A roundup of articles on the status of the Coronavirus and ways we can help….
Vancouver is a Ghost Town
In the last few seconds (1:57 on) of this video (vanity being vanity), you can hear me banging on my pot. (I know. I know. What can I say? I’m blowing my own horn … errr, banging my own pot.)
Dispatch From the COVID-19 Frontlines: ‘It Really is Our Duty’
https://mariashriver.com/dispatch-from-the-covid-19-frontlines-it-really-is-our-duty/
When I became a practicing physician 22 years ago, I took the Hippocratic Oath, “to treat the ill to the best of one’s ability,” regardless of the illness. This is why I now don the required PPE and head to New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital (epicenter of the U.S. pandemic), where I have a gastroenterology practice, to take care of people with the potentially fatal coronavirus.
Instead of entering through the main entrance, I have to go through a separate door away from patients and change into my scrubs, N95 surgical mask and screen before going into the areas populated with COVID-19 patients. Then I go to meet my team.
Walking through my hospital, which I know like the back of my hand, now feels like a surreal experience. The first thing you notice is that everyone is masked. Makeshift hospital beds are set up everywhere, even in the main lobby. When you get to the floors, you notice that all of the patient doors are closed and affixed with warning signs that remind us to “gown-up” before entering.
My team meets ahead of time to review each patient in detail. It’s at this point that we go over their labs, x-rays, and overall clinical status to develop an agenda prior to each examination. From there we round on each patient so we can get an up to the minute impression of their medical status.
Following this, we alter our plans as necessary, order the appropriate tests, and call advisable consults. Perhaps the most useful thing we do at this time is contact patients’ family members to give them an update, since they cannot come in to see their loved ones. This can be difficult, as they are often emotional, but I am glad to be their point of contact and able to answer their questions.
The conditions of our patients vary from stable to critical. We have learned not to be complacent when our patients are stable, because they can crash very quickly as the virus moves to attack the lungs.
Never before have I experienced the kind of uncertainty that I do at this time. We have the best possible medical technology to support our patients, but we still don’t have the treatment for this virus.
I’m not going to lie. We are all somewhat scared … about a lot of things. We’re scared for our patients, scared that we can’t save everyone and, yes, scared for our own health. There is also a mild sense of helplessness. I have never been in a situation like this before.
We were all afraid during the AIDS epidemic, but it was in no way contagious the way this infection is, and SARS and MERS did not hit us like this pandemic. We risk our lives as medical providers because our patients are dying from this infection, and they really need us now more than ever. Now that we have adequate PPE, we are more confident that we have the right protection.
Am I afraid for my life? Absolutely. Just before my deployment, I made sure to go through all of my insurance policies and accounts to assure that my family is well taken care of in case of an emergency. And I take special steps when I do return home.
Self-quarantining has been difficult. I first change out of my hospital gear into clean clothing in a safe area in the hospital. I then put a clean mask on to go home, using one that did not enter the hospital. I remove my shoes at the door, drop my clothes into a laundry bag and jump into the shower. I am then locked away from the rest of my family, eating and sleeping separately. I will remain there for a few days prior to rejoining them. It can be lonely, but it’s something I have to do.
I know people consider healthcare providers as heroes, and I do appreciate the honor, but I feel it really is our duty. We have the training to help the sick and make a difference, and if there was ever a time to be needed, it is now. I don’t feel like a hero, but I do feel a sense of pride.
Dr. Adam Steinlauf is an Associate Profession of Medicine, Gastroenterology at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. John Lee: ‘No Evidence The Lockdowns Are Working’
spiked, Fri, 17 Apr 2020
https://www.sott.net/article/432808-Dr-John-Lee-No-Evidence-The-Lockdowns-Are-Working
The UK government has extended its lockdown for another three weeks. But could the shutdown of society be doing more harm than good? In fact, is there any evidence it is doing any good at all?
Dr John A Lee, a recently retired professor of pathology and NHS consultant pathologist, has repeatedly called for a critical and dispassionate examination of the evidence in relation to Covid-19, raising questions about the government and its advisers’ interpretation of the data. spiked caught up with him to find out more.
spiked: You have been a relatively lone voice in questioning mainstream assumptions about coronavirus. Why have you found it important to speak out?
