All things CoronaVirus

[kramerica.inc]

Robert O'Brien: China's coronavirus cover-up "cost the world" two months:

//www.axios.com/china-coronavirus-cover-u ... 1c284.html

[jhu72]

Timeline: The early days of China's coronavirus outbreak and cover-up:

https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-earl ... 5faab.html

This is the same timeline, without Chinese internal machinations - "cover up", that I listed earlier. The interesting things that I was not aware of in building my timeline occurred on December 27th and December 31st. The Chinese did not know for certain what the problem was until 12/27. The Chinese informed the WHO on 12/31. That is 9 days earlier than I assumed for their release to WHO, corresponding to their public announcement. This doesn't help anyone who is arguing the Chinese were hiding something for a long period of time. This is certainly a shorter period of time than Trump has been denying the seriousness of the situation.

Their (Chinese) internal machinations are suspicious and can certainly be assumed to be "bad Chinese", but doesn't really seem to slow them down. The dates that they finally identified the virus and when they reported it to WHO, by this timeline, the Chinese (Bejing) went from seeing first patients that were symptomatic to identification of the new virus in 11 days, and then to notification of the WHO in another 4. This seems pretty good to me, but I am not an expert in how quickly this might have been done. So basically from this timeline to argue the Chinese delayed notifying the world, I can see at maximum a 4 day delay. But it is also easy to understand that there would be some delay. They would naturally inform the government of Wuhan before informing the WHO.

The more recent article you post by Robert O'Brien is nothing more than the US propaganda responding to the Chinese propaganda (or perhaps the other way around). This is going to be a pissing content between Trump and the Chinese that has no bearing on the discussion of time lines. Trump has been trying to pin this on the Chinese since January, with his disparaging name calling. The Chinese are of course going to respond and vice versa. Frankly I am not interested in the pissing contest or even who started it.

So YA's question is, when did the CDC approach the Chinese about helping them? I see nothing in this timeline that would indicate it was prior to their announcement to the WHO.

[DocBarrister]

From CNN:

Trump's malicious use of 'Chinese virus'

(CNN)When Donald Trump wants to rally his base and distract from his many screw-ups, he falls back on one thing: xenophobic racism.

It looks like members of his administration have picked up this dirty trick.

Earlier this week, CBS reporter Weijia Jiang (disclosure: she is a friend) tweeted that a member of the Trump administration had called the coronavirus "Kung-Flu" when talking to her. She is Chinese American. "Makes me wonder what they're calling it behind my back," she wrote.

Trump himself sent out a tweet Monday calling Covid-19 "the Chinese virus," and then repeated it Wednesday as he began a televised news conference in which he invoked the Defense Production Act. It's an intentional bit of provocation and racism that evokes the turn-of-the-century "yellow peril," when Americans and Europeans fear-mongered about allegedly dangerous East Asians.

... The President's indirection and obfuscation in the face of scientific evidence has put citizens at risk, as he invites them to think of the disease as "Chinese" and not a wholly American crisis sweeping our nation.

This President isn't acting out of ignorance; he's acting out of malice. He has screwed up the coronavirus response royally, downplaying the threat with ludicrous pronouncements in front of TV cameras, while his health care officials issued grave warnings.

... Americans are sick and dying -- and it's going to get worse, in large part because of the administration has been slow to make testing available. For this, he said in a recent news conference, "I don't take responsibility at all." But he knows someone has to shoulder the blame.
So he blames a "Chinese virus."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/opinions ... index.html

DocBarrister

[jhu72]

From CNN:

Trump's malicious use of 'Chinese virus'

(CNN)When Donald Trump wants to rally his base and distract from his many screw-ups, he falls back on one thing: xenophobic racism.

It looks like members of his administration have picked up this dirty trick.

Earlier this week, CBS reporter Weijia Jiang (disclosure: she is a friend) tweeted that a member of the Trump administration had called the coronavirus "Kung-Flu" when talking to her. She is Chinese American. "Makes me wonder what they're calling it behind my back," she wrote.

Trump himself sent out a tweet Monday calling Covid-19 "the Chinese virus," and then repeated it Wednesday as he began a televised news conference in which he invoked the Defense Production Act. It's an intentional bit of provocation and racism that evokes the turn-of-the-century "yellow peril," when Americans and Europeans fear-mongered about allegedly dangerous East Asians.

