skit that they edited in Google Docs. For presentations, they’ve worked the same way in Google Slides. One nice feature is that the technological solutions really cut down on the “I left my work at my friend’s house” factor. No, you didn’t, kid; it’s sitting in the cloud.
(Incidentally, collaborative software doesn’t make teenagers act any less like teenagers. If forced to listen in, you will still want to bang your head on a table.)
When it comes to sharing short pieces of work, art, and the like, my son and his friends sometimes take photos of their efforts and text them to each other or to an instructor. That’s a quick and easy solution in many cases when uploading and downloading documents is more effort than necessary.
The hard part isn’t finding work for your home students to do; it’s keeping them focused. Every child is different, and some are more self-directed than others.
Yes, you will have to check on them even if you’re not directly administering their lessons. That can be a challenge for new homeschoolers, but my experience is that most kids respond better to mom and dad than they do to teachers they barely know and won’t see after the year’s end.
Socializing is where the “social distancing” recommended for our virus-ridden times bites deep. But I have to imagine that cell phones, social media, and video chat make easier work of dealing with the requirements of the pandemic than what our ancestors suffered when they dodged polio or the Spanish flu. The kids can all complain to each other over their favorite apps about the privations they’re suffering in these hard times.
Fast delivery, downloadable books, and streaming video do away with a bit of the sting, too. The kids can still consume current media and discuss their favorite shows and novels—just not face-to-face for a while.
And here’s the thing. If you try homeschooling, you may discover that it’s not just a good way to keep COVID-19 at bay, but an effective approach to education more generally and a good fit for your family. If so, well, welcome to a happy, healthy, and growing club.
Ezekiel Emanuel is Rahm Emanual’s older brother. So he wants to check out when he’s 75? That’s okay by me.
Former Vice President Joe Biden — the presumptive Democratic nominee — may not openly support full-on socialized medicine, but his choice of advisors on a new Public Health Advisory Committee is very suspicious. Biden announced the committee as part of his plan to fight the coronavirus, but one of his advisors, Ezekiel Emanuel, published an op-ed in The Atlantic saying he wants to die at age 75 because life simply isn’t worth living after that point. The op-ed isn’t just personal, either — it attempts to convince the reader that death may be preferable to living in advanced age.
In fact, Emanuel’s op-ed goes on to advise the elderly to refuse life-saving medical care — the exact kind of care needed to combat the coronavirus. Given the fact that the coronavirus poses the greatest risk for the elderly, Biden’s choice of Emanuel is troubling — if not downright terrifying.
“Here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss,” Emanuel writes. “It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.”…
Yes, Biden’s coronavirus advisor encouraged people over 75 to avoid flu shots. Joe Biden himself is 77. Yet Emanuel’s advocacy against basic health treatments extends further.
A big challenge is antibiotics for pneumonia or skin and urinary infections. Antibiotics are cheap and largely effective in curing infections. It is really hard for us to say no. Indeed, even people who are sure they don’t want life-extending treatments find it hard to refuse antibiotics. But, as Osler reminds us, unlike the decays associated with chronic conditions, death from these infections is quick and relatively painless. So, no to antibiotics.
In another passage, Emanuel says he wants “no life-sustaining interventions” for himself. “I will die when whatever comes first takes me.”
Why advocate against flu shots, vaccines, antibiotics, and life-sustaining interventions?
You see, Ezekiel Emanuel is not a random doctor. He served as a top health care advisor to President Obama and was a central figure in the push for Obamacare. It is quite likely his end goal is some form of socialized medicine, and socialized medicine usually involves some form of health rationing.
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche announced Friday it had received emergency approval from US regulators for a new and much faster test for diagnosing the deadly new coronavirus.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given the green light to commercialise the SARS-CoV-2 Test to detect the virus that has sparked the global COVID-19 pandemic, Roche said in a statement.
The test can be run in high volumes on fully automated equipment, Roche said, suggesting it could provide more results far faster than other tests available.
“We are increasing the speed definitely by a factor of 10,” Thomas Schinecker, head of Roche’s diagnostics unit, said in an interview with Bloomberg News………..
The new Roche tests, which will also now be available in markets that accept the European CE-mark certification, are run on Roche’s widely available cobas 6800/8800 systems and can provide results within 3.5 hours, the company said.
