Italy's Hospitals At The Stage of Collapse

Our trend of coronavirus cases mimics Italy's cases eleven days ago. We are eleven days behind them.  
Monday March 23 is that day!

This is us in eleven days. We have seven times the population as Italy. You can't deny the rate of the intensifying Pandemic is extraordinarily scary.  

Coronavirus: Italy’s hospitals overflow with the dead as toll tops 1,000

Officials in hard-hit Lombardy region have cut red tape for burials and processing of death certificates

Hospitals in Italy’s hard-hit Lombardy region, already overwhelmed trying to care for the increasing number of sick people in limited intensive care units, are overflowing with the dead.

Lombardy’s top health care official, Giulio Gallera, said at the request of the hospitals, the region had simplified the bureaucracy needed to process death certificates and bury the dead, with the death toll in Lombardy alone reaching 617 by late Wednesday.

Ok, We Got Millions Of Square Feet Of Empty Stores and Malls...How Do We Put This To Use

The stores and malls shuttered by eBay and Amazon. It is a huge resource and would be easy to be put back to use. 

In our battle to contain coronavirus, how could we use this resource efficiently? 

What Is The Coronavirus Pandemic Going To Teach Us

Sometimes for wrong reason, we set things in motion or neglect to fix problems when known, until it ignites a situation that is uncontrollable. The only way it stops is until the energy in system exhausted. Usually in the big failures,  it ends in the deaths of millions.

Why Did Trump Really Stop All Flight From Europe

This president is noted for political scams. Like the Biden/Ukraine and Russian scams. Personally I think Trump stopped air traffic from Europe as a current and future  political talking points for his kooks. He can stick out his chest and brag publicly that he limited the size of the Pandemic even as nobody trust his fight against the pandemic. It is all about what you can pump into the new sphere over and over again even if it counteracts the truth. The air stoppage is the politics he thinks can get him reelected.    

Electric Utility Stocks are Dropping Like a Rock

I see a lot more maintenance not happening and bankruptcies all around.

Maximizing Hospital Surge Capacity...Nationize all the hospitals Nationwide

Basically right now we got to reduce the patient population by 50% in a emergency manner all across the nation. Nationalize all our hospitals. 
maximizing
1) All non patient civilians must be prohibited from interring the hospitals. The family medicine-doctor side of the hospital must be spirited from the hospital.  

2) All elective surgeries must stop...surgeries and procedures of all kinds needs to be stopped if possible. 

3) We need to think of hospitals as one system. Temporarally no more isolated single hospitals     
or corporate hospitals. 

4) Again, the purpose is to reduce hospital patient population  by 50%...have 50% of the hospitals beds not being use. The surge capacity.

I idea of this is certain hospitals in certain locations would be overwhelmed or inundated with sick people. Some hospitals on the other side of the state would be intentionally limited to 50% patient  capacity So you begin transferring the patients at the inundated hospital to the low patient hospital.

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It Is Just a Matter of Time Before Trump Has A Massive Heart Attack

Maybe God will take him out!

We Are At the Precipice Of A Severe Deflationary Depression

Down 2500 now heading for another circuit breaker. We should shutdown the stock market for a month!

***Do you know the what the function is of a Deflationary Depression is? It cleans out bad debt at a massive level.

The newscasters on the cable business channels today are starting to get crackling voices and talking with very nervous energy.

Stock market is shutdown at 1697.


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Historic Electricity Demand Shock Is Coming to the USA

Grid operators cancel travel, shift to remote meetings, as industry preps for broad coronavirus absenteeism

Electric companies could see up to 40% of their workforce out sick as the coronavirus continues to spread, according to a bulletin issued by the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), which represents investor-owned utilities.
***A electricity demand shock is right around corner. I'll bet the scale of the  demand shock is beyond any grid system analysis. Will we see limited blackouts.

World Health Organization Declares Coronavirus Is a Pandemic Two months Late

The WHO rules define A Pandemic when there is proof of world wide community spread of a Pandemic. They have to wait to have evidence of world wide community spread. Like, we know many nations at the beginning most nations didn't have test. The USA still don't have sufficient testing to meet our current needs.

