MILESFORTIS

White House Adds United Kingdom to Expanded Coronavirus Travel Restrictions

I had wondered, what with the UK being among the nations with a higher infection rate, why it was originally not included.

Vice President Mike Pence announced during Saturday’s coronavirus press briefing that the United Kingdom has been added to the White House’s coronavirus travel restriction list.

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday night that the U.S. would ban all travel for foreign nationals who had recently visited Europe but kept the U.K. off that list. Politico accused the White House of exempting the U.K. in order to protect business at the three Trump-owned golf resorts in Scotland and Ireland.

Coronavirus: Europe Now Epicentre of the Pandemic, Says WHO

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.

Delingpole: Trump Was Right to Shut the Gates on Plague Pit Europe

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.

Trump to Declare National Emergency to Speed Virus Response

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.

(Washington) Statewide death toll from coronavirus rises to 30

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.”

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Coronavirus USA Update: US Death Toll At 32; 150 Million Americans May Get Infected

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.”……………

Why ‘flattening the curve’ may be the world’s best bet to slow the coronavirus

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.”……..