In a 24-hour period, the largest machines can provide results on up to 4,128 tests, it said.
In a series of interviews with Good Morning America and CBS This Morning, Fauci gave his bleak assessment of what is still to come
White House coronavirus expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Friday morning that the current state of crisis in the US would last for two months and that ‘it’s all on the table’ in terms of how much more severe things may become.
In a series of interviews with Good Morning America and CBS This Morning, Fauci gave his bleak assessment of what is still to come.
‘It’s certainly going to get worse before it gets better…there’s no doubt we have not peaked yet,’ he said.
Asked directly if America was heading towards a complete shutdown like China and Italy, he would not rule it out.
‘I’m not sure we’re going to get to that.
‘I think that would be really rather dramatic, but I can tell you that all things are on the table.
‘We just have to respond as things evolve over the days and the weeks,’ he said.
There has been a dramatic shift in tone from the government in the last several days.
At the start of the week, President Trump was advising Americans not to panic and even said the virus would ‘go away’.
He then shut the border to Europeans, and said on Thursday that even US citizens who test positive for the virus would not be allowed to come home.
Fauci’s prediction was that there will be at least another several weeks of the current mode of crisis, but that it could last up to two months.
‘It will be at least a matter of several weeks. It’s unpredictable, but if you look at historically how these things work, it will likely be anywhere from a few weeks to up to eight weeks.
President Donald Trump plans to declare a national emergency on Friday over the coronavirus outbreak, invoking the Stafford Act to open the door to more federal aid for states and municipalities, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The president said he will hold a news conference at 3 p.m. in Washington. Trump spoke Friday with Emmanuel Macron, the French president tweeted, about the pandemic, and agreed to organize a video conference with world leaders on Monday to coordinate research efforts on a vaccine and treatments and work on how to respond to the economic fallout.
Trump is under increasing pressure to act as governors and mayors nationwide step up actions to mitigate the spread, closing schools and canceling public events. Declaring a national emergency would allow the government to marshal additional resources to combat the virus, and also marks a symbolic turning point for the president, who has repeatedly compared the coronavirus to the seasonal flu and insisted that his administration had the outbreak under control.
An emergency declaration would allow a state to request a 75% federal cost-share for expenses that include emergency workers, medical tests, medical supplies, vaccinations, security for medical facilities, and more, according to a letter Democrats sent the president earlier this week.
Only a few emergency declarations for public health threats have been made since the 1960s, and only two have targeted disease outbreaks, when President Bill Clinton in 2000 declared emergencies in New York and New Jersey in response to the West Nile Virus.
Major League Baseball is delaying the start of the 2020 regular season by at least two weeks in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the league announced Thursday.
NCAA CONFERENCES canceled their college basketball tournaments in rapid succession Thursday as the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic is felt across sports and popular culture.
The NHL has suspended its 2019-2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a statement published on Thursday afternoon, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman made the announcement.
Today, the LPGA informed its players that in an effort to minimize risks with the global outbreak of COVID-19 and following the California Government’s directive regarding events, the next three events on the LPGA Tour schedule are postponed: the Volvik Founders Cup in Phoenix, Ariz., which was scheduled to take place March 19-22; the Kia Classic in Carlsbad, Calif., which was scheduled to take place March 26-29; and the ANA Inspiration in Rancho Mirage, Calif., which was scheduled for April 2-5. The plan is to reschedule these events for later dates in the 2020 season.
As promised in our letter of March 11, 2020, we continue to monitor the changing conditions related to COVID-19 throughout the world. We have considered the counsel of local Church leaders, government officials and medical professionals, and have sought the Lord’s guidance in these matters. We now provide the following updated directions.
Beginning immediately, all public gatherings of Church members are being temporarily suspended worldwide until further notice. This includes:
Stake conferences, leadership conferences and other large gatherings
All public worship services, including sacrament meetings
Gun sales in the San Gabriel Valley, a region east of Los Angeles, have soared in recent weeks among Asian Americans who fear being attacked over the outbreak of the coronavirus, according to reports.
Attacks on Asian Americans have been on the rise amid the outbreak of COVID-19. Earlier this month, a video emerged on Facebook of a man on a New York City subway spraying Febreze at an Asian subway straphanger, the New York Post reported. Police are investigated the incident as a hate crime.
