A US Navy special warfare operator has tested positive for the coronavirus

Fellow service members who were in contact with the sailor have been quarantined at the base "out of an abundance of caution."

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Coronavirus: FAA briefly suspends all flights bound for NYC, Philadelphia airports

The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a "ground stop" for all flights to New York City airports including John F. Kennedy International Airport, Newark due to staffing issues related to Coronavirus.

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South Korea discusses coronavirus with China, Japan; plans to quarantine Europe entries

The foreign ministers of South Korea, China and Japan held a video conference on Friday to discuss cooperation on the coronavirus pandemic amid growing concern over the number of infected people arriving in their countries from overseas. The number of cases in Japan has been far smaller, but Tokyo has the extra worry of whether to press ahead with hosting the Olympics this summer.

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Trump administration asks states to delay releasing unemployment numbers

In an email Wednesday, the Labor Department told state officials they needed to hold off on releasing the exact number of unemployment claims they are receiving amid the accelerating COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, The New York Times reports. The Times obtained a copy of the email, which says that until the Labor Department releases the total number of national claims next Thursday, state officials should only "provide information using generalities to describe claims levels (very high, large increase)" and "not provide numeric values to the public."The message was written by Gay Gilbert, administrator of the Labor Department's Office of Employment Insurance. She has worked under Republican and Democratic administrations, and there is no indication political appointees asked her to send the request, the Times says. Still, many states were disturbed by the email, and one governor's office said it had asked the state attorney general whether it had to temporarily withhold the numbers.In Washington, where at least 74 people have died from COVID-19, a state official would tell the Times only that they are seeing an "even more dramatic increase this week" after unemployment claims rose 150 percent last week from the week prior. The federal government on Thursday morning reported that 281,000 people applied for unemployment insurance last week, an increase from 211,000 the previous week.More stories from theweek.com America has one of the world's worst coronavirus responses Top coronavirus doctor puts head in hands when Trump mentions 'Deep State Department' at briefing Senate GOP stimulus plan would exclude up to 64 million tax filers from full rebate, economist says

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Doctors and nurses in Spain are taping garbage bags to their bodies for protection against the novel coronavirus as supplies dwindle

Hospitals in Europe are doubling up on less-protective masks or turning to unconventional materials as protective gear amid a shortage.

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Covid-19: disaster declared in New York as fears grow over lack of ventilators

* Widespread shortage of equipment including gloves and masks * Cuomo: administration is ‘scouring the globe’ for suppliesNew York is preparing to ration its ventilators for sick coronavirus patients as a major disaster was declared in the city as it struggles to cope with the deadly outbreak.The disaster declaration comes as New York prepares guidance on how to deploy vital ventilators amid a widespread shortage of key equipment that also includes masks and surgical gloves, and medical supplies such as blood.The draft guidance on ventilators, prepared by a state taskforce in 2015 for a possible influenza pandemic, has reportedly been updated for the coronavirus crisis, though new guidelines have not been finalized.According to Sam Gorovitz, a professor of philosophy at Syracuse University and member of the taskforce, the revisions to the ventilator allocation guidelines include the formation of designated triage committees to determine which critically ill patients will or will not receive life-supporting respiration.Gorovitz told the Guardian he is “100% certain” that New York health administrators will face ethical decision-making in the near future about whom to ventilate – just as it is now making decisions about the allocation of masks and protective equipment.“Consider a patient, 85 years old, on a ventilator, out of hospice care. Along comes a 45-year-old, with a family, and in fundamentally good health and a good prospect of full recovery from coronavirus if treated with the best available treatment.“Is it not only acceptable but ethically necessary to take grandpa off the ventilator and switch him to palliative care, wipe away the tears, and switch the ventilator to the younger patient?” he said.“These decisions are already being faced with regard to protective equipment that are inadequately supplied,” Gorovitz said. “That’s not the same as ventilator allocations, but everyone knows it’s coming and those decisions are likely being made right now.”At a press conference on Saturday New York state governor Andrew Cuomo said that his administration was “literally scouring the globe looking for medical supplies”.Cuomo added that New York is doing more tests than China or South Korea, calling the 45,000 tests to date a “great accomplishment.”The announcement came as New York state recorded 10,000 infections. Forty to 80% of New Yorkers, or 7.8 million to 15 million people, would likely be affected by the virus in the end, Cuomo said.“You don’t have to wait til the end of the movie to know what happens,” he said, saying that the measures being taken would ease pressure on medical facilities and allow the authorities to cope with the influx of the infected.The Trump administration late Friday issued a major disaster declaration for New York, the center of the US coronavirus outbreak, as infections spike across New York City to 5,000 as one person an hour dies from the coronavirus.The emergency declaration was issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) to allow the state to access billions of dollars in aid from the disaster relief fund, as the number of confirmed New York cases soar.“With no time to waste, the administration heeded the call and approved the nation’s first major disaster declaration in response to the coronavirus, right here in New York,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.“With more and more cases confirmed here each day, it’s imperative that the federal government does everything within its power to stem the spread of the deadly coronavirus.”The disaster declaration allows for the US military to be called in, and the US Army Corps of Engineers may take over hotels, sports arenas, college dormitories and other buildings as needed.Under the declaration, Fema will be authorized to send its personnel and resources to set up mobile coronavirus testing centers, disinfect public facilities, and provide the state with medical supplies that are in high demand such as masks, gloves and surgical gowns.The vast Jacob Javits convention center on the west side of Manhattan could be used as a makeshift hospital, state officials have said.New Yorkers are already living under shutdown conditions that from Sunday night will see all residents, except for certain vital professions, expected to stay at home. Only a few vital businesses – like supermarkets and pharmacies – will remain open and citizens will be asked to only venture outside on vital tasks and not in groups.On Friday, New York mayor Bill de Blasio said: ‘We constitute 30 percent of the cases in the US and 70 per cent of the cases in New York State. Whether we like it or not, we are the epicenter.’New York certainly needs help: it has become the main focus of the epidemic in the US, outstripping the original “hot zone” of Washington state.New York state has about 6,000 intensive care unit ventilators, and state health officials fear the pandemic will overwhelm the roughly 3,000 ICU beds available.With cases of coronavirus in the state spiking from around 800 to 8,000 in a week, Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor, has estimated that the state may require 30,000 ventilators to meet demand.“It’s ventilators, ventilators, ventilators. That is the greatest need,” Cuomo told reporters on Friday after ordering a statewide shutdown of non-essential businesses. He also directed health facilities to turn over any non-essential ventilators to the department of health.“We will purchase it from you if you could lend it to us. But we need ventilators, and anyone who has them now please call the New York state department of health,” he said.Warnings of a ventilator shortage comes two days after Trump invoked wartime powers to harness private business to slow the spread of coronavirus to a manageable infection curve.But in New York and other major metropolitan areas, a shortage of basic masks and scrubs is threatening the effort even as testing ramps up.In Los Angeles, health officials are instructing doctors to only test sick people if a diagnosis would change how they would be treated, according to the LA Times.The LA Times reports that the county health department sent a letter to doctors this week saying they should only administer tests if “a diagnostic result will change clinical management or inform public health response”.The decision is part of a shift “from a strategy of case containment to slowing disease transmission and averting excess morbidity and mortality,” according to the paper.

