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Day 52: COVID-19 Pandemic
It’s official now according to everyone: we are in a pandemic. The President has added the Schengen Area within the European Union to the existing travel restrictions from China, Italy and Iran. Organizations are canceling conferences, tournaments and group events that were schedule over the next couple of months. Social distancing is starting to be a thing. Tele-video is becoming a thing from healthcare systems, schools, and anyone else with the capability. The person manning the cash register at the pharmacy today was wearing nitrile gloves. I have nitrile gloves in the car truck for wearing when pumping gas.
Nursing home visits are suspended for the time being — staff only. The elderly are encouraged to self-segregate from younger family members (who could be vectors) in addition to social distancing amongst themselves. Testing is expanding rapidly in the US (some argue its a critical “catch up” exercise).
Service entities, such as restaurants, are taking extra steps to ensure that at least someone will patronize their establishment. Here is an email sent out by the Smoke House restaurant located next to movie studios in Burbank, CA:
All of us here at The Smoke House care deeply about the health and safety of our guests and employees. We are always in accordance with CDC and LA County Health department requirements and are closely monitoring the Coronavirus (COVID-19) information they provide.
Here are some additional steps The Smoke House is taking to protect our guests so you can continue to visit us with confidence:
- Commonly used surfaces such as door handles, check presenters, and menus are being disinfected throughout the day, all day.
- Bussers are wearing plastic gloves and sanitizing tables between customer use, using alcohol-based sanitizers and bleach products to reduce any possibility of accidental community spread.
- Employees are being reminded about strict hand washing protocols, especially after contact with commonly used surfaces.
- The Smoke House maintains a paid sick leave policy for all our employees. Any employees who report symptoms is given the time off and advised to seek medical attention if appropriate.
- We are communicating with the staff daily to make sure they have all the tools and training they need to keep up a vigilant approach to clean surfaces.
Our mission at The Smoke House is to create an atmosphere that can be a tonic during times of turbulence. It is a time to stay present, stay positive, and to share our humanity with each person we encounter now more than ever. We have never been more mindful and grateful for the community of people we’ve been fortunate to serve over the years.
All of this is not because of ~1,600 confirmed cases and 40 deaths in this country. It is because of the over 21,ooo cases and ~1,700 deaths in the European Union that indicates something evil this way comes.
[Note: Links to all my COVID-19 posts can be found here.]
Here is the latest Worldometer.com news update for March 11 & 12:
Published in GeneralMarch 12 (GMT):
- United States:
Coronavirus outbreak “could easily be a a six-month crisis.” said New York Mayor Bill de Blasio as he declared a state of emergency in the city on Thursday, adding that New Yorkers should expect “major changes” from day-to-day because there’s a pattern of “extraordinary new information on what now feels like an hourly basis” With at least 328 total cases in New York, of which more than 100 added today, the number of cases in the city is projected to rise to 1,000 by next week, de Blasio said [source]Virus can remain viable “in aerosols up to 3 hours, up to 4 hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to 2-3 days on plastic and stainless steel” a Princeton study awaiting peer review has found [source]
- France to close all schools and universities beginning Monday, March 13. Employers urged to let staff work from home [source]
- Israel is closing all schools and university beginning Friday, March 13 [source]
- Greece is closing all the courthouses, theaters, cinemas, gyms, children playgrounds and nightclubs in the country, after having already closed the schools two days ago [source]
- UK – Boris Johnson has addressed the nation today: [source]
called coronavirus “worst public health crisis for a generation“
warned “many families are going to lose loved ones before their time“
UK is 4 weeks behind Italy
true UK cases likely up to 10,000
if you have symptoms stay home
more drastic measures to come- 2 new deaths in Germany [source] [source]
- Turkey has closed all schools for 1 week and universities for 3 weeks. Classes will be conducted online [source]