Dr John A Lee: As a doctor and a scientist my entire career, I believe that medicine and science have improved life immeasurably over the past 200 years, and especially over the last 50 years. But in the particular mix of science, medicine and politics that we are seeing now, I am not absolutely sure that is the case. I think it is more important than ever to try and look at this issue in a clear way in order to make sure that we are really doing the right thing on the basis of the right ideas. And it isn’t clear to me at the moment that we are.
spiked: What problems do you see in the way figures are currently being recorded and reported?
Lee: The figures are just so unreliable. It’s very difficult to understand when you are looking at figures from different countries, and figures in isolation about things like death, what they really mean. And obviously, if we can’t understand what the figures mean, it is quite difficult to then know what we should do about them.
These figures are then fed into models of the disease and the epidemic which are being used to influence and inform public policy. But those models are only as good as their input data and the assumptions they make. And there are so many unknowns which means the models’ outputs are really quite questionable. And given that we have now got ourselves into this situation, for a variety of reasons, getting ourselves out of it using the same models and predictions is even more questionable. So we are in a very difficult situation.
For example, we are currently in lockdown for two reasons. One is that the initial figures suggested that we were dealing with a very highly virulent disease. The World Health Organisation initially suggested that the case-fatality rate – the proportion of people diagnosed with the disease who die – would be 3.4 per cent. This is a very high number which would have caused a huge number of deaths. But as we have had gradually more and more data coming in, those percentages have been falling. In many examples, more complete data are now suggesting case-fatality rates of 0.4 per cent. My guess is that it will end up between 0.5 and 0.1 per cent, and probably nearer to the lower end of that. So if the disease isn’t as virulent as was originally thought, the number of deaths will be correspondingly lower.
The second reason that we were then put into lockdown is that it was assumed that this new virus was going to rip through the population, and a very high percentage of people were going to be infected quickly. This would cause a big surge or peak of cases which healthcare systems wouldn’t be able to deal with. The lockdown is supposed to reduce that peak, to enable health systems to cope with it. We had various pictures from Italy, Spain, New York and other places showing that health systems weren’t able to cope. But of course, in lots of other places, health systems have been able to cope with it.
The real point is that there isn’t any direct evidence that what we are doing is actually affecting the peak. It is possible to make arguments that sound reasonable that a lockdown should affect the peak. And yet other places which are doing different things seem to have similarly shaped graphs. It is only an assumption that the lockdown is having a big effect on the virus spread, but this is not a known scientific fact.
As far as I can see, Sweden, despite not having anywhere near as severe a lockdown as we have had, actually has a very similar curve to ours. And Sweden’s death rate per hundred thousand people is roughly half of ours at the moment. So it is not a given that what we are doing is either working or is having all the right effects.
spiked: Has the media given us an accurate picture of what might be going on?
Lee: I suppose that depends on what media you are looking at. It seems to me that there are two types of media: there is the investigative-journalism type media that tries to find out whether the facts and the interpretations of stories are really true. And then there is the less critical type of media which essentially illustrates a story that it thinks it already knows. And I think in the case of Covid-19, because of what originally came out of China and the pictures that were beamed around the world, people felt that they already knew that this was a highly virulent and dangerous disease. So pretty much the entire media coverage has illustrated this as a very dangerous disease.
Don’t get me wrong, it is clearly a nasty disease, but it is not as nasty as it was originally thought. Unfortunately, the media have tended to reinforce the initial ideas about what this disease was like which have not necessarily been borne out by the numbers since then.
(Read more….)
Richest Man in the World Jeff Bezos Now $24 Billion Richer Amid Pandemic
Turns out Bezos got the biggest coronavirus stimulus of all.
by Jessica Corbett, April 15th, 2020
Amplifying fresh critiques of wealthy inequality that have mounted throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—the world’s richest man—has added nearly $24 billion to his already massive fortune in 2020 as virus-related lockdowns across the globe have forced people to stay inside and fueled increased e-commerce demand.
Explaining the source of a nearly 5% jump in Bezos’ net worth Tuesday, Forbes reported that Amazon stock surged 5.3%, “hitting a new record close of $2,283 per share. The stock is now up over 20% so far this year, outpacing the benchmark index (the S&P 500 is down over 12%).”