And last month, an Asian woman was attacked at a New York City subway station. A man noticed that she was wearing a face mask and called her a “diseased b—-.”
At Arcadia Firearm & Safety, a gun store in San Gabriel Valley, owner David Liu told CBSLA he’s had a surge of sales in recent weeks from Asian American customers who are concerned over the possibility of similar attacks.
In the City of Industry, the store Gun Effects and Cloud Nine Fishing, has also experienced more Asian American customers buying firearms.
“Our staff is not accustomed to this kind of rush,” owner Dennis Lin told KABC. “But this made it really, really crazy.”
Lin said he believes the fear over the coronavirus is exaggerated.
“Just people discriminating,” he said. “We forget, we’re all people. We’re in America, we’re not in China.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Asians make up slightly less than 30 percent of the San Gabriel Valley’s 1.85 million residents.
I transferred out of Washington state a bit less than 30 years ago and have never been back. Nothing personal to our friends there, but I think I’ll keep trying to increase that record.
The statewide death toll from the coronavirus climbed to 30 on Wednesday, after a third Snohomish County man died along with three others in King County, health officials said.
The Snohomish County man, who is in his 80s, was one of three residents of the Josephine Caring Community in Stanwood who previously were confirmed to have the virus and were taken to a local hospital. No further details were available about the three additional King County deaths.
So far, 26 people have died from COVID-19 in King County, three in Snohomish County and one in Grant County. The number of confirmed cases in Washington state is now 366, according to new numbers posted Wednesday by the state Department of Health……………
Gov. Jay Inslee said at a Wednesday morning news conference that the true number of cases is believed to be much larger – on the order of 1,000 or more.
Large Gatherings Banned in Puget Sound Metro Area
Inslee also announced a ban Wednesday on gatherings and events of more than 250 people in virtually the entire Seattle metro area to try to stop the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak .
The ban covers King, Snohomish and Pierce Counties and affects gatherings for “social, spiritual and recreational activities. These include but are not limited to: community, civic, public, leisure, faith-based, or sporting events; parades; concerts; festivals; conventions; fundraisers and similar activities.”
Two top U.S. medical experts told members of Congress Wednesday the COVID-19 outbreak now raging across 36 states and inflicting 32 deaths as of Wednesday will dramatically worsen and might lead to the infection of up to 150 million Americans, or about half the total U.S. population.
Rear Admiral Dr. Brian Monahan, the Attending Physician of the United States Congress and the United States Supreme Court, told senators during a closed-door meeting he expects 70 million to 150 million people in the U.S. will become infected with COVID-19, as reported by NBC News.
Speaking mostly about how members of Congress can better protect themselves against the coronavirus, Adm. Monahan said senators and congressmen shouldn’t travel abroad if they don’t have to. He said there are as yet no restrictions on domestic travel.
Adm. Monahan also told those present that coronavirus testing will only be administered to members of Congress. On the other hand, Congressional staffers should see their doctors if they experience any COVID-19 symptoms. Adm. Monahan also reaffirmed a consistent message that ultimately, 80% of those that contract the coronavirus will be fine.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the most common novel coronavirus symptoms that might appear 2 to 14 days after exposure are fever, cough and shortness of breath. It urges people to call their doctors if they develop symptoms, and have been in close contact with a person known to have COVID-19.
Also on Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified before the House Oversight and Reform Committee about the country’s preparedness for the fast-spreading COVID-19 outbreak. He pointed out the coronavirus will continue to spread because containment measures and contact tracing have failed to prevent community spread of the highly-infectious coronavirus.
“Is the worst yet to come, Dr. Fauci?” aked Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
“Yes, it is,” Dr. Fauci replied.
Dr. Fauci said while the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is being contained in some respects, the U.S. is seeing more cases emerge through community spread, as well as international travel.
“I can say we will see more cases, and things will get worse than they are right now,” said Dr. Fauci. “How much worse we’ll get will depend on our ability to do two things: to contain the influx of people who are infected coming from the outside, and the ability to contain and mitigate within our own country.”……………
For many countries staring down fast-rising coronavirus case counts, the race is on to “flatten the curve.”
