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- [nostyle] The Heat is On
- [dalek] Privacy policy status: Keeping them honest
- [Mojibake Tengu] Escalation
- [Runaway1956] browseraudit.com
- [DannyB] Polite ways to wake someone up
- [NotSanguine] Tell the FCC not to allow OTA broadcasters to use DRM
- [AnonTechie] HOW DUCK TAPE BECAME FAMOUS
- [Freeman] Of course they did
- [TheLink] From bird calls to bird video calls
- [hubie] A Path to Seeing New Physics in Next-Gen Accelerators
- [turgid] Going Backwards
- [khallow] Why these recent changes?
- [bzipitidoo] bakery employees policing copyright
- [Azuma Hazuki] Hey "conservatives:" this July 4th, thank a liberal!
- [acid andy] Recursive Dos
Older Stuff
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March 11- Windows has a New Wormable Vulnerability -- No Patch in Sight (18)
- Microsoft Takes Down Global Zombie Bot Network (13)
- High-Severity Flaws Plague Intel Graphics Drivers (5)
- Gastronauts: Developing Food Ready for the Next Space Race (5)
- Virgin Media Data Breach Exposes Info of 900,000 Customers (3)
- Check Point Chap: Small Firms Don't Invest in Infosec Then Hope They Won't Get Hacked (9)
- Top VPN Software Had a Major Security Flaw (13)
- Space Radar Movies Track Motion on Earth's Surface (2)
- Canada's UBI Experiment Results Compiled (94)
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March 10- Open Source Initiative Bans Co-Founder, Eric S. Raymond, from its Mailing Lists (175)
- Another Starship Prototype Explodes, but SpaceX Isn't Stopping (23)
- Four Months, $1bn... and ICANN Still Hasn't Decided Whether to Approve .Org Sale with 11 Days to Go (13)
- Former CIA Software Engineer Joshua Schulte Convicted of Minor Charges, Not Espionage (16)
- Working from Home: Lessons Learned Over 20 Years (50)
- New US Bill Aims to Protect Researchers Who Disclose Government Back Doors (26)
Quick Links
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson's total compensation was more than $32 million in 2019, giving him a 10 percent raise while he slashed tens of thousands of jobs and reduced spending on network upgrades. Stephenson's total compensation was $28.72 million in 2017, $29.12 million in 2018, and $32.03 million in 2019, an AT&T filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission said. His pay raise was driven by stock performance.
[...]But Stephenson's 2019 compensation rose "after a headline-grabbing hedge fund battle ended up boosting the telecom and media giant’s share price," The Wall Street Journal reported today. The 10 percent increase came "almost entirely on the strength of AT&T’s stock appreciation," as AT&T shares rose about 37 percent during 2019, the Journal article said.
[...]AT&T has been trying to reduce its debt load, which was $163.1 billion total and $151.3 billion in long-term debt at the end of 2019. Stephenson might not get another pay increase this year given the turmoil in stock markets that has sent AT&T tumbling in recent days. Stephenson is nearing retirement, but AT&T has said he will remain in the top role through all of 2020.
20,000 jobs cut assuming, $50,000 per year, is $1 billion dollars saved per year. Even if the CEO wanted to give all of his income to the workers, he would have saved about 3.2%, or 640, jobs this year. Sounds better if you just blame him for the 20,000 job cuts, though.
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Even though it has only been a short while since our last round-up there are 22 separate stories merged into this round-up. Many report duplicate news but, nevertheless, we have tried to distill the important elements of each submission.
Firstly, there is some confusion regarding the actual names that are reported for the virus, the disease that it causes, and names frequently seen in media reporting. From https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0695-z:
The present outbreak of a coronavirus-associated acute respiratory disease called coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) is the third documented spillover of an animal coronavirus to humans in only two decades that has resulted in a major epidemic. The Coronaviridae Study Group (CSG) of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, which is responsible for developing the classification of viruses and taxon nomenclature of the family Coronaviridae, has assessed the placement of the human pathogen, tentatively named 2019-nCoV, within the Coronaviridae. Based on phylogeny, taxonomy and established practice, the CSG recognizes this virus as forming a sister clade to the prototype human and bat severe acute respiratory syndrome coronaviruses (SARS-CoVs) of the species Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus, and designates it as SARS-CoV-2.
In order to facilitate communication, the CSG proposes to use the following naming convention for individual isolates: SARS-CoV-2/host/location/isolate/date. While the full spectrum of clinical manifestations associated with SARS-CoV-2 infections in humans remains to be determined, the independent zoonotic transmission of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 highlights the need for studying viruses at the species level to complement research focused on individual pathogenic viruses of immediate significance. This will improve our understanding of virus–host interactions in an ever-changing environment and enhance our preparedness for future outbreaks.
There is much more information at the link provided.
Secondly, as this is a fusion of stories received over the last week or so take all quoted figures of casualties as possibly out-of-date. At the time of merging these stories (12 Mar 20) there have been 127,863 confirmed cases world-wide resulting in 4,717 deaths. 68,309 people have already recovered with the remainder either in self-imposed or advisory isolation, in basic hospital care and a relatively small number in critical care. The pandemic has affected 116 countries/regions. Source: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 - a graphical display produced by Johns Hopkins University (JHU).
Many countries have taken emergency measures to restrict travel or large gatherings of people. As this is a very fluid situation we suggest you refer to the media of any specific country in which you have an interest. President Trump has banned transatlantic air travel from countries in mainland Europe to the USA from Friday 2020-03-13 at 23:59 (no timezone stated) for a period initially of 30 days, and air travel within Europe is also significantly disrupted.
Coronavirus can live in the air for three hours, survive on surfaces for two to three days - UPI.com
According to new research, the novel coronavirus can remain in the air for up to 3 hours and survive on some surfaces for two to three days.
Derek Lowe on Coronavirus
The esteemed Derek Lowe talks Coronavirus.
Since this is going to be a post about the coronavirus, let's start off with this PSA: wash your hands. These viruses have a lipid envelope that is crucial to their structure and function, and soaps and detergents are thus very effective at inactivating them. It's fast, it's simple, and it's one of the more useful things that any individual can do under these conditions.
