Good evening, friends! I am going to do my best to provide an account of both what it is like in indeterminate quarantine as well as update you (and myself) on the positive a negative news. For the most part, I am now going to try to separate these posts so it is clear what you are heading into when you click on a post. Earlier today I posted my one week update from quarantine, so now it's time for-you guessed it-your consolidated news update!
Let's start with something a little different--good news from around the world on this pandemic.
Good News
The best news so far today is that there are now seemingly very-efficient pilot studies being run on volunteer patients that started in Australia. There are two main pharmaceutical interventions that seem to be incredibly promising. The first is an outdated HIV treatment which has shown positive results in eradicating the virus in its entirety in a test tube environment. This drug has also shown positive results among some of the first Chinese people who volunteered as test subjects in Australia. The second intervention is a shelved drug used for Malaria, and has shown similarly positive results in helping treat patients. Randomized volunteer trials have indicated that both drugs are effective on the majority of study participants and they have been able either to make a full recovery or progress from a hospital to a home recovery setting.
The next steps are randomizing the trails from drug vs. placebo to drug 1 vs. drug 2 vs. drug 1 + drug 2 vs. placebo. Early results are very promising! Another avenue that Johns Hopkins is currently pursuing is the likely idea that antibodies from recovered COVID-19 patients can be utilized to help minimize risk to potential high risk patients. Dutch and Canadian researchers are pursuing yet another research path and collaboration is speeding the effort to isolate the agent responsible for the virus. Doing this in just a few short weeks would be a world-first. Wow. Thank you, once again, to all researchers and healthcare professionals involved in these efforts.
In addition to this, distilleries across the USA are now making their own hand sanitizer and giving it away for free. That's right-after Amazon and other online companies cracked down on those people charging $80+ for 2 oz. of hand sanitizer, our country has mobilized one of our favorite industries to endear itself even further to us. THANK YOU!
As was predicted earlier this week, satellite images are showing a drastically reduced amount of pollution, especially in densely populated cities. This may wildly impact how we think about the current climate situation as this crisis passes and we can see the positive effects from using fewer vehicles and factories. Some reports are even estimating that China’s quarantine saved more than 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions to date.
Speaking of which, both China and South Korea are reporting more recoveries than infections and now appear to be in a state of decline of infection transmission. Many of the temporary hospitals that were set-up in China's outbreak location of Wuhan are no longer needed and small numbers of remaining patients have been sent to other treatment facilities that now have the capacity to take them.
FLATTENED CURVE
Local News
Governor Mike DeWine has ordered all hairdressers, tattoo parlors, nail salons, and spas to close by the end of business today. He has also closed all but five DMV locations across the state, citing that these are nonessential as long as a skeleton crew can keep five open for the time being.
The governor also told employers that they need to be doing temperature screenings on their employees every day upon entry as long as they are coming into work. This is a measure that has worked well in other countries that are experiencing a flattening of the curve and are beginning to (ostensibly) decline in new cases. Ohio continues to be on the cutting edge of coronavirus related protection measures as Kentucky only just now closed their gyms, recreation centers, and entertainment facilities. What is so remarkable about this pandemic is that delaying certain actions by even day, or hours, can be the difference in averting hot spot contamination.
So far, 88 cases have been confirmed across the state, the majority of them (38) being in Cuyahoga county near Cleveland. Our infection curve is looking more linear than exponential at this point in time, thanks to the measures being taken by officials across the state. This is absolutely excellent news for today. The less exponential the growth, the better response resources we have per patient. Hamilton county closed government buildings and all services deemed non-essential (such as auto titles) have been suspended.
National News
Both the USA and Canada agreed to close the border today to all “non-essential” traffic until further notice. In an effort to support this measure, two Navy Hospital ships have been deployed to high traffic areas along that border, including one to New York.
HUD has issued a two month moratorium on rents, government backed mortgage payments, and evictions for families during this time to “provide homeowners with some peace of mind during these trying times." While so many folks are facing unemployment challenges, this is crucial to keeping not only financially-impacted families safe, but also other citizens safe who might have provided a living space to an infected person without a roof over his or her head. This measure supports social isolation and citizen health. This is especially good news given that hotels have also been forced to close.
In defiance of California’s shelter-in-place orders, Elon Musk has kept his factory in Alameda County open saying that, “the coronavirus panic is dumb.” We can only hope that local law enforcement will soon put a stop to the numerous workers currently in harm's way. Thankfully, both Ford and GM have suspended domestic auto manufacturing until at least March 30th.
(Also, can we get this guy to come help us out?)
Earlier today, Trump invoked the Defense Production Act, created in 1950 to respond to production needs of the Korean War. This is allowing FEMA to be deployed and PPE (5 million masks and 2,000 ventilators) to be distributed nationwide. He also has deployed FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) teams to all 50 states and has increased their operations to Level 1 (highest level) of effectiveness. Hospitals are urged to postpone elective surgeries to devote more resources to fighting the coronavirus. Italy has added to our relief effort and has shipped about half a million coronavirus tests to various locations around the USA to aid in USA testing efforts for the coronavirus.
The House and Senate have passed a coronavirus relief bill to expand paid leave. The bill has been sent to President Trump and he is expected to sign it before this post is published. Congress also passed a bill to guarantee free coronavirus testing for all Americans.
The coronavirus has now appeared in all 50 states with WV confirming its first case Tuesday night. The individual in WV did not require hospitalization and is believed to be doing well.
Steve Mnuchin has predicted that the coronavirus will result in 20% unemployment nationwide when all is said and done. A lot may shift, positively or negatively between now and then, but with a potential fifth of the population facing unemployment, now is the time to get procedures in place to take care of our citizens. Last night, the online system for applying for unemployment benefits crashed as a result of so much traffic. While on the topic of online systems, the U.S. Census bureau has suspended all in-person operations until April, and has encouraged Americans to complete forms online in the meantime.
Unfortunately, President Trump continues to refer to CODVID-19 as the “Chinese Virus” and an unnamed White House staff member allegedly referred to it as the “kung-flu.” Factually and culturally reprehensible. President Trump has not condemned either term as racist at this time. However, he hopes to use Americans’ location data to track coronavirus on a daily basis.
In some brighter news, both Whole Foods and Target are now offering “Senior Hours” for senior citizens and high risk patients to shop in their stores on Wednesday mornings before they run out of essential products.
World News
Hang in there, my friends. We are almost there, but first-let's go to the numbers. While I can find some fault with the numbers being thrown around right now, I was encouraged at some of the trends that I found in my research. To start of with, globally over 200,000 cases of positive coronavirus have been detected. In descending order of the countries with the top percentages of those cases:
China has 81,000,
Italy has 31,000,
Iran has 16,000,
Spain has 11,000,
Germany has 9,000,
South Korea has 8,000,
and the USA has 5,000.
More than 8,000 people have been killed while 82,000 people have recovered from the disease
According the the WHO, Europe has become "the new epicenter of the virus." Due to a false sense of security with restrictions being placed on elderly and immunocompromised populations, large gatherings continued far too late in Italy and Spain and the disease is running rampant through the millennial population. Many of the stricter protocols in other countries (including our own) are as a direct result of witnessing this disproportion.
If a lot of this got you down, remember you can scroll back up to the top to remember all the good that is happening at the same time as these more difficult headlines to stomach. Now that people are taking physical distancing (hello, rebrand of social isolation!) more seriously, we may be in for some truly viral good news. ;)
Prepare, don't panic.
-Allison
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