Category: Science

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Pentagon Is Freeing Up 1 Million Respirator Masks Today To Fight COVID-19 with 4 Million More To Come. And More Ventilators!

“When you look at the number of people that are projected that may need ventilators, 2,000 doesn’t really put much of a dent into it. The key thing is the private sector, the manufacturing side, whoever makes medical machines of this type. How do you prime that pump to get production up?  Because we are simply not going to be able to meet the demand if the demand fits some of the profiles as we’ve seen in the CDC brief.”

— Mark Esper, U. S. Secretary of Defense, The Pentagon, March 17, 2020

If Iranians fail to follow stricter government guidance now, “it could collapse Iran’s already-strained medical system and cause 4 million coronavirus cases and 3.5 million deaths.”

— Afruz Eslami, M. D., Iranian State Television, March 17, 2020Click for report.

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Already-Existing Drugs Such As Remdesivir Might Help Treat COVID-19.

“Several tests of remdesivir in lab animals infected with the MERS coronavirus have researchers still hopeful when it comes to the new coronavirus. In studies in both rhesus macaques and mice, remdesivir protected animals from lung damage whether the drug was given before or after infection. … It may also have utility for related coronaviruses such as the novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV” that emerged from Wuhan, China.

— Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 13, 2020Click for report.

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7:00 PM Mtn UPDATE: ALL of Italy Now On Urgent Lockdown. Rest of World in 113 Countries = 114,343 Cases; 4,025 Deaths; 63,997 Recovered.

“Now that the COVID-19 coronavirus has a foothold in so many countries, the threat of a pandemic has become very real.”

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director, World Health Organization, March 9, 2020

“The future depends on us and everyone must do their part. There won’t be just a red zone for Lombardy. There will be Italy.”

— Gieuseppe Conte, Italy’s Prime Minister, March 9, 2020Click for report.

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8:30 PM Mtn Update – Half the World’s Countries Now Infected in 104 of 197. Milan Region’s 16 Million People Now On Lockdown Trying to Contain COVID-19. All Italian Schools Closed. Worldwide 110,066 Cases; 3,830 Deaths; 62,278 Recoveries.

“We are facing an emergency, a national emergency.”

— Prime Minister Giuseppte Conte in a 2 AM Sunday news press conference, March 8, 2020

“The head of the Italian Lombardy region’s intensive care crisis unit says the health system is on the brink of collapse, intensive care being set up in hallways. By March 26, they predict ~ 18,000 COVID-19 cases in Lombardy, of which ~ 3,000 will need intensive care.”

—  Twitter feed from Rachel Donadio, Lombardy Province, Italy, March 8, 2020

“Well, it’s arrived. I also have the coronavirus.”

— Rome-based leader of Italy’s Democratic Party and president of the Lazio region, Nicola Zingarette, announced on Facebook, Saturday, March 7, 2020

Click for report.

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2:00 PM Mtn UPDATE: COVID-19 Pandemic Now in 97 Countries = 101,876 Cases; 3,462 Deaths; 56,108 Recoveries. United States Still Without Adequate Test Kits While COVID-19 Hiding Weeks Inside Human Hosts Infecting Other Humans. Implication: Explosion of USA Positive Cases Upcoming.

 

“It’s a false hope to say, yes, that COVID-19 will disappear like the flu (with summer). We have to assume that the virus will continue to have the capacity to spread.”

— Mike Ryan, M. D., Executive Director, World Health Organization Health Emergencies Program, Geneva, Switzerland, March 6, 2020Click for report.

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1 PM Mtn UPDATE – UK’s First Death and World COVID19 Cases = 97,910; Deaths = 3,353, Recovered = 54,124. USA: 16 States; 194 Cases and 11 Deaths.

 

“England’s first COVID-19 death was an older woman believed to have contracted the virus in the U.K.,” another example of community spread to someone who had not been to China, Italy or other infected countries.

 

“Indian authorities on Tuesday, March 3, 2020, ordered India’s vast pharmaceutical industry to stop exporting 26 drugs and drug ingredients, most of them antibiotics, without explicit government permission. The reason: shortage of Chinese drug ingredients because of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

— The New York Times, “With Suppliers in China Hobbled, India Curbs Exports of Vital Drugs,” March 4, 2020Click for report.

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1 PM March 2nd UPDATE: Pandemic COVID-19 Now In 75 Countries: 90,294 Cases; 3,086 Deaths; 45,705 Recoveries. United States 92 Cases and 6 Deaths.

“The coronavirus outbreak in northern Italy has so overwhelmed the public health system that officials are taking extraordinary measures to care for the sick. … Alarmingly, 10% of Lombardy’s doctors and nurses cannot work because they tested positive for the virus and are in quarantine.”

— Giulio Gallera, Top Health Official, Lombardy in northern Italy, March 2, 2020Click for report.

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Sunday, 5 PM Update: Italy Reports 50% Spike in COVID-19 Cases; Rhode Island Reports First COVID-19 Case; and the French Louvre Closes Doors. Now In 67 Countries —  88,377 Cases, 3,001 Deaths, 42,743 Recoveries.

 

“If the virus has been spreading undetected in Washington state since mid-January 2020, that could mean that anywhere from 150 to 1,500 people may have it, with some 300 to 500 people the most likely range. Many of those people would now be in the early stages of incubating the virus and might not yet be contagious.”

— Mike Famulare, M. D., Principal Research Scientist, Inst. for Disease Modeling, Bellevue, Washington, March 1, 2020

“The COVID-19 coronavirus will ultimately not be containable and within a year will infect somewhere between 40 – 70% of humanity,” but only about 20% of human population will be seriously ill.

— Marc Lipsitch, Ph.D., Epidemiologist, Harvard University

“In the past week, COVID-19 has started behaving a lot like the once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about. I hope it’s not that bad, but we should assume it will be until we know otherwise.”

— Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, writing in The New England Journal of Medicine, February 28, 2020Click for report.

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First COVID-19 Death in U. S. Is In Washington State. King County Press Conference At 4 PM Mtn Today. New Cases in Washington, Oregon and California Could Be “Community Spread.” U. S. 66 Confirmed Cases. World Death Total Now 2,942 and 86,021 Cases.

“It is a sad day in our state as we learn that a Washingtonian has died from COVID-19. Our hearts go out to his family and friends. We will continue to work toward a day where no one dies from this virus.”

— Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington, February 29, 2020 Click for report.

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