Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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For nearly two months, the Chinese capital, a city of more than 20 million people, did not report a single local case of the coronavirus. But a recent spike in confirmed cases has officials in Beijing afraid they're staring down a new outbreak — and they are responding with swift and sweeping measures to contain it.

Authorities say there have been seven new cases in the past three days, all of which are connected to the Xinfadi market, the city's largest wholesale food market. Health officials said Saturday that, of the 517 samples that they took from market workers the day before, 45 tested positive for the virus.

Under China's standards for confirming coronavirus cases — which exclude asymptomatic individuals — this cluster of people won't be counted as confirmed until they begin displaying symptoms and come up positive on a separate nucleic acid test. Yet officials view the development with significant alarm — at least partly because the market employs or hosts some 10,000 workers and vendors and provides 90% of the capital's vegetables and fruit, according to state-run media.

"Depending on the results [of epidemiological surveys and contact tracing], Beijing should take swift action, expand the testing pool to include all personnel involved with the market, and investigate surrounding neighborhoods," Beijing officials said in a statement outlining the contents of a high-level meeting Friday.

Authorities have shut down the market itself and parts of several others in the city, while canceling classes for at least nine schools nearby. Eleven residential neighborhoods in the city's Fengtai district now require temperature checks and are closed to outside visitors.

The entire district has been placed in a "wartime emergency mode," Chu Junwei, a Fengtai official, told a news briefing Saturday, according to a Reuters translation.

Once the epicenter of the global pandemic, China had largely seen new cases taper off in recent months, while other countries, including the U.S., surpassed it in total cases and deaths. The positive data have been attributed partly due to the country's shift to a diagnostic standard with a steep bar for confirmation and partly due to the strict lockdowns implemented by Communist Party officials.

Hundreds of partiers converged on St. Marks Place in the East Village Friday night — coronavirus pandemic be damned.

Crowds of at least 200 were seen drinking outside for hours, most without facemasks, on the stretch between Avenue A and First Avenue alone.

Revelers lounged against Citi Bike racks or strolled with cups of beers and hard seltzers tucked in koozies in what felt like a giant bar crawl.

“The way I see it, it’s like already [past] the 8th; that’s my marker,” said Sarah, a law student who lives in the East Village, in reference to the date marking the city’s entrance into its Phase One of reopening under state guidelines.

“Now I’m just like, how long can you live in isolation scrolling on Tinder? You can’t do that enough already. You need to venture out,” she added.

MTA buses and other vehicles crawled through the massive throng of carousers, who spilled into the street as others sat at the curb.

The Post observed two marked police cars roll through the block, but neither stopped to address the scene.

Restaurants and bars are still barred from allowing patrons inside, but since the city lockdown have been allowed to dispense drinks via pickup or delivery.

Still, it remains illegal to drink in public.

Originally, I was a little hesitant upon the scene [but] when you get drunk every reservation I had was thrown out the window,” said Yael, 26, who works in real estate and lives on the block, and who declined to give his last name.

Phase One has allowed retail shops to start curbside or in-store pickup service while construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade and agriculture work has also been greenlit to begin again.

“I don’t fault businesses who are trying to keep the lights on, but what the actual f—?” mused Twitter user Jenni Miller after the popular neighborhood Twitter account Evgrieve posted a clip of the partying.

The Friday night scene came after Gov. Andrew Cuomo earlier in the day shared more good news around the coronavirus, asserting that New York has the lowest spread of the deadly bug among any state in the country.

But experts have warned that it can be two or three weeks before infection spikes are countable by epidemiologists — the time it takes for sick people to start showing up at hospitals.

https://www.thelocal.it/20200613/prosecutors-to-question-italys-pm-over-handling-of-covid-19-crisis

Any chance to the Trump administration going to have to face to the same consequences or their blame it on China propaganda will be enough strong to protect them?

PANIC BUYING

When the pandemic began in the U.S. many people began taking precautions. This quickly translated into shortages. The first to disappear were face mask, hand sanitizing gel and disinfectant wipes. This was followed a few weeks later with runs on toilet paper and paper towels. People began to realize that their civilized life evolved around a roll of toilet paper. But many other items also came into short supply. Some I didn't even expect.

I remember going into Krogers grocery store and finding out they had no flour. In a way this makes a bit of sense. If your going to be stuck at home for a few months, what better thing to occupy your time then baking.

But there were a couple other things that also disappeared or went into short supply. These were frozen pizzas and meat. I chucked this up on the fact that many people did not know how to cook and pizzas were easy to fix. Meat was in short supply because of the coronavirus infections in the meat plants. Those indeed are in part to blame. But there was another factor that I hadn't even thought about that played a major part.

