Wednesday, October 21, 2020

World News Briefs -- October 21, 2020 (Evening Edition)

Reuters: U.S. hit by spike in coronavirus cases; rising infections strain Europe's hospitals

AMSTERDAM/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Europe’s hospital systems are at risk of buckling under the strain of soaring COVID-19 infections that put the continent again at the center of the global pandemic on Wednesday while nearly two-thirds of U.S. states were in a danger zone of coronavirus spread. 

With European case numbers that were brought largely under control by the unprecedented lockdowns in March and April now resurging relentlessly, authorities in countries from Poland to Portugal have expressed mounting alarm at the renewed crisis confronting their health infrastructure. 


 MIDDLE EAST 



Turkish forces withdraw from largest base in northeast Syria. 

Israel lauds UAE delegation visit as 'making history', Palestinians deem it 'shameful'. 




 ASIA 

Thailand’s PM vows to lift state of emergency, but protesters insist he must quit in 3 days. 










 AFRICA 

Nigeria protesters tell of 'terrible' shooting. 

Nigeria Sars protest: Unrest in Lagos after shooting. 










 EUROPE 










Berlin mystery attack targets 70 museum artefacts. 

 AMERICAS 



U.S. economy recovering slowly, but some sectors struggling: Fed survey



‘Not even the pandemic’ will stop Colombia protests, leaders say. 

Nicaraguan President Ortega denies torture allegations. 


 TERRORISM/THE LONG WAR 




 ECONOMY/FINANCE/BUSINESS 

S&P ends choppy session lower as U.S. stimulus talks drag on. 




Cathay Pacific cuts 8,500 jobs, closes regional airline due to COVID-19 pandemic. 

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Strange, for decades I was told that the EU's health care system was the envy of the world and just today NPR stated that Covid death rates were declining in all categories. Yet this article states the EU's hospitals are buckling at the very onset of cases ascribed to a second wave. Something is rather odd. Not to mention the WHO pronouncement that total lockdowns were ineffective.

Anonymous said...

I know a nurse in London
London is under lock down
Hospitals are empty
Media says they're full

Just like in the US

Something is odd indeed
Meanwhile China makes a lot of money of this.. and the left nm media and your Democrats shout at us if we ask any questions about China and the Wuhan virus

And Biden and the Democrats are bankrolled by the CCP. Just like Hollywood and the NBA . Mark Cuban the traitor just came out in defense of China. Good boy. He wants that sweet Chinese money. Human rights issues?ahhh come on, trump is a nazi he says. Good boy. The money flows

Anonymous said...

Italy, Numbers, and Confusion: Why Is Italy the Hotbed of COVID-19

"Stripped of the panic, SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 — the new betacoronavirus that originated in China, and the disease the virus caused — are really fascinating, an exciting and important scientific detective story that someone, someday, will get to tell without ritualized stomping by various political factions. Probably not today, but someday."

"Of all the locations with clusters of kung flu infections, Italy is the most active."

They identified several things that might be contributing to this:

1 Demographics: Italy is, on average, a country full of old people. According to the CIA World Factbook, Italy is the fifth-oldest country in the world. We know that COVID-19 is more likely to cause death in older people.

2 Comorbidity, that is, association with other diseases: Italy’s aging population, as well as being old, also has lots of old people with heart disease, COPD, long histories of smoking, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

3 There’s a geographic factor here as well: most of the deaths are coming from heavily industrial Lombardy, which also has a long history of bad air pollution.

4 The most interesting one is that the Italian National Institute of Health thinks the cause of death is being over-identified as COVID-19.


Charlie Martin is really smart.

Ask Why 5 times

Apparently Charlie has.

RussInSoCal said...

The FBI just pushed out the lamest, no context, nothing-burger gloss-over presser I've ever seen.

FBI holds press conference on 'major election security issue'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s0Jq-IL2NA

/cue Louis Renault

Anonymous said...

What a load of tosh. Get your facts straight pal...

London is not in lockdown at all, they are in tier 2 restrictions. Households cannot mix and businesses stay open. Pubs and restaurants must close at 10pm. And the rule of 6 applies.

I live in the North West, the current epicentre of the outbreak in the UK, we are in tier 3 restrictions, still not a lockdown as such.

My neighbour is an NHS nurse.
Liverpool hospitals are treating more Covid patients now than at the first peak. Fact.

Anonymous said...

Russ,
I think bit was a message to China and some domestic people. But it was strange, also why was Ratcliffe there?
He's supposed to be the big cheese in charge, but it didn't feel that way.

Anonymous said...

London is under lockdown.

If stores, bars, churches, restaurants cannot operate under any capacity they want, it is lockdown.

If there is no indoor dining or restricted indoor dining, then you are in lockdown. Before governmental bodies ran by political cliques panicked or connived to stampeding people like a herd over a cliff in March, people were voluntarily dialing back travel (see petrol usage) and going out (see economic activity).

You can argue until you are blue in the face and start talking like a Democrat, but you are in lockdown. Such restriction affect revenue and unemployment levels.

Assholes have killed more people due to depression and overdoses than the virus had killed. Your "chicken little", "Mother May I" way has resulted in more life=years lost than just letting the disease run its course. You are just trading, who is dying. Nay, you are picking and choosing.

You should be ashamed of yourself for being functionally illiterate in at least two areas. Just because you can sign you name to a document with something other than the proverbial X does not prove that you are functionally literate. It might enable others and yourself to fool you into thinking you are literate, but that is all.

It is okay though. I just read an essay by a person in their late 30's who thinks he is wise. He is a consultant and that automatically confers a degree of respectability. looked up his linkedin profile. He had a degree in physics. philosophy and something else. It might mean he is a really bright guy. It might mean he is lazy. It might mean upper level physics courses got tough and he filled in with philosophy courses to get to the magical 120 semester hours and a folded piece of paper.

Anywho he had graph with his essay. More like it was a picture of 2 curves. One curve was labeled disease cases without action in red and the other in blue labeled disease cases with action. The red curve was lower it had a lower peak. The curve was flattened. Whether number of infections per day or deaths per day it doesn't matter. They are related. One is a proxy for the other.

So I told you this guy is smart. He has a diploma (folded piece of Paper. He is a consultant. He took physics. Does it really matter if he took 3 courses or 20?

Back to the graph/picture. It had two curves. And the consultant took physics. Well presumably if he took physics, he took at least 2 if not 3 semesters of calculus. If he took 2nd semester calculus, he learned Riemann sums and did more than a few exercises in area under the curve.

Now the area under the curve would measure cumulative death or infections.

What if the area under the curves is the same?

It means you have the same # of deaths.

You did gain something and you lost something.

There might not be any queue for the hospital (There wasn't after we set up field hospitals.). And some people gained some more days lived (about 5 months per person).

You lost days lived by the suicides and overdoses. You lost the economy. You can relate poverty rates to life years.

You lost freedom and let me tell you many politicians are very happy about it. They get to dole out more and more money like the chieftains of old.