Covid 19 Pandemic

"We believe that under the phase one criteria that we have a sufficient amount of testing at that level to allow states to begin to responsibly reopen. And literally doing more than 150,000 tests a day now, a number that we believe we could double once we activate all the laboratories around the country, we're confident that that would enable any governor who's otherwise met the criteria of 14 days of declining cases to be able to have the testing capacity sufficient to monitor people that may have symptoms so we can identify them and do contact tracing and also deploy the resources to vulnerable populations, nursing homes and particular vulnerable populations in our city to ensure that we don't see a resurgence of the coronavirus. So yes, we think we've laid a strong foundation for testing for phase one and we're going to continue to expand testing going forward for the nation in the weeks and months ahead."

"I've seen that report in the papers this morning. And I know that HHS is making inquiries. But we believe those issues were resolved on that particular test by early February. But it's important for your viewers to know that that test, the slow lab-based test that is typical for CDC and labs would never have been able to meet the needs of testing in this coronavirus epidemic. That's why President Trump was so right when he brought together these commercial labs and formed a consortium. And literally took us from -- at that time in February we had done some 20,000 tests total across the country. Now we've done more than four million and we believe we'll have done more than five million tests before the end of this month. None of that would have been possible without the president's leadership, without the innovation, without the incredible efforts of companies like Roche and Avid Laboratories. And the American people can be confident that whether it is supplies, whether it is testing, we're going to continue to make sure that our governors, our state health care officials and most especially our health care workers have the resources and the support they need. But I want the American people to know that sitting here this morning we really are seeing encouraging signs because of what the American people have done, we believe we are slowing the spread."

"In any health care crisis, we want to make sure the health care workers at the local level have the resources they need because it's locally executed. It is state managed. But it's federally supported. And the federal government at the president's direction will continue to support governors as they deploy the testing resources in the time and manner of their choosing. But we believe today, as Dr. Deborah Birx has confirmed, is we have a sufficient capacity of testing today for any state in America to move into phase one and begin the process of reopening their state and their economy."

"Admiral Brett Giroir of the spends all of his time coordinating testing deployment and resources deployment from . And what we're making clear to governors, and I want the American people to know, is that we will continue to do that. While the president has made it clear that we want the governors to implement testing and deploy testing where they deem it's most appropriate in their state, we're going to continue to fully partner with states around the country to increase the supply, to make sure that they have the reagents and the test kits necessary to perform those tests. But I want to say again, it is truly -- it's a tribute to the president's leadership that early on in this process he brought in the top commercial labs in the country. They formed an alliance. And we went from one month ago to 80,000 tests being done to four million tests being completed as of yesterday. We'll continue to increase that. We'll continue to make governors aware of that."

"And we also have deployed a team from Walter Reed that over the last two weeks has been calling every single laboratory in the country that can do coronavirus testing. And tomorrow we'll be presenting all of those details to governors so that they can activate those tests in their state."

"Just so we're very clear, when the president outlined his guidelines for opening up America, we laid out a plan for both -- for when and how we thought it was best according to our best scientists and advisors for states to be able to responsibly and safely reopen. And we believe today as Dr. Birx has said, as Dr. Fauci and others have said, is that there is a sufficient capacity of testing across the country today for any state in America to go to a phase one level which contemplates testing people that have . And also doing the kind of monitoring of vulnerable populations in our cities, in our nursing homes that we ought to be watching very carefully for outbreaks of the coronavirus. But we believe working with the governors, as we'll continue to partner with them, that we can activate labs around the country and that states today, if the governor so chooses, have sufficient testing to be able to move into the testing contemplated in phase one."

"Secondly, the president made it clear to us that we were to make sure the hospitals in impacted areas had the resources and the equipment that they needed to be able to save as many lives as possible. [...] But testing has been a focus of ours as well, from very beginning. And it's the reason why the president, early on, brought in this vast array of commercial labs that took us from 80,000 tests one month ago to now four million tests as of yesterday. And as we'll make clear again to governors tomorrow in our weekly conference call, we look forward to continuing to partner with governors all across the country as we continue to scale testing. Because we really believe that, while we're doing 150,000 tests a day now, that if states around the country will activate all of the laboratories that are available in their states, we could more than double that overnight and literally be doing hundreds of thousands of more tests per day in a very short period of time."