At the beginning of the pandemic many people immediately went out and purchase freezers then they packed them full of meals such as pizzas and meats. So even today, in the U.S. you cannot go out and buy a freezer because the stores do not have any and they are back ordered.

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday withdrew emergency use authorizations for two coronavirus treatments that President Donald Trump promoted despite concerns about their safety and effectiveness.

The agency revoked the authorizations for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine after a request from Gary Disbrow, acting director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.

After reviewing new information from large clinical trials the agency now believes that the suggested dosing regimens "are unlikely to produce an antiviral effect," FDA chief scientist Denise Hinton said in a letter announcing the decision.
Critics have accused the agency of caving to political pressure when it authorized use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in hospitalized Covid-19 patients in late March despite thin evidence. More recent randomized controlled trials have found the drugs do not benefit coronavirus patients, and doctors have reported that hydroxychloroquine can cause heart problems.

Because hydroxychloroquine is approved for other uses — treating lupus and arthritis — doctors could still use it "off label" to treat coronavirus patients, and clinical trials examining their use against Covid-19 can continue. The FDA noted that the version of chloroquine that had been authorized for emergency use is not approved in the U.S. so all use of that drug, donated by Bayer, will now end.

Drugmakers donated millions of the pill to the government’s strategic national stockpile after Bright wrote to the FDA requesting for emergency use, a move he now says he was pressured to make.

In April, roughly a month after the FDA authorized emergency use of the drugs, the agency warned against using hydroxychloroquine outside of hospitals and clinical trials because of potentially fatal cardiac side effects. Trump toned down on mentions of the pills during his White House briefings around the same time, but in May told reporters he was taking a course of hydroxychloroquine after a White House aide was diagnosed with the coronavirus.

This month two randomized controlled trials, considered the gold standard for determining whether a drug is effective, concluded that the drug does not prevent coronavirus infection and did not help hospitalized patients.

Governor Cuomo will take swift action if we see a spike in COVID cases here in New York.

He’s a jerk in some respects—but he’s been really good as far as the COVID thing is concerned.

His nursing home policy was a big mistake, though. For a time, a nursing home could not refuse entry to somebody with COVID-19.

The critical indicators surrounding the coronavirus crisis in New York have clearly turned a corner: Deaths have slowed to a trickle, new cases have declined sharply and the numbers of hospitalizations and intubations have eased.

But over the weekend, a more ominous sign emerged. Throughout New York City, many people openly disregarded social-distancing rules, prompting state officials to threaten to reinstate restrictions in the city to guard against a second wave of infections.

“We have 22 states where the virus is increasing,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said at a news conference on Monday. “It’s a dramatic national turnaround. We don’t want the same plight of these other states.”

Mr. Cuomo sounded the alarm after a weekend’s worth of videos and reports of people violating social-distancing rules, including on Friday in Manhattan’s East Village and on Saturday in Hell’s Kitchen, neighborhoods with many bars and restaurants.

The governor singled out bar owners and patrons in Manhattan and the Hamptons on Long Island for flouting the rules, and he warned that if local officials did not crack down on such behavior, the state authorities might suspend or roll back reopening plans for those areas.

Such a move could be financially devastating for business owners who were forced to close for most or all of New York’s almost three-month shutdown, and for the tentative recovery in the city, where municipal coffers were decimated as nearly a million people lost jobs.

“There is a very real possibility that we would roll back the reopening in those areas,” Mr. Cuomo said on Sunday, suggesting that a second wave of infections was almost inevitable if people gathering outside bars and others violated rules. “It will come. And once it comes, it’s too late.”

Mr. Cuomo’s warning came as state officials touted the minuscule rate of new positive virus cases in New York — just over 1 percent of more than 56,000 tests conducted on Sunday, according to the governor — and as other states grappled with surges in infections.

The number of virus cases has been rising in many of the states that reopened earlier, and in a broader fashion, than New York: Arizona, Florida and Texas all recently reported their highest numbers of cases yet. The governors of Oregon and Utah have taken the drastic step of pausing reopenings in their states as a result of similar spikes.

Without a vaccine for the virus, experts have warned, about 70 percent of the population will need to be infected and develop immunity to halt the spread of infection. New York has had about 390,000 confirmed cases, or about 2 percent of the state’s population.

As of Monday, about 1,600 people in the state were hospitalized because of the virus, the fewest since March 20 and a huge decline from a peak of over 18,000. The daily death toll has hovered below 50 for the past five days, compared with the nearly 800 in one day that were recorded at the outbreak’s peak.

