We are getting more information about the demography of COVID-19. I have not yet seen detailed age and gender breakdowns nationwide. But the chair of the New York City Council’s health committee just tweeted out a breakdown of the fatality numbers so far out of New York City. The total numbers remain small in statistical terms though heartbreaking in the metric of individual people’s lives, with 99 people succumbing to the disease in the city.
TPM reader JH writes in from Asia…
I’m an American (from Colorado), but I split my time between Nepal (where my work is) and Thailand (where my husband lives and works). And both countries exhibit so many of the key challenges that the world is facing as this pandemic expands beyond the developed, and frankly high capacity, countries of China, East Asia, Europe, and the US.
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TPM Reader BB makes a good suggestion. Do you have personal protective gear you can donate? If you do maybe you’ve thought of this. But many hospitals around the country are now asking, begging for contributions. Perhaps you have latex or nitrile gloves for some other work you do. When I used to do woodworking I had a ton of n95 masks. I pitched them all when I had to close up my workshop. But many of you who’ve done woodworking or various fix it projects that use toxic chemicals might have them. Think about it. I bet there’s a hospital nearby that may need them.
Senator Rand Paul’s twitter account just announced that he has tested positive for COVID-19 and is now in quarantine. The Twitter announcement says that he is currently asymptomatic. He appears to be the third members of Congress and the first Senator to test positive.
A new article authored by a group of physicians in Bergamo, Italy proposes a radical theory of the COVID-19 outbreak and how it must be addressed. (It is published in a new peer-reviewed journal from the New England Journal of Medicine. Article here; write up in StatNews here.) The authors write that “Western health care systems have been built around the concept of patient-centered care,” but that doctors must now move to “community-centered care.”
“Demand testing. It’s what matters. Take it from people in an outbreak zone.” That was TPM Reader RS’s sign off on March 2nd, writing from his home a few hundred yards from the Kirkland, Washington nursing home that was the first epicenter of the crisis in the United States. You can see his whole note here.
This evening RS writes again, almost three weeks on …
I went back to read this message I sent you three weeks ago and I actually wept a bit.
To see what’s happening in NYC makes me so angry and sad for the people there. So sad that we begged to be listened to in Seattle but no one listened.
I’ve been responding to notes from TPM Readers about the post below on the musical chairs economy. It raises the issue of declining refunds, especially when it comes to cultural institutions and small businesses. Everyone’s financial reality is different – though almost everyone’s is likely less certain today than it was a month ago. But for those of us who can it is worth considering affirmatively declining refunds. One reader just told me about declining a refund on canceled tickets for a local chamber orchestra. A different moral and ethical calculus applies to non-profits and small businesses and major corporations. But it’s worth considering that many cultural institutions, especially smaller ones, as well as small businesses likely cannot survive making everyone whole at once for an event they couldn’t have predicted or controlled. Educational payments are an entirely different matter. Those are major family budgets items for almost any family. I mean for smaller stuff. So again, for those who can easily absorb relatively small sums, it’s worth considering and suggesting the same to others who are able.
It’s not a matter of shaming people. I’m not suggesting that. But in all the rush of events I’m not sure the impact of these refunds will occur to everyone.
There are an almost limitless number of economic questions now facing policy-makers, managers, workers, everyone. There’s one issue I want to focus on. Call it musical chairs economics. For the last two summers my son went to camp. For this summer, long before COVID-19, he decided he wanted a change of pace. So we didn’t enroll him in camp. If we had enrolled him we would already have paid the fees in advance. This isn’t about that camp or my son. This is to illustrate a more general point. Lots of people in the economy have already paid for things they now cannot receive. In the normal course of things those people would be entitled to refunds in most cases. But of course we’re not in the normal course of things.
Latest information is that air traffic is resuming into the NYC-region with only some on-going disruptions to flights arriving to JFK. Limited information suggests that a positive test tied to regional air traffic control triggered decontamination procedures and those procedures led the FAA to temporarily halt in-bound flights into the airports controlled by NYC-region air traffic control.
Update 3:09 Eastern: Multiple reports that the FAA ground stop for NYC-region airports has been lifted and flights are now returning to normal operation.
Based on this tweet from an airline industry journalist and this FAA alert, it appears that air traffic into the major airports servicing the NYC region has been halted. We are dealing with limited information here. But this does not appear to be an effort to restrict travel. It appears that “staffing issues” (quote from FAA alert), possibly positive tests, have brought staff levels below a point where the airports can operate.
This is an emerging story. We will update as new details emerge. I stress again: this does not appear to be a policy decision to restrict travel. It appears to be a reaction to staffing shortfalls below which the airports cannot operate. It is also entirely possible that it will be in effect only for a short period.