- 2 new cases in Armenia: they had been in close contact with a previously confirmed case of a woman who had arrived from Italy. They had fever and later tested positive for coronavirus. They now feel well and have no fever [source]
- United States: NBA suspended its season indefinitely after a player on the Utah Jazz has tested positive for COVID-19 earlier today [source] Later during the day, a second Utah Jazz player tested positive for coronavirus, as a suspended NBA considers next steps [source]
- United States updates include:
– 1st case in Maine: a woman who recently returned from an outbreak area [source]
– 3 new cases in Washington State, for a total of 379
– 13 new cases in Massachusetts, for a total of 108
– 11 new cases in Colorado, for a total of 45
– 6 new cases in New Jersey, for a total of 29
– 9 in Tennessee, for a total of 18
– 5 in North Carolina, for a total of 14
– 3 in Nevada, for a total of 10
– 4 in Minnesota, for a toal of 9
– 1 in New Hampshire, for a total of 6
– 5 in Arkansas, for a total of 6
– 2 new in Utah, for a total of 5 (2 Utah Jazz players)
– 1 in Oklahoma, for a total of 3
– 2 new in Texas, for a total of 25 [source]
– 6 new in Pennsylvania, for a total of 22 [source]
– 7 new in Virginia (including a Longwood student), for a total of 18 [source]
– 1 new in Louisiana, for a total of 14 [source]
– 3 new in Kansas, for a total of 4 [source]
– 1 new in New Mexico, for a total of 5 [source]
– 3 new in Delaware, for a total of 4 [source]
– at least 5 new cases in North Carolina for a total of 14 [source] [source] [source]
– 3 in Wisconsin, for a total of 6 [source]
– at least 112 new in New York State, for a total of 328 in the state [source]
– 4 in Florida for a total of 35 [source] [source]
– 13 in California (Riverside County) for a total of 197 cases and 4 deaths [source]
– 1st case in Mississippi: a Forrest county adult male who recently traveled to Florida [source]- 1 new death in Azerbaijan: a 51-year old woman who had been quarantined after returning from Iran [source] 4 new cases [source]
- Lithuania (3 cases in total) closes all schools for 2 weeks, bans mass events, and recommends to avoid travel to high risk countries (China, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Italy, France, Germany and Spain) [source]. Capital City of Vilnius also closes museums, cinemas, sport clubs, etc. Recommends to organise work from home to all companies. City administration is to provide its services online and via phone only [source]
- US travel ban from Europe (read original document), which does not apply to the UK and Ireland, will go into effect on Friday March 13 (tomorrow) at 23:59 ET (midnight). Americans returning from Europe “will be funneled through 13 different airports,” be subject to screening, and asked “to self-quarantine for 14 days” said Pence [source]
- 2 new deaths and 130 new cases in the UK [source]
- 1 new case in Cyprus: a person who had recently arrived from the UK [source]
- 167 new cases in Sweden, [source] which announced that testing for Covid-19 will ceaseunless you are hospitalized or belong to one of the risk groups. Even if you report corona-like symptoms [source]
- 1 new case in Pakistan: a 31 year-old man who returned from Iran [source]
- 2 new cases in Czech Republic, bringing the total to 96. State of Emergency declared[source]
- 1 new case in Senegal: a Senegalese national who returned to Dakar from Italy [source]
- 1 new case in Estonia [source]
- 111 new cases in the Netherlands [source]
- 1 new case in the Republic of Moldova: a young man who recently returned from Italy[source]
- 85 new cases in Belgium [source]
- Republic of Ireland announces that all schools will be closed for 17 days starting today. Indoor gatherings of more than 100 people and outdoor gatherings of more than 500 should be canceled [source]
- 1 new case in Sri Lanka (second in the country): a 44-year-old man shared a hotel room in Dambulla with the first confirmed case [source]
- At least 3 Albanians have died in Italy so far, including a 55-year-old who had diabetes, according to reports [source]
- 1 new case in Palestine: a 20 year-old woman in Bethlehem [source]
- 11 new cases in the UAE: 2 Italians, 2 Filipinos, 1 Montenegrin, Canadian, German, Pakistani, Emirati, Russian and British citizen [source]
Schools will be closed, over 1 million students will stay at home until at least April 12. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz appealed that grandparents should not take care of the children, so that the elderly be protected against the coronavirus. Children are “much less at risk when it comes to illnesses, but at the same time we know that children are strong multipliers,” said Health Minister Anschober [source]- 18 new cases in Iceland [source]
