Tag Archives: Pandemic

A Terrible List of “Hot Spots”

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The New York Times has a long list of the worst virus outbreaks in the U.S. The list includes facilities with 50 or more cases.

Among facilities with more than 150 cases, jails and meatpacking plants predominate (presumably, the virus can survive longer where there’s meat). The U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt and a few long-term care facilities, such as psychiatric hospitals, also have large numbers of cases.

Most long-term care facilities are relatively small and appear further down on the Times list. However:

Across the country, a pattern has played out with tragic consistency: Someone gets sick in a nursing home. Soon, several residents and employees have the coronavirus. The New York Times has identified more than 6,400 nursing homes and other long-term care facilities across the United States with coronavirus cases. More than 100,000 residents and staff members at those facilities have contracted the virus, and more than 17,000 have died. That means more than a quarter of the deaths in the pandemic have been linked to long-term care facilities.

It’s hard to imagine the suffering that’s going on behind closed doors (including the doors of houses and apartments).

Marion Correctional Institution — Marion, Ohio 2268
Pickaway Correctional Institution — Scioto Township, Ohio 1655
Smithfield Foods pork processing facility — Sioux Falls, S.D. 1095
Trousdale Turner Correctional Center — Hartsville, Tenn. 1037
U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt — Guam 969
Cook County jail — Chicago, Ill. 940
Cummins Unit prison — Grady, Ark. 911
Lakeland Correctional Facility — Coldwater, Mich. 821
Bledsoe County Correctional Complex — Pikeville, Tenn. 585
Harris County jail — Houston, Texas 488
Neuse Correctional Institution — Goldsboro, N.C. 480
JBS USA meatpacking plant — Green Bay, Wis. 348
G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility — Jackson, Mich. 347
Lansing Correctional Facility — Lansing, Kan. 336
Triumph Foods meat processing facility — St. Joseph, Mo. 295
Butner Prison Complex — Butner, N.C. 266
Sterling Correctional Facility — Sterling, Colo. 260
Paramus Veterans Memorial Home — Paramus, N.J. 256
Trenton Psychiatric Hospital — Trenton, N.J. 247
JBS USA meatpacking plant — Greeley, Colo. 245
Parnall Correctional Facility — Jackson, Mich. 243
American Foods Group meat processing facility — Green Bay, Wis. 241
JBS USA meatpacking plant — Grand Island, Neb. 230
Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women — St. Gabriel, La. 216
Shelby County jail — Memphis, Tenn. 205
Westville Correctional Facility — Westville, Ind. 200
Stateville Correctional Center — Crest Hill, Ill. 196
Hackensack Meridian Health Nursing and Rehab Care Center — Hackensack, N.J. 190
Franklin Medical Center prison hospital — Columbus, Ohio 185
Christian Health Care Center — Wyckoff, N.J. 183
The Harborage nursing home — North Bergen, N.J. 181
Tyson Foods meatpacking plant — Waterloo, Iowa 180
Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center II — Andover, N.J. 176
Redwood Springs nursing home — Visalia, Calif. 174
Central Detention Facility — Washington, D.C. 172
Lincoln Park Care Center — Lincoln Park, N.J. 168
PruittHealth Palmyra nursing home — Albany, Ga. 167
Tyson Foods meatpacking plant — Columbus Junction, Iowa 166
Soldiers’ Home — Holyoke, Mass. 163
Gallatin Center for Rehabilitation and Healing — Gallatin, Tenn. 162
JBS Beef Plant — Cactus, Texas 159
Dillwyn Correctional Center — Dillwyn, Va. 158
Northern State Prison — Newark, N.J. 158
California Institution for Men — Chino, Calif. 154
Perdue Farms meat processing facility — Cromwell, Ky. 154
Brookdale Paramus assisted living facility — Paramus, N.J. 153
George Beto Unit prison — Tennessee Colony, Texas 153
JBS USA pork production facility — Worthington, Minn. 151

A president who was reluctant to force the production of protective gear was willing to force meatpacking plants to stay open. Why? On one side are giant corporations who want to continue business as usual and millions of voters who would be affected by a shortage. On the other is a low-paid workforce mostly made up of people — immigrants, Latinos and African Americans — who don’t matter to the president at all. Q.E.D.