"We believe we have the testing today around the country that would allow any state in America to move into phase one if they've met the other criteria: fourteen days of consistent declines and strong hospital capacity, so that their system would not be overwhelmed in the event of a flare-up. But we’re going to be working with governors tomorrow on the subject of testing and supplies. And as the President said again this evening: We’re here to help. We’ve forged a partnership with governors around the country, and tomorrow we’ll be building on that partnership to hopefully arrive at the day that we can make sure governors around the nation have the best advice and the best resources to put America back to work."

"That White House Coronavirus Task Force met today. It was reported to us that, at this moment, more than 746,000 Americans have tested positive for the coronavirus."

"A reliable test to see who has been infected without showing symptoms — and so could be moved to the recovered group — would be a game changer for modellers, and might significantly alter the predicted path of the pandemic, says Edmunds. To stress the need for such a test, a team at the University of Oxford, UK, led by theoretical epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, has suggested that the pattern of recorded deaths in the United Kingdom might fit a range of SIR models, including one that assumes millions of people have already been infected but haven’t shown any symptoms. Only tests that reveal such past infections can show what’s going on in reality."

"Market signals were clear: There’s no profit in preventing a future catastrophe. [...] One effect is the shockingly belated and limited testing, well below others, making it impossible to implement the successful test-and-trace strategies that have prevented the epidemic from breaking out of control in functioning societies. Even the best hospitals lack basic equipment. The U.S. is now the global epicenter of the crisis."

"Peter Alexander: How are non-symptomatic professional athletes getting tests while others are waiting in line and can't get them?"

"Not all branches of faith go as far as handling snakes, but they’re all rooted in the one miracle that overrides our intellect. That’s why, as a young, idealistic Christian who only wanted to grow in my faith, I was prayed over to sever me from my intellectual and rational thinking. This global pandemic has revealed there’s already a virus inside some American forms of belief — ones that believe God isn’t powerful enough to exist outside of gatherings or ones who believe this is in God’s plan so he can show his power. This kind of spiritual terrorism is showing up on a national scale and, as in my own faith journey, only reason can get us out."

"The Satan is using this opportunity as it has always done to lead us astray from our religious duties in the name of precautions, treatment and protection. Whenever a calamity strikes, Satan makes the victims of calamity commit such acts which destroy their rewards and add to their woes. This is the time to populate the mosques and to invite the ummah towards repentance. As I have already said, this is the time to make our supplications effective. This is not the time to pay heed to false remedial measures…."

"Given that Trump concluded early on that the coronavirus simply could not present a threat to the United States, perhaps there is nothing that the intelligence community, medical experts employing epidemiological models, or public health officials could have told the White House that would have made any difference."

"By now, there are three painfully obvious observations about Trump’s leadership style that explain the worsening coronavirus pandemic that Americans now face. First, there is the fact that once he believes absolutely anything – no matter how poorly thought-out, ill-informed or inaccurate – he remains completely anchored to that initial impression or judgment. Leaders are unusually hubristic and overconfident; for many, the fact that they have risen to elevated levels of power is evidence of their inherent wisdom. But truly wise leaders authentically solicit feedback and criticism, are actively open thinkers, and are capable of changing their minds. By all accounts, Trump lacks these enabling competencies."