Coronavirus COVID-19 Declared to be a pandemic
The World Health Organization has declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. This may mean that some types of insurance may no longer be valid for medical treatment. Italy is now locked down and many other countries now have cases including Australia where there the virus has now reached all states.
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Trump Announces New Agreements From Health Insurance Companies Amid Wuhan Virus Spread
Trump announced that ten major health insurance companies have agreed to fully cover testing for Wuhan virus, without co-pays. He is following that with an effort to help hourly wage earners avoid missing paychecks due to the epidemic.
Coronavirus: NHS Targets Fake News Spreading Online
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The decision to delay closing schools and introduce other strict measures to combat coronavirus has been defended by England's deputy chief medical officer.
Dr Jenny Harries said experts are assessing new cases on an hourly basis to achieve a "balanced response".
The NHS has unveiled a range of measures as part of its response to try to stop fake news being spread about coronavirus on the internet.
Searches for "coronavirus" on Google, Facebook and YouTube will now promote information from the National Health Service or the World Health Organization.
The NHS said it had worked with Twitter to take down an account claiming to be a hospital and spreading false information, while it is also speaking out against homeopaths promoting false treatments online.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the actions meant the public could access accurate health information "which is more crucial than ever as we continue our response to coronavirus".
The UK is currently in the first phase - "containment" - of the government's four-part plan.
On Monday, health officials said people who showed "even minor" signs of respiratory tract infections or a fever would soon be told to self-isolate for seven days in an effort to tackle the outbreak.
The change in advice could happen within the next 10 to 14 days, the UK's chief medical adviser Prof Chris Whitty said.
It came after researchers in the US found it took five days for most people with coronavirus to show symptoms.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson also suggested the elderly and vulnerable could be asked to stay home in the near future.
[Editor's Note: In the budget announcement in Parliament yesterday (11 Mar) the Government announced billions of pounds of measures to support businesses during the crisis, and to ensure that anyone who is advised to self-isolate can receive state sickness payments from the start of the absence from their place of work. The UK Cobra (Emergency Committee) are sitting as I edit this round-up and may well announce new measures to address the pandemic in the next few hours and days]
Apple Reportedly Offers Retail Workers Unlimited Sick Leave for Coronavirus Symptoms
Apple reportedly offers retail workers unlimited sick leave for coronavirus symptoms:
Days after the coronavirus outbreak prompted Apple CEO Tim Cook to let his employees work from home, 9to5Mac reported that the company's retail and hourly workers are getting unlimited sick leave if they experience the pneumonia-like symptoms linked to the disease.
These workers won't need to give managers a doctor's note either. Apple Stores are remaining open despite the outbreak, but 9to5Mac noted that company is canceling some Today at Apple sessions and other gatherings to limit crowds.
Italy Extends Coronavirus Lockdown to Entire Country
Italy extends coronavirus lockdown to entire country:
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced Monday that the government has extended internal travel restrictions to the entire country until April 3, after initially locking down the country's northern region in an effort to contain the coronavirus.
Why it matters: It's an extreme measure that effectively locks down 60 million people in one of the most populated countries in Europe, where more people have tested positive for the coronavirus than any country outside of China. Conte also announced that all public gatherings and sporting events would be banned.
Xi Visits Wuhan
Xi visits Wuhan, Italy under coronavirus quarantine: Live updates:
Chinese President Xi Jinping has visited Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, the first time he has done so since the epidemic began and a sign that Beijing believes its efforts to control the virus are working.
His arrival in the city comes after its spread in mainland China has sharply slowed in the past week and as attention has turned to preventing imported infections from overseas hot spots such as Iran, Italy and South Korea.
Authorities in China's Hubei said on Tuesday they will implement a "health code" mobile-phone-based monitoring system to start allowing people to travel within the province, as it tries to get life back to normal.
The statement, published on the government's website, said the move was aimed at promoting the resumption of work and production.
China's President Xi Jinping arrived in the provincial capital, Wuhan, on Tuesday for his first visit and is meeting medical workers and others involved in the fight against the virus.
FDA / NY Atty Gen Order Jim Bakker to Stop Selling Fraudulent Coronavirus Products
FDA warns televangelist Jim Bakker and six others to stop selling fraudulent coronavirus products
The Food and Drug Administration said Monday it has sent warning letters to televangelist Jim Bakker and six companies for selling unapproved coronavirus drugs and treatment products.
"The FDA considers the sale and promotion of fraudulent COVID-19 products to be a threat to the public health. We have an aggressive surveillance program that routinely monitors online sources for health fraud products, especially during a significant public health issue such as this one," FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn said in announcing the enforcement actions.
The products include teas, essential oils, tinctures and colloidal silver, which have been cited as not safe or effective for treating any disease, the agency said in a statement with the Federal Trade Commission.
The FDA said it was particularly worried that the products may cause people to delay or stop appropriate treatment, "leading to serious and life-threatening harm."
See also: NY attorney general orders televangelist Jim Bakker to stop promoting alleged coronavirus cure
Covid-19 Small Molecule Therapies Reviewed
Covid-19 Small Molecule Therapies Reviewed:
Let's take inventory on the therapies that are being developed for the coronavirus epidemic. Here is a very thorough list of at Biocentury, and I should note that (like Stat and several other organizations) they're making all their Covid-19 content free to all readers during this crisis. I'd like to zoom in today on the potential small-molecule therapies, since some of these have the most immediate prospects for use in the real world.
The ones at the front of the line are repurposed drugs that are already approved for human use, for a lot of obvious reasons. The Biocentury list doesn't cover these, but here's an article at Nature Biotechnology that goes into detail. Clinical trials are a huge time sink – they sort of have to be, in most cases, if they're going to be any good – and if you've already done all that stuff it's a huge leg up, even if the drug itself is not exactly a perfect fit for the disease. So what do we have? The compound that is most advanced is probably remdesivir from Gilead, at right. This has been in development for a few years as an RNA virus therapy – it was originally developed for Ebola, and has been tried out against a whole list of single-strand RNA viruses. That includes the related coronaviruses SARS and MERS, so Covid-19 was an obvious fit.
The compound is a prodrug – that phosphoramide gets cleaved off completely, leaving the active 5-OH compound GS-44-1524. It mechanism of action is to get incorporated into viral RNA, since it's taken up by RNA polymerase and it largely seems to evade proofreading. This causes RNA termination trouble later on, since that alpha-nitrile C-nucleoside is not exactly what the virus is expecting in its genome at that point, and thus viral replication is inhibited.
