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Open Thread 2020-88
Please use the MoA Election Week In Review thread for election related issues.
Other stuff:
Nagorno Karabakh:
Russia:
Covid-19:
> They found the proCoV2 virus and its initial descendants arose in China, based on the earliest mutations of proCoV2 and their locations. Furthermore, they also demonstrated that a population of strains with as many as six mutational differences from proCoV2 existed at the time of the first detection of COVID-19 cases in China. With estimates of SARS-CoV-2 mutating 25 times per year, this meant that the virus must already have been infecting people several weeks before the December 2019 cases. <
Use as open thread …
As predicted by virtually everyone except Trump and his covidiots…
Covid in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count
At least 1,013 new coronavirus deaths and 126,156 new cases were reported in the United States on Nov. 7. Over the past week, there has been an average of 106,972 cases per day, an increase of 57 percent from the average two weeks earlier.
As of Sunday morning, more than 9,957,000 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 237,500 have died, according to a New York Times database.
Case numbers in the United States have been spiking for weeks. Weekly infection reports reached record levels in more than half the country in early November, and there were almost no hopeful signs in the data.
As conditions worsened and winter approached, some governors in the Northeast issued stay-at-home advisories. In Iowa, exhausted hospital leaders pleaded with residents to wear masks and avoid crowds. And in both rural counties and major cities, infections continued rising to fearsome new levels with no end in sight.
Deaths, though still well below their peak spring levels, averaged more than 800 per day in early November, far more than were reported in early July.
A Very Dark Pandemic Winter Is Nigh
A deluge of Covid-19 hospitalizations is a warning that a surge in deaths is coming
Frustrations are boiling over on Twitter just as the reality of what’s ahead — another surge in deaths amid an out-of-control pandemic—comes into focus.
“It is very difficult to watch our case counts soar, with few meaningful efforts to turn things around,” says Caitlin Rivers, PhD, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University. “Rising hospitalizations keeps me up at night. The pandemic will accelerate until we slow it down.”
“Honestly, I don’t even know what to say anymore,” tweeted epidemiologist Saskia Popescu, PhD, an assistant professor at George Mason University, upon sharing the latest chart above.
Hospitalizations in the United States have soared above 50,000, deaths are on the rise again, and a record 116,255 new cases on November 5 promises more misery to come…
“Do you all understand what 116,000 cases of Covid-19 exponentially growing means as we head into the holiday season?” asks Krutika Kuppalli, MD, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at Medical University of South Carolina. She answers herself: “Hospitals are at capacity. We have over 1,000 people dying a day (that’s two airplanes for perspective). ICUs are full. Health care workers are tired. This is bad.”
What’s Going on in Sweden
The country’s Covid-19 cases are rising dramatically
There’s been a lot of debate over whether the U.S. should or should not embrace a Swedish approach. Setting aside the fact that the countries are different in many ways (namely, universal health care), the fact is that the U.S.’s approach to the pandemic is very similar to Sweden’s and has been for a long time. Most parts of U.S. society are open and have been for months. Sweden is currently imposing some measures to reduce spread, including limits on the number of people in restaurants and cafes. The U.S. has not applied new restrictions to tamp down transmission like Sweden, or sweeping lockdowns like Germany and France.
COVID-19 is surging across the US and Europe. Here are the 9 most common mistakes people make when trying to protect themselves from the virus.
One sobering example: a new study from Stanford economists suggests President Trump’s rallies during the pandemic have “likely led to more than 700 deaths.”…
In South Korea, infectious disease expert and Professor Yae Jean Kim credits “participation, cooperation, and compliance of the public” in successfully batting back COVID-19 infections. (That’s in addition to the country’s robust testing and tracing system.)
“We encouraged wearing of masks from the early phase of the pandemic, and avoided mass gathering later on,” Kim told reporters during a WHO press conference on Monday. “However, we did not lock down the country or close the border, but only performed variable degrees of social distancing, according to the epidemiological situation. Although we had a second wave in some metropolitan areas mid-August and September, the outbreak was controlled with the various collective efforts.”
“…participation, cooperation, and compliance of the public” – good luck getting that in the US with the morons we have here.
