U.S. coronavirus deaths top 400,000 as Trump leaves office

As President Donald Trump entered the final year of his term last January, the U.S. recorded its first confirmed case of COVID-19. Not to worry, Trump insisted, his administration had the virus “totally under control.”

Now, in his final hours in office, after a year of presidential denials of reality and responsibility, the pandemic’s U.S. death toll has eclipsed 400,000. And the loss of lives is accelerating.

OCR-Z-VIRUS-TRUMP-1004-05.jpg?fit=620%2CWASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 05: U.S. President Donald Trump gives a thumbs up upon returning to the White House from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on October 05, 2020 in Washington, DC. Trump spent three days hospitalized for coronavirus. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

“This is just one step on an ominous path of fatalities,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University and one of many public health experts who contend the Trump administration’s handling of the crisis led to thousands of avoidable deaths.

“Everything about how it’s been managed has been infused with incompetence and dishonesty, and we’re paying a heavy price,” he said.

The 400,000-death toll, reported Tuesday by Johns Hopkins University, is greater than the population of New Orleans, Cleveland or Tampa, Florida. It’s nearly equal to the number of American lives lost annually to strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, flu and pneumonia combined.

With more than 4,000 deaths recorded on some recent days — the most since the pandemic began — the toll by week’s end will probably surpass the number of Americans killed in World War II.

“We need to follow the science and the 400,000th death is shameful,” said Cliff Daniels, chief strategy officer for Methodist Hospital of Southern California, near Los Angeles. With its morgue full, the hospital has parked a refrigerated truck outside to hold the bodies of COVID-19 victims until funeral homes can retrieve them.

LDN-L-VIRUS-MORGUE-0112-02.jpg?fit=620%2A row of 12 refrigerated containers behind The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner in Los Angeles on Monday, January 11, 2021. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

“It’s so incredibly, unimaginably sad that so many people have died that could have been avoided,” he said.

The U.S. accounts for nearly 1 of every 5 virus deaths reported worldwide, far more than any other country despite its great wealth and medical resources.

The coronavirus would almost certainly have posed a grave crisis for any president given its rapid spread and power to kill, experts on public health and government said.

But Trump seemed to invest as much in battling public perceptions as he did in fighting the virus itself, repeatedly downplaying the threat and rejecting scientific expertise while fanning conflicts ignited by the outbreak.

As president he was singularly positioned to counsel Americans. Instead, he used his pulpit to spout theories — refuted by doctors — that taking unproven medicines or even injecting household disinfectant might save people from the virus.

The White House defended the administration this week.

“We grieve every single life lost to this pandemic, and thanks to the president’s leadership, Operation Warp Speed has led to the development of multiple safe and effective vaccines in record time, something many said would never happen,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere.

With deaths spiraling in the New York City area last spring, Trump declared “war” on the virus. But he was slow to invoke the Defense Production Act to secure desperately needed medical equipment. Then he sought to avoid responsibility for shortfalls, saying that the federal government was “merely a backup” for governors and legislatures.

  • Registered nurse Nikki Hollinger cleans up a room as a body of a COVID-19 victim lies in a body bag labeled with stickers at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission Hills section of Los Angeles, Saturday, Jan. 9, 2021. The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus has eclipsed 400,000 in the waning hours in office for President Donald Trump. (Photo by Jae C. Hong, AP)

  • FILE – In this Oct. 5, 2020, file photo, Andrea McDonnell and her brother-in-law Kevin McDonnell leave a service honoring the 46 members of the NYPD who have died due to COVID-19 related illness at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. Andrea McDonnell lost her husband, Det. Christopher McDonnell, in May due to COVID-19. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

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  • FILE – In this Monday, Oct. 5, 2020 file photo, President Donald Trump removes his mask as he stands on the Blue Room Balcony upon returning to the White House in Washington, after leaving Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, in Bethesda, Md. Trump announced he tested positive for COVID-19 on Oct. 2. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

  • In this Sept. 29, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump holds up his facemask during the first presidential debate at Case Western University and Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio. President Trump and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for the coronavirus, the president tweeted early Friday. In this (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

  • FILE – In this April 17, 2020, file photo Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks about the coronavirus, as President Donald Trump listens, in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

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“I think it is the first time in history that a president has declared a war and we have experienced a true national crisis and then dumped responsibility for it on the states,” said Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health care policy think tank.