The United States and other countries, experts say, are likely to be hit by tsunamis of Covid-19 cases in the coming weeks without aggressive public health responses. But by taking certain steps — canceling large public gatherings, for instance, and encouraging some people to restrict their contact with others — governments have a shot at stamping out new chains of transmission, while also trying to mitigate the damage of the spread that isn’t under control.
The epidemic curve, a statistical chart used to visualize when and at what speed new cases are reported, could be flattened, rather than being allowed to rise exponentially.
“If you look at the curves of outbreaks, they go big peaks, and then come down. What we need to do is flatten that down,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told reporters Tuesday. “That would have less people infected. That would ultimately have less deaths. You do that by trying to interfere with the natural flow of the outbreak.”
The notion that the curve of this outbreak could be flattened began to gain credence after China took the extraordinary step of locking down tens of millions of people days in advance of the Lunar New Year, to prevent the virus from spreading around the country from Wuhan, the city where the outbreak appears to have started. Many experts at the time said it would have been impossible to slow a rapidly transmitting respiratory infection by effectively shutting down enormous cities — and possibly counterproductive.
But the quarantines, unprecedented in modern times, appear to have prevented explosive outbreaks from occurring in cities outside of Hubei province, where Wuhan is located.
Since then, spread of the virus in China has slowed to a trickle; the country reported only 19 cases on Monday. And South Korea, which has had the third largest outbreak outside of China, also appears to be beating back transmission through aggressive actions. But other places, notably Italy and Iran, are struggling.
For weeks, a debate has raged about whether the virus could be “contained” — an approach the WHO has been exhorting countries to focus on — or whether it made more sense to simply try to lessen the virus’ blow, an approach known as “mitigation.”
That argument has been counterproductive, Mike Ryan, the head of the WHO’s health emergencies program, said Monday.
“I think we’ve had this unfortunate emergence of camps around the containment camp, the mitigation camp — different groups presenting and championing their view of the world. And frankly speaking, it’s not helpful,” Ryan told reporters.
Caitlin Rivers, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said any lessening of spread will help health systems remain functional.
“Even if we are not headed to zero transmission, any cases that we can prevent and any transmission that we can avoid are going to have enormous impact,” she said. “Not only on the individuals who end up not getting sick but all of the people that they would have ended up infecting. … And so the more that we can minimize it, the better.”……..
The Trump Coronavirus Task Force held another press briefing in the White House on Tuesday evening.
The press conference was led by Vice President Mike Pence who was joined by top US health leaders including HHS Secretary Alex Azar, Surgeon General Jerome Adams and Larry Kudlow, the Director of the National Economic Council.
During questioning the NBC reporter Geoff Bennett accused the administration of not supplying COVID-19 test kits to medical facilities.
Reporter Geoff Bennett: So when can the American people expect to see these test kits available at doctor’s offices and urgent care clinics?
HHS Secretary Alex Azar: By the end of this weekend we had 1.1 million test kits that originally shipped. We have another one million that are either in transit or waiting for orders. So we actually have a surplus capacity already that have been produced… The tests are out there.
The tests are in every public health lab in the country. They’re in hospitals. They’re in labs.
But I think there is a false premise in your question. Which is a notion that just because I as a person can say, “Oh, I’d like to be tested for the novel coronavirus.” I should be walking into any minute clinic or any other facility and just walking in and saying, “Give me my test.”
That’s not how diagnostic testing works in the United States or frankly almost any place in the world… We’ve always been clear if their doctor or public health physician believes they should be tested it needs to always be clinically indicated to receive a test.
And with that Secretary Azar destroyed ANOTHER liberal media lie.
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to continue enforcing an immigration policy requiring asylum seekers at the southern U.S. border to wait in Mexico while their cases are considered.
The court on Wednesday granted an emergency request by the administration to leave the program in place for now while legal proceedings continue. The order blocks the effect of a lower-court decision that said the administration must stop implementing the policy…….
Within hours of the Ninth Circuit court’s decision blocking the policy, hundreds of migrants queued at ports of entry in San Diego, El Paso, Texas, and Brownsville, Texas, some clutching printed copies of the court’s ruling, asking border officials to allow them into the U.S. They were turned away. The administration had been preparing military backup to guard U.S. points of entry in case migrants rushed the border, which it warned, in its filing with the Supreme Court, could happen if its policy was blocked.