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With many under orders to stay at home, the party has moved online.

By BY SANDRA E. GARCIA from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3a8iwiI

A group of friends still played basketball, with modifications: hazmat suits and respirators.

By BY MICHAEL LEVENSON from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2xe60iX

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Vice President Pence, wife test negative for COVID-19

03/21/20 6:02 PM

Army Corps of Engineers races to provide 10,000 hospital rooms for coronavirus response

The Army Corps of Engineers is planning to create more than 10,000 ICU-type hospital rooms in hotels, dormitories and other available buildings in New York City over the next few weeks, its commander said Friday. 

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How the coronavirus has disrupted education for one California family — my own

As a reporter and editor at Yahoo News who has written often about the impact the growing coronavirus outbreak is having on American life, my assignment to investigate how education was being impacted took me to a not-so-exotic location — my own kitchen table.

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Remains of missing Colorado boy, 11, found in Florida

Investigators want to know if anyone saw suspect Leticia Staunch in the Panhandle in early February

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How the Coronavirus Pandemic Could Come to Define the Millennial Generation

As the scale and nature of the COVID-19 pandemic becomes clear, 30- and 40-somethings have urged their 60- and 70-something parents to take more serious precautions. Fifty-something parents are remarking to their 20-something children that this is the most significant disruption of day-to-day living to occur in their lifetimes, while offering the reassurance that the virus poses its least threat to the young. But is that true?While the Wuhan coronavirus is a greater existential threat to boomers than to Millennials, it isn’t always true that that which does not kill us makes us stronger. As Karl Mannheim noted in his 1923 essay “The Problem of Generations,” generations are not so much defined by biological categories as by world events. And this pandemic may come to define Millennials.Boomers are often accused of having had it easy. As children, their neighborhoods were safe; as adults, their houses were affordable. Sure, they had some struggles: keeping jobs, paying mortgages, staying married, supporting us and their elderly parents for longer than they’d anticipated. Some of their children, now well into adulthood, have enjoyed similarly decent lives, growing up in the Cold War, when neoliberalism was still trendy and men still asked women out face-to-face.But Millennials have had a different experience. The Berlin Wall came down before they knew what it was. They witnessed 9/11 and the Iraq War through innocent eyes. Then came the 2008 financial crash. Now they’re the generation that doesn’t own, but rents; holds down jobs, not careers; and pays offs student loans, not mortgages. They even appear to have lost some interest in sex and marriage. The idea that they will enjoy a greater quality of life than their parents is laughable, but most of them are not laughing; they’re resentful. Intensifying their anger is a fear that previous generations have also managed to ruin the planet, saddling them with the supposedly catastrophic effects of climate change.This is why so many Millennials are drawn to the ideas of those such as the French economist Thomas Piketty, who rejects “propertarianism” and would “democratize” the economy by nationalizing key industries and banishing the market from many spheres where it currently holds sway. They like ideas such as universal basic income and a wealth tax of up to 90 percent. In Spain, they support Podemos; in Greece, Syriza; in Britain, Jeremy Corbyn; and in America, Bernie Sanders. In the 2016 primaries, more young people voted for Sanders than for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined. According to one poll, 51 percent of Americans aged 18–29 have a positive view of socialism.Politically, the result is an intergenerational gulf. In the 2016 Brexit referendum, 64 percent of Brits over the age of 65 voted Leave, compared with only 29 percent of those under the age of 25. The same disparity was seen in Conservative voters in the 2017 and 2019 general elections. This global pandemic may not kill as many millennials as it kills boomers. But there’s a real possibility that it will destroy our already-diminished economic inheritance. And if that happens, another danger looms: Opportunistic socialists will have a chance to make their case to a resentful generation that has neither the personal memory nor the grasp of history necessary to resist their advances.

