Besides a Donnie-Two-Bibles exclusive deal being off the table, there is this: The company hopes to have an experimental vaccine developed by June or July, and then to get approval for testing on people. The research into several possible vaccines had begun and the two most promising would be chosen for clinical tests, CureVac co-founder and chief production officer Florian von der Mülbe told Reuters on Friday.
Knock on wood…
The whole story behind this isn’t clear yet, though: On March 2, CureVac’s then-CEO Daniel Menichella attended a meeting at the White House to discuss coronavirus vaccine development with Trump and members of his coronavirus taskforce. On March 11, the company announced Menichella would be replaced by company founder Ingmar Hoerr, without giving a reason why.
a person came in today to shop. a co-worker overheard them talking on their cell: just got off a plane, hasn’t been feeling well, and felt maybe it was “time to start taking things seriously.”
it hadn’t really occured to any of us on shift that people might come in when they know they are sick - because how else do you get food?
this person bought vitamins and some ginger, forgot some of their personal belongings in a cart - which another customer was now using. we informed the other customer and cleaned the daylights out of everything the person had touched.
what do you do? evaluate every allergy suffer for covid 19 as they shop? drag people complaining of fever out of the store? how can you even have a discussion with someone who’s breath or sneeze might get you sick?
ugh. please stay home, and ask friends and family for help… using your phone.
This is quite correct, although to be honest I don’t think that was behind the govt’s hesitation here. They just honestly have no clue and continue to approach the situation as they approach everything: from a political angle, trying to find how they can use this situation to further their own agendas and undermine the opposition. Orbán went on record saying that it’s a pity that the virus is dominating all conversations because what we really should be talking about are migrants. The “operative task force” is ignoring advice from the leading council of healthcare workers, and when the latter’s representative says they have no necessary equipment to handle the virus, the former says it’s filthy lies fueled by a political agenda. The CEO of a local company that deals in medical equipment including ventilators said in an interview just today that nobody contacted them yet from the government, even as cases continue to rise very steadily. On Friday morning Orbán was still talking about migrants and the evil EU and making veiled threats to teachers about not getting paid leave if schools close, and displayed an absolutely stunning degree of ignorance about just how the damn thing works (“children are not at risk”…), and the decision to close schools anyway came so suddenly that it didn’t reach propaganda outlets in time. And so on and so forth.
(Also: he announced that teaching would go on via digital means, but neither he, nor subsequent announcements, spared a thought about how to make it actually happen. Nobody on the government’s side is talking about how to care for the elderly and at-risk people who must isolate themselves either, or how to help parents who are at risk of being fired for having to stay at home with the kids now that schools are closed.)
Orbán being the dictator that he very much is, keeps everything under personal control and everyone under him is either too spineless or too much of a servile idiot to dare to go against what he says. So basically the government’s actions depend on when someone with a miniscule amount of sense manages to convince him to make steps, and how he decides to go about doing it.
I just spent a shitton of money on resources and will isolate myself come tomorrow (I still have to go out today for, ironically, a dentist appointment that can’t be delayed), but honestly I’m really scared - of the virus, yes, but mainly about what’s going on and how incredibly ineffective the people who should be in charge are.
Trump admin are not competent or ideologically coherent enough to do that. (Yes, I’m saying that they’re saved from being Nazis by simply being too damn stupid to pull it off.)
Well, we’ve banned all public events w. 500 people or more; smaller events are being canceled all around; schools and universities are moving students to online classes, or telling them to stay home; companies are moving employees to WFH whenever possible; Finnair has cut 90% of their flights; major hospitals are canceling or postponing non-critical operations or treatments to save resources and limit potential contagion; et cetera. I wouldn’t say we’ve been in a state of denial, exactly, as important steps are being taken all the time, but it’s done in a characteristically low-profile way. Oh yeah, social distancing and self-isolation are going on.
It helps that we have paid sick leave, solid labor laws, and otherwise a pretty robust welfare system so a lot of the US-style worries about people going to work sick because they’ll be ruined otherwise are not really an issue.
Oh, we’ve got the first COVID-19 patient needing intensive care now at Helsinki-Uusimaa hospital district. So far, we’ve been lucky that the cases (240 official ones now, but everyone agrees there are more that haven’t been recognized yet) have been fairly mild.
Me and millions of others that pay variable rate loans or credit cards are very happy this happened. Our payments just got a little easier to make while we are in this crisis specially since the economy is slowing and making money to pay our bills is now harder.
Master’s in Social History from Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF); Rua Mariz e Barros, 98/401; 24220-121 Niterói – RJ Brazil; adrianacgoulart@yahoo.com.br
ABSTRACT
The article analyzes the political and social impacts of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic in the city of Rio de Janeiro, then Brazil’s federal capital. Through an analysis of press reports from Rio de Janeiro and of other documentation, I explore how the epidemic served as a tool for political engineering. Data sources include annals, reports, and bulletins from a federal ministry, the Mayor’s Office, and the Chamber of Deputies, along with studies from the Brazilian Academy of Medicine and dissertations from Rio de Janeiro’s Faculdade de Medicina. My concern is how the epidemic impacted the representation of certain political and social actors and how it reaffirmed a group of sanitarians as an intelligentsia with a vocation for political leadership–a group that came to play a key role in the process of modernizing Brazilian society.
Keywords: Spanish flu; epidemic; public health; political and social history; governability; political and social representation; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Where I live, in very rural Eastern Poland, younger people typically take reasonable precautions, while older people seem to don’t understand how high the risk is. Local babushkas suddenly became extremely social. Our grandma has several guests everyday and also comes to church hour before the mass to socialize.
Meanwhile, I called one of my aunts yesterday; she and her husband are in their eighties, and my uncle is due to have a pacemaker replaced this Thursday.
If you don’t need it for medical reasons (or even if you do and it’s feasible), you might want to consider edibles instead of smoking/vaping, or just putting it on hold.
Yesterday, Bavarians voted in their communities. Communal votes in Munich, one of Germany’s largest cities, were counted by state servants - teachers - to ensure the voting went ahead, since many of the voting aides canceled their volunteering last minute due to Covid-19 precautions.
Currently, Germany has 4828 documented infections as of yesterday 15h.
