I have a piece up on the homepage today about Florida’s approach to the COVID-19 crisis. If you talk to Governor DeSantis and his team, it’s impossible to conclude anything other than that they have taken this seriously from the beginning, been immersed in the data and research, and crafted a well-considered response. Which makes it all the more astonishing and unfair that the media has been portraying DeSantis as a yokel who was going to get Floridians killed with his lax approach. In fact, on an absolutely central policy question — how to deal with the nursing homes — DeSantis and his team were much more stringent than other states.
Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday praised Florida’s phased-in plan for restarting its economy in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, saying the state is “leading the way” in its effort to balance safety with the need to reopen businesses.
“Because of the choices you’ve made, the truth is that we’ve stopped the spread, we’ve flattened the curve, we’ve saved lives,” Pence said in the opening moments of a roundtable discussion with Gov. Ron DeSantis and leaders of the state’s tourism industry at the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort in Orlando.
While Disney has not revealed any further information on when the rest of the park may reopen, we do know that if things go well in Phase 1 of Florida's reopening, the governor is eager to move on to Phase 2, which would allow nonessential travel to resume, and potentially the reopening of theme parks like Disney. "My hope would be each phase we're talking about weeks, not months," DeSantis said when he announced Phase 1 of the plan on April 29. Phase 2 specifically addresses theme parks, saying, "Theme parks may consider re-opening with capacity limits, strict social distancing, and proper measures to clean and disinfect." Of course, Disney has the final say on when and how it reopens Disney World, so we will have to wait for the official word directly from it.
Should you wear a face mask? Medical authorities have sent confusing messages. Both the U.S. surgeon general and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exhorted Americans not to wear masks in January and February, then reversed themselves in April. Mask wearing is now mandatory in many workplaces and public spaces, but how much good does it do? The science is inconclusive, but probably not much.
Ronald Reagan famously declared that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Those words resonate with many during a time when some governments are aggressively enforcing efforts that seek to prevent society from re-opening. Polling I conducted this past weekend found that 52 percent of voters share Reagan's view of how terrifying government "help" can be. Only 35 percent disagree.
Initially, of course, there was strong support for the lockdowns. But a backlash is brewing. Forty-one percent of voters have already come to believe that the lockdowns did more harm than good. Barely two months into the lockdown, only 51 percent disagree with that assessment. As the economic trauma continues, those numbers are almost certain to shift and cast the initial lockdowns in an even less favorable light.
Looking ahead, the data reveal another perspective Reagan applauded: confidence in the commonsense wisdom of the American people. When it comes to making decisions about re-opening, just 34 percent of voters trust government officials more than everyday Americans. Let's face it, it's hard to have confidence in government decision-making when decisions about which businesses can open seem either irrational or blatantly political. That's one reason why more voters—43 percent—place their trust in the general public.
All 50 U.S. states have now relaxed some of their coronavirus restrictions as governments around the world work to revive their economies after months of shutdowns designed to curb the pandemic.
Slight declines in new confirmed cases in some states have prompted governors from N ew York to Ohio to reopen services—to varying extents—including restaurants, churches and schools. On Wednesday, Connecticut became one of the last states to loosen its curbs, though Washington, D.C., remains under stay-at-home orders and wide swaths of states, including major metropolitan areas, remain largely shut.
More than 1.53 million people in the U.S. have confirmed cases of the coronavirus, and over 92,000 deaths have been recorded, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. World-wide, there are some 4.94 million confirmed infections, and more than 324,000 reported deaths.
Experts caution that official numbers likely understate the extent of the pandemic in part because of limited and differing testing capabilities for the virus.
State governments in the U.S. estimate the collective expense of fighting the pandemic at some $45 billion, which most want the federal government to repay in full, rather than be reimbursed at the 75% rate allowed under the law, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said.
Organizations representing state, territorial and local governments asked Congress on Wednesday to approve an aid package that would help fund services and essential jobs as states, cities and counties face budget shortfalls.
Since the coronavirus first spread in the U.S., states have shut down and, months later, reopened at different paces. Absent mandated federal guidelines, state and local leaders looked to various sources—including virus data, priorities, task forces, public-health leaders and constituencies—in their decision-making.
Utah never issued a blanket stay-at-home order but placed different levels of restrictions on different counties. California was one of the earliest states to issue a stay-at-home order and only recently began relaxing restrictions, though curbs in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area are expected to remain in place for some time. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s order late last month to allow nonessential businesses such as hair salons and gyms to open was one of the most aggressive reopenings in the nation.