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National Park Service offering virtual tours of closed parks

Climb up the Statue of Liberty, hike through Yosemite National Park and visit the Pyramids of Egypt — all from your computer.

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Hong Kong Records Its Biggest Rise in Coronavirus Cases as New Wave of Infections Crashes Into Asia

Hong Kong saw a dramatic rise of 48 new coronavirus cases Friday, majority of whom were travelers returning from abroad

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The gang-rape and murder that shocked India

Four men were hanged Friday, more than seven years after a gang-rape and murder that stunned India. Jyoti Singh, 23, was returning home from the cinema with a male friend when they boarded a private bus on the evening of Sunday December 16, 2012. The five adults and one juvenile were charged with 13 offences in February 2013 by a fast-track court.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham Says Government Could Underwrite ‘70 Percent’ of U.S. Payroll if Coronavirus Containment Continues

Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) on Friday warned that federal and state governments could be forced to support a large segment of the American workforce if measures designed to contain the Wuhan coronavirus remain in place."I talked with [Treasury Secretary Steve] Mnuchin this morning. Here's the challenge, and we've just got to tell the public the truth: we're going to be floating probably 70 percent of the nation's payroll," Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill. "The federal government in some form, working with the states and the private sector, but mostly the federal government is going to underwrite 70 percent of the payroll in this country if the containment policies continue to be this aggressive."Graham said the economic stimulus currently being hashed out by senators in conjunction with the White House will be much more expensive than originally thought."It's going to be a hell of a lot more than $1 trillion," Graham said. Other Republican and Democratic senators have privately agreed that the stimulus will exceed the $1 trillion mark, CNN reported on Friday. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said the body would be ready to vote on the stimulus by Monday."We expect to have an agreement by the end of today,” McConnell told CNN. “The game plan remains the same. We will be voting on a final package in the Senate on Monday."The Wuhan coronavirus pandemic has caused large swaths of the U.S. to implement closures of schools, theaters and other public venues, with New York and California ordering nonessential workers to stay at home and residents to remain home as much as possible. Jobless claims have surged by 281,000 since March 8, the highest rise since September 2017.

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Trump and Fauci differ in tone on possible drug treatment for coronavirus

At Friday's White House coronavirus task force briefing, President Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, differed on their expectations about the use of chloroquine to treat the virus.

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Emirates Airlines suspends flights to dozens more cities

Dubai carrier Emirates Airlines announced Saturday it would suspend flights to dozens more cities, taking its total route closures past 100, in a bid to forestall the spread of coronavirus. The United Arab Emirates on Friday announced its first two deaths from the disease. Total recorded infections in the UAE stood at 153, of which 38 have recovered.

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Trump says Congress 'very close' on coronavirus stimulus, Pence says he'll be tested - live updates

In a letter to Democratic colleagues released Friday evening, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the stimulus "as written" a "non-starter."

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Taiwan reports 18 new coronavirus cases, all imported

Taiwan reported 18 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, all imported from people coming from countries including the United States, Britain, South Africa and Indonesia or those having contact with them, bring the total number of infected to 153. While Taiwan's initial efforts to control the spread of the virus have won praise at home and abroad, it is now facing an upsurge in cases from people bringing the virus with them to the island, as are some other countries in Asia. Taiwan has reported two deaths, while 28 have been released from hospital.

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Governments and Companies Race to Make Masks Vital to Virus Fight

By BY RACHEL ABRAMS, JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG, ANDREW JACOBS, VANESSA FRIEDMAN AND MICHAEL ROTHFELD from NYT Business https://ift.tt/2U7G1Tq

The Hottest Parties in Town Are Now Online

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