But health officials have cautioned that the number of cases could rise as businesses fully reopen, people return to work and commuters take mass transit again, especially in New York City, which has tallied more than 20,000 virus-related deaths. The city began a limited reopening on June 8 that allowed construction and manufacturing to resume, while also permitting curbside and in-store pickup for retail businesses.

Another concern is the recent mass protests against police brutality that have, at times, clogged the city’s streets with tens of thousands of people. Although they have encouraged participants to wear masks, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Mr. Cuomo have fretted about the possibility the protests could fuel the virus’s spread.

There have also been conflicting messages from the state leaders about social gatherings. Such gatherings are still technically limited to 10 people, although Mr. Cuomo said on Monday that the New York regions in the third phase of reopening — most of the state from the Hudson River to Lake Erie — could allow gatherings of up to 25 people.

The mixed messages on gatherings, along with a weekend of warm weather, may have contributed to a false sense of security among those who were seen flouting social-distancing guidelines.

Jennifer Charlera, 19, a college student, has self-quarantined in her family’s apartment in Harlem since March. She said it was difficult to balance respect for social-distancing rules with the desire to see friends and relatives after many weeks of isolation.

She said she had recently begun to get together — outdoors, with masks — with friends who themselves had quarantined at home. Family outings have included walking homemade dinners to relatives, to eat together outside.

“I’ve gotten more lenient now,” she said. “I go out more than I did in March and April.”

On Sunday, Mr. Cuomo said that the state had been deluged with around 25,000 complaints about businesses that were “in violation of the reopening plan.” He warned that bars and restaurants could lose their liquor licenses if they failed to comply, noted that State Liquor Authority inspectors had been dispatched to problem areas and said that he had called several establishments himself.

But he emphasized it was ultimately up to local governments to enforce the state’s reopening policies, and he publicly urged mayors and county executives to target establishments that were found to be flouting rules.

“They don’t want to enforce them because they’re not popular,” Mr. Cuomo said on Monday. “Nobody wants to go to a bar and say, ‘You guys have to wear a mask. You guys are violating social distancing.’ I get it, but they have to do their job.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. de Blasio, the governor’s fellow Democrat and frequent rival, took issue with Mr. Cuomo’s remarks, saying in a statement that city employees had worked over the weekend to disperse large groups, distribute face coverings and help business owners keep patrons at an appropriate distance from one another.

“We must balance safety with people’s need to reopen their businesses,” the statement said. “These businesses are allowed to be open per the governor’s guidelines, and we don’t believe imprisoning people or taking away their livelihood is the answer.”

In another sign of frustration over the virus-related restrictions, residents of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood gathered at a playground there on Monday to demand that it be reopened so children who had been cooped up for months had a place to play.

Joseph Lentol, a state assemblyman who represents the area, said police officers from the local precinct had provided a temporary reprieve by unlocking the playground’s gates. Mr. Lentol said he understood the need for rules meant to keep the virus contained, but suggested that there were inconsistencies in how they were being enforced.

“Nobody seems to be disciplining people who go out and stand around all night in the street and drink,” he said.

Monday was also the start of the second stage of New Jersey’s reopening. Across the state, outdoor dining was allowed to resume with restrictions, and retail businesses swung their doors open for limited indoor shopping for the first time in months.

“Our goal is to not experience the spikes that other states are now seeing because they rushed to open too much, too soon,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy said. “We have lost too many lives in too short a period to not heed the lessons of this virus.”

Not every public official was pleading for caution.

Steven McLaughlin, the Republican county executive of Rensselaer County, N.Y., just east of Albany, has been encouraging local businesses to fully reopen against state’s guidelines, saying that county officials would not enforce the restrictions.

Mr. McLaughlin has criticized the governor’s shutdown as unnecessary, arguing that it was hurting small businesses despite there being few active cases in the county.

“Ignore him and his stupid ‘phases,’” Mr. McLaughlin wrote of the governor on Twitter last week. “Every day he proves they are arbitrary and based on nothing but his maniacal need for power.”

Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Mr. Cuomo, said Mr. McLaughlin was a “conservative extremist who always puts politics over science.”

“Look no further than the 22 states experiencing spikes to see what happens when you do that,” he added.

It was good after about April 1st.

The New York situation was caused by it being an international hub, primarily.

New York will, of course, have the most deaths....but it would have been a lot worse had Cuomo not acted.

His nursing home policy was a big mistake, though. For a time, a nursing home could not refuse entry to somebody with COVID-19.

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In general, I hope people are capable of learning on their own mistakes.

It was the federal government’s responsibility to do something about those arriving in New York on planes from COVID hotspots. Cuomo didn’t have the power/jurisdiction to implement preventative measures at airports in February.