There are five clinical trials underway (here's an overview at Biocentury). The NIH has an adaptive-design Phase II trial that has already started in Nebraska, with doses to be changed according to Bayesian readouts along the way. There are two Phase III trials underway at China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Hubei, double-blinded and placebo-controlled (since placebo is, as far as drug therapy goes, the current standard of care). And Gilead themselves are starting two open-label trials, one with no control arm and one with an (unblinded) standard-of-care comparison arm. Those might read out first, depending on when they get off the ground, but will be only rough readouts due to the fast-and-loose trial design. The two Hubei trials and the NIH one will add some rigor to the process, but I'm not sure when they're going to report. My personal opinion is that I like the chances of this drug more than anything else on this list, but it's still unlikely to be a game-changer.
There's an RNA polymerase inhibitor (favipiravir) from Toyama, at right, that's in a trial in China. It's a thought – a broad-spectrum agent of this sort would be the sort of thing to try. But unfortunately, from what I can see, it has already turned up as ineffective in in vitro tests. The human trial that's underway is honestly the sort of thing that would only happen under circumstances like the present: a developing epidemic with a new pathogen and no real standard of care. I hold out little hope for this one, but given that there's nothing else at present, it probably should be tried. As you'll see, this is far from the only situation like this.
[...] There are several other known antiviral drugs [that] are being tried in China, but I don't have too much hope for those, either. The neuraminidase inhibitors such as oseltamivir (better known as Tamiflu) were tried against SARS and were ineffective; there is no reason to expect anything versus Covid-19 although these drugs are a component of some drug cocktail trials. The HIV protease therapies such as darunavir and the combination therapy Kaletra are in trials, but that's also a rather desperate long shot, since there's no particular reason to think that they will have any such protease inhibition against what this new virus has to offer (and indeed, such agents weren't much help against SARS in the end, either). The classic interferon/ribavirin combination seems to have had some activity against SARS and MERS, and is in two trials from what I can see. That's not an awful idea by any means, but it's not a great one, either: if your viral disease has interferon/ribavirin as a front line therapy, it generally means that there's nothing really good available. No, unless we get really lucky none of these ideas are going to slow the disease down much.
There are a few other repurposed-protease-inhibitors ideas out there, such as this one. (Edit: I had seen this paper but couldn't track it down, so thanks to those who sent it along). This paper suggests that the TMPRSS2 protease is important for viral entry on the human-cell-side of the process, a pathway that has been noted for other coronaviruses. And it points out that there is a an approved inhibitor (in Japan) for this enzyme (camostat), so that would definitely seem to be worth a trial, probably in combination with remdesivir.
That's about it for the existing small molecules, from what I can see. What about new ones? Don't hold your breath, is all I can say. A drug discovery program from scratch against a new pathogen is, as many readers here well know, not a trivial exercise. As this Bloomberg article details, many such efforts in the past (small molecules and vaccines alike) have come to grief because by the time they had anything to deliver the epidemic itself had passed. Indeed, Gilead's remdesivir had already been dropped as a potential Ebola therapy.
You will either need to have a target in mind up front or go phenotypic. For the former, what you'd see are better characterizations of the viral protease and more extensive screens against it. Two other big target areas are viral entry (which involves the "spike" proteins on the virus surface and the ACE2 protein on human cells) and viral replication. To the former, it's worth quickly noting that ACE2 is so much unlike the more familiar ACE protein that none of the cardiovascular ACE inhibitors do anything to it at all. And targeting the latter mechanisms is how remdesivir was developed as a possible Ebola agent, but as you can see, that took time, too. Phenotypic screens are perfectly reasonable against viral pathogens as well, but you'll need to put time and effort into that assay up front, just as with any phenotypic effort, because as anyone who does that sort of work will tell you, a bad phenotypic screen is a complete waste of everyone's time.
[...] All this means that any new-target new-chemical-matter effort against Covid-19 (or any new pathogen) is going to take years, and there is just no way around that. This puts small molecules in a very bimodal distribution: you have the existing drugs that might be repurposed, and are presumably available right now. Nothing else is! At the other end, for completely new therapies you have the usual prospects of drug discovery: years from now, lots of money, low success rate, good luck to all of us. The gap between these two could in theory be filled by vaccines and antibody therapies (if everything goes really, really well) but those are very much their own area and will be dealt with in a separate post.
Chinese Robot Is Designed to Help Doctors Fight Coronavirus
Chinese researchers have developed a robot designed to help doctors treat the new coronavirus and other highly contagious diseases.
The machine has a long robotic arm attached to a base with wheels. It can perform some of the same medical examination tasks as doctors. For example, the device can perform ultrasounds, collect fluid samples from a person's mouth and listen to sounds made by a patient's organs.
Cameras record the robot's activities, which are controlled remotely so doctors can avoid coming in close contact with infected patients. Doctors and other medical workers can operate the machine from a nearby room, or from much farther away.
The robot's main designer is Zheng Gangtie, an engineer and professor at China's Tsinghua University in Beijing. He told Reuters news agency that he got the idea for the device around the time of the Lunar New Year in January. At the time, the number of cases of the COVID-19 virus was rising quickly in the city of Wuhan. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
Zheng said a friend of his is the head of Beijing's Tsinghua Changgung Hospital. He said his friend told him that one of the biggest problems in dealing with COVID-19 was that healthcare workers treating patients were getting infected themselves. Zheng said he wanted to do something to help this situation.
So the engineer gathered a team and went to work on the robotic device. Zheng said the team was able to convert two robotic arms. The devices use the same technology that is used for space equipment, including moon explorers. The new robot is almost completely automated, Zheng said. It can even disinfect itself after performing actions involving patient contact.
Greece Closes Borders to Millions of Migrants from Turkey as Coronavirus Fears Escalate
Turkey has allowed millions of undocumented migrants to cross into Greece as the coronavirus takes hold in Iran and enters Europe. With more countries around the world reporting cases of infection Turkey, going back on its billion dollar agreement to contain undocumented migrants at its borders, is now assisting migrants to enter Greece. Greek officials are already struggling to manage the undocumented arrivals and provide sufficient care to them in the wake of what looks like a global pandemic. With hundreds of thousands of migrants trying to enter the country locals are repelling boats and border guards are shooting riot gas. At least one undoc has been killed trying to cross the Greek border. The situation is causing panic in Greece as people prepare for the impact of Covid-19.