- 8 new cases in Albania: all have connections with Italy [source]
- 3 new cases in Armenia: a 51 year-old Italian man and 45 and 27 year-old Armenians that returned from Italy [source]
- 6 new cases in Slovakia, declares ‘state of emergency’ [source]
- 32 new cases in Slovenia: [source] [source]
– the government will declare an epidemic
– all educational institutions will close
– those forced to stay at home will be paid 80 percent of their salary- 75 deaths, 1,075 new cases, and 317 new recoveries in Iran [source]
- Over 100 new cases in Denmark [source]
- 3 new cases in the Philippines [source]
- 12 new cases in Luxembourg: local transmission was noted for 2 cases [source]
- 1 new case in the Channel Islands (Jersey): a person returning from north-west Italy[source]
- 4 new cases in Bosnia and Herzegovina: 2 of the cases are a man and a woman returned from skiing in Austria [source]
- 1 new case in Serbia [source]
- 1 new case in Taiwan: a woman in her 40s who traveled to Ireland and Belgium [source]
- 4 new cases in South Africa: 38 year-old male living in Turkey and visiting family, a 27 year-old female who traveled to the United States, a 43 year-old male who traveled to New York via Dubai, a 32 year-old male who came in contact with a Chinese businessman [source]
- 8 new cases in Kuwait: cases connected by travel to Azerbaijan and Iran [source]
- 56 new cases in Austria [source]
- 3 new cases in Israel [source]
- 28 new cases in Australia, including actor Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson [source]
- 7 new cases in Norway: 2 cases related to outbreaks abroad [source]
- new cases in Peru [source]
- 114 new cases and 6 new deaths in South Korea [source]
- 15 new cases, 11 new deaths (10 in Hubei) and 1,318 new discharges occurred in China on March 11, as reported by the National Health Commission (NHC) of China [source]
March 11:
“PANDEMIC”
But not the time for countries to move to mitigation
Must still try to suppress transmission, continue with containment efforts
_____________All Travel from Europe to the United States suspended for 30 Days
Ban will not apply to the UK
Trump had said earlier: “I am fully prepared to use the full power of the Federal Government to deal with our current challenge of the CoronaVirus!” [source]
Pence: “All the insurance companies […] have agreed to waive all copays on coronavirus testing, and extend coverage for coronavirus treatment in all of their benefit plans,”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases:
“Things will get worse.” How much worse it will get depends on 2 things, he said:
1. containing the influx of infected people coming from other countries
2. containing local outbreaks within the U.S.
When pressed by lawmakers for an estimate of eventual fatalities in the U.S., Fauci said it will be “totally dependent upon how we respond to it.”
“I can’t give you a number,” he said. “I can’t give you a realistic number until we put into the factor of how we respond. If we’re complacent and don’t do really aggressive containment and mitigation, the number could go way up and be involved in many, many millions.”
[source]
____________
Italy closes all commercial activities, offices, cafes, shops
Only transportation, pharmacies, groceries will remain open
[source]
- UK: Boris Johnson calls emergency meeting to rule on closing schools and telling everyone to work from home [source]
- 73 new cases in the UK: biggest daily rise [source] NHS to ramp up testing capacity from 1,500 to 8,000 tests per day [source]
- Germany: Merkel warns that up to 70% of Germany’s population could contract the coronavirus, which would amount to 58 million people (population of 83.7 million people) [source] [Germany Population]
- 343 new cases and 1 new death in Germany [source]
Government closes all schools and universities
All public employees will be sent home beginning on March 13 [source]- Hungary declares State of Emergency: [source]
– closes all Universities
– bans indoor events for more than 100 people
– bans outdoor events for more than 500 people
– stops flights, trains and buses from Slovenia and Austria
– tightens control of the border with Croatia
– requires quarantine for Hungarian citizens returning from Italy, China, South Korea and Iran- 4 new cases in Israel including a man in his 60s from central Israel whose contagion source is unknown [source]
- New cases in Canada include:
2 in Ontario: a radiation oncologist in Hamilton who had returned from a trip to Hawaii [source], and a man in his 50s [source]
2 in Montreal, raising the total to 7 confirmed in Quebec [source]