In most countries, the tool of choice to “flatten the curve” of the coronavirus pandemic is the lockdown. Not in Sweden, which has chosen a rather laissez-faire approach. The borders have been kept open, and Swedes are free to travel within the country, visit bars and restaurants (with some restrictions), parks, hairdressers, gyms and most other places.
The cornerstone of the Swedish response is its constitution’s most important part, the Regeringsform. Chapter 2, Article 8 states: “Everyone shall be protected in their relations with the public institutions against deprivations of personal liberty. All Swedish citizens shall also in other respects be guaranteed freedom of movement within the Realm and freedom to depart the Realm.” The Regeringsform makes exceptions only for prisoners and military conscripts, and there is no provision for a peacetime state of emergency. While the constitutions of neighboring Finland and Norway also guarantee freedom of movement, neither juxtaposes that provision with a broad protection of “personal liberty.”
The Swedish Constitution comes into play in another, more significant way, namely the strong independence of public authorities from government interference. This unique feature originated with the Regeringsform of 1634, which followed the death of King Gustavus Adolphus II in the Thirty Years War. It insulates Sweden’s public institutions from political meddling to a much greater degree than in any other democracy.
The Public Health Agency of Sweden—like other public bodies, such as the world’s oldest central bank, the Riksbank—operates with an incomparably high degree of independence from the government. Chapter 12, Article 2 of the Regeringsform spells this out: “No public authority, including the Riksdag”—the Parliament—“or decision-making body of any local authority, may determine how an administrative authority shall decide in a particular case relating to the exercise of public authority vis-à-vis an individual or a local authority, or relating to the application of law.”
We no longer need to rely on unicorn simulation models to predict the threat level of COVID-19. After millions of global cases, we now have reams of hard data. In recent days, two things have become clear: 1) The overall death rate is dramatically inflated with people who died only with COVID-19 – not because of it – especially in nursing homes; 2) Outside nursing homes, the fatality rate is low even for most seniors and shockingly low for younger and healthier people. This destroys politicians’ reasons for pushing the irrevocably harmful actions taken by our government rather than a more strategic and targeted approach.
To begin with, the media and politicians are still promoting high overall infection fatality rates (IFR), such as the World Health Organization’s estimate of 3.4%. But we’ve seen enough random sampling from serological antibody tests, corroborated by hard data from prisons and navy ships, to demonstrate that the virus spread earlier, wider, and more asymptomatically than previously thought, thereby driving the fatality rate much lower. A new analysis averaging all the major antibody tests indicates that the average overall fatality rate (including nursing home deaths) is 0.2%. Why have our policies not been updated to reflect that reality?
This week, Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis published a preprint (before peer review) analysis averaging the fatality rates reflected in the extrapolation of all the serology tests with a sample size larger than 500 and that were randomly sampled (as opposed to health care workers). These tests measure the seroprevalence – the prevalence of antibodies for the virus in a given population – through some degree of random sampling.
Based on these random samples, the Stanford professor of medicine, epidemiology, biomedical data science, and statistics concluded that the fatality rate ranges from 0.02% to 0.40%. That is a range of seven times less deadly or 2.8 times more deadly than seasonal influenza.
The mean IFR is 0.2%, right around the result we saw from the first U.S. serology studies in Santa Clara, Los Angeles, and Miami Dade Counties. That is 17 times less deadly than what the World Health Organization originally predicted and 4.5 times less deadly than the Imperial College study assumed!
China has launched a Twitter offensive in the COVID-19 information war, more than doubling its number of official government tweets since January and in recent days using the platform to spread a conspiracy theory that the virus came from a U.S. government lab.
"The #US keeps calling for transparency & investigation. Why not open up Fort Detrick & other bio-labs for international review? Why not invite #WHO & int'l experts to the US to look into #COVI19 source & response?" the spokesperson for China's Foreign Affairs Ministry wrote in a May 8 tweet that has been liked more than 4,000 times.
The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, is where the military houses and researches infectious diseases
The Chinese have pushed out 90,000 tweets since the start of April from 200 diplomatic and state-run media accounts as part of an offensive in the COVID-19 information war, according to data collected by the Hamilton 2.0 dashboard of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a tool that aggregates accounts connected to the Chinese government.
Bret Schafer, the digital disinformation fellow at the alliance, based in Washington, D.C., has been tracking China's increasing social media output for months.
According to Schafer's analysis, Twitter output from China's official sites has almost doubled since January, and the number of diplomatic Twitter accounts has tripled, to 135, up from just 40 accounts this time last year. Many tweets are in English or Mandarin, but the diplomatic accounts are often in the language of an embassy's host country.