The 78 (?) Quarantine Players Present Three Speeches from Shakespeare

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From The Guardian:

In celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday and in partnership with Shakespeare’s Globe we invited the general public to join leading actors in performing three of Shakespeare’s iconic speeches from their place of quarantine: As You Like It, Hamlet and The Tempest. More than 500 people from around the world submitted and a selection of those performances have been edited together here….

It’s excellent, although not being British or Shakespearean, I watched with closed captions [CC] on.

The Toddler Strikes Again — Pandemic Edition

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From Crooked Media’s informative newsletter:

The T—- administration abruptly removed the doctor who led the federal agency working on a coronavirus vaccine because he pushed back against the administration’s efforts to promote [the president’s] favorite unproven drugs. Now he has become a whistleblower: “I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way.”

Dr. Rick Bright said he was dismissed as director of [Health and Human Service’s] Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) because he insisted that the government invest funding into scientifically vetted treatments, vaccine research, and critical supplies, and resisted widespread use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus symptoms. (On Tuesday, a panel of experts [at the National Institutes of Health] specifically advised against the use of hydroxychloroquine outside of clinical trials.)

Bright believes he was transferred to a smaller role at NIH as an act of retaliation. He said he’ll request an investigation into the politicization of BARDA, including how the administration has pressured scientists to “fund companies with political connections and efforts that lack scientific merit.”

A vague but stunning accusation of political corruption hobbling the government’s response to one of the most deadly crises the country has ever faced….

Remember during Trump’s impeachment,a mere 400 years ago, when we learned that Trump fired an experienced career diplomat because she wouldn’t go along with his corrupt Ukraine scheme? We’ve just seen him do the same thing to a career scientist in a key public health role, in the middle of the worst public-health crisis in our lifetimes. Somebody ask [Republican Senator] Susan Collins if she still thinks T—- learned his lesson. 

Unofficial Advice from Italy (and New Jersey)

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Here’s unofficial advice from S. Abbas Raza, who lives in Northern Italy (there have now been more deaths in Italy than China):

• Stay calm but be concerned: this is probably the greatest single challenge the world has faced in our lifetimes. Decisions made in a panic are not good … and don’t keep reading everything about Corona all day every day—I did that for a couple of days and then I couldn’t sleep. It is very important to pay attention to one’s mental well-being at this time, as well as physical.

• It is best to get serious advice and information from reputable scientific sources…. For example:

Centers for Disease Control Coronavirus Resource Page

World Health Organization Coronavirus Resource Page

Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center

Harvard University Coronavirus Resource Center

[Avoid the president’s daily “briefing”. He has turned them into campaign rallies. He downplayed the problem for weeks, wasting precious time, and is now bragging and spouting misinformation. Pressure is building to stop televising what he says live, since he’s become a public health risk. For example, here, here, here and especially here.]

• Stay at home. Buy groceries for at least a week at a time (two if you can do that) and then don’t be tempted to run out for that one brand of potato chips you suddenly have a craving for. Now is the time to be disciplined about this. As one doctor advised, behave as if you have the virus and don’t want to give it to others.

• A good way to make a comprehensive grocery list is to walk through each room in your house with a pad and pen and look around carefully and see what you might run out of in the next week or two. This way, I remembered to buy shaving blades when I was in the bathroom looking around, for example, which I would have forgotten otherwise. Same happened with laundry detergent in the laundry room, etc.

• Convince others to take the problem seriously and insist that they cancel plans for socializing, travel, etc. Do this calmly and without getting worked up, otherwise they will dismiss what you say as the product of irrational fear. This will only work if we all do it. Obviously.

