Facilities funded years ago to rapidly develop vaccines and life-saving medicinesInstead of leading the rush to find and mass manufacture a vaccine or lifesaving treatment, two of the sites are taking no role, while the other two expect to conduct small-scale testing of potential coronavirus vaccines. Continue reading.
SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA — This afternoon, Governor Walz announced the temporary closure of Minnesota bars and restaurants for dine-in customers, theaters, gyms, and other venues. The Governor also took executive action to strengthen Minnesota’s Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund and ensure that affected establishments have benefits available for workers who are not able to work as a result of COVID-19.
House Speaker Melissa Hortman and Majority Leader Ryan Winkler released the following statements:
“The decisions made by Governor Walz today are in the best interest of Minnesotans,” said Speaker Hortman. “Social distancing and drastically limiting the size of crowds are critically important to slowing the spread of COVID-19. Minnesotans should follow the guidelines put forward by the Minnesota Department of Health and the CDC. If at all possible, limit your time outside of your home, especially if you are older or at higher risk.” Continue reading “Statements from Speaker Hortman and Majority Leader Winkler on temporary closure of bars, restaurants, and venues; action to support workers”
The coronavirus pandemic is the greatest challenge that the U.S. economy and financial system have faced in more than a decade.
As the U.S. braces for cases of the coronavirus to rise through the country, Americans are preparing to hunker down and withdraw from society in a bid to avoid infection — or at least buy time for a medical system that may be stretched beyond its limits.
Financial markets have suffered their worst losses since the 1987 stock market crash, wiping out nearly three years of gains and prompting crisis-level action from the Federal Reserve. Continue reading.
The United States is suffering the most abrupt and widespread cessation of economic activity in its history, hurtling toward a recession that could mean lost jobs, income and wealth for millions of Americans.
Across the country, consumer spending — which supports 70 percent of the economy — is grinding to a halt as fears of the escalating coronavirus pandemic keep people from stores, restaurants, movie theaters and workplaces.
The rapid national shutdown already has caused layoffs and reverberated on Wall Street, driving stocks into their first bear market in 11 years. Amid panic selling, unusual strains have appeared in less visible market niches that are critical to the ability of businesses to operate normally. Continue reading.
Vice President Mike Pence announced Saturday that all travel from Ireland and the United Kingdom to the U.S. will be suspended, effective midnight EST on Monday. He said Americans and legal residents abroad in those countries can return home.
Why it matters: The administration initially left the two off its restricted travel list, but that case has been weakened due to an uptick in cases in the UK.
Details: The travel restrictions do not apply to cargo or economic shipping, officials with the coronavirus task force said. Continue reading.
President Trump said Saturday that he took the test for the coronavirus the previous night and would have the results in a few days, saying he did so because of questions from the media.
“I also took the test last night,” Trump told reporters during a news conference in the White House briefing room. “I decided I should based on the press conference yesterday. People were asking that I take the test.”
Trump was referring to an appearance in the Rose Garden on Friday during which he was pressed on why he hadn’t been tested or self-isolated after coming in contact with a Brazilian official last weekend who later tested positive for COVID-19. Continue reading.
One of the most tired cliches in conservative politics is that we should run government like a business. Donald Trump’s disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic is a perfect demonstration of how pernicious that philosophy can be when applied to governance.
Much has already been said about how Donald Trump’s personality flaws and questionable policy obsessions have hampered America’s response to the growing pandemic. His narcissism leaves him unable to consider anything but his own political fortunes; his racism makes him treat an international medical problem like a clash-of-civilizations and border control problem; his incuriosity makes him unable to digest new information and respond with flexibility, must less act foresight to head off problems. Whole books could be—and likely will be—written about how the convergent moral failings of the president and his favorite conservative infotainment networks have contributed to a ruinously incompetent response to the burgeoning pandemic crisis.
Even in more competent and empathetic hands, the Trump (and more broadly, the conservative) approach to governing philosophy would still run counter to the demands of the moment, at a time of crisis requiring foresight and intervention by public sector. Continue reading.
Thousands of people are going to die, he knows he will be blamed and he can already see his campaign circling the toilet. Those realizations were all over Donald Trump’s face on Wednesday night as he addressed the nation from the Oval Office. His speech was monotonal, his face so frozen with failure and fear that he looked like the product of taxidermy. He knows he is staring into the maw of a beast he can’t control. It’s going to be impossible to tweet away all the deaths that are coming, and he is terrified.
The question that sprang to mind as I watched him epically fuck up the most important moment of his presidency was this: What’s going to happen when the numbers of coronavirus deaths begin to climb, and his numbers begin to tank? They will. He’s not going to be able to stop the pandemic from killing thousands of Americans, and this lawless maniac is capable of anything. With the NBA and Major League Baseball suspending their seasons, with “March Madness” canceled, with concerts and festivals and parades canceled, Broadway theaters closed, schools shuttered from coast to coast, and the fact that we have no idea how long the coronavirus epidemic will last, Donald Trump is fully capable of making plans to cancel the election in November to save himself.
Trump tried to keep the whole thing secret at first, ordering the Department of Health and Human Services to hold its meetings about the coronavirus in secret — in a goddamned SCIF, for crying out loud! Because those initial meetings were top secret, important experts on epidemiology who lacked security clearances were banned from attending. Testing for the virus was held up by the CDC, which repeatedly refused to release hospitals and independent research facilities from regulations that prevented them from developing and fielding their own test kits. The idea throughout the initial weeks of the virus was to follow Trump’s lead, keep the numbers of coronavirus cases as low as possible, and hope for the best. Continue reading.
The other day I went into Costco to buy some toilet paper. It came as a small shock when I couldn’t find a single roll.
The new coronavirus is inspiring panic buying of a variety of household products such as toilet paper in cities across the U.S. and world.
While it makes sense to me that masks and hand sanitizer would be in short supply because of the outbreak, I wondered why people would be hoarding toilet paper – a product that is widely produced and doesn’t help protect from a respiratory virus like COVID-19. Toilet paper is becoming so valuable there’s even been at least one armed robbery. Continue reading.
The World Health Organization has declared COVID-19 a pandemic. This is a landmark event.
As an epidemiologist listening to the steady stream of conversation around the coronavirus, I’m hearing newscasters and neighbors alike mixing up three important words my colleagues and I use in our work every day: outbreak, epidemic and pandemic.
Simply put, the difference between these three scenarios of disease spread is a matter of scale. Continue reading.