Here’s the one piece of good news – plain old aspirin helps…
Aspirin May Treat Severe Covid-19 Disease, and That Tells Us Something Important
For a study published on October 21 in the journal Anesthesia and Analgesia, Chow and Mazzeffi — along with a multi-university team of researchers — examined the effects of aspirin among people hospitalized with Covid-19. After adjusting their data to account for age, BMI, race, preexisting conditions, and other variables that could muddy their conclusions, they determined that the risk of death or ICU admission was almost halved among people who got aspirin compared to those who did not.
“This is now the second study linking blood thinners of some kind with improved outcomes,” Mazzeffi says. “I think it’s driving home the point that an important part of the disease’s process is clotting in the organs and that intervening in those pathways is something we should focus on.”
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Nov 8 2020 17:04 utc | 6
Meanwhile, the SCO held its meeting of the Council of Heads of State via video, with some results published here:
“Thanks to the unilateralism and protectionism pushed by the Trump administration in the past four years, the development of the SCO cooperation has experienced a golden era, as under the joint guidance of China and Russia, the organization is getting increasingly united; and in the post-Trump era, the SCO will be even more united, said Chinese experts.”
Although Russia holds the rotating Presidency, it was Xi who made the keynote speech, its six main points put together in a chart at the link:
“It is important that we forestall terrorist, separatist and extremist attempts to exploit the pandemic for disruption, curb the proliferation of drugs, crack down on internet-based propagation of extremist ideology, and deepen SCO members’ law-enforcement cooperation, Xi noted.”
“Yang Jin, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences”, made several observations, the following IMO being the most important:
“Yang said that due to the pandemic, many countries’ economic development and people’s livelihoods in the region have been seriously impacted and this has provided chances for local terrorist groups to recruit more people, which is a new problem for the SCO.
“‘To fight these forces, military and intelligence cooperation is not enough. Economic cooperation to boost development can effectively wipe out the soil where terrorism and extremism are able to grow.'” [My Emphasis]
Putin opened the meeting with an overview of events occurring during its Presidency. A few of his points:
“The SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group has been created; it has drafted and adopted a roadmap of the organisation’s further steps with regard to Afghanistan. All this is aimed at helping Afghanistan to become a stable and safe state free of terrorism and drug-related crimes and living at peace with its neighbours.
“During the past few years, Russia, working with support from the SCO, has organised a series of meetings, which were attended by representatives of all the Afghan political forces without exception. We intend to continue doing our utmost to promote national reconciliation in Afghanistan, including at the platform of the Moscow consultations where Afghanistan’s neighbours are represented, including SCO countries, of course, as well as the United States….
“One more open challenge to our common security is the increased number of attempts of direct foreign interference in the internal affairs of states that are involved in SCO activities. I am referring to the blatant infringement on sovereignty, attempts to split societies, change the countries’ path of development and sever the existing political, economic and humanitarian ties that took centuries to develop.”
Also noted by Putin are the numerous statements that were made via consensus including:
“Adopted documents also include a statement on the 75th anniversary of Victory in World War II and statements on countering the spread of the terrorist, separatist and extremist ideology, including online, on cooperation in ensuring international information security, on countering the drug threat, on joint efforts against the novel coronavirus infection and on cooperation in the digital economy.”
TASS provided this short note about the video conference including:
“The Russian leader also supported Xi Jinping’s statement concerning the safety of digital data. ‘In this regard, we will support China’s initiative, as well as the idea to hold a digital economy forum in China,’ Putin said, expressing hope that other SCO member states would be willing to participate in the event.
“‘Undoubtedly, there are no good and bad civilizations. That said, it is important for us to pool our efforts in the humanitarian field so that integration and interpenetration will create conditions for everyone to enjoy the blessings of every civilization for the sake of common harmonious development,’ Putin emphasized.”
Many wondered what would become of the SCO when India and Pakistan were admitted. The generally expressed outcome is that the SCO provided another opportunity for dialog between those two and also between India and China that kept their border incidents from escalating. It would be good to know what Modi and Khan had to say in their addresses. It seems Iran must wait another year to become a full member.
Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 10 2020 18:37 utc | 74
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