H5N1

COVID-19 in Florida on Thursday: 9,446 new cases, 217 new deaths

A screenshot from Rebekah Jones's Florida COVID Action dashboard:

Herman Cain dies from COVID-19

Via CNNPolitics: Herman Cain dies from coronavirus. Excerpt:

Washington (CNN)Herman Cain, the former presidential candidate and former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, has died from coronavirus, according to an obituary sent from his verified Twitter account and Newsmax, where he was launching a television show.  

Cain, 74, was hospitalized earlier this month, and his Twitter account said earlier this week he was being treated with oxygen in his lungs. It is unknown where Cain contracted the virus. 

As a co-chair of Black Voices for Trump, Cain was one of the surrogates at President Donald Trump's June 20 rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma -- which saw at least eight Trump advance team staffers in attendance test positive for coronavirus. Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh told CNN at the time that Cain did not meet with Trump at the Tulsa rally.

Auditor-General to probe lapse in Canada’s pandemic warning system

This is the kind of thing you'd expect from Donald Trump, not from Justin Trudeau, and it's infuriating. Via The Globe and Mail: Auditor-General to probe lapse in Canada’s pandemic warning system. Excerpt:

Canada’s Auditor-General is planning to investigate what went wrong with the country’s once-vaunted early warning system for pandemics after the unit curtailed its surveillance work and ceased issuing alerts more than a year ago, raising questions about whether it failed when it was needed most. 

Sources close to the matter said the Auditor-General is planning to probe the government’s handling of the Global Public Health Intelligence Network, or GPHIN, which was a central part of the country’s advance surveillance, early detection and risk-assessment capacity for outbreaks.

The Globe and Mail reported on Saturday that a key part of GPHIN’s function was effectively shut down last spring, amid changing government priorities that shifted analysts to other work. According to 10 years of documents obtained by The Globe, the system went silent on May 24 last year, after issuing more than 1,500 alerts over the past decade about potential outbreaks including MERS, H1N1, avian flu and Ebola.  

GPHIN was part of Canada’s contribution to the World Health Organization. Those alerts often helped Canada, the WHO and other countries assess outbreaks at their earliest stages to determine the urgency of the situation. It was responsible for alerting the WHO to the first signs of several potentially catastrophic events, including a 2009 outbreak of H1N1 in Mexico, a 2005 flare-up of bird flu in Iran that the government there tried to hide, and the 1998 emergence of SARS in China.  

According to federal documents, “approximately 20 per cent of the WHO’s epidemiological intelligence” came from GPHIN. But sources from inside the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) said the analysts were stripped of their ability to independently issue alerts in late 2018. Those alerts, which had garnered GPHIN a global reputation as a leader in pandemic intelligence, had to be approved by senior management, a move that ultimately silenced the system. 

Several past and present employees told The Globe that the government had grown wary of GPHIN’s mandate in recent years, believing it was too internationally focused, given that pandemic events were rare. Analysts were given domestic projects to focus on that didn’t involve global surveillance, and the operation’s early-warning capacity soon suffered. Over the past decade, doctors inside Public Health also began to fear their messages weren’t being heard, or understood, on important topics, the employees said, which affected Canada’s readiness for the COVID-19 pandemic.  

The Auditor-General is also planning to look at Canada’s risk assessments during the pandemic, which may have affected the speed and urgency of mitigation measures, such as border closings, airport shutdowns and the use of protective masks. Throughout January, February and into March, the government maintained the risk the virus posed to Canada was “Low,” even as evidence of human-to-human spread became increasingly evident around the world. Canada didn’t elevate its risk rating to “High” until March 16, nearly seven weeks after the WHO declared the global risk was high and urged countries to start preparing.

Vietnam: Five more locally transmitted COVID-19 cases confirmed in Quang Nam

Via VietnamPlus: Five more locally-transmitted COVID-19 cases confirmed in Quang Nam.

Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnam reported five new COVID-19 infections in the central province of Quang Nam on July 30 afternoon, announced the National Steering Committee on COVID-19 Prevention and Control.  

All the five patients, including four women, had links to the outbreak at Da Nang Hospital in the central city of Da Nang.  

Among Vietnam’s total 464 confirmed patients, 276 are imported cases who were immediately quarantined upon arrival.  

At present, 18 patients have tested negative for the virus at least once. 

The number of community transmission cases since July 25 climbed to 48. 

More than 81,540 people who had close contact with COVID-19 patients or returning from pandemic-hit areas are being quarantined across the country, including 472 at hospital, 14,213 at concentrated facilities and 66,861 at their accommodations.

COVID-19 on Thursday morning: 17,057,700 cases, 667,744 deaths

A screenshot from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) dashboard:

The epistemic tragedy of COVID-19 misinformation

Via Columbia Journalism Review, Jon Allsop writes: The epistemic tragedy of coronavirus misinformation. Excerpt:

Yesterday, four of the most powerful men on earth—Mark Zuckerberg, of Facebook; Jeff Bezos, of Amazon; Tim Cook, of Apple; and Sundar Pichai, of Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube—were dragged to Capitol Hill (well, a videoconference) to answer to a subcommittee of the House of Representatives. As well as allegations of monopolistic practices, abuses of privacy, and political bias, lawmakers asked about the spread of misinformation on social media, including content related to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. 

Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat who chairs the subcommittee, grilled Zuckerberg on a nonsense-stuffed COVID video that went massively viral earlier this week before Facebook pulled it down. Cicilline accused Facebook of exploiting such harmful content to juice engagement. Zuckerberg denied this. 

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, also asked about the incident. He described a claim from the video as “a legitimate matter of discussion,” and wanted to know why Facebook had punished Donald Trump, Jr., for sharing it. Zuckerberg gently replied that Twitter, not Facebook, had acted against Trump, Jr. So such hearings go. 

The content that perturbed Cicilline and Sensenbrenner, for different reasons, was published on Monday by Breitbart, and featured a group of doctors, in immaculate medical garb, making far-from-immaculate claims, including that masks don’t work against COVID-19, and that hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug beloved of the president and his boosters, is a COVID “cure,” which, by all credible accounts, it is not. 

As the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer has reported, one of the doctors in the video—Stella Immanuel, a physician and religious minister in Houston—has claimed, in the past, that having sex with demons and witches can cause gynecological problems, that alien DNA is used in human medicine, and that aliens and reptiles help run the government, which, by the way, is working to vaccinate us against religion. 

Immanuel thanked the Daily Beast for Sommer’s story, which she said did “a great job summarizing our deliverance ministry and exposing incubus and succubus.” (Don’t ask.) She also invited the Beast (italics definitely necessary) to contact her should it ever find itself in need of “deliverance from these spirits.”

I digress. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter all removed the video, citing various violations of their COVID-19 misinformation policies and general terms of service, but not before it had found some high-profile fans. Madonna shared it, and called Immanuel her “hero.” President Trump shared variants of the video; Twitter eventually scrubbed it from his account, though it didn’t temporarily block the president from tweeting, as it had done with his son, because the president only retweeted the video, whereas Trump, Jr., uploaded it himself. 

At a briefing on Tuesday, the president declared himself “very impressed” with Immanuel. When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pressed him on Immanuel’s past claims, Trump walked out. And so such briefings go.  

Junk about the coronavirus keeps cycling through our information ecosystem. The news media bears responsibility for that; as David Leonhardt, of the New York Times, put it yesterday, there are many reasons why the US has a worse COVID outbreak than any other rich country, “but one of them is the size and strength of right-wing media organizations that frequently broadcast falsehoods.” Flotsam washes from dark corners of the web right into conservative institutions—to cite one recent example, a COVID conspiracy video called Plandemic went viral online, leading Sinclair, the local-news chain, to interview one of its stars for a segment it planned to broadcast to millions of Americans. Under immense pressure, it reversed course. 

Such dynamics invite coverage from the reality-based media; we make clear that the claims we’re covering are bogus, but we are still, in the eyes of many information experts, contributing to a form of seepage. By the time one cycle is done, a new one has begun. As Casey Newton, of The Verge, pointed out this week, the Immanuel video “racked up nearly three times the views that the most-shared Plandemic video did in half the time.” We covered that. Then Congress got involved, and we covered Congress getting involved. Rinse. Repeat.  

Despite their COVID misinformation policies, social media companies could act much more quickly to remove harmful content, or at least limit its virality. The many calls for such action come amid a broader period of reckoning for the tech giants. Facebook, in particular, has faced loud complaints, including a staff walkout and a boycott by advertisers, about its laissez-faire approach to hate, including posts by Trump; others, including Zuckerberg, have argued that it isn’t Facebook’s role to interfere with political speech. 

In many ways, the problem of COVID misinformation is part of the same conversation. The threatened shooting of protesters and the threat of the virus both involve potential harm, albeit in different ways. And medicine is inseparable from politics, especially right now.

Hong Kong needs citywide COVID-19 testing, China’s ‘Sars hero’ Zhong Nanshan says

Via the South China Morning Post: Hong Kong needs citywide coronavirus testing, China’s ‘Sars hero’ Zhong Nanshan says. Excerpt:

China’s top respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan has urged the Hong Kong government to carry out citywide Covid-19 testing to contain its third wave of local infections. 

Hong Kong registered a triple-digit rise in Covid-19 cases for the eighth day running on Wednesday, pushing its total infections over 3,000 since its first coronavirus outbreak in late January. 

The city’s authorities are battling to manage the burden on local hospitals as a result of the surge and are facing the additional challenge that the origin of more than half of daily infections have been untraceable since mid-July. 

“My understanding is that Hong Kong people are now being tested on a voluntary basis,” Zhong said in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV. “But I think if the situation goes on like this, everyone should be made to do the test.”  