The appeals court had agreed to postpone the effect of its decision temporarily, and it eventually gave the administration a week to seek intervention from the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court is unlikely to give full consideration to the policy until its next term, which begins in October……
The administration also has argued recently that ending “Remain in Mexico” could also pose a risk amid the worsening coronavirus crisis, although the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. far exceeds the number in Mexico.
Nearly 200 people have died in Italy from the novel coronavirus in one day, NBC News reports.
The Italian Civil Protection Agency confirmed to the news agency that the country, which has the worst outbreak of COVID-19 outside of China, recorded 196 deaths between Tuesday to Wednesday. NBC News reports a total of 897 deaths from the virus have been recorded in the country thus far.
The confirmation comes after earlier reports placed the total number of COVID-19 cases in Italy at 10,000 on Wednesday.
…..One factor affecting the country’s death rate may be the age of its population—Italy has the oldest population in Europe, with about 23% of residents 65 or older, according to The New York Times. The median age in the country is 47.3, compared with 38.3 in the United States, the Times reported. Many of Italy’s deaths have been among people in their 80s, and 90s, a population known to be more susceptible to severe complications from COVID-19.
MADRID (AP) — Spain’s health minister reported a sharp spike in coronavirus cases in and around Madrid and said all schools in the capital region, from kindergartens and universities, would close for two weeks starting Wednesday.
Italians are being told to stay inside unless they need to buy medicines by health authorities patrolling neighborhoods with loudspeakers as the coronavirus quarantine begins to take hold.
A German export ban on masks that protects against the coronavirus has angered Austria and Switzerland. “It can’t be that Germany is holding back products for Austria just because they happen to be stored in a German location,” said Austrian economy minister Margarete Schramboeck. “These products are for the Austrian market, and unilateral moves by Germany are just causing problems in other countries,” she added.
South Korea has seen a steady decrease in new coronavirus cases for four consecutive days, despite being one of the worst-affected countries outside China, although global attention has shifted towards outbreaks in Italy and Iran.
As of end-Monday, it had 7,513 cases and 54 deaths. The Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said there was an increase of 131 cases from Sunday to Monday.
The country averaged more than 500 new infections a day for the past two weeks, but last Friday, this number dipped to 438, then 367 on Saturday and 248 on Sunday. The daily number of confirmed cases is reported the following day.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Monday noted his country’s “slowing trend” of new infections but warned: “We should not be complacent at all.”
His point was underscored by the KCDC, which said that among the new patients were more than 60 people who were infected while working in close proximity to each other at an insurance company call centre.
“The total number of new confirmed cases is on a downturn but there are concerns over such mass infection cases”, said KCDC Deputy Director Kwon Jun-wook.
Either it’s one of the more massive over-reactions in NooYawk history, or the gubbermint knows something we don’t.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is deploying the National Guard to enforce a mile-radius coronavirus “containment area” in a Westchester County community dubbed perhaps the “largest cluster” of cases in America.
“New Rochelle, at this point, is probably the largest cluster of these cases in the United States,” Cuomo said in a Tuesday afternoon press conference. “And it’s a significant issue for us.”
The midpoint of the circle will be the Young Israel of New Rochelle Synagogue, where a lawyer at the center of the area’s now-108-patient outbreak worships, officials said.
Cuomo announced he was dispatching the National Guard to enforce the closure of “large gathering areas” within the radius, including schools, houses of worship, and other large gathering facilities effective starting Thursday and running for two weeks. The two Metro-North stations serving the area will remain open, transit sources said.
Grocery stores will not be closed, and civilians will be free to come and go from the containment area.
“We’re also going to use the National Guard in the containment area to deliver food to homes, [and] to help with the cleaning of public spaces,” said Cuomo.
The state’s second coronavirus case was confirmed last week in New Rochelle, with the infection of a lawyer identified by sources as Lawrence Garbuz, 50.
His family and neighbors soon contracted the potentially deadly disease, and led to the requested isolation of some 1,000 people who came in contact with the lawyer.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the total number of cases in the state sat at 173, tops in the nation.
Cuomo announced 10 new cases in Westchester County, bringing that hotbed’s total to 108.
In the five boroughs, 17 new cases were revealed Tuesday, nearly doubling the city total to 36.
Long Island’s Nassau County and upstate Rockland County saw two more cases each, bringing their totals to 19 and six, respectively.