The WHO need to have a criteria where when they discover a new virus or a old one behaving more dangerously, then the world has to just throw unlimited amounts of money on research. Figure out what the dangerousness is of the virus. Declare a Pandemic based on its potential to become a Pandemic.  

Coranavirus: Hospitals A Threat to Everyone

update

*We keep testing for a horrendous coronavirus outbreak at hospitals. This guy was running around in two hospitals: Connecticut confirms hospital worker has coronavirus

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) on Friday said a hospital employee had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the first confirmed case in the state — though the patient does not live there.

The employee, who worked at the Danbury and Norwalk hospitals, is a resident of New York state, Lamont said in a tweet. The governor said he was meeting with health officials in Danbury.

*The World Health Organization says we don't know yet how heat and humidity affect the virus. “There is currently no data available on stability of 2019-nCoV on surfaces,” it says in its guidance on preventing infections.

***I guess US hospital have areas with closed air ventilations systems and HEPA filters to prevent the spread of pathogens. But the rest of the hospital would not have these systems. Why wouldn't the heating ventilation system have the same problem? So much for the idea the coronavirus doesn't become aerosolized. Most of the building ventilation system's heating and air-conditioning systems share the same duct work. Would the elevated heating ducts temperatures kill the coronavirus?

The scenario I worry about is there will be a car accident. The driver just caught the virus. In the early stage of the infection, a lab test would not pick up the infection. The accident injured him enough so he would be in  hospital for weeks. He would be shedding the virus till he got a elevated temperature gaining the nurses attention. We don't know at what point the hospital takes a coronavirus test. There, the hospital's ventilation system is contaminated with coronavirus and it spreading wildly through the hospital.   

 
Coronavirus could be spread by air-conditioning and may be more contagious than previously thought, scientists believe after finding traces of the virus in hospital air-duct

• The rooms of three coronavirus patients were tested in a Singapore hospital   
• The room of a 'mild' infectee had trace amounts of the virus in an air vent
• Concerns have been raised in recent weeks of the spread of the deadly coronavirus through air-conditioning units after many became ill on cruise shi

Traces of the coronavirus found in a hospital air duct has led scientists to believe the disease could be spread through air-conditioning units, making it more contagious than initially thought. 

Swab analysis of rooms used by three coronavirus patients by experts at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases in Singapore suggest that the respiratory illness spreads easier than previously thought. 

An air duct connected to the room of one of the patients, thought to be only suffering from 'mild' symptoms', was found with traces of the virus, suggesting 'suggests small, virus-laden droplets may be displaced by airflows and deposited on equipment such as vents'.

The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, comes shortly after it was reported that 142 Britons were reported trapped on a Princess Cruise ship anchored for patients to undergo testing, off the coast of California yesterday. 

Health authorities have had a suspicious eye on cruise ships in recent weeks ever since a number of voyages were disrupted by virus scares.

In the most serious case, 705 people tested positive for the virus on board the Diamond Princess during a two-week lockdown in Japan.  

Japanese authorities said last week that a British tourist who had been on board the Diamond Princess had died after contracting coronavirus.

On Thursday, a patient with underlying health conditions became the first person in the UK to die after also testing positive for the virus.   

It is standard practice for buildings and cruise ships to use recycled air through air-conditioning systems. 

Professor James G. Dwyer, from Purdue University in Indiana, told the Telegraph: 'The problem is that these systems can't filter out particles smaller than 5,000 nanometers.'

The size of the coronavirus is not yet known, but a similar respiratory illness, Sars, was recorded at just 120 nanometres. 

Professor Dwyer said that if the current COVID-19 is a similar size, 'the air conditioning system would be carrying the virus to every cabin.  

'Cruise ships could minimise this problem by just using outside air and not recirculating it,' he added.       

Airlines have already sought to reassure passengers that their air-conditioning systems are fit to prevent the coronavirus spreading in the cabin, with Etihad suggesting their system is as watertight as a hospital operating theatre.      

'In any confined area, there is a risk of contracting illnesses from other people,' an airline statement reads. 

'However, the risk is considered lower on aircraft because of the use of high efficiency particulate air filters, which are effective in capturing more than 99 per cent of airborne microbes in filtered air.' 

Coronavirus Infected Petroleum: The Great Competition Of Nations In A World Crisis.