"Most leaders lack the discipline to do routine risk-based horizon scanning, and fewer still develop the requisite contingency plans. Even rarer is the leader who has the foresight to correctly identify the top threat far enough in advance to develop and implement those plans. Suffice it to say, the Trump administration has cumulatively failed, both in taking seriously the specific, repeated intelligence community warnings about a coronavirus outbreak and in vigorously pursuing the nationwide response initiatives commensurate with the predicted threat. The federal government alone has the resources and authorities to lead the relevant public and private stakeholders to confront the foreseeable harms posed by the virus. Unfortunately, Trump officials made a series of judgments (minimizing the hazards of Covid-19) and decisions (refusing to act with the urgency required) that have needlessly made Americans far less safe. In short, the Trump administration forced a catastrophic strategic surprise onto the American people. But unlike past strategic surprises – , the Iranian revolution of 1979, or especially 9/11 – the current one was brought about by unprecedented indifference, even willful negligence. Whereas, for example, the assigned blame for the al-Qaida attacks on the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan through George W Bush, the unfolding coronavirus crisis is overwhelmingly the sole responsibility of the current ."

"Second, Trump’s judgments are highly transmissible, infecting the thinking and behavior of nearly every official or adviser who comes in contact with the initial carrier. Unsurprisingly, the president surrounds himself with people who look, think and act like he does. Yet, his inaccurate or disreputable comments also have the remarkable ability to become recycled by formerly honorable military, intelligence and business leaders. And if somebody does not consistently parrot the president’s proclamations with adequate intensity, they are fired, or it is leaked that their firing could be imminent at any time – most notably the recent report of the president’s impatience with the indispensable Anthony Fauci, the director of the ."

"And, third, the poor judgments soon contaminate all the policymaking arms of the federal government with almost no resistance or even reasonable questioning. Usually, federal agencies are led by those officials whom the White House believes are best able to implement policy. These officials have usually enjoyed some degree of autonomy; not under Trump. Even historically non-partisan national security or intelligence leadership positions have been filled by people who are ideologically aligned with the White House, rather than endowed with the experience or expertise needed to push back or account for the concerns raised by career non-political employees. Thus, an initial incorrect assumption or statement by Trump cascades into day-to-day policy implementation."

"The White House detachment and nonchalance during the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak will be among the most costly decisions of any modern presidency. These officials were presented with a clear progression of warnings and crucial decision points far enough in advance that the country could have been far better prepared. But the way that they squandered the gifts of foresight and time should never be forgotten, nor should the reason they were squandered: Trump was initially wrong, so his inner circle promoted that wrongness rhetorically and with inadequate policies for far too long, and even today. Americans will now pay the price for decades."

"Now we're working with the states in almost all instances, but we have a great system. And the other thing that we bought a tremendous amount of is the hydroxy chloroquine]]. Hydroxy chloroquine, which I think is, you know, it's a great malaria drug. It's worked unbelievably. It's a powerful drug on malaria and there are signs that it works on this, some very strong signs and in the meantime it's been around a long time. It also works very powerfully on lupus, so there are some very strong powerful signs and we'll have to see because again, it's tested."

"We are issuing this joint statement to highlight the important role that physicians, pharmacists and health systems play in being just stewards of health care resources during times of emergency and national disaster. We are aware that some physicians and others are prophylactically prescribing medications currently identified as potential treatments for COVID-19 (e.g., or hydroxychloroquine, ) for themselves, their families, or their colleagues; and that some pharmacies and hospitals have been purchasing excessive amounts of these medications in anticipation of potentially using them for COVID-19 prevention and treatment. We strongly oppose these actions. At the same time, we caution hospitals, health systems, and individual practitioners that no medication has been FDA-approved for use in COVID-19 patients, and there is no incontrovertible evidence to support of medications for COVID-19. Stockpiling these medications—or depleting supplies with excessive, anticipatory orders—can have grave consequences for patients with conditions such as or if the drugs are not available in the community. The health care community must collectively balance the needs of patients taking medications on a regular basis for an existing condition with new prescriptions that may be needed for patients diagnosed with COVID-19. Being just stewards of limited resources is essential."

"We are further concerned by the confusion that may result from various state government agencies and boards issuing emergency rules limiting or restricting access to chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine or other emerging therapies or requiring new procedures for physicians and other healthcare professionals and patients. If these bodies promulgate new rules, we urge that they emphasize professional responsibility and leave room for professional judgment. We further urge that patients already on these medications should not be impacted by new laws, rules or other guidance. In a time of national pandemic, now is not the time for states to issue conflicting guidance, however well-intentioned, that could lead to unintended consequences. We applaud the ongoing efforts to conduct clinical trials and generate evidence related to these and other medications during a time of pandemic. We are also encouraged that some pharmaceutical manufacturers are increasing production of high-demand medications as well as supplying them for use in clinical trials."