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tried to issue guidelines for reopening in May, Trump administration officials held them up and watered them down. As the months passed, Trump claimed he was smarter than the scientists and belittled experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top authority on infectious diseases.

“Why would you bench the CDC, the greatest fighting force of infectious disease in the world? Why would you call Tony Fauci a disaster?” asked Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

As governors came under pressure to reopen state economies, Trump pushed them to move faster, asserting falsely that the virus was fading. “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” he tweeted in April as angry protesters gathered at the state Capitol to oppose the Democratic governor’s stay-at-home restrictions. “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”

In Republican-led states like Arizona that allowed businesses to reopen, hospitals and morgues filled with virus victims.

“It led to the tragically sharp partisan divide we’ve seen in the country on COVID, and that has fundamental implications for where we are now, because it means the Biden administration can’t start over,” Altman said. “They can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”

In early October, when Trump himself contracted COVID-19, he ignored safety protocols, ordering up a motorcade so he could wave to supporters outside his hospital. Once released, he appeared on the White House balcony to take off his mask for the cameras, making light of health officials’ pleas for people to cover their faces.

“We’re rounding the corner,” Trump said of the battle with the virus during a debate with Joe Biden in late October. “It’s going away.”

It isn’t. U.S. deaths from COVID-19 surpassed 100,000 in late May, then tripled by mid-December. Experts at the University of Washington project deaths will reach nearly 567,000 by May 1.

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More than 120,000 patients with the virus are in the hospital in the U.S., according to the COVID Tracking Project, twice the number who filled wards during previous peaks. On a single day last week, the U.S. recorded more than 4,400 deaths.

While vaccine research funded by the administration as part of Warp Speed has proved successful, the campaign trumpeted by the White House to rapidly distribute and administer millions of shots has fallen well short of the early goals officials set.

“Young people are dying, young people who have their whole lives ahead of them,” said Mawata Kamara, a nurse at California’s San Leandro Hospital who is furious over the surging COVID-19 cases that have overwhelmed health care workers. “We could have done so much more.”

Many voters considered the federal government’s response to the pandemic a key factor in their vote: 39% said it was the single most important factor, and they overwhelmingly backed Biden over Trump, according to AP VoteCast.

But millions of others stood with him.

“Here you have a pandemic,” said Eric Dezenhall, a Washington crisis management consultant, “yet you have a massive percent of the population that doesn’t believe it exists.”

El Othmani: Morocco Has No Clue When COVID-19 Vaccines Will Arrive

The head of government blamed Morocco’s lack of awareness about the delivery date of its ordered vaccines on the competitiveness of the global market for COVID-19 vaccines.

“At the international level, everyone is asking for vaccines and orders have reached more than one billion doses. Manufacturers do not have the ability to keep up with all the orders at once,” he explained.

El Othmani also argued that the countries producing COVID-19 vaccines cannot begin exporting them until they meet their domestic needs.

“Just like when we manufactured face masks, we did not export them until we achieved domestic sufficiency. These countries are doing the same thing,” he said.

Morocco’s Head of Government, Saad Eddine El Othmani, declared today, January 19, that health authorities in the country are still uncertain about when they will receive COVID-19 vaccines.

El Othmani made the statement during the monthly general policy session at the House of Representatives. This month’s meeting aimed to discuss the upcoming national vaccination campaign against COVID-19.

Read also: Preparations Underway for Morocco’s Mass Vaccination Campaign

The head of government blamed Morocco’s lack of awareness about the delivery date of its ordered vaccines on the competitiveness of the global market for COVID-19 vaccines.

“At the international level, everyone is asking for vaccines and orders have reached more than one billion doses. Manufacturers do not have the ability to keep up with all the orders at once,” he explained.