The Chinese accounts "have become more aggressive, more conspiratorial, and the ones who have done that are their most popular accounts and have by far the most engagement," Schafer said
Home Depot co-founder and billionaire Bernie Marcus says that the media has not done much for Americans other than scaring them during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Marcus, who appeared on Fox News' Laura Ingraham on Monday, said the media is at fault for creating panic and division amid the coronavirus pandemic.
"[The media have done a] wonderful job in frightening America," he said.
He added that the country would be better served taking care of its infirm population who are more likely to suffer deadly complications of the respiratory disease.
"My age bracket is really the problem," Marcus, who is 91 years old, said. "If we take care of my age bracket, that is 70 or above, I think that we can end a lot of the problems that are out there. People that are 70 or above have to be so careful because you are compromised in many different ways. But we're only a small portion of the population, and we're closing down everybody in addition to the schools."
Diana Nyad is a sports journalist, author, performer and the only person to date to swim unaided from Cuba to Florida.
My friend Ann, mid-60s, chose swimming laps as her coping mechanism through the long, torturous 14 years of her husband’s cancer battle. Ann isn’t a strong swimmer. She’s not a former college or high school competitor. But for 14 years, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, Ann placed her fins and timer and paddles at the end of her lane and found solace in gliding, in turning her head for that sip of air, in the peaceful effort of an hour of daily laps. She depended on that hour.
March 14, 2020, was Ann’s husband’s last day. Her pool closed that week as well, along with all public pools in Los Angeles. Her lifeline evaporated. Without her stalwart haven, her pool, Ann’s mourning deepened further.
We seem to speak of missing our sports during this time in terms of professionals. No NBA, no Wimbledon, no Olympics. Yes, we are a nation of fans, and we miss our professional athletes. They not only wow us, entertain us, but they set a standard for the pursuit of excellence that inspires us in our own respective realms.
But, keeping the original spirit of modern sports in mind, the joy of movement and play among the masses crucial to our society’s collective physical and mental health, it’s the amateurs who are also suffering hardship through this virus era.
The high school soccer player who will never get her senior spring season back. She not only missed her final, precious time to play with her teammates, perhaps the highlight of her secondary schooling, but she also hasn’t had a chance to work out in front of college scholarship recruiters.
The 50-year-old basketball player who hadn’t missed a Sunday morning with his buddies for decades. That Sunday morning was fundamental to his happiness, and depression has set in without it…
We athletes have come to live out loud a set of values. We hold high the discipline and the unrelenting focus it takes to chase long-term goals. We believe in the self-esteem and the life lessons of winning and losing that come through playing sports...
I am clear about my good fortune in thriving through this covid-19 era, compared to so many others. Yet I would say losing tennis, even temporarily, has hit me the hardest.
Delta Air Lines Inc (DAL.N) is likely to increase capacity this summer by adding flights in June and July as U.S. domestic travel slowly picks up amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, its chief executive officer said on Wednesday.
CEO Edward Bastian told Fox Business Network the airline’s 60% cap on passenger load would help it maintain social distancing, while it also undertakes other efforts such as cleaning to boost customer confidence.
It’s no longer a question of if the coronavirus fatality numbers are inflated but by how much they are inflated.
Last week, Colorado was forced to revise its own COVID-19 fatality numbers down by a whopping 23% after state and local officials called out the coding of deaths of people who died of other causes causes who merely tested positive for the virus. It now appears that this trend is widespread in Colorado and all over the country, which would explain why we saw an endless surge in the death count for weeks after hospitals were already empty. Once testing became standard, officials were retroactively recoding anyone who tested positive for COVID-19 without any evidence they died from it.
What would the death rate look like if every state were forced to count only those proven with reasonable evidence to have died of the coronavirus?
Take Pennsylvania, for example. The Armstrong County coroner posted on Facebook earlier this week that the state department of health inflated his county’s COVID-19 death numbers from two to six.
In Europe, roughly three groups of countries emerge in terms of fatalities. One group, including the U.K., the Netherlands and Spain, experienced extremely high excess mortality. Another, encompassing Sweden and Switzerland, suffered many more deaths than usual, but significantly less than the first group. Finally, there were countries where deaths remained within a normal range such as Greece and Germany.
Yet the data show that the relative strictness of a country’s containment measures had little bearing on its membership in any of the three groups above. While Germany had milder restrictions than Italy, it has been much more successful in containing the virus.
The overall impression is that while restrictions on movement were seen as a necessary tool to halt the spread of the virus, when and how they were wielded was more important than their severity. Early preparation, and plentiful health-care resources, were enough for several countries to avoid draconian lockdowns. Germany, with better testing and contact tracing and more intensive care units than its neighbors, could afford to keep the economy a bit more open. Greece, by acting quickly and surely, appears to have avoided the worst, so far.