... The President's indirection and obfuscation in the face of scientific evidence has put citizens at risk, as he invites them to think of the disease as "Chinese" and not a wholly American crisis sweeping our nation.

This President isn't acting out of ignorance; he's acting out of malice. He has screwed up the coronavirus response royally, downplaying the threat with ludicrous pronouncements in front of TV cameras, while his health care officials issued grave warnings.

... Americans are sick and dying -- and it's going to get worse, in large part because of the administration has been slow to make testing available. For this, he said in a recent news conference, "I don't take responsibility at all." But he knows someone has to shoulder the blame.
So he blames a "Chinese virus."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/opinions ... index.html

DocBarrister

Yup. I said it earlier. Trump knows exactly what he is doing.

[old salt]

Respectfully, we should remove the “Chinese” in this thread’s title.

It’s a not-so-subtle form of racial profiling and we shouldn’t be doing it here.

DocBarrister

Read all about it in the reporting from China by the NYT, WP & WSJ.

[old salt]

Timeline: The early days of China's coronavirus outbreak and cover-up:

https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-earl ... 5faab.html

This is the same timeline, without Chinese internal machinations - "cover up", that I listed earlier. The interesting things that I was not aware of in building my timeline occurred on December 27th and December 31st. The Chinese did not know for certain what the problem was until 12/27. The Chinese informed the WHO on 12/31. That is 9 days earlier than I assumed for their release to WHO, corresponding to their public announcement. This doesn't help anyone who is arguing the Chinese were hiding something for a long period of time. This is certainly a shorter period of time than Trump has been denying the seriousness of the situation.

Their (Chinese) internal machinations are suspicious and can certainly be assumed to be "bad Chinese", but doesn't really seem to slow them down. The dates that they finally identified the virus and when they reported it to WHO, by this timeline, the Chinese (Bejing) went from seeing first patients that were symptomatic to identification of the new virus in 11 days, and then to notification of the WHO in another 4. This seems pretty good to me, but I am not an expert in how quickly this might have been done. So basically from this timeline to argue the Chinese delayed notifying the world, I can see at maximum a 4 day delay. But it is also easy to understand that there would be some delay. They would naturally inform the government of Wuhan before informing the WHO.

The more recent article you post by Robert O'Brien is nothing more than the US propaganda responding to the Chinese propaganda (or perhaps the other way around). This is going to be a pissing content between Trump and the Chinese that has no bearing on the discussion of time lines. Trump has been trying to pin this on the Chinese since January, with his disparaging name calling. The Chinese are of course going to respond and vice versa. Frankly I am not interested in the pissing contest or even who started it.

So YA's question is, when did the CDC approach the Chinese about helping them? I see nothing in this timeline that would indicate it was prior to their announcement to the WHO.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... how-report

Official statements by the Chinese government to the World Health Organisation reported that the first confirmed case had been diagnosed on 8 December. Doctors who tried to raise the alarm with colleagues about a new disease in late December were reprimanded. Authorities did not publicly concede there was human-to-human transmission until 21 January.

[jhu72]

Pretty good for a bald republican.

[jhu72]

Timeline: The early days of China's coronavirus outbreak and cover-up:

https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-earl ... 5faab.html

This is the same timeline, without Chinese internal machinations - "cover up", that I listed earlier. The interesting things that I was not aware of in building my timeline occurred on December 27th and December 31st. The Chinese did not know for certain what the problem was until 12/27. The Chinese informed the WHO on 12/31. That is 9 days earlier than I assumed for their release to WHO, corresponding to their public announcement. This doesn't help anyone who is arguing the Chinese were hiding something for a long period of time. This is certainly a shorter period of time than Trump has been denying the seriousness of the situation.

Their (Chinese) internal machinations are suspicious and can certainly be assumed to be "bad Chinese", but doesn't really seem to slow them down. The dates that they finally identified the virus and when they reported it to WHO, by this timeline, the Chinese (Bejing) went from seeing first patients that were symptomatic to identification of the new virus in 11 days, and then to notification of the WHO in another 4. This seems pretty good to me, but I am not an expert in how quickly this might have been done. So basically from this timeline to argue the Chinese delayed notifying the world, I can see at maximum a 4 day delay. But it is also easy to understand that there would be some delay. They would naturally inform the government of Wuhan before informing the WHO.

