Would self quarantine be a challenge for an Audiophile? Home detention even a punishment?

The World Health Organization (WHO) is now haunted by a tweet it sent earlier this year when it cited Chinese health officials who claimed there had been no human transmissions of the novel coronavirus within the country yet.

The Jan. 14 tweet came less than two months before WHO declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic.

"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel /#coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in /#Wuhan, /#China," the organization had said.

It also relied on information from Chinese health authorities who have been accused of obscuring facts and figures during the course of the outbreak.

The Chinese government reportedly knew the disease was spreading before the tweet was sent, according to the South China Morning Post.

Louisiana has the fastest rate of growth rate of coronavirus cases in the world, the state’s Gov. John Bel Edwards said during a news conference on Sunday, citing a University of Louisiana Lafayette study.

Marijuana dispensaries are deemed 'essential' in LA, allowed to stay open during coronavirus order

11:54 AM EDT March 20, 2020

With California residents being asked to stay at home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and all "non-essential businesses and areas" being closed down, officials in Los Angeles are making sure that marijuana is still available to the public.

Marijuana dispensaries are being deemed as "essential businesses," as they are allowed to remain open under the state's "Safer at Home" order.

Los Angeles has "cannabis dispensaries with a medicinal cannabis license" listed under "essential infrastructure" or "healthcare operations" that are exempt from closing.

“Deliveries are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic as Americans stay home from work and school, but 12 UPS drivers in nine states tell NBC News they don’t think their company has done enough to protect workers or the millions of customers they serve.

UPS has told drivers across the country not to share their hand-held devices with customers when making signature deliveries, and drivers in California, Wisconsin, Michigan and Washington said their daily morning meetings had been canceled since Monday to avoid forming crowds.

But drivers in all nine states said UPS hadn’t provided any protective gear to workers in their areas — no gloves or masks — or instituted “no contact” deliveries. They would also like the company to supply them with hand sanitizer, but UPS has instead advised frequent hand washing, which drivers said isn’t particularly feasible on their routes.

The drivers spoke on the condition of anonymity, due to fears about losing their jobs.”

Data show that anti-malaria drugs touted by President Trump can help in treating coronavirus patients, a top oncologist said Friday on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle."

Dr. William Grace of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City discussed the benefits of the drugs with host Laura Ingraham.

At first, Grace addressed what he described as a misconception about the immune systems of older people.

"Well, you know, we've had the understanding [that] old people seem to have compromised immune systems. And I think it's just the opposite," Grace told Ingraham. "It's a paradigm change that the more mature immune systems, even though their bodies may be weakened, their immune systems are actually quite strong.

"And it's the strength of that immunity," he added, "that causes the damage to the lungs and the deaths in these cases."

"Hence, the reason why hydroxychloroquine, an immunosuppressive agent, is beneficial by two mechanisms suppressing the immune response," Grace added. "And number two, acting to suppress the replication of the virus."

Health officials in New York, California and other hard-hit parts of the country are restricting coronavirus testing to health care workers and people who are hospitalized, saying the battle to contain the virus is lost and the country is moving into a new phase of the pandemic response.

As cases spike sharply in those places, they are hunkering down for an onslaught, and directing scarce resources where they are needed most to save people’s lives. Instead of encouraging broad testing of the public, they’re focused on conserving masks, ventilators, intensive care beds — and on getting still-limited tests to health care workers and the most vulnerable. The shift is further evidence that rising levels of infection and illness have begun to overwhelm the health care system.

Health officials are struggling with a complicated message — more people can get tested, but those with mild symptoms should stay home and practice social distancing. Some go so far as to warn that widespread testing at this point could threaten the U.S. response by burning through precious supplies just as a tidal wave of sick people descend on the system — a message at odds with administration announcements that millions of test kits are finally becoming available.

(Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the first rapid coronavirus diagnostic test, with a detection time of about 45 minutes, the test’s developer, California-based molecular diagnostics company Cepheid, said on Saturday.

Cepheid said in a statement it had received an emergency use authorization from the FDA for the test, which will be used primarily in hospitals and emergency rooms. The company plans to begin shipping it to hospitals next week, it said.

also,

There were at least 22,397 confirmed cases as of Saturday in the United States -- a number that has soared as testing became more available. At least 278 people have died.

I’ll leave the mortality rate calculation to the student.

Breaking Gnus 🐃 🐃 🐃

Arizona man dies after ingesting chloroquine in hopes of treating coronavirus

Updated 1:11 pm EDT Mar. 24, 2020

PHOENIX – A man has died and his wife was in critical care Monday after the couple ingested a chemical as self-medication for the new coronavirus, Banner Health announced in a press release.

The couple, both in their 60s, ingested chloroquine phosphate, which is an additive commonly used at aquariums to clean fish tanks, the news release said. Within 30 minutes of ingestion, they experienced effects that required admittance to a Banner Health hospital, the hospital said.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Tuesday offered a grim forecast for the coronavirus outbreak in New York, warning that it would reach its peak much sooner and more sharply than expected, flooding the state’s strained hospitals with as many as 140,000 stricken patients in the next few weeks.

Mr. Cuomo said that in New York City, the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States, new cases appeared to be doubling every three days. The crisis has already claimed the lives of more than 200 people statewide, and 131 in the city.

Despite the city’s draconian efforts to slow the spread of the virus, Mr. Cuomo said the number of infections could reach its peak by mid-April, far outrunning earlier projections.

“We haven’t flattened the curve and the curve is actually increasing,” Mr. Cuomo said. “The apex is higher than we thought and the apex is sooner than we thought. That is a bad combination of facts.”

“When COVID-19 first started showing up at the UC San Francisco Medical Center in February, the hospital set up triage tents, canceled elective surgeries, and created a whole new ICU in the now-empty surgery-recovery area. But what if all of that isn’t enough? If a surge of coronavirus cases overwhelms the hospital in the coming weeks, the remaining options become more and more drastic: putting beds in a waiting room and then in hallways outside the ER, and then—if necessary—a gymnasium across the street.

“Nobody wants to go there,” Jeanne Noble, an emergency-care physician at UCSF, says. “We will not be providing the level of care we’re all comfortable and used to providing.”

Hospitals all over the country are, like UCSF, preparing for the worst. If social distancing fails to sufficiently slow the spread of the coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, hospitals in the United States could be overburdened, as they were in Wuhan and northern Italy—both of which have more hospital beds per capita than the U.S. “Our hospitals will be stressed in ways they’ve probably never experienced,” says Eric Toner, an emergency physician and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.”