List N: Disinfectants for Use Against SARS-CoV-2
List N: Disinfectants for Use Against SARS-CoV-2:
The EPA-registered disinfectant products on this list have qualified under EPA's emerging viral pathogen program for use against SARS-CoV-2, a coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Coronaviruses are enveloped viruses, meaning they are one of the easiest types of viruses to kill with the appropriate disinfectant product. The emerging viral pathogen guidance was triggered for SARS-CoV-2 on January 29, 2020.
EPA strongly recommends following the product label use directions for enveloped viruses, as indicated by the approved emerging viral pathogen claim on the master label. If the directions for use for viruses/virucidal activity list different contact times or dilutions, use the longest contact time or most concentrated solution.
- List N: Disinfectants for Use Against SARS-CoV-2 (PDF)(7 pp, 270 K, March 3, 2020)
Don't Panic: The comprehensive Ars Technica guide to the coronavirus
[Ed. note: This story is being actively maintained with daily updates. --martyb]
More than 100,000 people have been infected with a new coronavirus that has spread widely from its origin in China over the past few months. More than 3,000 have already died. Our comprehensive guide for understanding and navigating this global public health threat is below.
[...] You should be concerned and take this seriously. But you should not panic.
This new coronavirus—dubbed SARS-CoV-2—is unquestionably dangerous. It causes a disease called COVID-19, which can be deadly, particularly for older people and those with underlying health conditions. While the death rate among infected people is unclear, even some current low estimates are seven-fold higher than the estimate for seasonal influenza.
[...] Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that get their name from the halo of spiked proteins that adorn their outer surface, which resemble a crown (corona) under a microscope. As a family, they infect a wide range of animals, including humans.
[...] SARS-CoV-2 is related to coronaviruses in bats, but its intermediate animal host and route to humans are not yet clear. There has been plenty of speculation that the intermediate host could be pangolins, but that is not confirmed.
While the identity of SARS-CoV-2's intermediate host remains unknown, researchers suspect the mystery animal was present in a live animal market in Wuhan, China—the capital city of China's central Hubei Province and the epicenter of the outbreak. The market, which was later described in Chinese state media reports as "filthy and messy," sold a wide range of seafood and live animals, some wild. Many of the initial SARS-CoV-2 infections were linked to the market; in fact, many early cases were in people who worked there.
[...] That said, a report in The Lancet describing 41 early cases in the outbreak indicates that the earliest identified person sickened with SARS-CoV-2 had no links to the market. As Ars has reported before, the case was in a man whose infection began causing symptoms on December 1, 2019. None of the man's family became ill, and he had no ties to any of the other cases in the outbreak.
[...] In people, SARS-CoV-2 causes a disease dubbed COVID-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO). As the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) points out, the 'CO' stands for 'corona,' 'VI' for 'virus,' and 'D' for disease. [...] On average, it takes five to six days from the day you are infected with SARS-CoV-2 until you develop symptoms of COVID-19. This pre-symptomatic period—also known as "incubation"—can range from one to 14 days.
From there, those with mild disease tend to recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe cases can take three to six weeks to recover, according to WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who goes by Dr. Tedros.
[...] So far, some preliminary population screening for COVID-19 infections has been done in China, specifically in Guangdong province. Screening of 320,000 people who went to a fever clinic suggested that we may not be missing a vast number of mild cases. This in turn suggests that the CFRs we are calculating now are not wildly higher than they should be. However, experts still suspect that many mild cases are going unreported, and many still anticipate that the true CFR will be lower than what we are calculating now.
Coronavirus's Genetics Hint at its Cryptic Spread in Communities
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Hodcroft decided to generate an infographic showing the connections between the traveler from Singapore and the other coronavirus cases emerging in Europe. "I thought, I'll make an image and see if anyone else finds this useful," she says. She posted the image on Twitter, and "somewhat unexpectedly, it got a lot of attention," she says. "People were definitely really, really interested in this. So I kept that image updated over the next week or so." As she updated it, the graphic showed that at least 21 people were exposed to the virus at the ski resort the traveler from Singapore visited; 13 of those people ended up developing COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. After she'd finished the preliminary work, a colleague of Hodcroft saw it and suggested she write it up for publication. She posted the paper on February 26; the next day it appeared in Swiss Medical Weekly.
Hodcroft talked with The Scientist about the work, how its conclusions have been supported by genetic testing of viral strains from patients, and what it tells us about the spread of the virus, SARS-CoV-2, in other countries.
The other thing that's surprising is that, according to the patient statement that he released, the focal patient never had any symptoms. In his own words, he never felt sick. So he did all of this transmission without ever having any indication that he was unwell or that he should be taking any precautions to modify his behavior. It tells us that some infections might be from people who never even know that they're sick.
A few days ago, the research group called the Seattle Flu Study, which is designed to take community samples from random people who have any kind of cough, runny nose, or cold-like symptoms and look for the flu—they pivoted and started testing some of the samples for coronavirus. They found a case in the Seattle area and sequenced the viral genome of the infected person [posted on NextStrain] and showed it links very closely with another case in the Seattle area that's from mid-January. And so this strongly suggests (though we don't yet know for certain) that there has been ongoing undetected transmission in Seattle since mid-January and wasn't picked up because we weren't looking for it. This has become clearer in the last few days, as more cases and even deaths have been reported in Washington State. That tells us the virus hasn't just appeared in the last few days in the area.
When you have a very small number of cases of a disease, you can do this just through epidemiological contact tracing: you can go to everyone and ask questions and find out the connections between the cases. As the case numbers scale up, this becomes very hard to do. With genetic sequencing, we can do this without having to go and try and figure out where everyone was at the time of infection. We've had an influx of sequences from Brazil, Switzerland, Mexico, Scotland, Germany. These have clustered with sequences from Italy and have a travel history from Italy and so from that we can show that Italy really is now exporting cases around the world to multiple countries.