The more recent article you post by Robert O'Brien is nothing more than the US propaganda responding to the Chinese propaganda (or perhaps the other way around). This is going to be a pissing content between Trump and the Chinese that has no bearing on the discussion of time lines. Trump has been trying to pin this on the Chinese since January, with his disparaging name calling. The Chinese are of course going to respond and vice versa. Frankly I am not interested in the pissing contest or even who started it.

So YA's question is, when did the CDC approach the Chinese about helping them? I see nothing in this timeline that would indicate it was prior to their announcement to the WHO.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... how-report

Official statements by the Chinese government to the World Health Organisation reported that the first confirmed case had been diagnosed on 8 December. Doctors who tried to raise the alarm with colleagues about a new disease in late December were reprimanded. Authorities did not publicly concede there was human-to-human transmission until 21 January.

Certainly and interesting report. If true it would certainly change all the timelines seen. The Guardian could not confirm so they just reported the Hong Kong paper's story. If I have the date right, this has been reported in the last 7 days. Interesting that it comes out as Chinese - US pissing contest is cranked up. The paper doing the original reporting would of course have a reason for liking this story. Will have to look into it.

Quick fact check done. Media Bias Fact Check notes that the Post has an anti-mainland China bias and is not 100% trustworthy. I would need to see a second source before believing this.

[old salt]

Timeline: The early days of China's coronavirus outbreak and cover-up:

https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-earl ... 5faab.html

This is the same timeline, without Chinese internal machinations - "cover up", that I listed earlier. The interesting things that I was not aware of in building my timeline occurred on December 27th and December 31st. The Chinese did not know for certain what the problem was until 12/27. The Chinese informed the WHO on 12/31. That is 9 days earlier than I assumed for their release to WHO, corresponding to their public announcement. This doesn't help anyone who is arguing the Chinese were hiding something for a long period of time. This is certainly a shorter period of time than Trump has been denying the seriousness of the situation.

Their (Chinese) internal machinations are suspicious and can certainly be assumed to be "bad Chinese", but doesn't really seem to slow them down. The dates that they finally identified the virus and when they reported it to WHO, by this timeline, the Chinese (Bejing) went from seeing first patients that were symptomatic to identification of the new virus in 11 days, and then to notification of the WHO in another 4. This seems pretty good to me, but I am not an expert in how quickly this might have been done. So basically from this timeline to argue the Chinese delayed notifying the world, I can see at maximum a 4 day delay. But it is also easy to understand that there would be some delay. They would naturally inform the government of Wuhan before informing the WHO.

The more recent article you post by Robert O'Brien is nothing more than the US propaganda responding to the Chinese propaganda (or perhaps the other way around). This is going to be a pissing content between Trump and the Chinese that has no bearing on the discussion of time lines. Trump has been trying to pin this on the Chinese since January, with his disparaging name calling. The Chinese are of course going to respond and vice versa. Frankly I am not interested in the pissing contest or even who started it.

So YA's question is, when did the CDC approach the Chinese about helping them? I see nothing in this timeline that would indicate it was prior to their announcement to the WHO.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... how-report

Official statements by the Chinese government to the World Health Organisation reported that the first confirmed case had been diagnosed on 8 December. Doctors who tried to raise the alarm with colleagues about a new disease in late December were reprimanded. Authorities did not publicly concede there was human-to-human transmission until 21 January.

Certainly and interesting report. If true it would certainly change all the timelines seen. The Guardian could not confirm so they just reported the Hong Kong paper's story. If I have the date right, this has been reported in the last 7 days. Interesting that it comes out as Chinese - US pissing contest is cranked up. The paper doing the original reporting would of course have a reason for liking this story. Will have to look into it.

Quick fact check done. Media Bias Fact Check notes that the Post has an anti-mainland China bias and is not 100% trustworthy. I would need to see a second source before believing this.

I also saw a report citing 15 Jan statement by WHO saying COVID19 could not be confirmed communicable person to person.
Unable to relocate source but will watch for it.

[old salt]

Neither ship has a medical staff. Salty? How long will that take to assemble?

Several weeks. Maybe longer. The Comfort's med staff is made up of E Coast Naval Reservists & active duty hospital staff from Walter Reed/Bethesda, Portsmouth Naval Hospital & Navy base clinics along the E coast. Complicating their recall Is the impact that depriving them will have on where they work, particularly those in civilian hospitals. The plan is for the Comfort & Mercy to provide extra capacity for non-COVID patients to free up beds in hospitals ashore.