"Hydroxychloroquine has been studied as a possible antiviral therapy for many decades. Despite showing evidence of activity against several viruses in the laboratory, it never showed success in randomized clinical trials."

"President Trump doubled down Sunday on his push for the use of an anti-malarial drug against the coronavirus, issuing that goes well beyond scant evidence of the drug's effectiveness as well as the advice of doctors and experts. Mr. Trump's recommendation of hydroxychloroquine, for the second day in a row at a White House briefing, was a striking example of his brazen willingness to distort and outright defy expert opinion and when it does not suit his agenda."

"Standing alongside two top public health officials who have declined to endorse his call for widely administering the drug, Mr. Trump suggested that he was speaking on gut instinct and acknowledged that he had no expertise on the subject. Saying that the drug is "being tested now," Mr. Trump said that "there are some very strong, powerful signs" of its potential, although health experts say that the data is extremely limited and that more study of the drug's effectiveness against the coronavirus is needed. [...] Mr. Trump, who once predicted that the virus might "miraculously" disappear by April because of warm weather, and who has rejected on issues like climate change, was undaunted by skeptical questioning. "What do you have to lose?" Mr. Trump asked, for the second day in a row, saying that terminally ill patients should be willing to try any treatment that has shown some promise."

"Even as Mr. Trump has promoted the drug, which is also often prescribed for patients with lupus, it has created rifts within his own coronavirus task force. And while many hospitals have chosen to use hydroxychloroquine in a desperate attempt to treat dying patients who have few other options, others have noted that it carries serious risks. In particular, the drug can cause a that can lead to ."

"Hydroxychloroquine has not been proved to work against Covid-19 in any significant clinical trials. A small trial by Chinese researchers made public last week found that it helped speed the recovery in moderately ill patients, but the study was not peer-reviewed and had significant limitations. Earlier reports from France and China have drawn criticism because they did not include control groups to compare treated patients with untreated ones, and researchers have called the reports anecdotal. Without controls, they said, it is impossible to determine whether the drugs worked. But Mr. Trump on Sunday dismissed the notion that doctors should wait for further study."

"There are side effects to hydroxychloroquine. It causes psychiatric symptoms, cardiac problems and a host of other bad side effects. [...] There may be a role for it for some people, but to tell Americans 'you don't have anything to lose,' that's not true. People certainly have something to lose by taking it indiscriminately."

"Now this is a new thing that just happened to as the invisible enemy we call it. And if you can, if you have a no signs of heart problems, the , which will kill certain things that you don't want living within your body. It's a powerful drug. If you don't have a problem, a heart problem, we would say, let your doctor think about it, but as a combination, I think they're going to be, I think there's two things that should be looked at very strongly. Now, we have purchased and we have stockpiled 29 million pills of the hydroxy chloroquine, 29 million. A lot of drug stores have them by prescription and also, and they're not expensive. Also, we're sending them to various labs. Our military, we're sending them to the hospitals, we're sending them all over. I just think it's something, you know the expression, I've used it for certain reasons."

"What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose? And a lot of people are saying that when … and are taking it, if you're a doctor, a nurse, a first responder, a medical person going into hospitals, they say taking it before the fact is good, but what do you have to lose? They say, take it, I'm not looking at it one way or the other, but we want to get out of this. If it does work, it would be a shame if we didn't do it early. But we have some very good signs. So that's hydroxy chloroquine and as azithromycin, and again, you have to go through your medical people get the approval. But I've seen things that I sort of like, so what do I know? I'm not a doctor, I'm not a doctor, but I have common sense."