• Avoid public transport and walk if you can. Driving a car is also better than public transport, for once.

• The natural tendency is to want to visit one’s parents and other family in a time like this. Don’t. [Use online video] with them and keep in touch more than normal through phone, email, social media, and every way except actually being there. Everyone needs reassurance these days, and it’s nice for people who love you to hear your voice.

• Just in case, make a plan with your family about what you will do if one of you gets sick. Better to do this while calm and healthy than in a panic.

• Use this time to exercise more…, read, do stuff you’ve been putting off that can be done at home. Or just watch TV….

• I’ve also found that keeping the house spic and span helps a lot psychologically to ward off thoughts of disease.

• …. Buy a variety of foods to store as you get sick of eating the same things….

• Be extra kind to everyone and remain patient and avoid emotional outbursts. And stay home if you can!

Unquote.

Also, use disposable gloves whenever possible. And consider a scarf when you have to go somewhere.

And wash your hands! A lot! Because “soap absolutely destroys the coronavirus”.

If you think governments are overreacting, see the graph from a couple days ago in this article. Italy tried to isolate the virus. Now it’s spreading and we are about nine days behind them.

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We’re Being Tested, But Not in the Right Way

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There is good news on the coronavirus front. But not in this country.

From the Popular Information newsletter:

South Korea, a country of about 51 million people, conducted nearly 200,000 tests as of Monday. In South Korea, you could get tested for coronavirus in a drive-thru lane, without ever getting out of your car. The strategy appears to be working. “[T]he country has seen a steady decline in new infections over the last few days,” NBC News reports.

Initially, the United States conducted very few tests because the T—- administration decided to develop its own test kit rather than using functional kits from the World Health Organization or commercial suppliers. That test did not function properly.

But that problem appears to be solved….

So how many Americans have been tested? The CDC is not releasing comprehensive data on testing, so the best information comes from three guys updating a Google Doc. Aggregating state data, they’ve found only 7,695 Americans have been tested, as of Wednesday evening [NOTE: The latest number is 8,909 — but if we were conducting tests at the same rate as South Korea, we might have done 1.2 million by now].

As a result, coronavirus is still spreading undetected in many communities….The lack of testing increases the chances that things will get much worse.

As it turns out, having a functional test kit isn’t enough to perform a coronavirus test. You also need something called an “RNA extraction” kit to “prepare samples for testing.” And there is a shortage of these RNA extraction kits in labs across the country.

CDC Director Robert Redfield admitted to Politico that the shortage of RNA extraction kits was a major roadblock. “I’m confident of the actual test that we have, but as people begin to operationalize the test, they realize there’s other things they need to do the test,” Redfield said. Asked what he would do to address the shortage, Redfield replied, “I don’t know the answer to that question”….

The main supplier of RNA extraction kits is Qiagen, a Dutch diagnostics company. Qiagen “confirmed that its product is backordered due to ‘the extraordinary pace’ at which the world has increased coronavirus testing over the last few weeks.” In other words, other countries obtained the supplies they needed to conduct testing faster than the United States. Now that T—- administration officials realize that testing needs to accelerate quickly, the supplies are no longer available.

Here is what Dr. Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard, had to say about the inability of the United States to conduct testing at scale:

The lack of testing in the United States is a debacle. We’re supposed to be the best biomedical powerhouse in the world and we’re unable to do something almost every other country is doing on an orders of magnitude bigger scale.

Recall that the administration had people with the relevant background and expertise to handle this precise situation. T—- fired them in 2018 and never replaced them….

Asked about the reduction in expert staff, T—- defended the decision and said he could get the experts back “quickly” if needed.

Unquote.

We’re lucky that something like COVID-19 didn’t come along sooner. We’ve been at elevated risk since T—- sat down in the Oval Office. (Actually, it did come along sooner when hurricane Maria destroyed much of Puerto Rico in 2017, but nobody much cared about a horrible government response to a disaster that didn’t affect “real” Americans.)