One thing I would note is that studies have shown that limiting transportation really doesn't make much of an impact for outbreaks. Quarantining particular cities, if they seem to be epicenters, can work as a preventive measure, but as the epidemic scales up, you move past being able to contain it in this sense, [and] what you end up doing is just disrupting supply routes, interrupting business, making all of these things much harder.
Toilet Paper Hoarding Continues as Australia Faces Coronavirus Outbreak
Australians are still going bonkers buying up toilet paper before the coronavirus hits and some people are then selling them online for a profit. This behavior offers an intriguing insight into mob reactions of people when disaster strikes. Still staggering from horrendous bushfires and disasterous flooding, which is still ongoing, Australians now facing another immediate disaster are falling back to mob mentality copying those they see as leaders. People don't seem to understand why they are buying up toilet paper, only knowing that it is something they should do. In the meantime, stores have imposed buying limits and toilet paper heroes are keeping the paper mills running 24/7 to keep up with demand.
Just when you thought Australia could not get any stranger.
Coronavirus may tear apart Australian University that relies on Chinese students
The secondary effects of the coronavirus are being felt around the world as factory production is slower, deliveries are affected and entire countries are shut down. In Australia the University of Tasmania is cutting courses in a bid to survive foreign student loss in the midst of a travel ban imposed by Australia in a bid to slow the coming COVID19 outbreak. With UTAS (University of Tasmania) buying up tens of millions worth of real estate in prime areas for future expansion based on foreign students the future of the university may be in doubt with so many of its wealthy students unable to attend. Given expectations that the virus outbreak is expected to last months, UTAS may have to suck in its belt, reduce courses, and ride out the wave like so many other businesses facing extinction. Already several restaurants in the Sydney Chinatown area have closed due to the ongoing situation with many more predicted to come.
They could get locals to attend their local university like they did in the Old Days.
Hong Kong offers HK$10000 to stem economy free fall pushed by pandemic fears
Hong Kong government is giving out HK$10,000 to residents to stop the slide into recession. With the recent unrest from anti-China demonstrations, stoppages and finally the coronavirus outbreak, the city economy is stalled on the edge of collapse.
Time for a holiday.
Previously:
Coronavirus Breakthrough: Protein Mutation Affects Spread and Virulence of Respiratory Virus
Thailand Quarantines 32 Due to MERS Case
China Reports 3rd Death, Nearly 140 New Cases of Coronavirus
China Confirms Human-To-Human Transmission of New Coronavirus; CDC Confirms First US Case
Coronavirus: Millions Quarantined in Wuhan City
China Battles Coronavirus Outbreak: All the Latest Updates
In The Pipeline: Coronavirus
Coronavirus Declared a Global Health Emergency by World Health Organization
2019-nCoV Coronavirus Story Roundup
Australia Bans All Arrivals From China [Updated]
Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Roundup
Phishers Impersonate WHO, Exploit Coronavirus-Related Anxiety
Coronavirus Roundup
MWC Barcelona 2020: "Mobile World Congress" or "Most Won't Come"?
Coronavirus Roundup (Feb. 17)
Roundup of Stories about the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus and COVID-19 Disease
Coronavirus Drug Clinical Trials Beginning in Nebraska
COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 - CoronaVirus) Roundup
New Zealand Birds Show Humanlike Ability to Make Predictions
World Health Organization Declares the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Outbreak a Global Pandemic
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Engineers crack 58-year-old puzzle on way to quantum breakthrough:
[...] Generating magnetic fields requires large coils and high currents, while the laws of physics dictate that it is difficult to confine magnetic fields to very small spaces—they tend to have a wide area of influence. Electric fields, on the other hand, can be produced at the tip of a tiny electrode, and they fall off very sharply away from the tip. This will make control of individual atoms placed in nanoelectronic devices much easier.
[...] The researchers had originally set out to perform nuclear magnetic resonance on a single atom of antimony—an element that possesses a large nuclear spin. One of the lead authors of the work, Dr. Serwan Asaad, explains: "Our original goal was to explore the boundary between the quantum world and the classical world, set by the chaotic behaviour of the nuclear spin. This was purely a curiosity-driven project, with no application in mind."
"However, once we started the experiment, we realised that something was wrong. The nucleus behaved very strangely, refusing to respond at certain frequencies, but showing a strong response at others," recalls Dr. Vincent Mourik, also a lead author on the paper.
[...] Dr. Asaad continued: "What happened is that we fabricated a device containing an antimony atom and a special antenna, optimized to create a high-frequency magnetic field to control the nucleus of the atom. Our experiment demands this magnetic field to be quite strong, so we applied a lot of power to the antenna, and we blew it up!"
[...] "Normally, with smaller nuclei like phosphorus, when you blow up the antenna it's 'game over' and you have to throw away the device," says Dr. Mourik."But with the antimony nucleus, the experiment continued to work. It turns out that after the damage, the antenna was creating a strong electric field instead of a magnetic field. So we 'rediscovered' nuclear electric resonance."
After demonstrating the ability to control the nucleus with electric fields, the researchers used sophisticated computer modelling to understand how exactly the electric field influences the spin of the nucleus. This effort highlighted that nuclear electric resonance is a truly local, microscopic phenomenon: the electric field distorts the atomic bonds around the nucleus, causing it to reorient itself.
Journal Reference,:
Serwan Asaad, Vincent Mourik, Benjamin Joecker, Mark A. I. Johnson, Andrew D. Baczewski, Hannes R. Firgau, Mateusz T. Mądzik, Vivien Schmitt, Jarryd J. Pla, Fay E. Hudson, Kohei M. Itoh, Jeffrey C. McCallum, Andrew S. Dzurak, Arne Laucht1, Andrea Morello. Coherent electrical control of a single high-spin nucleus in silicon, Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2057-7 , https://nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2057-7
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Meltwater pulses (MWPs) known as abrupt sea-level rise due to injection of melt water are of particular interests to scientists to investigate the interactions between climatic, oceanic and glacial systems. Eustatic sea-level rise will inevitably affect cities especially those on coastal plains of low elevation like Hong Kong. A recent study published in Quaternary Science Reviews presented evidence of abrupt sea level change between 11,300-11,000 years ago in the Arctic Ocean. The study was conducted by Ms Skye Yunshu Tian, PhD student of School of Biological Sciences and Swire Institute of Marine Science, the University of Hong Kong (HKU) during her undergraduate final year project in the Ecology & Biodiversity Major, solving the puzzle of second largest meltwater pulse (labelled as "MWP-1B" next to the largest and already well understood MWP-1A).