We and the world have been sanctioning Russia over a host of issues. It has severely degraded the  Russian economy and squeeze the Russian people. Basically because of the coronavirus the Chinese have greatly reduce using petroleum on a massive scale. Seems the world is heading that way with social isolation. So OPEC and the other oil producers want to make a deal to cut the petroleum  production to boost the price of petroleum. I am hearing from  the cable business shows their there is a agenda underneath baulking on the cutback deal. Our miracle fracking natural gas and petroleum industry sits on the edge of profitability. The market price of electricity has been drastically cut due to fracking. So here is Russia trying to get even with our sanctions. They see the USA at this time as extraordinary vulnerable. Their intention is to drive down the world price of petroleum until they wipe out our fracking business. They know the speculative fracking business is highly loaded up with debt. It is huge. The experts think Russia can carry this out. 

The sub prime mortgage lit off the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Basically this ended freezing up our financial system. The Russians think the fracking  industry's debt is enough to freeze up our financial system and wipe out the fracking industry. Especially in the terror of coronavirus.        

Oil just had its worst day in 11 years as OPEC and Russia fall out over the coronavirus crisis

Vienna (CNN Business)Oil prices crashed more than 9% to their lowest level in nearly three years on Friday as major producing nations failed to agree on supply cuts aimed at addressing the collapse in global demand caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

The OPEC cartel led by Saudi Arabia on Thursday had proposed a two-pronged approach to its key ally Russia: extend existing production cuts of 2.1 million barrels through to the end of 2020; and make further cuts of 1.5 million barrels per day.

But Russia refused to back the plan at a meeting with OPEC in Vienna on Friday, leaving the future of its three-year alliance with the cartel in doubt and raising the prospect of a huge supply glut.

'This is a crisis.' Airlines face $113 billion hit from the coronavirus

OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo, speaking to reporters after the meeting broke up, said there was no consensus to extend the policy of supply restraint beyond the end of March and OPEC would not act unilaterally. Discussions would continue, he added, but gave no further detail.

Russian energy minister Alexander Novak told CNN Business that producers would make their own decisions on what to do from April 1.

Brent crude, the global benchmark, settled 9.4% lower at $45.27 a barrel. That was its worst level in nearly three years. It was the worst one-day percentage drop since December 2008.

US oil prices settled 10.1% lower at $41.28 on Friday -- the biggest one day percentage drop since November 2014. It was the lowest close since August 2016.

OPEC has faced immense pressure to act since oil prices fell into a bear market last month, or 20% below their previous peak, as the coronavirus outbreak destroyed demand for fuel, initially in China. Prices have now fallen 33% since early January.

 

Real Fatality Rate

update

Pat Herrick said her mother, Elaine, was a resident at Life Care but died on Wednesday at 3:30 a.m. 

She explained a staff member called her early in the morning to say her mother had died, and then a different staff member called her at 10 a.m. to say her mother was doing fine. Herrick said she had to correct the employee that her mother had already passed away.

Herrick said her mother was not exhibiting symptoms of coronavirus and was told she died from natural causes but is fighting to get her mother's body tested for the virus.

“This is so tragic. I am so sorry for everybody involved, and I am so sorry for us as a country,” said Her...

There is more to this story. It goes like this. The daughter became irritated with the confusion going on with her mother. The facility told her that her mother death was not related to coronavirus. But then the facility was full of coronavirus cases. The mother wanted a determination on what cause her mother's death. She asked the facility to test her mother's body for coronavirus. The center came back that we can't do the test on a assortment of red tape issues. She said a dead person doesn't meet the criteria for getting tested for coronavirus and nobody will pick up the cost for the testing.

There just is a lot of incentives and disincentives for a body not to get tested for coronavirus. Some flaws in the system and some intentional. We should have begun testing for coronavirus weeks ago on all deceased people in the USA. A least a targeted area suspected with having an outbreak. There you could have gotten a picture with all bodies infected with coronavirus not included in the offical virus numbers. 

***I don't buy it we can't get a fatality rate. You would need a 50 to 100 population of people in a local area. It would have to be in a representative area of our society. Once you get to say a hundred people infected, you closely monitor the medical condition of these people  for reasonable amount of time. Then you count all the dead by medical detectives. It could come in numerous smaller group numbers and or chose a random group throughout the USA. It would have to be a represented sample of people.

