Chinese critics of China's policy responses to COVID-19 have been going missing. The latest one is Dr. Ai Fen. She gave a video interview to a magazine about 3 weeks ago that was widely circulated. She is the doctor who first got computerized test results, in late December, indicating that the genetic material from patients with pneumonia was SARS (that computer diagnosis was wrong, since this SARS-CoV-2 was a close, but then unknown, mutation). She gave the information to the late Dr. Li Wenliang, who spread it to his medical school classmates through social media.
The aircraft carrier USN Theodore Roosevelt is reducing towards a skeleton crew, because social distancing is not possible on board.
Saudi Arabia will probably announce a plan to cancel Hajj for this year. Pilgrimage to Mecca (umrah) is always encouraged in Islam, but Hajj is the big annual one that many people (2 million last year) do at the same time (July 28th to August 2nd this year). All Moslems are supposed to do Hajj at least once in their lives, so this is a huge deal. They stopped accepting people for umrah several weeks ago.
FWIW: Saudi Arabia is Sunni Moslems. Shiite Moslems go to a number of different sites, year round, including many in Iran. It is believed the outbreak in Iran was made worse by permitting those pilgrimages to go on late into February.
Like the UK, Florida tried to not lock everyone down. That failed. They are doing a statewide lockdown starting tomorrow. FWIW: Sweden is also trying to do this.
I am not sure of the significance of this, but a "top secret" U.S. intelligence report was leaked to the press this morning that concludes that China has lied about the scope of its outbreak.
Federalism again. CDC emphasized today that lockdowns and quarantines are decisions that belong to the states, not to the federal government.
Italy is estimating their real GDP will be down 6% for 2020. For recessions, that's huge.
No comments:
Post a Comment