During the last deglaciation, melting of large ice sheets in the Northern hemisphere had contributed to profound global sea level changes. However, even the second largest MWP-1B is not well understood. Its timing and magnitude remain actively debated due to the lack of clear evidence not only from tropical areas recording near-eustatic sea-level change, but also from high-latitude areas where the ice sheets melted.
The research study, led by Ms Tian under the supervision of Dr Moriaki Yasuhara, Associate Professor of School of Biological Sciences, HKU and Dr Yuanyuan Hong, Postdoctoral Fellow of School of Biological Sciences, HKU, and in collaboration with scientists in HKU and UiT The Arctic University of Norway, discovered a robust evidence of formerly elusive abrupt sea-level jump event during the climatic warming from the last ice age to the current climate state. The study presented evidence of abrupt sea level change between 11,300-11,000 years ago of 40m-80m in Svalbard, the Arctic Ocean. High time-resolution fossil records indicate a sudden temperature rise due to the incursion of warm Atlantic waters and consequent melting of the covering ice sheets. Because of the rebound of formerly suppressed lands underneath great ice load, the sedimentary environment changed from a bathyal setting [...] to an upper-middle neritic setting [...] at the study sites. This is the first solid evidence of relative sea-level change of MWP-1B discovered in ice-proximal areas.
Journal Reference:
Skye Yunshu Tian, Moriaki Yasuhara, Yuanyuan Hong, Huai-Hsuan M. Huang, Hokuto Iwatani, Wing-Tung Ruby Chiu, Briony Mamo, Hisayo Okahashi, Tine L. Rasmussen. Deglacial–Holocene Svalbard paleoceanography and evidence of meltwater pulse 1B. Quaternary Science Reviews, 2020; 233: 106237 DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106237
-- submitted from IRC
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from the Quis-Custodiet-Ipsos-Custodes? dept.
House Passes Bill Preserving F.B.I. Surveillance Powers (archive)
The House passed a bipartisan adjustment of key surveillance laws on Wednesday, cobbling together an unusual coalition of lawmakers to approve some new privacy protections for Americans and extend three expiring F.B.I. tools for investigating terrorism and espionage.
The vote appeared to be a breakthrough after weeks of negotiations in both the House and the Senate to prevent the surveillance tools from expiring this weekend and to address abuses identified in F.B.I. applications to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser. Though civil libertarians in both parties opposed it as a half-measure that fell short of the kind of sweeping protections they favor, the bill passed with strong Democratic and Republican support, 278 to 136.
[...] In the Senate, Republican leaders urged their colleagues to support the House agreement and pledged to move it "as soon as possible." They were trying to line up an expedited Thursday vote, but their aides said it would depend on whether the bill's opponents would use Senate rules to slow down passage. A handful of senators have long championed broader surveillance reforms, like Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, and Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, and argue that the House changes leave Americans' privacy at risk of intrusion by government investigators.
Even if they stall the bill, once it does make it to a Senate vote, a similar bipartisan coalition of lawmakers most likely will amount to the 60 votes needed to overcome objections.
See also: House passes key surveillance bill with deadline looming
Sen. Mike Lee urges Trump to veto House FISA bill
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from the things-that-go-clunk-in-the-shower dept.
Why is an empty shampoo bottle so easy to knock over?:
It becomes annoyingly easy to knock over a shampoo bottle when it's nearly empty. This is an easily observed and curiosity-provoking phenomenon that, according to Lehigh University physics professor Jerome Licini, yields insights into center-of-mass and impacts.
"The physics of that is pretty interesting and easy to understand," says Licini who, along with first-year physics major Allen Zijun Yuan, wrote a paper on the phenomenon that was recently published in The Physics Teacher. In the paper, they find the center-of-mass of a shampoo bottle, discuss its stability on a tilted surface, and demonstrate its sensitivity to impacts using a simple experiment involving a tennis ball and a protractor.
They write: "An object placed on a tilted surface and released will tip over if the horizontal position of the center of mass lies outside the geometric outline of the base of the object. This means that an object with a low center of mass will be stable for larger incline angles. Students are often surprised to see that the altitude of the center of mass of a shampoo bottle is a nonlinear function of the fraction occupied by the contents. This can, however, be seen in a straightforward manner by recognizing that for a plastic bottle, the mass of the liquid contents is usually far greater than the mass of the bottle. When the bottle is either completely full or completely empty, the center of mass must be approximately at the geometric center of the bottle, but the center of mass gets significantly lower in altitude for small liquid levels in between those two extremes."
Yuan developed a demonstration to show the effect of impact and, it turns out, even more extreme than just looking at angle.
Reference:
Why is an empty shampoo bottle so easy to knock over? The Physics Teacher (DOI: 10.1119/1.5145426[$]) (free access link)
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Water is heavy and hard to transport into orbit, which is why the International Space Station is a champion when it comes to recycling. Even astronaut urine is captured and processed to make it drinkable. The system that does this work is about to get an important upgrade.
The ISS water recovery system is tasked with turning wastewater into potable water. The urine-processing part of the system has been an ongoing concern. Astronauts will be installing a redesigned urine distillation assembly. This piece handles the crucial step of boiling urine to kick off the purification process.
"One of the most important things we've learned in the last 12 years of the hardware's orbital operation is that the hardware is vulnerable in its steam environment," said NASA's Jennifer Pruitt in a statement on Monday.
NASA said the upgrades are focused on internal redesigns, "including a new toothed belt drive system, bearing seals, Teflon spacer and liquid level sensor." If you want to dive into the details (including the technical glitches the system has encountered), then check out this NASA paper on the upgrades (PDF link).
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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Astronomers working on 'first light' results from a newly commissioned telescope in Chile made a chance discovery that led to the identification of a rare eclipsing binary brown dwarf system.
The discovery, published today in Nature Astronomy, was led by an international team of researchers, including scientists at the University of Birmingham, working on the SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) project. SPECULOOS involves the University of Birmingham in collaboration with the University of Liège, the University of Cambridge, the University of Bern, the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canaries, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other partner institutions.