When Is Catching Coronavirus Going To Be A Badge Honor By our Media

When are we going to heroize them all and all the people around them.

What if Burnie, Trump or Joe Dies From Coronavirus

update

It was a high level CDC official who got the all clear. 

The CDC is under attack by the virus. President Trump cancelled the CDC trip because a agency employee was presumed to have coronavirus. He didn't want to walk into a group infected by the virus. He says the employee was tested clean. A reporter asked if he is now going to go to the CDC today. He answered in a vague manner.  

Update


It could happen here no doubt: Coronavirus strikes top levels of Iranian government as infection rate soars. 

A top Iranian diplomat died of coronavirus infection Thursday, according to state media reports, continuing the heavy toll the outbreak has taken on the country’s leadership as the rate of infection continues to mount dramatically.

*Trump just cancelled his trip to the CDC today. CNN is all over this. This just came out five minutes ago. The feeling is they are trying to socially isolate him because of coronavirus. I'll put my money on the CDC in Atlanta is riddled with coronavirus infections. The stock market would go absolutely crazy if coronavirus was in the CDC. It would ruin the reputations of all the nations agencies fighting coronavirus if the CDC was infected.

*Because these guys are so old, the risk of their death is high if they catch the virus. These guys come in direct contact with a lot of people, they come in indirect contact with a unimaginable number of of other people. I wonder if these guys are under special coronavirus procedures and controls? Imagine if one of these candidates disappears into a intensive care room for weeks at a time. Take a look at our congress, they are all old bastards. Same with state government. Our political system is extraordinarily vulnerable and fragile because the system is loaded with the elderly. What if politicians disappear from direct public exposure because they are so fearful of dying. Would the governance by  a old man and a young man be any difference because one of them is much more susceptible to a coronavirus. 

I can't wait to see the envy with the special medical care and all the expensive accommodations the billionaires will get verses all the rest of us will get whom is lost in coronavirus land.        

Stock Market Is Signaling a Severe Depression.

There is mild depressions and severe depressions. But we are in a grand novel experiment which sits outside all history.  

Why the Coronavirus Could Threaten the U.S. Economy Even More Than China’sWhy the Coronavirus Could Threaten the U.S. Economy Even More Than China’s

If people stop traveling and going to the dentist, the gym or even March Madness basketball games, the impact could be enormous, an economist says.

The coronavirus could be especially dangerous for more mature economies.Credit...Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

By Austan Goolsbee
March 6, 2020, 5:32 a.m. ET

After a string of deaths, some heart-stopping plunges in the stock market and an emergency rate cut by the Federal Reserve, there is reason to be concerned about the ultimate economic impact of the coronavirus in the United States.

The first place to look for answers is China, where the virus has spread most widely. The news has been grim with deaths, rolling quarantines and the economy’s seeming to flat line, though the number of new cases has begun to fall.

Advanced economies like the United States are hardly immune to these effects. To the contrary, a broad outbreak of the disease in them could be even worse for their economies than in China. That is because face-to-face service industries — the kind of businesses that go into a tailspin when fearful people withdraw from one another — tend to dominate economies in high-income countries more than they do in China. If people stay home from school, stop traveling and don’t go to sporting events, the gym or the dentist, the economic consequence would be worse.

In a sense, this is the economic equivalent of the virus’s varied health effects. Just as the disease poses a particular threat to older patients, it could be especially dangerous for more mature economies.

This is not to minimize the indiscriminate and widespread damage that the disease has caused by disrupting the global supply chain. With shortages of everything from auto parts to generic medicines and production delays in things like iPhones and Diet Coke, a great deal of pain is coming from the closing of Chinese factories. That proliferating damage has central banks and financial analysts talking about a global recession in the coming months.

Nor is it to discount the possibility that the United States will be spared the worst effects. Scientific and public health efforts might limit the spread of the virus or quickly find a treatment or vaccine. The warmer weather of summer might slow the spread of the coronavirus as it usually does with the seasonal flu. Many things could prevent an outbreak as large as the one in China.

But it is to say that an equivalent outbreak in the United States might easily have a worse economic impact.

