the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

The national shortage of N95 respirator masks can be traced back to 2009 after the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, when the Obama administration was advised to replenish a national stockpile but did not, according to reports from Bloomberg News and the Los Angeles Times.

In 2009, the H1N1 outbreak hit the United States, leading to 274,304 hospitalizations, 12,469 deaths, and a depletion of N95 respirator masks.

A federally backed task force and a safety equipment organization both recommended to the Obama administration that the stockpile be replenished of the 100 million masks used after the H1N1 outbreak, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Charles Johnson, president of the International Safety Equipment Association, said that advice was never heeded

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: That is really unfortunate. I would wish that would stop because we have a much bigger problem here than trying to point out differences. They really, fundamentally, at the core when you look at it, there are not differences. The president has listened to what I’ve said with the other people on the task force have said. When I’ve made recommendations,

he’s taken them. He’s never countered and overridden me.
The idea of pitting one against the other is just not helpful and I’d wish that would stop so we can look ahead at the challenge we have together to get over this thing.

Steve James wrote:If you understand why social distancing now is important, that's good enough.

Yeah, we know that the trend lines are being shown right now. Thanks for the update. Great that your hopes are high for the live drug testing. But, just tell everyone you can to stay away from others for a while. Say it's the president's idea. I don't care. Just no more "it's a flu," "more people die from the flu," or anything that makes this less important than it is. It can't be explained any better to you.

The only reason I entered this thread is because of what you were saying.

Between 14 March and 30 July 2003 a total of 668 probable cases of SARS were reported. Of the 668 cases, 181 (27%) were fatal. Compared to the survivors, fatal cases were more likely to be older (p < 0.001), male (p < 0.05), exposed through hospital contact (p < 0.001), and have a coexisting medical disorder (p < 0.001). Between 28 March and 30 July a total of 151,270 persons were quarantined.

More than half the population of the UK could already have the new coronavirus Covid-19, according to researchers from Oxford University.

University of Oxford Professor Sunetra Gupta said if that is the case, then fewer than one in a thousand people who contract the disease will need hospital treatment.

If the Oxford research is correct, the lockdown could be lifted earlier than expected.

Sir Patrick Vallance, the government's chief scientific adviser, previously said about 60 per cent of the population need to contract Covid-19 and recover for there to be 'herd immunity'.

Oxford, Cambridge and Kent universities plan to carry out antibody testing on the public later this week

A new epidemiological COVID-19 coronavirus model from Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease group suggests the vast majority of people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 suffer little or no illness.

Scientists at Oxford University say the COVID-19 death rate could be much less than first reported. The team looked at the dramatic variation in death rates in known cases around the world and found that less than 0.2% of patients who catch coronavirus will die worldwide. The article includes comments from Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based-Medicine at Oxford University

The Oxford vaccine, known as ChAdOx1, is one of five frontrunner vaccines in development around the world. The US biotech Moderna gave its first vaccine shot to a person in Seattle earlier this week. Another US firm, Inovio, will soon start trials on its own coronavirus vaccine, which requires a special device to administer through the skin. In Germany, CureVac is working on a vaccine, while others are in development in China

In February, a research group led by virologist Manli Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences put the idea to the test and found that chloroquine successfully stopped the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in cultured human cells. Preliminary reports from China, South Korea and France suggest that the treatment is at least somewhat effective in treating human patients, and some hospitals in the U.S. have begun administering the drug, according to The New York Times. In addition, the FDA is organizing a large clinical trial to formally assess the drug's effects, the Times reported.