Turns out Jeff Bezos has got the biggest coronavirus stimulus of all … https://t.co/10BrXbnIZ6
— Will Tooke (@willtooketv) April 15, 2020
Bezos was worth $138 billion as of Tuesday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He is Amazon’s CEO and president, and owns an 11.2% stake the e-commerce giant, which has come under fire for how it has treated workers during the outbreak.
While Bezos tops the index, Fortune noted that the 18th spot now belongs to his ex-wife MacKenzie, “who was left with a 4% stake in Amazon as part of the couple’s recent divorce settlement. Her net worth has climbed $8.2 billion to $45.3 billion.”
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The index updates followed a Forbes report from Saturday about how “market gains led to a combined $51.3 billion boost for 10 of the world’s billionaires since the market closed a week ago, on April 2.” Bezos gained $6.8 billion in that time, an increase second to only that of Amancio Ortega of the Spanish fast-fashion retailer Inditex.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime labor rights advocate and foe of millionaires and billionaires, tweeted the Forbes report Wednesday and highlighted how the wealth increases of Bezos and other billionaires contrast with the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs because of the ongoing public health crisis.
$33.4 billion. That’s how much the wealth of Jeff Bezos and six other billionaires increased last week while millions of Americans were filing for unemployment.
Our society cannot sustain itself when so few have so much, while so many have so little. https://t.co/XwlhIXTMzS
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 15, 2020
As Common Dreams reported last week, U.S. unemployment claims during the pandemic have soared to 16.8 million, which one economist noted “is a mind-boggling 2,500% increase over the pre-virus period.”
That contrast between U.S. billionaires and the nation’s newly unemployed was also pointed out on Twitter Wednesday by Public Citizen, which cited the Forbes report.
Billionaire wealth increases last week:
Jeff Bezos: +$6.8B
Mark Zuckerberg: +$6.2B
Warren Buffett: +$5B
Elon Musk: +$4.2B
Larry Ellison: +$4B
Larry Page: +$3.6B
Bill Gates: +$3.6B
Meanwhile, more than 16 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the past month.
— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) April 15, 2020
While millions of people across the United States have lost their incomes due to COVID-19, Amazon has filled 100,000 new jobs since March and plans to add 75,000 more “to help meet customer demand and assist existing employees fulfilling orders for essential products,” according to a Sunday blog post on the company’s website. The retailer has “increased pay for hourly employees by $2/hour in the U.S., C$2/hour in Canada, and €2/hour in many E.U. countries.”
Amazon has “made over 150 process updates to help protect employees—from enhanced cleaning and social distancing measures to piloting new efforts like using disinfectant fog in our New York fulfillment center,” the blog post said. The company is also building a lab to test its front-line workers for COVID-19 and has “distributed personal protective gear, such as masks for our employees, and implemented temperature checks across our operations worldwide.”
However, workers at Amazon warehouses and Whole Foods Market—the grocery chain acquired by Amazon in 2017—have expressed fear and frustration about working conditions, and accused the company of not doing enough to protect employees. Just this week, Amazon also elicited condemnation for firing three workers who publicly criticized the company’s pandemic response and treatment of employees.
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“Instead of firing employees who want justice,” Sanders tweeted Tuesday, “maybe Jeff Bezos—the richest man in the world—can focus on providing his workers with paid sick leave, a safe workplace, and a livable planet.”
The safety of Amazon facilities in the midst of a pandemic has raised particular alarm. According to Business Insider:
More than 74 U.S. warehouses alone have now reported cases of the virus, and concerns from workers about safety and sanitation have ballooned, leading to employee walkouts and protests.
On Tuesday, Business Insider broke the news that Amazon had seen its first warehouse worker death, an operations manager who worked at the company’s Hawthorne, California warehouse. The man died on March 31.
Some Amazon employees told Business Insider that they feel they have to choose between paying their bills and risking the health of themselves and vulnerable family members.
“I was grateful at first for the unlimited [unpaid time off] and $2 increase, but as things got worse and the virus was spreading more and more, it didn’t matter. I don’t want to be there, but I need the income,” said one worker who cares for an elderly relative. “The stress of bringing it home to him makes me physically ill.”