- 10 new cases in Greece, raising the total to 99, with at least 2 patients in intensive care[source]
- 238 new cases in Qatar (total cases jumps from 24 to 262) [source]
- 1 new case in Tunisia: a person who had traveled to Egypt [source]
- 4 new cases in Cyprus: 3 men and 1 woman [source]
- 1 new case in Brazil: a 52-year old patient in critical condition hospitalized in the Regional Hospital of Asa Norte [source]
- 5 new cases in Brunei: 3 had attended the same religious gathering in Malaysia with the first confirmed patient, the other 2 had no history of travel [source]
- 5 new cases in Hong Kong, including a Cathay Pacific flight attendant and members of an Egypt tour group [source]
- 6 new cases in Colombia [source]
- 3 new cases in Slovakia [source]
- 9 new cases in Poland, including 3 persons in Cieszyn, 1 of which had potential contacts with schoolchildren (for which a decision was made to close all schools in town), a young man from the province Masovian (Warsaw), and a young woman from Łańcut [source] [source]All schools, as well as museums and cinemas, will close starting on Monday to curtail the spread of the coronavirus, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said [source]
- 23 new cases in Slovenia [source]
- India: a 76-year-old man suspected to be infected with coronavirus dies in Karnataka ‘s Kalaburagi [source]
- 2 new cases in Latvia: part of a group traveling back from northern Italy [source]
- 12 new cases in Singapore: 8 cases, including 3 Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) servicemen who were in France on duty, were imported. One other case is linked to the private dinner function at the Joy Garden restaurant at Safra Jurong, Singapore’s biggest coronavirus cluster [source]
- 4 new cases in Iceland, all related to international skiing trips [source]
- 3rd death in Germany [source] and 57 new cases [source], including the first German professional football player to test positive for coronavirus [source]
- 34 new cases in Norway [source]
- 6 new cases in Romania: including a 43-year-old woman doctor, contact of the patientwho was admitted to the Dimitrie Gerota Hospital in Bucharest, and a 42-year-old man from Iasi who returned from Venice, Italy [source]
- 1 new case in Saudi Arabia: an Egyptian man who was passing through King Abdul Aziz Airport in Jeddah on the way to Cairo from New York [source]
- 18 new cases in Portugal, 83 people awaiting laboratory results and 471 suspected cases [source]
- 19 new cases in Finland [source]
- 122 new cases in Sweden [source]
- 1 new case in Croatia: a young male hairdresser who returned from Munich, Germany [source]
- 2 new cases in Morocco: a wife and son of a previously confirmed case [source]
- 2 new cases in Albania [source]
- 1 new case in Malta: a man who contracted the infection while on holiday in Italy [source]
- 7 new cases in Indonesia: all imported [source]
- 7 new cases in Serbia [source]
- 79 new cases in Bahrain, including 77 Bahrain citizens evacuated from Iran (out of the 165 total evacuees) [source]
- 16 new cases in the Philippines [source]
- 4 new case in Vietnam:
– a 64-year old woman, 37-year old woman, and 28-year old man, contacts of a previous case [source]
– a 29-year old woman who had direct contact with 2 British nationals at a supermarket[source]- 24 new cases in Austria [source]
- 6 new cases in South Africa: a 33 year old woman who returned from a trip to Italy, a 34 and 33 year-old couple who traveled to Germany, a 57 year-old man who traveled to Austria and Italy, a 40 year old man who traveled to Portugal, and a 36 year old man who traveled to multiple countries including Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Turkey [source]
– a 42-year-old Honduran pregnant woman who entered the country asymptomatically on March 4 on a flight from Spain. At this time she is hospitalized, clinically stable
– a 37-year-old Honduran who entered the country on March 5 on a flight from Switzerland. The patient has a clinical picture of mild disease and has remained in home self-isolation, with medical surveillance since entering the country- 1 new case in Israel, bringing the total to 76 [source] [source]
– Mass events canceled, no gatherings over 2,000 people
– Police will help catch Israelis who break quarantine
– Hundreds of schoolchildren quarantined
– Law enforcement will monitor Israelis returning from abroad
– 25 diagnosed with coronavirus on Tuesday, including Israeli returning from U.S.- 3 new cases in Kuwait [source]
- 2 new cases in the Maldives [source]
- 6 new cases in Thailand [source]
- 1 new case in Mexico: a 47-year-old man who arrived from a trip from Italy [source]
- New cases in Australia include:
– 3 new cases in Queensland: a 42-year-old female partner of a 38-year-old woman who tested positive and recently travelled from London through Dubai, as well as a 22-year-old man who attended a nightclub for multiple times over the weekend. Queensland Health is asking anyone who attended the CBD nightclub in Brisbane between 6pm last Friday and 11pm on Monday to contact 13 HEALTH if they become unwell [source]
– 2 new cases in South Australia: men in their 60s and 70s who traveled abroad and will most likely be taken to the Royal Adelaide
– 4 new cases in New South Wales: 3 women in their 20s and 30s who returned from Italytogether and 1 resident of a nursing facility in his 70s [source]
- 1 new case in Taiwan: a woman in her 30s who had traveled to the UK [source]
- 1 new case in Sri Lanka: a 52-year old Sri Lankan tour guide who had worked with a group of Italian tourists [source]
- United States new cases include:
– 1 new case in Virginia [source]
– 3 new cases in Louisiana [source]
– 5 new cases in Georgia [source]
– 8 new cases in Florida [source]
– First 2 cases in Michigan (Oakland and Wayne counties), Michigan: Gov. Whitmer declared a state of emergency [source]- 242 new cases in South Korea [source]
- 24 new cases, 22 new deaths (all in Hubei) and 1,578 new discharges occurred in China on March 10, as reported by the National Health Commission (NHC) of China [source]
- 3 new cases in Paraguay [source]
Growth curve continues in Germany, France, Spain and Switzerland. In one week they’ve gone from 1191 cases and 32 dead/critical to 9615 cases and 488 dead/critical. United States has more than doubled in two days. We will go from 1600 today to 10,000 in a week.
If true, bully for the administration. I think it was @miffedwhitemale who opined that because of the economic consequences of these recent drastic measures, people might stop being able to pay for and thus lose their health coverage. It is un-conservative of me to imagine that government could intervene to prevent that from happening, but I hope something can be done along those lines if necessary.
The irony in all this is now that China is over the hump, a current threat it faces is infections from abroad.
I suspected this would be the case….
I wouldn’t be so sure. China could easily brew up again.
And if it does as they loosen internal restrictions that’s bad news for all of us.
And they lie about everything.
The good news is that if lots of cases start popping up daily in Shanghai or other coastal cities we will know. The exact numbers we won’t know but that there is a resurgence we will know. The other indicator will be if the government starts sending workers home again. They can conceal (we’ll never know if the original source was the live market or the biolab in Wuhan) but not the overall trend.
Aw, man.
Didn’t you mean “C’mon, man!”
Bully for the Smoke House, Rodin. Nice and thorough notice for others to follow.
I have been going to that place since I was kid in the 50’s. It’s not very fancy but does a good steak and a great Garlic Cheese Bread. And does land office business. Right across the street from Warner Bros.
George Clooney named his production company ” Smoke House Productions” I believe.
I have to laugh, I think. The colleges and universities have just dispersed their untested-for-the-virus students to their family homes all over the world in one fell swoop.
These are kids who have been living in close quarters with their fellow traveling students, . . .
If ever there is written the Keystone Cops version of this pandemic story, this will be the funny chapter.
Oh, Lord! See, we don’t tend to think like this. Our natural way of thinking isn’t how the virus operates.
We still have two young Chinese women (university students) staying with us. They came to the Charlotte, NC, area at the end of December, for a winter-break internship teaching Chinese as a foreign language and were staying with American host families. When their program ended in mid February they were unable to return home and were placed with new, volunteer host families.
The girls who came to us had tickets with American Airlines, which told them they couldn’t travel until April 25. Other students in the group gradually bought other tickets (some with Aeroflot, through Moscow) and went home. These two are the only ones left and their families finally bought new tickets (on a Chinese airline, I think) for March 31. In the meantime they have gone to Charleston, SC, for 4 days with another host family and we have plans to take them to the Virginia mountains in ten days.
I have an underlying fear that they could contract the virus and not be allowed back into China (or take the virus back to their families). Argh!