El Othmani also argued that the countries producing COVID-19 vaccines cannot begin exporting them until they meet their domestic needs.

“Just like when we manufactured face masks, we did not export them until we achieved domestic sufficiency. These countries are doing the same thing,” he said.

Besides the incapacity of manufacturers to produce enough vaccines, El Othmani mentioned that “rich countries” purchase vaccines by paying up to nine times the normal prices.

“The scarcity of vaccines has led countries that have enough money to offer prices that are five times higher, and sometimes even nine times higher, than the normal price,” he claimed.

The Moroccan official expressed his hope that the country will receive the vaccines as soon as possible. However, unlike health officials who claimed that the first lot of vaccines would arrive this week, El Othmani did not specify any timeframe.

The head of government also promised that the national vaccination campaign against COVID-19 will begin as soon as vaccines arrive.

Morocco initially announced the vaccination campaign in November, saying it will begin “in a few weeks.” However, after more than two months, health authorities seem to have no clue when it can finally begin.

Read also: Morocco’s Vaccination Campaign Needs Transparency, Support

The post El Othmani: Morocco Has No Clue When COVID-19 Vaccines Will Arrive appeared first on Morocco World News.

Coronavirus: L.A. County reported 269 fewer hospitalizations, 9,927 new cases and 88 new deaths as of Jan. 18

Los Angeles County  reported 9,927 new cases of the coronavirus, bringing the total number of cases to 1,024,190 according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health as of Monday, Jan. 18.

The county reported 88 new fatalities linked to coronavirus, bringing the total number of deaths to 13,936 since tracking began.

Hospitalizations continue to decline. There were 269 fewer patients hospitalized by the virus as of Monday. The total number of patients in L.A. County hospitals is 7,328 with 22% in ICU.

The breakdown of people infected with the coronavirus by age is as follows:

LDN-L-LA-TRACKER-0119.jpg?fit=620%2C9999

 

Data posted each day is preliminary and subject to change, officials emphasize. More information may become available as individual case investigations are completed.

Open Thread | Been Looking For A COVID Story Like This | 3CHICSPOLITICO

Hollis, 54, a former journalist, learned that his blood is fortified with so-called super antibodies — antibodies that neutralize the virus, which, even when diluted 10,000 times, still resists Covid-19, Liotta said.

It is a medical phenomenon found in less than 5 percent of the population who have contracted the coronavirus, a study indicates, making Hollis and his blood valuable resources in identifying potential treatments for Covid-19, Liotta said.

Source: Open Thread | Been Looking For A COVID Story Like This | 3CHICSPOLITICO

Almost a third of recovered Covid patients return to hospital in five months and one in eight die

Almost a third of recovered Covid patients will end up back in hospital within five months and one in eight will die, alarming new figures have shown.

Research by Leicester University and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found there is a devastating long-term toll on survivors of severe coronavirus, with many people developing heart problems, diabetes and chronic liver and kidney conditions.

Out of 47,780 people who were discharged from hospital in the first wave, 29.4 per cent were readmitted to hospital within 140 days, and 12.3 per cent of the total died.

The current cut-off point for recording Covid deaths is 28 days after a positive test, so it may mean thousands more people should be included in the coronavirus death statistics.

Source: Almost a third of recovered Covid patients return to hospital in five months and one in eight die

Day 48/67 of GED in Five Months, science, help, and health

Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better

 How many of us remember why monocropping can be a problem, and how it could impact our health, and the health of generations to come?

Reading: “Growing the same crop on a field year after year can cause crop yields to decline as the soil becomes depleted and insect populations become firmly established. Crop rotation, or growing different crops in different years, is one way to avoid these problems. However, discovering the most effective rotation of a number of different crops is difficult, because there are so many possible orders in which to grow them and testing any given crop rotation takes several years.”

This might take some math, huh?  For example, what might a percentage increase in one year be for a bunch of bugs that have made themselves snuggly at home in a potato field, versus the percentage increase of those bugs if that potato field were…

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