I heard that Comfort will be underway in Apr. That's not unreasonable, going from "cold iron", torn apart for a planned maint period.

Sounds right (and thanks for the insight)...of course then the question becomes: Why wasn't this decision to go from "cold iron" made 3 weeks ago?
Do you know that it wasn't ? You think people inside DoD were not planning for contingencies ?

Don't expect you to have that answer, Salty.
I think we all know the answer, we were "fiddling".

Glad it's in motion now.

Do you know that it was?

I don't know. Ask the Tom Brady of Mon morning QB's. He appears certain the Navy was fiddling & is grateful that it's finally in motion now.

11;35 pm 3/18 MSNBC 11th Hour. Gen Barry McCaffery :
I was very encouraged today to listen to Sec Def Mark Esper. Essentially, they got their marching orders yesterday, I'm sure in the background, Gen Mark Milley CJCS, & the services have been actively getting ready to move when they got the order.

For the benefit of Brian Williams, the NYT & our own 2nd guessers, the medical staff don't sit around on the Comfort & Mercy when they are in their homeports. They're away doing their regular jobs until recalled for deployment. The inport time is used for scheduled & routine maint on the ships. They are all vaiuable resources. Nobody's been fiddling.

https://news.usni.org/2020/03/18/trump- ... st-support

New York officials anticipate the peak demand for medical services in about 45 days...

[Trinity]

Thanks, Salty. Good to know.

[RedFromMI]

The Hospital Deluge Is Coming. Washington Has Done Almost Nothing to Prepare.
By Jonathan Chait

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03 ... a-cdc.html

President Trump has won glowing plaudits for changing the tone of his press conferences from completely unhinged to partially hinged, and reducing his rate of massive Orwellian lies to one or two per appearance. But as the president manages to stumble over a bar set at ground level in his televised communications, the government’s actual performance is a different matter altogether. Even catastrophically failed government enterprises usually manage to project an air of competence. And a growing body of reporting suggests the government has done shockingly little to prepare for the coming public-health crisis.

The most efficient first step would have been to prevent the coronavirus pandemic from spreading in the first place. As many reports have widely documented, that first step never took place because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed to deploy an effective coronavirus test. “This is such a rapidly moving infection that losing a few days is bad, and losing a couple of weeks is terrible,” Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, tells Bloomberg News. “Losing 2 months is close to disastrous, and that’s what we did.”

The loss of those two months deprived the government of any chance to prevent the pandemic from sweeping across the entire country. Officials have been forced into reaction mode, deploying blunt measures of closing public spaces to try to slow down the spread. Even so, it is highly likely that, within a few weeks, the number of infected patients will exceed the capacity of the hospital system to treat them.

Washington has had weeks and weeks to prepare for this surge. The three most obvious and foreseeable shortages are hospital beds, respirator masks to protect medical staff, and ventilators (the machines that are needed to pump air into the lungs of patients with the most serious coronavirus symptoms).

You would think the government would have spent the last two months scrambling to produce more of all three. There is no evidence this has happened, and a great deal of evidence it has not.

Read the rest - it is not reassuring that even today the Trump administration has their eye on the ball.

[RedFromMI]

Robert O'Brien: China's coronavirus cover-up "cost the world" two months:

//www.axios.com/china-coronavirus-cover-u ... 1c284.html

An amazing attempt to shift blame...

[Bart]

No new coronavirus cases in Wuhan, China, where global pandemic began:

https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-wuhan ... b6232.html

That is great news if true. I certainly hope so. It shows how social distancing works but it has taken over to months of very strict social distancing to do so? Do we have the stomach for that? I hope so.

[RedFromMI]

More about US leadership incompetence:

Special Report: How Korea trounced U.S. in race to test people for coronavirus

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... ssion=true

SEOUL - In late January, South Korean health officials summoned representatives from more than 20 medical companies from their lunar New Year celebrations to a conference room tucked inside Seoul’s busy train station.

One of the country’s top infectious disease officials delivered an urgent message: South Korea needed an effective test immediately to detect the novel coronavirus, then running rampant in China. He promised the companies swift regulatory approval.