I’m trying to find statistics for mortality due to the seasonal flu, by age. So far, no luck. Can you help? It seems that, since this disease favors the elderly so heavily, and the elderly tend to die eventually anyway, a skew such as we’re seeing in mortality for this particular virus would be, not just predictable, but unavoidable. That is, ultimately the overall mortality rate could very possibly be no worse than the standard seasonal flu, except that the young are <not> exhibiting the symptoms, and/or are not being tested, in accordance with current protocols.
I came across a useful resource that is updated daily from Ars Technica – Don’t Panic: Guide to Coronavirus. It seems free of political agendas, straightforward and links to new research. Two items of interest:
They link to a still unpublished study that goes to the effectiveness of early intervention on impacting the curve. It’s examines the effectiveness of China’s actions in Wuhan and estimates that if it had occurred one week earlier the cases would have been 66% less and if one week later the caseload would have been 3X.
The other is something I may have been mistaken about and hope someone who knows more than me on Ricochet can clear up – about the transmissibility of the coronavirus. On March 3, WHO stated COVID-19 “does not transmit as efficiently as influenza, from the data we have so far“. However, “the basic reproduction number (R0 or R naught) for COVID-19 is estimated to be between 2 and 2.5. That is, on average, a single infected person will go on to infect about two other people within a susceptible population.” compared to 1.3 for the flu. As I now understand it, the Ro is a statement of how many others so far are infected per infected person but not a statement regarding the ease of transmissibility but I still don’t know if I understand properly or the relative role in the two statements in gauging the transmissibility issue which is significant if you are trying to estimate potential growth in cases.
Why COVID 19 is so dangerous for seniors
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/12/21173783/coronavirus-death-age-covid-19-elderly-seniors
More like a “panicdemic”.
It’s sad that even asking the question “Are we over-reacting?” labels the questioner as an uncaring lout. Because I’m already accused of being such, I don’t mind . . .
Thank you for that link, @alfrench. I was struck by a thought reading the part about social distancing deepening social isolation for many. The canceled rallies, sporting events, conferences were places that energize, as well as threaten, people. How do we thread the needle of “We’re all in this together…from a distance.”?
Part of being a social animal is panic. We have a herd/flocking instinct. When the threat is perceived we react. Doesn’t mean we react in the right direction. Sometimes in your panic you run straight into, rather than away from, danger.
We find the remains of ancient civilizations with no or indecipherable writings explaining their existence. We speculate what caused a city to be abandoned and the people dead or dispersed. It may have been war, disease, famine or some other natural disaster. We discount war when we see no charring. But in the end the reason is just that we are humans. Social animals with developed brains that permit us to build great things, but remaining ruled to a great extent by deeply ingrained instincts that do not always serve us well.
FIFY
Doesn’t take published studies, it takes published data. This is bog standard epidemiology; if you know the R0 and a few other things you can make that sort of calculation.
Canada enters the race for a vaccine.
https://www.tms.org/communities/ftattachments/superalloystable_castcomp.pdf
Tucker Carlson last month:
Overblown rhetoric?
Understated, if anything:
That’s what a WTO member with Most Favored Nation status from the US acts like, alright.
China owns a lot of politicians on both sides of the aisle and other members of our nomenklatura.
At least one of them was running for President as a Democrat.
@Rodin: Do you have any insight on why Sweden is going to be limiting their testing so much? Can they not do it so lets give up or something else? The South Koreans seem to be the ones who have gotten most on the ball about testing and controlling things generally. I don’t count Singapore or Taiwan as they are (1) islands and (2) have a fairly small population. Thanks, thanks, thanks for this.
Having seen a video of mountain goats on a snowfield running in all directions including doubling back when their presence triggered an avalanche, I’d guess that having some individuals reacting in multiple directions may favor the continuation of the species. Not so much the individuals whose instinct was wrong for any given avalanche.
Thought it over and you are correct.
Did this spread all over China or did they contain it in the Wuhan region? I don’t recall any stories about problems in Beijing, for example.
I think what happened over time was that China behaved like a monopolist: they aggressively underbid everyone else in certain areas, driving out of business the smaller companies such as the American manufacturers. That’s why we look at the map of trade relationships and we see Boston importing goods from Beijing, a full 6,700 miles away, rather than from, say, Bogota, Colombia, which is only 2,600 miles away. The Chinese monopolist practices distorted the marketplace.
