All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Hong Kong third wave: free Covid-19 tests for residents as mainland Chinese clinical teams head to city | South China Morning Post

Free

Covid-19

testing will be made available to Hong Kong’s 7.5 million residents and about 60 clinical technicians from mainland China will be sent to help, with seven set to arrive on Sunday.

Four health advisers, however, suggested at a government meeting on Saturday that testing should focus on high-risk groups, rather than across the city, which was not cost-effective without a lockdown, sources told the Post.

Source: Hong Kong third wave: free Covid-19 tests for residents as mainland Chinese clinical teams head to city | South China Morning Post

Doctors and nurses want Manila back on lockdown

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Warning that the country’s healthcare system is on the brink of collapse, dozens of Philippine doctors’ and nurses’ groups urged the government yesterday to put Metropolitan Manila and the surrounding towns back on lockdown for at least two weeks.

“The health sector cannot hold the line for much longer,” they said in a letter to President Rodrigo Duterte that was signed by the heads of some 40 medical societies.

“Our healthcare system has been overwhelmed. We are waging a losing battle against Covid-19 and we need to draw up a consolidated, definitive plan of action,” they said.

The groups called for a half-month “timeout” from Aug 1, so that the government and the health sector could draw up a better plan to deal with the coronavirus crisis.

Current plans are not working, they insisted, citing a surge of over 50,000 infections in the past month alone.

The Health Ministry reported 4,963 new cases yesterday, in what was the country’s largest single-day increase of new coronavirus cases on record.

Yesterday’s tally brought the country’s caseload to 98,232. Over 50,000 cases were recorded in July alone, when many of the sweeping shelter-at-home restrictions in place since May were eased to restart a stalled economy.

Despite the surge, Mr Duterte has decided to stay the course until the middle of this month.

Last Wednesday, a task force coordinating efforts to roll back the outbreak allowed gyms, Internet cafes, tutorial and review centres, pet clinics and drive-in cinemas to reopen. Movement restrictions for children and the elderly remain but business operations – from restaurants to gyms – can proceed, albeit in a more limited way.

The Ospital ng Maynila, one of the biggest public hospitals in the capital, told ABS-CBN News it had been seeing “four to six DOAs (dead on arrival cases)” each day, as the number of patients desperate to be admitted surged in the last two weeks of July.

Dr Karl Laqui, the hospital’s officer in charge, said that nearly a dozen of the hospital’s own staff, many of whom had no contact with infected patients, were now down with Covid-19.

The medical groups said in their letter to Mr Duterte that many health professionals are resigning “because of fear, fatigue and poor working conditions”.

They called for a “comprehensive, extensive plan” to contain the outbreak and for the Health Department to take the lead.

A task force overseeing efforts to slow the spread of Covid-19 is being led by a former military general.

They noted the poor implementation of case finding and isolation strategies, failure of the Health Department to conduct proper contact tracing, lack of transport and work safety procedures, and poor public compliance with health safety measures.

“Contact tracing is failing miserably,” they said, pointing out that while guidelines exist, “compliance (by local government officials) is optional”.

“The progressive lifting of quarantine has inadvertently fuelled public misconception that the pandemic is getting better. It is not,” they added.

Mr Duterte’s spokesman Harry Roque said in response that “the strict lockdown in Metro Manila has served its purpose and we need to intensify other strategies”.

“Community quarantine alone, we repeat, is an insufficient response in controlling Covid-19,” he said, adding that the government is hiring more healthcare workers to scale up hospital capacity.

This call from health professionals came just a day after Mr Duterte promised a vaccine by December, saying he is confident the situation would be back to normal by then.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Tens of thousands protest in Jerusalem, across country – The Jerusalem Post

Protesters rally in front of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Jerusalem residency, calling for his resignation. (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)

People were demanding the resignation of an indicted prime minister who is “destroying the dreams that the country was built on.”