As a baseline, several factors work against the United States. China’s authoritarian government can quarantine entire cities or order people off the streets in a way that would be hard to imagine in America, presumably giving China an advantage in slowing the spread of the disease. In addition, a large share of American workers lack paid sick days and millions lack health care coverage, so people may be less likely to stay home or to get proper medical care. And 41 percent of China’s population lives outside urban areas, more than twice the share in the United States. Diseases generally spread faster in urban areas.

Beyond those issues, however, is a fundamental difference in economic structure: When people pull back from interacting with others because of their fear of disease, the things they stop doing will frequently affect much bigger industries in the United States.

Consider travel. The average American takes three flights a year; the average Chinese person less than half a flight. And the epidemiological disaster of the Diamond Princess has persuaded many people to hold off on cruises. That cruise ship stigma alone potentially affects about 3.5 percent of the United States, which has about 11.5 million passengers each year, compared with only 0.17 percent of China, which has about 2.3 million passengers.

People may stop attending American sporting events. There have even been calls for the N.C.A.A. to play its March Madness college basketball tournament without an audience. But sports is a huge business in the United States. People spend upward of 10 times as much on sporting events as they do in China.

And if 60 million Americans stop spending $19 billion a year on gyms, that would be a much a bigger deal than if the 6.6 million gym members in China stopped spending the $6 billion they devote to gyms now.

That’s just a start. Who wants to go to the dentist or the hospital during an outbreak if a visit isn’t necessary? Yet health spending is 17 percent of the U.S. economy — more than triple the proportion spent in China.

Of course, not every service sector is so much larger than in China. Retail and restaurants, for example, have comparable shares of gross domestic product in both countries.

But over all, the United States is substantially more reliant on services than China is. And, on the flip side, agriculture, a sector not noted for day-to-day social interaction and so potentially less harmed by social withdrawal, is a 10 times larger share of China’s economy than it is in the United States.

So for all the talk about the global “supply shock” set off by the coronavirus outbreak and its impact on supply chains, we may have more to fear from an old-fashioned “demand shock” that emerges when everyone simply stays home. A major coronavirus epidemic in the United States might be like a big snowstorm that shuts down most economic activity and social interaction only until the snow is cleared away. But the coronavirus could be a “Snowmaggedon-style storm” that hits the whole country and lasts for months.

So go wash your hands for the full 20 seconds. And show some more sympathy for the folks quarantined in China and elsewhere. Because if it spreads rapidly in the United States, it could be a heck of a lot worse.

Austan Goolsbee, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, was an adviser to President Barack Obama. Follow him on Twitter: @austan_goolsbee

Coronavirus Fatality Rate

Everyone thinks the fatality rate is much lower because we yet can't count how many are infected. I think everyone is " not" counting the dead because this would emediately crater the world's  financial system and put hundreds of million people out of work.

There is no doubt in my mind we are heading for a world wide financial freeze up worst than the great recession of 2008.  My guess its going to be a depression. The 50 point fed decline in interest rate I contend is a result of the rising tsunami tide of bankruptcies based on the all the economic damage caused the virus. The world's financial system was never stress tested for the scale of this economic devastation.  

You got to know after all this horror rolls across our eyeballs, our consumer sentiment is going to tank. Consumer spending makes up to 70% of our economy.  

When Are Our Courts Going Be Overwhelmed by Coronavirus

Update March 12

N.H. Superior Courts cancelling trials for 30 days due to coronavirus

Update March 7

US federal court operations altered by the coronavirus

From CNN's Ariane de Vogue and Kevin Bohn

The coronavirus is impacting the operations of some federal courts across the US.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from nine western states including Washington, as well as a district court in Washington state, which has seen at least 80 cases, have altered some of the procedures as the virus continues to spread.

The appeals court, which has four courthouses including one in Seattle, said it is cancelling all hearings involving multiple judges as well as non-case related meetings, scheduled for next week.

The court said in an order posted online it was taking this measure “in light of the concerns about community spread of the COVID-19 virus throughout” the region covered by it.

All scheduled oral arguments in all locations will go forward, the court said.

“Counsel who wish to appear remotely for any hearing may file a motion in that case for such relief,” the court said.

***So when are we going to get to the point of the missing court employees overwhelming the courts?

On a Pandemic level event, can you just imagine the scale of legal suits?