Add to that the friendship between our governments that began during the Nixon-Kissinger trip to Beijing in 1972 to meet with Zhou Enlai. This was a chess move we had to make because of the closeness that had developed between the USSR and the CCP. There was an interesting consequence, however, of that new friendship between our countries. Zhou, in his interest to open China to the West, began a policy of sending 10,000 Chinese students to the United States to go to college. Zhou passed away in 1976, but his legacy of creating a cultural friendship between the young people of China and the United States endured. It turned out that the Chinese young people loved America, and the country’s high school students’ greatest ambition was to pass the English test and go to an American university. Today there are something like 370,000 foreign national Chinese college and university students in the United States. These networks and friendships were a big reason the trade between the two countries grew so rapidly.
The CCP has behaved dishonorably in these extensive trade relationships, which we have ignored because the CCP holds so much American bond debt. For example, in the pharmaceuticals industry, the CCP seized the opportunity when our government and private insurance companies embarked on buying mostly generic drugs as a healthcare cost-saving step to create a monopoly in that market. The CCP is a dominant force in this trade story because although it usually looks like a silent partner, it actually is not, and it owns 50 percent of all “private” businesses within China. In our telling our government to buy nothing but the lowest bidders’ products and wares, this particular monopoly was inevitable. In short, our public- and private-sector trade practices have basically enriched the CCP, which has used its money to bear down tragically on Hong Kong and Taiwan (Formosa), and frankly the Uighur.
I am optimistic, however, about our future relationship with China. I think those friendships and the inspiration to be free of government control of and interference with self-determination that have emerged from the Chinese students’ attending school here will pay off eventually. I believe the Chinese people will vote out or forcibly remove the aging CCP members, and we will see a rebirth of China that will be wonderful for everyone. The cultural ties between our countries are strong now and will be forces for good.
Can someone help me a question that I just can’t get my head around? I’m not a scientist nor a mathematician (I’m still waiting for my $1,000,000 payment from the Bloomberg campaign). I’m one of a small minority that got my undergraduate degree in Sociology without taking a statistics class, thanks to divine intervention.
If the virus is so contagious, wouldn’t that mean that there are millions of people around the globe that either were exposed to it and had a resistance to it or got mild or no symptoms at all? The data we have is based on a only tiny sample, those people that were tested, correct? Reports I’ve read state that the vast majority of people who’ve gotten it or will get it will never be recorded because most people won’t be tested.
Wouldn’t that mean that it’s impossible to extrapolate any meaningful data re: deaths, illnesses and rates of transmissions? Even countries that do a lot of testing, test only a small fragment of their populations. In my simple mind, I keep thinking there are either millions of people who have/had it, thereby substantially skewing the numbers, or that the disease is not terribly contagious. What am I missing?
#23 Ontheleftcoast
Not overblown rhetoric where the observation about all-cash housing purchasers from China is concerned — at least so far as the one residential real estate market I’m acquainted with goes. One of my parents is a 30-year veteran residential real estate agent/broker in my hometown, a well-to-do Boston-area suburb; for probably the past ten years or so, all-cash/no-mortgage-contingency/inspection-waived purchases, where the buyer hails from China, have been the dominant type of single-family residence transaction in this market.
This has been particularly so with new-construction purchases, and by “new-construction” I mean not only completed construction but also cases where the projected completion date of construction is still roughly 3 months away.
The public schools system in my hometown has been held in high regard for decades, with my old high school holding something of a “feeder school” status for a fairly extensive list of prestigious colleges — all told, a situation that makes the residential real estate market in town a consistently strong draw over the long term. Indeed, the feeling during the past decade has approached frenzy in terms of bidding wars among house buyers — to the point where, frequently, several different Chinese buyers may be pitted against one another.
The result for me personally is that I cannot afford to live in the town where I grew up, at least not based on my own means at present; having fled Tokyo at the end February (thinking that I might evade the coronavirus…), I am one of the most fortunate people I know inasmuch as my parents paid off their mortgage in full quite a while ago and thus my ability to seek temporary refuge with them is not complicated by housing-cost pressures.
Once things relatively settle down for me here, though, I’ll have to approach the process of setting back out on my own with a lot of trepidation — and I pray not a lot of housing-related debt.