Thousands of demonstrators joined protests calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign near his official residence in Jerusalem and marched through the capital, while thousands more demonstrated at close to 300 locations across the country on Saturday night.
Israel Police foreign press spokesman Micky Rosenfeld put the number of demonstrators near Netanyahu’s official residence on the capital’s Balfour Street at “more than 10,000” and other reports said 13,000.

Source: Tens of thousands protest in Jerusalem, across country – The Jerusalem Post

Who Are ‘America’s Frontline Doctors’ and Dr. Stella Immanuel? (Made up group with fake information)

A group that called itself “America’s Frontline Doctors” (AFD) took to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court on July 27, 2020, in a self-described “White Coat Summit” to address a “massive disinformation campaign” regarding COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by SARS-CoV-2.

A video recording of the 45-minute long event was promoted online as a “SCOTUS press conference” but had no clear affiliation with the high court other than being held on the footsteps of the Washington, D.C., courthouse.

Each doctor in the video is seen wearing a white coat featuring an “America’s Frontline Doctors” logo on the left side. Dr. Simone Gold, an emergency and general practice physician registered with the California Medical Board and featured in the video, described the group as “doctors, healers, and just people that want to help our nation” who represent “hundreds and thousands of doctors.” In a separate video shared to Twitter, Gold described her take on “flattening the curve” while standing in front of Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai hospital, discussing case rates and hospital capacity as if appearing to have an affiliation with the institution. Cedars-Sinai publicly addressed the videos saying that “there is no one by that name on the staff of Cedars-Sinai or affiliated with Cedars-Sinai.”

Source: Who Are ‘America’s Frontline Doctors’ and Dr. Stella Immanuel?

Rep. Raúl Grijalva tests positive for COVID-19 | TheHill

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) has tested positive for COVID-19 after being in Washington, D.C., this week, becoming the latest member of Congress to be diagnosed with the disease.

“While I cannot blame anyone directly for this, this week has shown that there are some Members of Congress who fail to take this crisis seriously,” Grijalva said in a statement to the Arizona Republic.

Grijalva, who is the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, had been self-quarantining at his D.C., residence this week after chairing a hearing attended by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), who tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday.

 

Source: Rep. Raúl Grijalva tests positive for COVID-19 | TheHill

How studying our reaction to coronavirus can help us fight climate change

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Climate change and COVID-19 are the two most significant crises faced by the modern world – and widespread behavior change is essential to cope with both. This means that official messaging by the government and other authorities is critical. To succeed, leaders need to communicate the severe threat effectively and elicit high levels of public compliance, without causing undue panic. But the extent to which people comply depends on their psychological filters when receiving the messages – as the coronavirus pandemic has shown. With COVID-19, the early messaging attempted to circumscribe the nature of the threat. In March, the WHO…

This story continues at The Next Web

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California churches evade coronavirus lockdown orders – Los Angeles Times – (I hope and pray that those betting they are not risking their life or their family come out ok)

“I am covered in the blood of Jesus Christ and I don’t believe in COVID, and God will never allow me to contract it,” she said. “I think it’s more of a political thing.”

Source: California churches evade coronavirus lockdown orders – Los Angeles Times

Hydroxychloroquine is a poor coronavirus treatment but a perfect parable for our times – ABC News

Whether or not hydroxychloroquine ever becomes a viable coronavirus drug, the evolution of its online narrative has created a template for how to muddy the narrative around potential treatments, and especially around any potential vaccine.

Mr Lowe predicted there is going to be “a lot of craziness” as the vaccine clinical data starts to emerge.

Ultimately, however, what frustrates him most about the hydroxychloroquine hype is the vast gulf between the appealing narrative it offers and the usual way that medical science advances.

Most of the drugs that scientists develop, Mr Lowe said, for everything from cancer to coronaviruses, simply do not work. They fail.

“There aren’t very many miracle drugs.”

 

Source: Hydroxychloroquine is a poor coronavirus treatment but a perfect parable for our times – ABC News