Perhaps this is another sign of disdain for pandemic-phobia.
Many eyes are on the cruise line industry as it reels from the impacts of coronavirus. Earlier this week, Carnival Cruise Lines announced it was scheduling its return to the sea for August 1, 2020. That’s just a few days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is set to lift their “do not sail” order. Cruise Planners, an American Express travel franchise, reports that bookings skyrocketed 600% over 3 days after the announcement. That was in comparison to the 3 days prior to the announcement. Year-over-year, the company said bookings saw a 200% increase.Of course, this is largely dependent on the CDC lifting its current sailing restriction currently in place until July 24. Carnival said earlier this week that cruises “could potentially operate if it was determined that cruising can resume.” The cruise company announced possible cruises departing from Miami, Galveston, and Port Canaveral. All other North American and Australian homeport cruises are cancelled through August 31.
Remember all the panic reporting that Georgians were going to have a massive uptick in deaths after Gov. Brian Kemp opened the economy, including hair salons and tattoo parlors?
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced Saturday that the state had the lowest number of hospitalized coronavirus patients it has seen in just over a month.”Today marks the lowest number of COVID-19 positive patients currently hospitalized statewide (1,203) since hospitals began reporting this data on April 8th,” Kemp tweeted.Kemp moved forward with his plan to reopen the state late last month, despite initial opposition from President Trump.”Now, with favorable data and approval from state health officials, we are taking another measured step forward by opening shuttered businesses for limited operations. I know these hardworking Georgians will prioritize the safety of their employees and customers,” Kemp previously tweeted. “Together, we will weather this storm and emerge stronger than ever.””Today also marks the lowest total of ventilators in use (897 with 1,945 available). We will win this fight together!” he added.
At this point, hair and nail salons have become very essential for me! Hoping California adopts the Georgia model sooner rather than later.
And I can testify that Major League Baseball is very essential for my colleague, Mary Chastain.
Just 0.7% of Major League Baseball employees tested positive for antibodies to COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus.Results were based about about 5,600 completed records from employees of 26 clubs. Samples were obtained on April 14 and 15.“It allows us to get a peek of the nation-wide prevalence,” said Dr. Jay Bhattacharya at Stanford, one the study’s leaders, said Sunday.The start of the baseball season has been delayed because of the virus outbreak. There’s no timetable for when the season might begin.Sixty people tested positive in the raw data, and adjustments were made for false positives and false negatives. Bhattacharya said the survey had a 0.5% false positive rate.
Yes, the pandemic experience in San Francisco is the nightmare we expected.
San Francisco is being sued by a law school and residents and businesses in the inner-city Tenderloin District who argue sidewalks are “unsanitary, unsafe, and often impassable” as homeless people crowd streets amid the coronavirus pandemic.The number of tents and makeshift structures in the Tenderloin has tripled since January, as homeless shelters are forced to operate at low capacity in order to enforce stringent social distancing requirements, reports say.The federal lawsuit, filed last week in part by the University of California Hastings College of Law, does not seek financial damages but instead demands the city clean up streets littered with drug needles and human waste. The litigants are also seeking help for people living in sidewalk tents, saying they are at increased risk of COVID-19.
The neighborhood might want to consider bringing in America’s new Mr. Clean: Scott Pressler (aka The Persistence). He was in San Francisco earlier this year to clean and was greeted with protesters.
Today’s update ends with an intriguing revelation that one of the leading figures in the coronavirus fight is less than pleased with information coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus task force response coordinator, blasted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a White House coronavirus task force meeting during a discussion on COVID-19 data, according to The Washington Post.”There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust,” she told CDC Director Robert Redfield, two people familiar with the meeting told the newspaper.The Post reported that Birx and others feared that the CDC’s statistics on mortality rate and case counts were inflated by up to 25%.Birx later told The Post in a statement that “mortality is slowly declining each day.””To keep with this trend, it is essential that seniors and those with comorbidities shelter in place and that we continue to protect vulnerable communities,” she said.
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