"The FDA feels good about it. They've, as you know, they've approved it. They gave it a rapid approved approval. And the reason because it's been out there for a long time and they know the side effects and they also know the potential. So based on that, we have sent it throughout the country. We have it stockpiled about 29 million doses, 29 million doses. We have a lot of it. We hope it works. Driven by the goal of the brightest minds in science. We have the brightest minds in science, but we were driven by the goal of getting rid of this plague, getting rid of this scourge, getting rid of this virus. These brilliant minds are working on the most effective antiviral therapies and vaccines. We are working very, very hard. I have met many of the doctors that are doing it. These are doctors that are working so hard on vanquishing the virus."

"I want them to try it. It may work, and it may not work. But if it doesn't work, it's nothing lost by doing it. Nothing. Because we know long-term what I want. I want to save lives, and I don't want it to be in a lab for the next year-and-a-half as people are dying all over the place. In France, they had a very good test. They're continuing. But we don't have time to go and say, gee, let's take a couple of years and test it out, and let's go and test with the test tubes and the laboratories. We don't have time. I'd love to do that, but we have people dying today. As we speak, there are people dying. If it works, that'd be great. If it doesn't work, we know for many years malaria, it's incredible what it's done for malaria. It's incredible what it's done for lupus, but it doesn't kill people."

"Speaker to Anthony Fauci: And would you also weigh in on this issue of hydroxychloroquine? What do you think about this and what is the medical evidence?"

"Fauci suppressed off-label use of hydroxychloroquine by encouraging discussions of it to be pulled from social media, by sabotaging its clinical trials by testing doses six times the recommended levels (p. 26), and by pulling sixty-three million doses of the medicine off the market, safely away from covid sufferers they could have helped (p. 28). Fauci also provided cover for those who threatened doctors and pharmacists with loss of licenses and jobs for prescribing and dispensing hydroxychloroquine for covid (pp. 31–32). The story of ivermectin is similar."

"Of course, the top priority now is to put public health and safety first. To that end, employees across the country are now thinking about refusing to obey orders to work in unsafe job conditions. U.S. capitalism has thus placed a general strike on today's social agenda. A close second priority is to learn from capitalism's failure in the face of the pandemic. We must not suffer such a dangerous and unnecessary social breakdown again. Thus system change is now also moving onto today's social agenda."

"Surely there must be other such strikes and sit-ins that haven't been covered by the press, and we know there are many other protests by all sorts of workers, particularly important among them teachers and nurses, though we do not include those in this discussion, important as they are. The wildcat strike holds a particular place in the history and theory of the labour movement, as well as today reaction to the bosses and the government during the coronavirus pandemic. We notice that these strikes involve both highly skilled and highly paid workers – such as those at the ' Bath shipyard – and also lower paid workers such as those at the Purdue chicken processing plant in Georgia and the bar and restaurant in Portland, Oregon. One can make the case that black workers – Pittsburgh sanitation, Kathleen, Georgia, Purdue chick, and Memphis Teamsters – play a leading role in the strikes. Yet workers at Bath shipyard are overwhelmingly white, while autoworkers are black, Arab, white and Latino, and GE's Lynn jet engine plant also has a racially mixed workforce. No doubt workers of all genders can be found in these protest, and we hear both men and women giving voice to the workers' concerns. While the central demands are about workers' health, we can see that already they begin to raise demands about wages, benefits and working conditions, as well as job security."

"For 150 years, workers have struck over safety and health in myriad industries, most memorably in the twentieth century the miners' strike over black lung. But we have not seen anything exactly like this before – wildcat strikes over health and safety in response to an epidemic, with workers making strong demands on the employers and sometimes winning. And these strikes are taking place in the midst of politicians' ignorant and sometimes deceitful statements and government failures at all levels. Consequently, these strikes – even when only directed at a particular employer – have not only an economic but also a political character. We're now seeing such strikes in a variety of industries in several states."

"Across the United States, we are seeing workers walk off the job in wildcat strikes in response to the employers' failure either to shut down the workplace or to make it safe. The strikes are too few to call them a strike wave, but we should be aware that on their own initiative workers are taking what practically is the most powerful action they can: withdrawing their labour. The strikes are taking place in both the private and , in both unionised and non-union s large and small."

