Tag Archives: Wuhan

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Hospitals built for Wuhan Coronavirus patients are being dismantled

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It was probably a good idea for the U.S. government to construct massive hospitals to deal with all the expected Coronavirus patients. But now, these hospitals are being dismantled, and almost all of them never saw a single Wuhan Coronavirus patient. This story was reported by far-left National Public Radio, which is about as far left as you can go, except for North Korea.

NPR reports:

As hospitals were overrun by coronavirus patients in other parts of the world, the Army Corps of Engineers mobilized in the U.S., hiring private contractors to build emergency field hospitals around the country.

The endeavor cost more than $660 million, according to an NPR analysis of federal spending records.

But nearly four months into the pandemic, most of these facilities haven’t treated a single patient.

The Army Corps of Engineers has contracted with private companies to turn convention centers and other sites into emergency field hospitals. Federal spending totaled more than $660 million. Most of these facilities haven’t treated a single COVID-19 patient. Some haven’t opened. Others have closed but could reopen if there’s a resurgence in cases. This data on some of the biggest projects is current as of Monday.

Things are also going well for states that have re-opened early.

Florida has an excellent governor and it looks like he did the best job of balancing the need to lock down with the need for a quick re-opening to save his state’s economy.

The far-left Miami Herald reports:

Restaurants are seating patrons for the first time in weeks. Shops are cautiously welcoming back customers. And state parks are opening their gates.

As Florida looks to rebound from the crisis wrought by the novel coronavirus, so, too, does Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Florida’s Republican governor is slowly opening the state, a month after he shut it down amid national criticism for his response to the novel coronavirus outbreak that has so far killed at least 1,399 people in Florida and infected more than 36,000.

The move — at a date when early models incorrectly predicted Florida would experience a peak in infections — isn’t without risk. Florida continues to see sickness and death, particularly in hard-hit South Florida. But after avoiding worst-case predictions in March and April, DeSantis has, in May, positioned himself as a conservative coronavirus success story.

“DeSantis right now has been able to thread that needle between overreacting and following the facts,” said Rob Schmidt, a Republican Miami-based pollster with the firm McLaughlin & Associates.

And Georgia also re-opened early, but their Republican governor seems to have timed it right as well.

Far-left U.S. News and World Report has the story:

THE number of Georgia patients hospitalized due to the coronavirus has fallen to its lowest total in weeks, Gov. Brian Kemp said Saturday as the state’s death toll from COVID-19 reached at least 1,400.

Kemp tweeted Saturday morning that 1,203 patients were currently hospitalized, the lowest number since the state started reporting the figure on April 8.

He also noted that Saturday’s total of 897 ventilators in use across the state was the lowest number since early April.

“We will win this fight together!” the Republican governor tweeted.

Those states that re-open early will have much better economic growth than Democrat-run states like Michigan, New York, etc. that remain in lockdown mode. I sure hope that the blue states don’t come begging for money from red states after they kill their own economies. I’m in a red state, we’re open, and I don’t want my money being used for socialists who make decisions with their feelings rather than with facts.

 

News

New study: newly identified antibody neutralizes both SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 viruses

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Let's take a closer look at an interesting problem
Let’s take a closer look at an interesting problem

The new research was published in Nature Communications, a prestigious peer-reviewed journal (link here). The research was reported by News Medical Life Sciences. According to the report, the new discovery is “an initial step towards developing a fully human antibody to treat or prevent the respiratory disease COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.”

Report here:

Researchers at Utrecht University, Erasmus Medical Center and Harbour BioMed (HBM) today reported that they have identified a fully human monoclonal antibody that prevents the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) virus from infecting cultured cells.

The discovery, published online today in Nature Communications, is an initial step towards developing a fully human antibody to treat or prevent the respiratory disease COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.

Dr. Berend-Jan Bosch of Utrecht University is the Research Leader and Study Co-Lead Author.

[…]Dr. Bosch noted that the antibody binds to a domain that is conserved in both SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, explaining its ability to neutralize both viruses.

“This cross-neutralizing feature of the antibody is very interesting and suggests it may have potential in mitigation of diseases caused by future-emerging related coronaviruses.”

“This discovery provides a strong foundation for additional research to characterize this antibody and begin development as a potential COVID-19 treatment,” said Frank Grosveld, PhD. co-lead author on the study, Academy Professor of Cell Biology, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam and Founding Chief Scientific Officer at Harbour BioMed.

“The antibody used in this work is ‘fully human,’ allowing development to proceed more rapidly and reducing the potential for immune-related side effects.” Conventional therapeutic antibodies are first developed in other species and then must undergo additional work to ‘humanize’ them.

What will be interesting is to see how Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. handle this emerging research. I’ve heard that YouTube is suppressing and censoring research that disagrees with the Democrat lockdown narrative. This is because the lockdown is the only chance their candidate Joe Biden has to win in November.

We’ve seen that Democrat feminists are willing to look the other way to excuse rape when their candidate is accused of rape. But will they look the other way from peer-reviewed research in order to extend the economic devastation that is their only chance to win? And will they censor people who publicize actual published research in order to keep people in fear?

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News

Two new studies reduce the severity of the Wuhan Coronavirus

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Let's take a closer look at an interesting problem
Let’s take a closer look at an interesting problem

I found two new studies that reduce the threat of the Chinese Covid-19 virus. The first one was reported by Sky News, and it’s about a study that says that coronavirus patients cannot contract the disease after they’ve had it once already. And the second study was reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, and it says that the virus cannot be transmitted from children to adults.

Sky News first:

A number of reported cases of coronavirus patients relapsing after overcoming the disease were actually due to testing failures, South Korean scientists say.

Researchers at the South Korean centre for disease control and prevention (CDC) now say it is impossible for the COVID-19 virus to reactivate in human bodies.

There have been more than 10,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in South Korea, with 245 deaths – a 2.3% fatality rate, which is lower than the 3.4% average as stated by the World Health Organisation.

A total of 277 patients in the country were believed to have fallen ill for a second time, as had patients in China and Japan.

This prompted concerns that the virus could be mutating so quickly that people were not necessarily immune to catching it again.

However, genetic analyses of the virus have not found any substantial changes which would effectively disguise it from the immune system.

So, this study is good news for people who have had the virus, but I still worry that people who have had it might be able to infect other people unless they are completely cured.

Then Sydney Morning Herald:

No child has been found to have passed coronavirus to an adult, a review of the evidence in partnership with the Royal College of Paediatrics has found.

Major studies into the impact of COVID-19 on young children suggest they “do not play a significant role” in spreading the virus and are less likely to become infected than adults.

While experts insist that more evidence is needed, they note there has not been a single case of a child under 10 transmitting the virus, even in contact tracing carried out by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Public health officials in Switzerland have announced that under-10s can hug their grandparents again because they pose them no risk.

Now a review in partnership with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) has found the evidence “consistently demonstrates reduced infection and infectivity of children in the transmission chain”.

Led by Dr Alasdair Munro, a clinical research fellow in paediatric infectious diseases, the research concluded: “COVID-19 appears to affect children less often, and with less severity, including frequent asymptomatic or subclinical infection. There is evidence of critical illness, but it is rare.

“The role of children in transmission is unclear, but it seems likely they do not play a significant role.”

This study just seems like all good news to me. It means that we can be more confident than we were before about re-opening schools.

Anyway, check out the articles and see what you think.

I’m an investor, and I mostly think that the virus is not an issue right now. My biggest concern right now is that we are doing damage to the economy by staying in lockdown. Damage that will really hurt us in the long run because of inflation and massive debt.