SPECULOOS' mission is to investigate planets surrounding ultra-cool dwarfs, a category that includes the smallest stars that exist, as well as objects called 'brown dwarfs'. Brown dwarfs are 'sub-stellar' objects, meaning they have less mass than a star but more than a planet. Brown dwarfs are unable to sustain the fusion of hydrogen into helium, a process that powers the light from normal stars like the Sun.
Astronomers predict that these ultra-cool dwarfs should host large populations of close-by, potentially habitable rocky planets, offering a wealth of opportunity to explore a diversity of atmospheres and climates. An example is the 7-planet system TRAPPIST-1, which was discovered by members of the same team.
-- submitted from IRC
Amaury H. M. J. Triaud, Adam J. Burgasser, Artem Burdanov, Vedad Kunovac Hodžić, Roi Alonso, Daniella Bardalez Gagliuffi, Laetitia Delrez, Brice-Olivier Demory, Julien de Wit, Elsa Ducrot, Frederic V. Hessman, Tim-Oliver Husser, Emmanuël Jehin, Peter P. Pedersen, Didier Queloz, James McCormac, Catriona Murray, Daniel Sebastian, Samantha Thompson, Valérie Van Grootel, Michaël Gillon. An eclipsing substellar binary in a young triple system discovered by SPECULOOS[$]. Nature Astronomy, 2020; DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-1018-2
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from the aich-tee-tee-pee-ess-colon-slash-slash-aich-tee-tee-pee-dot-pee-ess dept.
Crafty Web Skimming Domain Spoofs "https":
Earlier today, KrebsOnSecurity alerted the 10th largest food distributor in the United States that one of its Web sites had been hacked and retrofitted with code that steals credit card and login data. While such Web site card skimming attacks are not new, this intrusion leveraged a sneaky new domain that hides quite easily in a hacked site's source code: "http[.]ps" (the actual malicious domain does not include the brackets, which are there to keep readers from being able to click on it).
This crafty domain was hidden inside the checkout and login pages for grandwesternsteaks.com, a meat delivery service owned by Cheney Bros. Inc., a major food distributor based in Florida.
[...] A simple search on the malicious domain "http[.]ps" at HTML search service publicwww.com shows this code is present on nearly a dozen other sites, including a music instrument retailer, an herbal pharmacy shop in Europe, and a business in Spain that sells programmable logic controllers — expensive computers and circuit boards designed to control large industrial operations.
The http[.]ps domain is hosted in Russia, and sits on a server with one other malicious domain — autocapital[.]pw. According a Mar. 3 Twitter post by security researcher and blogger Denis Sinegubko, the autocapital domain acts as a collector of data hoovered up by the http[.]ps skimming script.
Jerome Segura over at Malwarebytes recently wrote about a similar attack in which the intruders used http[.]ps to spoof the location of a script that helps improve page load times for sites that rely on Web infrastructure firm Cloudflare.
Don't believe everything you [think you] see!
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from the like-hail-only-much-much-worse dept.
Exoplanet where it rains iron discovered:
Researchers using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) have observed an extreme planet where they suspect it rains iron. The ultra-hot giant exoplanet has a day side where temperatures climb above 2400 degrees Celsius, high enough to vaporise metals. Strong winds carry iron vapour to the cooler night side where it condenses into iron droplets.
"One could say that this planet gets rainy in the evening, except it rains iron," says David Ehrenreich, a professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. He led a study, published today in the journal Nature, of this exotic exoplanet. Known as WASP-76b, it is located some 640 light-years away in the constellation of Pisces.
This strange phenomenon happens because the 'iron rain' planet only ever shows one face, its day side, to its parent star, its cooler night side remaining in perpetual darkness. Like the Moon on its orbit around the Earth, WASP-76b is 'tidally locked': it takes as long to rotate around its axis as it does to go around the star.
On its day side, it receives thousands of times more radiation from its parent star than the Earth does from the Sun. It's so hot that molecules separate into atoms, and metals like iron evaporate into the atmosphere. The extreme temperature difference between the day and night sides results in vigorous winds that bring the iron vapour from the ultra-hot day side to the cooler night side, where temperatures decrease to around 1500 degrees Celsius.
Not only does WASP-76b have different day-night temperatures, it also has distinct day-night chemistry, according to the new study. Using the new ESPRESSO[*] instrument on ESO's VLT in the Chilean Atacama Desert, the astronomers identified for the first time chemical variations on an ultra-hot gas giant planet. They detected a strong signature of iron vapour at the evening border that separates the planet's day side from its night side. "Surprisingly, however, we do not see the iron vapour in the morning," says Ehrenreich. The reason, he says, is that "it is raining iron on the night side of this extreme exoplanet."
"The observations show that iron vapour is abundant in the atmosphere of the hot day side of WASP-76b," adds María Rosa Zapatero Osorio, an astrophysicist at the Centre for Astrobiology in Madrid, Spain, and the chair of the ESPRESSO science team. "A fraction of this iron is injected into the night side owing to the planet's rotation and atmospheric winds. There, the iron encounters much cooler environments, condenses and rains down."
[*] ESPRESSO Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations.
Reference:
David Ehrenreich, et al Nightside condensation of iron in an ultra-hot giant exoplanet https://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso2005/eso2005a.pdf
(No DOI at this time.)
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SpaceX and United Launch Alliance have made the construction and launch of space-faring rockets seem almost commonplace. Once in a while things don't go completely right, but it is amazing how much a successful launch is now taken for granted. This was not always the case!
Growing up, I was faced with the daunting prospects of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. Every couple weeks there seemed to be yet another nuclear weapon test on the nightly news. First with atomic bombs and later with hydrogen bombs. It was common to hear and see daily reminders of Duck and Cover, fallout shelters, and Mutual Assured Destruction. It was a frightening time to be a child. Especially since there were certain "facilities" in the area that would likely put us on the list of Soviet targets.
Juxtaposed with that fear was a sense of hope and destiny. John F. Kennedy had just been elected president. His inaugural address challenged: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." Then, on the heels of the USSR's Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person in space, Kennedy became "eager for the U.S. to take the lead in the Space Race, for reasons of national security and prestige." A short while later, Kennedy gave his famous speech (transcript and video [NB: He doesn't even seem to sweat!]) in which he uttered the challenge:
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon... (interrupted by applause) we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
The United States thereupon launched headlong on the space race. It was a heady time when it seemed almost anything was possible. Science would continue to unlock countless mysteries. Hope reigned high.
