“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.
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.”
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.
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.
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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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.
A bit more on donating personal protective equipment to local hospitals and care providers … As I noted, many of us have at least small supplies of these things in our homes. I used to have boxes of n95 masks for woodworking. Maybe you have a few boxes of latex or nitrile gloves for some home DIY project. Some readers have noted that in areas where hospitals are not yet under great stress they don’t want donations because they can’t validate the chain of custody of the materials. But in other areas with emerging locals epidemics they are desperate for really anything people have on hand. Google your local hospital or state health department. You’ll likely quickly find out what’s needed in your community.
President Trump appears to be growing tired of his own plan to combat the coronavirus.
Just this week’s reminder that all of our COVID-19 Crisis coverage is outside the Prime paywall. We will continue this for the duration.
You’ve likely heard the story about how the Peace Corps has not only withdrawn its more than 7,300 volunteers from countries around the world but also fired them. All of them. Immediately. Evacuation was probably inevitable and wise – though it seems reasonable to ask whether some volunteers may have been safer remaining in country than returning to the US. The decision to fire them all summarily was callous, gratuitous and inane.
But I wanted to TPM Reader MA’s story of his son’s rushed evacuation from Peru.
So I am a long time reader and member at TPM, and I thought I would share my son’s crazy story of getting out of Peru as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
As you know Peru went on total lock down this week. Before that my son and other PCV personnel had traveled to Lima from their home sites to hold their Completion of Service (CoS) ceremonies. My son’s last day in the Peace Corp was slated to be May 22nd. So, they had their ceremony and then last Saturday night before they were to head back to their sites, they got an email from their local director that they should stand pat; no one was going to travel until further notice. Inadvertently my son also got an email of a screenshot between some higher ups that that an evacuation order was coming worldwide.