The Guangzhou-based “Sars hero” also said Hong Kong’s ban on dine-in services, which took effect this week, was a crucial step to contain the outbreak. Other stringent measures introduced in the city include mandatory mask wearing in public.  

While the increase in cases was concerning, they were not yet growing at an exponential rate, he said. “Hong Kong’s problem was never on the medical aspect, but on containment.”

Zhong said the mainland’s experience showed strict lockdown policies had been very successful. “The mainland would have adopted even stronger measures. But Hong Kong has its own conditions, it has too little space, population density is too high, adopting the same strict measures would cause an impact on economic development and all other areas. 

“So the way out is to increase testing and discover the asymptomatic patients,” he said.

Saskatchewan Premier warns Hutterites over spiking COVID-19 numbers

Via The Globe and Mail: Saskatchewan Premier warns Hutterites over spiking COVID-19 numbers. Excerpt and then a comment:

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has sent a stark message to the province’s Hutterite colonies as their leaders and health officials work to deal with a rising number of COVID-19 cases mainly found in their communities. 

On Wednesday, the Ministry of Health reported 50 new infections, with 44 of them in one northern Hutterite community. It was the second-highest number of new cases reported in Saskatchewan on any day since the pandemic began. The province reported 60 new cases on July 22. 

Moe said 244 of Saskatchewan’s 322 active cases are in Hutterite communities. That represents three-quarters of the province’s current infections. 

The Premier noted that most of the province’s 80 or so colonies are being co-operative in trying to contain the outbreak and added no one should be stigmatized because of the virus. 

However, he said, a few of the Anabaptist communities are resistant to testing and unwilling to change parts of their communal lifestyle, such as eating and worshipping in large groups.  

“This needs to change,” said Moe. 

Speaking from prepared remarks directly to those living in colonies, he said the province has been spared from some of the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic because people changed their behaviour. 

“Every single one of us in this province has been asked to and the vast majority have changed how we are living each and every day,” said Moe. 

“You all need to as well. If you don’t, many will get sick in your community. Some will get very sick. Some will die.”  

There are about 50,000 Hutterites in more than 520 colonies in Canada and the United States. Their way of life can make colonies vulnerable to the novel coronavirus since members eat, worship and do many other activities together.

 Advocates for Hutterite communities have complained that tough talk from politicians focused on colony outbreaks is leading to cultural and religious profiling. Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, has said that such discrimination does not help build trust.  

Hutterian Safety Council Chair David Tschetter said they have been working with colonies for months and sending the same message as Moe when it comes to the pandemic. 

He expressed disappointment the Saskatchewan government continues identifying infections as coming from colonies. 

During Wednesday’s briefing, the premier said they have been working with the council for awhile and “it’s clear in the (infection) numbers that we need to do more than that.” 

Rural and Remote Health Minister Warren Kaeding said he has been reaching out to leaders and ensuring compliance with public health orders is top of mind, which he believes is best achieved through education.  

“I know even the conversation I had this morning with a couple of Hutterite leaders was talking about asymptomatic patients,” he said. 

The government has the authority to intervene to prevent the spread of the virus. It can mandate self-isolation and restrict travel with roadblocks in communities, as was seen in the far north earlier this year.

I expect some kind of response will soon be forthcoming from the Hutterian Safety Council. 

COVID-19 on Wednesday afternoon: 16,845,602 cases, 662,577 deaths (150,034 deaths in US)

A screenshot from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) dashboard:

'This is imported': Mysterious COVID-19 outbreak catches Vietnam by surprise

Via The New York Times: Mysterious Coronavirus Outbreak Catches Vietnam by Surprise. Excerpt:

With no clarity as to the source of the outbreak in Danang, which has infected at least 26 people there, medical authorities were racing to figure out how cases were proliferating in a supposedly closed country.  

The health ministry said that the strain of virus detected in Danang is different from ones that circulated during the earlier round of local transmission. 

“This is imported,” said Professor Nga, the public health expert at Quang Trung University. “A virus cannot survive for three months in a community without causing illness.” 

Professor Nga said he thought the virus likely arrived in Vietnam in late June or early July. 

In Danang, the police fanned out across the city, trying to locate outsiders who might have brought the virus with them. On Saturday, the police apprehended nine Chinese nationals who had sneaked into Vietnam illegally, local authorities said. Dozens more Chinese who had entered the country illegally were nabbed earlier this month in central Vietnam. A Chinese man, who the police said had set up an illegal immigration network, was arrested on Monday. 

The Chinese who were caught were either put in quarantine camps or isolated in hospitals, the police said. 

Across Vietnam, hospitals were getting beds ready to handle a rise in cases. Professor Nga noted that ventilators and other equipment needed in the fight against the coronavirus are limited in Vietnam.  

People, he said, had become complacent.  

“After 100 days with no outbreaks, people weren’t taking precautions anymore,” Professor Nga said. “They weren’t wearing masks or cleaning their hand with soap. People were going to crowded places.”