"In the face of the COVID-19 tsunami, our lives are changing in ways that were inconceivable just a few short weeks ago. Not since the 2008–9 economic collapse has the world collectively shared an experience of this kind: a single, rapidly mutating global crisis, structuring the rhythm of our daily lives within a complex calculus of risk and competing probabilities. In response, numerous social movements have put forward demands that take seriously the potentially disastrous consequences of the virus, while also tackling the incapacity of capitalist governments to adequately address the crisis itself. These demands include questions of worker safety, the necessity of neighborhood-level organizing, and social security, the rights of those on s or in precarious employment, and the need to protect renters and those living in poverty."

"Capitalists preach "the market" for the working class – stand on your own two feet, don't rely on the government – but themselves sponge off the public big time. Just look at the billions in subsidies and tax concessions the fossil fuel companies, huge enterprises for the most part, extract from state and federal governments in Australia. The vehicle manufacturers raked in hundreds of millions a year from the for decades until deciding it wasn't enough and went overseas. This is why big companies and industry groups hire armies of former politicians to lobby on their behalf in the offices of premiers and prime ministers – there's money in government coffers and they want it. And while the capitalists talk about "the market" setting wages for workers, in reality, they don't really allow the market to do the job. They use the whole apparatus of state repression, the industrial tribunals, the police, the courts to suppress workers' rights to organise to pursue their demands. But when a crisis hits all the bullshit about the market is thrown to the winds. And that is just what we are seeing now. Faced with the collapse of the capitalist economy, for the second time in a dozen years, with massive bankruptcies on the table and the stock market plunging by more than 30 percent and more to come, fervent advocates of the free market are now embracing government intervention to save their skins."

"Wikipedia's main article for Wikipedia, one of the most important (as well as most edited) articles on the project, explains that the ability to lock pages and prevent anonymous public editing on the encyclopedia that anyone can edit was the key to Wikipedia's success in weeding out disinformation on the coronavirus."

"You cannot outrun the game clock with this pandemic. This virus will find you and, unfortunately, many of the outcomes are very sad. Look at what's happening right now in the US. We have health care systems around the country, including in my home state of Minnesota, that are hanging on by a thread. We've seen health care systems virtually broken by this pandemic. They just couldn't provide critical care to non-Covid patients."

"Terrorists – like all criminals – have sought to profit from COVID-19, to make money, strengthen their base and to fuel division."

"“We started to see retail workers get sick and put themselves on self-quarantine,” said Kim Cordova, president of the UFCW Local 7 in Colorado, which represents more than 17,000 private sector grocery workers in the state. “They had to use personal time to take time off or go to work sick...Workers felt [hazard pay] was just like a carrot to keep you working during this dangerous health crisis.""

"“The idea of just opening a stadium and letting the crowds come back to capacity is clearly really foolish,” says Mark Rupp, chief of infectious disease at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. In an interview, Rupp tells me that while there could be ways of limiting crowds and enforcing safety measures, “I don’t think there is any way of taking the risk out of it completely, quite frankly.”"

""If you were to create a petri dish and say, how can we spread this the most? It would be cruise ships, jails and prisons, factories, and it would be bars," Alozie says. He was a member of the Texas Medical Association committee that created a COVID-19 risk scale for common activities such as shopping at the grocery store."

"The true performance of simulations in this pandemic might become clear only months or years from now. But to understand the value of COVID-19 models, it’s crucial to know how they are made and the assumptions on which they are built. “We’re building simplified representations of reality. Models are not crystal balls,” Ferguson says."

"The most challenging aspects of modelling COVID-19 are the sociological components, Meyers says. “What we know about human behaviour up until now is really thrown out of the window because we are living in unprecedented times and behaving in unprecedented ways.” Meyers and others are trying to adjust their models on the fly to account for shifts in behaviours such as mask wearing and social distancing."

"“It’s become clear that cloth masks, even though they’re not as effective as the N95s, are still effective at reducing transmission,” said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. “Even if you’re not achieving that 95 percent reduction, something is better than nothing.”"