Though there were only four known cases in South Korea at that point, “we were very nervous. We believed that it could develop into a pandemic,” one attendee, Lee Sang-won, an infectious diseases expert at the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Reuters.

“We acted like an army,” he said.

A week after the Jan. 27 meeting, South Korea’s CDC approved one company’s diagnostic test. Another company soon followed. By the end of February, South Korea was making headlines around the world for its drive-through screening centers and ability to test thousands of people daily.

South Korea’s swift action stands in stark contrast to what has transpired in the United States. Seven weeks after the train station meeting, the Koreans have tested well over 290,000 people and identified over 8,000 infections. New cases are falling off: Ninety-three were reported Wednesday, down from a daily peak of 909 two weeks earlier.

The United States, whose first case was detected the same day as South Korea’s, is not even close to meeting demand for testing. About 60,000 tests have been run by public and private labs in a country of 330 million, federal officials said Tuesday

My bolding - SK had the same information that the US did, and the same first day cases. We still are not testing to the level we should be...

The administration of President Donald Trump was tripped up by government rules and conventions, former officials and public health experts say. Instead of drafting the private sector early on to develop tests, as South Korea did, U.S. health officials relied, as is customary, on test kits prepared by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some of which proved faulty. Then, sticking to its time-consuming vetting procedures, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration didn’t approve tests other than the CDC’s until Feb. 29, more than five weeks after discussions with outside labs had begun.

Meanwhile, in the absence of enough kits, the CDC insisted for weeks on narrow criteria for testing, recommending it only when a person had recently been to China or other hot spots or had contact with someone known to be infected. As a result, the federal government failed to screen an untold number of Americans and missed opportunities to contain the spread, clinicians and public health experts say.

South Korea took a risk, releasing briskly vetted tests, then circling back later to spot check their effectiveness. By contrast, the United States’ FDA said it wanted to ensure, upfront, that the tests were accurate before they went out to millions of Americans.

“There are always opportunities to learn from situations like this one,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, who has been on the job only three months, told Reuters. “But one thing I will stand firm on: We cannot compromise on the quality of the tests because what would be worse than no tests at all is wildly inaccurate test results.”

In a statement, CDC spokesman Benjamin Haynes said, “This process has not gone as smoothly as we would have liked.” But he said “more and more state labs have come online, increasing our public health system’s ability to detect and respond to cases.”

Bombarded by criticism amid a re-election campaign, Trump vowed on Friday to ramp up production of test kits in partnership with private companies and to make the diagnostic tests more widely available at hospitals and in-store parking lots. This week, the FDA said more than 35 universities, hospitals and lab companies had begun running their own tests, under the agency’s revised policy.

[MDlaxfan76]

Neither ship has a medical staff. Salty? How long will that take to assemble?

Several weeks. Maybe longer. The Comfort's med staff is made up of E Coast Naval Reservists & active duty hospital staff from Walter Reed/Bethesda, Portsmouth Naval Hospital & Navy base clinics along the E coast. Complicating their recall Is the impact that depriving them will have on where they work, particularly those in civilian hospitals. The plan is for the Comfort & Mercy to provide extra capacity for non-COVID patients to free up beds in hospitals ashore.

I heard that Comfort will be underway in Apr. That's not unreasonable, going from "cold iron", torn apart for a planned maint period.

Sounds right (and thanks for the insight)...of course then the question becomes: Why wasn't this decision to go from "cold iron" made 3 weeks ago?
Do you know that it wasn't ? You think people inside DoD were not planning for contingencies ? Recalling the reservist med staff will likely be the long pole in the tent. Many will probably trickle in after the ship is pierside in NYC.

Don't expect you to have that answer, Salty.
I think we all know the answer, we were "fiddling".

Glad it's in motion now.

Sure, we know that it certainly wasn't made at the White House level 3 weeks ago...I think you may be saying, however, that the military folks may have had their heads screwed on right and got this moving 3 weeks ago on their own?

Sure, that's possible, but then your estimate of how long it would take to get from "cold" to "warm" should start from that point, not today, right?

I'm not saying that no one at DoD was at least thinking about contingency planning weeks ago, heck I sure hope some folks were doing so, but the decision to actually move from "cold" asap does not at least sound like it had already been made.

This feels like an Occam's Razor situation.

It also appears that when the announcement was made, the WH didn't understand that the ship wasn't actually ready...or they chose to BS it despite knowing.

