The end of the world!!!

Stephani Grisham, part-time White House Press Secretary and full-time Stepford Wife, says there's very little risk

https://www.foxnews.com/media/stephanie-grisham-on-coronavirus-risk-to-americans-very-low-due-to-trumps-unprecedented-steps

 

Camp Apocalypse. or is it Camp TEOYWAWKI

https://harpers.org/archive/2020/03/waiting-for-the-end-of-the-world-lauren-groff/

 

Not sure about the Apocalypse, but Saluda is one breathtakingly beautiful area! Gorges, waterfalls, steep mountains, the Green River and world championship whitewater.

 

More end of the world news.

California has declared a statewide state of emergency. (OK, California is already like a slow-motion train wreck, but coronavirus makes it that much worse.)

Here in the Bay Area there are a growing number of confirmed cases. (My county has several.) But I just went to my local Kaiser hospital for a checkup yesterday and there was no sense of emergency or danger. There were coronavirus advisories posted at the doorways. But none of the medical staff in the clinics buildings were wearing masks and everything seemed normal. (I didn't see into the emergency room which was in another building.

The big talk is a cruise ship that had recently arrived in San Francisco from a cruise to Mexico. One passenger was ill when he got off and returned to his home near Sacramento. That was a few days ago and he went to a local hospital where Coronavirus was confirmed. Meanwhile the ship left with mostly different passengers for a cruise to Hawaii. When several dozen of those passengers fell ill and the ship's captain heard about the passenger from the previous cruise, the ship turned around to return to San Francisco. It was ordered to remain offshore until everyone could be tested. Reportedly Coast Guard helicopters have delivered test kits to the ship.

The news is trying to reassure everyone that no cases are currently confirmed on the ship. (Well sure, given that there were no test kits aboard until today.) But everyone is thinking of that cruise ship in Japan where a large percentage of the passengers and crew ended up being infected. There is concern about where this ship will dock (probably San Francisco's cruise ship terminal) and where its passengers will go. (Into quarantine?) There is also concern about the passengers from the previous cruise who have dispersed all over the map. I imagine that the public health people are trying to track them down.

There are starting to be reports of unusually large sales of stuff like canned food. Campbell's soup is selling extraordinarily fast.

gGBb

 

So... what type of soup did you get??!

 

The clinic near my home began asking incoming patients if they have recently done any international travel. A wiseguy at the diner ordered an egg salad sandwich with a side order of corona virus. Everyone laughed. No one I know has it or knows anyone who knows anyone who has it. Everyone knows it's real but until it becomes more of a present reality they're not worried. I've heard people express great faith in the CDC and "they" (they will find an answer, etc.)

 

When I went in for my annual checkup yesterday, my primary care physician was more concerned about my blood pressure than about coronavirus. In fact I never brought it up and the doctor never mentioned it. None of the medical staff seemed to be taking any special precautions. The only acknowledgment were those posters near the doorways telling people what symptoms to look out for and what to do if they thought they had it. (Phone in first, etc.) This in a county that already has confirmed cases.

I did buy some soup this afternoon. But not in panic buying quantities. I like soup.

The shelves did seem unusually bare though. I don't know if local shoppers are buying unusual quantities (I haven't noticed it, but I haven't been watching very closely) or if the supermarket is finding it harder to stock from their wholesalers.

 

This photo was uploaded by a passenger on the cruise ship. It shows a helicopter lowering health care workers onto the ship to perform the necessary tests.

The news reports say that the Coast Guard delivered the kits, but this isn't a Coast Guard helicopter. The long refueling boom gives it away as an HH60G Pave Hawk from the California Air National Guard's 129th Rescue Wing at Moffett Field.

 

The corona virus is now illegal on earth. so we can all relax

https://deadstate.org/christian-prophet-uses-gods-authority-to-declare-the-coronavirus-illegal-on-earth

 

So you've got the damn coronavirus and so they stick you in a quarantine hotel and then the hotel collapses. What's next?
Hit by lightning?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-hotel-collapse-coronavirus-quarantine-fujian-province-death-latest-a9384546.html

 

LINK

LINK

New York Declares State of Emergency - 21 New Cases

Florida - 1st East Coast Coronavirus Death

Trump Administration Debates Honesty

Washington Nursing Home - Now at 13 Deaths

Seattle Hospitals Running Low on Respirators

Graingers (industrial distributor) Suspends Respirator Order Fulfillment

This is certainly charting into unknown territory.

 

Normally, I am not one to reference Zerohedge, although I enjoy some of the main writers wit. They do tend to be very alarmist and often rely on, perhaps not the most reliable sources. While this article may follow suit with all that, it is a collection of tweets from some people that do seem to pan out and have some alarming calculations.

All Hospital Beds in America will be Filled in May. LINK

• We can expect that we’ll continue to see a doubling of cases every 6 days (this is a typical doubling time across several epidemiological studies). Here I mean *actual* cases. Confirmed cases may appear to rise faster in the short term due to new test kit rollouts.
• We’re looking at about 1M US cases by the end of April, 2M by ~May 5, 4M by ~May 11, and so on. Exponentials are hard to grasp, but this is how they go.
• As the healthcare system begins to saturate under this case load, it will become increasingly hard to detect, track, and contain new transmission chains. In absence of extreme interventions, this likely won’t slow significantly until hitting >>1% of susceptible population.
• What does a case load of this size mean for healthcare system? We’ll examine just two factors — hospital beds and masks — among many, many other things that will be impacted.
• The US has about 2.8 hospital beds per 1000 people. With a population of 330M, this is ~1M beds. At any given time, 65% of those beds are already occupied. That leaves about 330k beds available nationwide (perhaps a bit fewer this time of year with regular flu season, etc).
• Let’s trust Italy’s numbers and assume that about 10% of cases are serious enough to require hospitalization. (Keep in mind that for many patients, hospitalization lasts for *weeks* — in other words, turnover will be *very* slow as beds fill with COVID19 patients).
• By this estimate, by about May 8th, all open hospital beds in the US will be filled. (This says nothing, of course, about whether these beds are suitable for isolation of patients with a highly infectious virus.)
• If we’re wrong by a factor of two regarding the fraction of severe cases, that only changes the timeline of bed saturation by 6 days in either direction. If 20% of cases require hospitalization, we run out of beds by ~May 2nd.
• If only 5% of cases require it, we can make it until ~May 14th. 2.5% gets us to May 20th. This, of course, assumes that there is no uptick in demand for beds from *other* (non-COVID19) causes, which seems like a dubious assumption.
• Continues....

 

Some of the numbers suggest that China is at least approaching containment. Hopefully the world will learn something from their mistakes and their successes.

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-03-04/chinas-virus-slowdown-offers-hope-for-global-containment

 

Ha, that pretty much summarizes it!

 

NASA Ames Research Center, a certifiably big deal in the Silicon Valley area, has followed nearby Stanford in ordering all personnel to work remotely from home.

https://arcsos.arc.nasa.gov/archives/242

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-administrator-statement-on-coronavirus-situation

 

cancel everything

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-cancel-everything/607675

 

And I'm a SJ Sharks fan! Still no word on game cancellations, perhaps because the Sharks are on an extended road trip to Chicago and points east. But I expect cancellations, home games being played as away games on the opposing team's rink, or games played without fans (only on TV) are in store soon.

https://www.nhl.com/sharks/news/latest-news-regarding-sap-center-events/c-315896084