6/million is Sweden’s daily death rate. Death toll is at 389/million right now.
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23.5 12:42 Second day without fatalities, 9 patients leave hospital
The national health agency THL said on Saturday that there had been no new deaths attributed to Covid-19 since Thursday.
That marks the first two-day stretch without any reported fatalities in two months. Finland’s first death was reported on 21 March, followed by the second and third on 25 March.
The number of patients in hospital dropped by nine to 104, while the number in intensive care remained steady at 21.
The number of lab-confirmed infections edged up by 31 to 6568. However only about three percent of the population (some 165,600 people) have been tested, so the actual number is considerably higher.
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White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany showed off President Donald Trump’s private banking information at a press conference Friday, The New York Times reports. While announcing that Trump plans to donate his $100,000 quarterly presidential salary to the Department of Health and Human Services to “support the efforts being undertaken to confront, contain and combat the coronavirus,” McEnany displayed the Capital One check he had written to the agency as proof. The problem, however, was that Trump’s account and routing number were clearly visible on the bottom edge of the check. Those numbers are some of the most sensitive pieces of personal information available, as they can authenticate bank transactions.
Yes, she really did make it pretty easy for foreign intelligence agencies and the run of the mill hacker to dox the president. God, I miss having competent leadership at the White House.
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Naming the supplier violates the contract, making verification of certification impossible. But trust me, they are fine. OMFG, they are not even trying anymore…
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A lot of the recommendations on masks aren’t based on very hard science.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/unpacking-the-mask-debate
That University of Minnesota review seems to be the source of a lot of recommendations at the time, but it’s very weak. (Polite for “What rubbish is this?”)
https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/why-theresa-tam-changed-her-stance-on-masks/
Infection control measures early in the pandemic were based off lessons learned from SARS in 2003, which was a fair approach because of the many commonalities between SARS and COVID-19. Both are coronaviruses, both showed evidence of being transmitted through respiratory droplets, and both viruses created pneumonia-like symptoms. Thus early public health measures were very similar to those used to combat SARS: find infected patients based on their symptoms, aggressively contact trace, test, isolate and quarantine their close contacts. But what differentiates COVID-19 from SARS is when it becomes infectious.
Unlike SARS, which had a low risk of transmission until five days after symptoms started, COVID-19 is proving to be infectious before an infected person shows any symptoms. The first suggestion of asymptomatic transmission was reported in early February. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until late March that consistent studies were showing similar patterns of asymptomatic or pre-symtomatic transmission. This recent understanding explains why universal masking wasn’t announced at the outset of the pandemic. Large-scale public health measures can’t be implemented from one case report or a presumed hunch. The explanation for why asymptomatic spread occurs wasn’t published until April 2020 either.
The 6’ social distancing recommendation also seems to be based on old knowledge from SARS. It reduces contact with larger droplets from sneezing and coughing, but what about the smaller droplets from asymptomatic COVID-19?
The ranking of effectiveness of various types of masks also seems to be a weak area. They’re based on the ability to filter particles the size of the COVID-19 virus. But the virus doesn’t travel naked (I hope!); it’s in a droplet, small but much larger than just the virus alone. What happens when that hits a mask?
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In Los Angeles County, Hengky Lim, a 44-year-old nurse practitioner from Indonesia, said he approached an ER patient who had a fever and a cough to show him how to put on a mask one night in March. The patient yelled at him and coughed in his face, spit splattering on his plastic face shield. “You know where coronavirus is from? It’s from you people! I don’t want to be seen by you,” Lim recalled the patient shouting. Then the patient walked out of the ER.
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First Dog on video!
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The idea of face coverings (as distinguished from N95’s) is not to filter viral particles, nor to protect the wearer, it is to arrest the flinging of spittle during breathing, talking, coughing and sneezing. And to protect others from the wearer. Worth noting that the little button in the N95’s? That is a flapper valve. It opens on exhalation, allowing unimpeded air flow. It closes on inhalation, filtering air coming in. This protects the wearer, specifically not others, and if you have seen pics of what the weaver’s faces look like after several hours of wearing, you will know they are really unpleasant.
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Yes, and that’s one of the bits of unexamined wisdom that bugs me. There are bits and pieces that suggest even surgical coverings on the receiving end can significantly reduce transmission. A probably not peer-reviewed study:
That breath-check value on an N95 mask is no friend to other people if you’re asymptomatic.
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This is really scary. Most peds that I know are trying to keep vaccination visits on schedule, even as we delay others, but I fully understand parents being afraid to come to a medical facility right now.
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I just hope my pediatrician is still in business when our next round is scheduled.
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I have read (again, not peer reviewed, etc) that paper or cloth face coverings may decrease the risk to the wearer by something on the order of 10% or so. And that they decrease the risk to others by about 70%. Not perfect, but hey, add in 6’ spacing, if both are masked, it begins to approach 90% or more. So, yeah, worth the doing.
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That is honestly a real concern. We were acquired (I hate that term) by UVA last summer. Had we still been independent, we would probably be closing our doors by now. Not bringing in enough to cover fixed expenses, let alone pay staff. Or ourselves (always last.) They say God looks out for children and fools. We are pretty old, so…
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That seems like a parking-lotable sort of thing.
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A stupid woman who doesn’t understand asymptomatic transmission (“It’s not like we are unaware of the virus.”
You are.) and Fox News twisting Anthony Fauci to make him look like a Reopening Fever nutbag.
Twitter is an abomination.
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The study was released by the department of microbiology at The University of Hong Kong, and local media state it will be published in the Clinical Infectious Diseases medical journal, suggesting it is yet to be peer reviewed.
If it is described as “to appear in journal X” then that suggests that it has been peer-reviewed.
Looking at the photos from the experimental setup, those hamsters were in very close proximity. I’m surprised that the masks can do that well over such a period with the hamsters so close. Maybe hamsters are less prone to infection than humans.
(Also, isn’t it dangerous infecting new animals with a virus like this? Or was Covid-19 already rampant in hamsters?)
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