EDIT: Saw your update re McCaffrey's comment yesterday..He's not saying that the DoD got orders 3 weeks ago...indeed, just a week ago the reporting out of DoD was that they were waiting for orders re COVID 19. It's indeed good news that they've at least gotten orders this week.

I'd note that NY Gov Cuomo was loudly calling for military help on Saturday and the WH looked like deer in the head lights on that call...

[MDlaxfan76]

Respectfully, we should remove the “Chinese” in this thread’s title.

It’s a not-so-subtle form of racial profiling and we shouldn’t be doing it here.

DocBarrister

Read all about it in the reporting from China by the NYT, WP & WSJ.

I agree with Doc on this, it bothered me when the title of the thread was changed to include the word "Chinese".
How about calling it COVID-19?

China's gov't, first at the provincial level then central, screwed up, definitely. That gov't should not be trusted to tell the truth.

But given the dynamics of the virus, it was definitely going to spread.
The virus is not "Chinese".

Labelling it "Chinese" is simply an attempt to focus attention on China's gov't mistakes, rather than our own. And it is definitely a reversion to xenophobia.

Kram,
That's on you, right? Started the thread?
I don't think you personally are trying to be racially blaming here, more likely just provocative.

I think it should be changed...the topic itself is provocative enough!

[MDlaxfan76]

Pretty good for a bald republican.

We've appreciated our Governor here in MD for some time.
In an overwhelmingly Dem state, he's managed to be quietly competent with a heart without losing a fiscal conservative bent.
So, approval rating in the 80% range.

The hard core Trumpists hate him (but know that the alternatives would be leftward) and the far left partisans try to undercut him. However, the vast middle strongly supports him.

[admin]

I thought the same but didn't want to interject. Since others are saying it, too, I amended it. If any object, I'd be curious to hear why.

[jhu72]

Neither ship has a medical staff. Salty? How long will that take to assemble?

Several weeks. Maybe longer. The Comfort's med staff is made up of E Coast Naval Reservists & active duty hospital staff from Walter Reed/Bethesda, Portsmouth Naval Hospital & Navy base clinics along the E coast. Complicating their recall Is the impact that depriving them will have on where they work, particularly those in civilian hospitals. The plan is for the Comfort & Mercy to provide extra capacity for non-COVID patients to free up beds in hospitals ashore.

I heard that Comfort will be underway in Apr. That's not unreasonable, going from "cold iron", torn apart for a planned maint period.

Sounds right (and thanks for the insight)...of course then the question becomes: Why wasn't this decision to go from "cold iron" made 3 weeks ago?
Do you know that it wasn't ? You think people inside DoD were not planning for contingencies ?

Don't expect you to have that answer, Salty.
I think we all know the answer, we were "fiddling".

Glad it's in motion now.

Do you know that it was?

I don't know. Ask the Tom Brady of Mon morning QB's. He appears certain the Navy was fiddling & is grateful that it's finally in motion now.

11;35 pm 3/18 MSNBC 11th Hour. Gen Barry McCaffery :
I was very encouraged today to listen to Sec Def Mark Esper. Essentially, they got their marching orders yesterday, I'm sure in the background, Gen Mark Milley CJCS, & the services have been actively getting ready to move when they got the order.

For the benefit of Brian Williams, the NYT & our own 2nd guessers, the medical staff don't sit around on the Comfort & Mercy when they are in their homeports. They're away doing their regular jobs until recalled for deployment. The inport time is used for scheduled & routine maint on the ships. They are all vaiuable resources. Nobody's been fiddling.

https://news.usni.org/2020/03/18/trump- ... st-support

New York officials anticipate the peak demand for medical services in about 45 days...

I also saw McCaffery segment. He had a number of obvious good ideas. Hospital space should not be a problem, there is lots of available space. Use the military to prep this space. All it takes is reasonably competent numbers of people (that can follow orders) to do this.

The ventilator problem and PPE seem to be the real issues. Wife tells me in pediatrics they have been moving from ventilators to CPAP machines in the last few years. CPAP does just fine in this environment. Of course these are not 80 year olds. But who knows? It is not clear to me that ventilators are always necessary. They are just ICU "standard of care" equipment. A simple intubation of an oxygen bottle may work fine in many cases.

The PPE really needs to be given priority. It has nurses totally freaked out at the moment.