It was during this period I was introduced to model rockets and spent countless hours constructing, launching, and [trying to] recover them. Oh, to be an astronaut someday! Estes rockets got far more of my limited funds at that time than they had any right to!
Eventually, the race to the moon hit a climax with Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong ("That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.") and Buzz Aldrin becoming the first humans to step upon the moon.
Moon colonies were surely just a matter of time and there was talk of humans making the journey to Mars, as well.
Sadly, although the Apollo Program proved a huge source for gaining scientific knowledge (the moon rocks that were returned are still being examined), the thirst for human space flight abated and the race to the moon became better known as "Flags and Footprints". Sure, there was the ensuing Space Shuttle. Laps around the Earth are, however, a far cry from performing activities on other bodies in our solar system.
So, it is against this backdrop that I came upon Destin Sandlin's YouTube channel called Smarter Every Day and his 54m16s video HOW ROCKETS ARE MADE (Rocket Factory Tour - United Launch Alliance). It is the very first video tour of ULA's largest — 1.6 million square feet (~150,000 square meter) — rocket factory located in Decatur, Alabama. It is where they construct their Delta IV and Atlas V rockets, and soon their Vulcan rockets, too.
In Destin's own words:
How this happened: I messaged Tory[*] "If you ever find yourself with an open lunch I'll buy. No cameras, just rocket geek chat."
A few months later he changed a flight one day so we could grab lunch, but he also carved out a couple of hours before lunch to give me a personal tour.
He's as cool off camera as he is on camera. He allowed me to ask any technical question I had, and I never even got close to the limits of his understanding of rockets. His technical prowess is something I aspire to.
[*] Tory: Tory Bruno who, since August of 2014, has been the CEO of ULA (United Launch Alliance).
Watch the entire process from when raw aluminum and other materials come into one end of the factory through it being cut, planed, machined, curved, welded and finally assembled into a rocket that exits the other end. The simultaneously huge scale and ultra-high precision tolerances are amazing. Having followed all thing space since a youth, actually seeing what it took to make a real life rocket was amazing.
Now I'm hoping to see a similar tour of SpaceX's facilities!
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Noted pianist McCoy Tyner just passed. Perhaps best known for five years with John Coltrane in the early 1960s, he also recorded with his own band for many years. This is probably the obit of record,
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/arts/music/mccoy-tyner-dead.html
Along with Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and only a few others, Mr. Tyner was one of the main expressways of modern jazz piano. Nearly every jazz pianist since Mr. Tyner’s years with Coltrane has had to learn his lessons, whether they ultimately discarded them or not.
Mr. Tyner’s manner was modest, but his sound was rich, percussive and serious, his lyrical improvisations centered by powerful left-hand chords marking the first beat of the bar and the tonal center of the music.
That sound helped create the atmosphere of Coltrane’s music and, to some extent, all jazz in the 1960s. (When you are thinking of Coltrane playing “My Favorite Things” or “A Love Supreme,” you may be thinking of the sound of Mr. Tyner almost as much as that of Coltrane’s saxophone.)
To a great extent he was a grounding force for Coltrane. In a 1961 interview, about a year and a half after hiring Mr. Tyner, Coltrane said: “My current pianist, McCoy Tyner, holds down the harmonies, and that allows me to forget them. He’s sort of the one who gives me wings and lets me take off from the ground from time to time.”
He was featured on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz show,
https://www.npr.org/2008/09/12/94547798/mccoy-tyner-on-piano-jazz
One of your AC's long time favorites is the driving piano on Ole', https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUSMON8eO9Y
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Ilya Dudkin at Skywell Software has a story
Top 7 Dying Programming Languages to Avoid Studying in 2019 –2020.
Each language gets a paragraph's treatment as to why he thinks these languages are dead or dying. Those languages are:
- Visual Basic
- Objective-C
- Perl
- COBOL
- CoffeeScript
- Scala
- Lisp
Do you agree with his assessment? Are there any other language(s) you would add to the list?
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from the maybe-it-is-not-such-a-bad-time-to-be-living-alone-in-someone's-basement dept.
[Editor's note: We had been gathering together COVID-19 stories for eventual release as a round-up story. I lack time at the moment to personally gather all those together with this most recent submission. We will run the next round-up in the next few days. But given the significance of this submission, I wished not to delay it from being immediately released to the community. --martyb]
World Health Organization declares the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic:
The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on Wednesday as the new coronavirus, which was unknown to world health officials just three months ago, has rapidly spread to more than 121,000 people from Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the United States.
“In the past two weeks the number of cases outside China has increased thirteenfold and the number of affected countries has tripled,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva. “In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths and the number of affected countries to climb even higher.”
Tedros said several countries have demonstrated the ability to suppress and control the outbreak, but he scolded other world leaders for failing to act quickly enough or drastically enough to contain the spread.
“We’re deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction,” he said, just before declaring the pandemic. “We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear.”
[Ed. addition follows.]
Also at Ars Technica and cnet.
For those who might not be aware of the distinction, Wikipedia helpfully provides these summaries:
An epidemic (what we have had up to now with COVID-19):
An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί epi "upon or above" and δῆμος demos "people") is the rapid spread of infectious disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time, usually two weeks or less.
[...]An epidemic may be restricted to one location; however, if it spreads to other countries or continents and affects a substantial number of people, it may be termed a pandemic.[1] The declaration of an epidemic usually requires a good understanding of a baseline rate of incidence; epidemics for certain diseases, such as influenza, are defined as reaching some defined increase in incidence above this baseline.[2] A few cases of a very rare disease may be classified as an epidemic, while many cases of a common disease (such as the common cold) would not.
By comparison, a pandemic (which has just now been announced for COVID-19):
A pandemic (from Greek πᾶν pan "all" and δῆμος demos "people") is an epidemic of disease that has spread across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic. Further, flu pandemics generally exclude recurrences of seasonal flu. Throughout history, there have been a number of pandemics, such as smallpox and tuberculosis. One of the most devastating pandemics was the Black Death, which killed an estimated 75–200 million people in the 14th century. The current pandemics are HIV/AIDS and Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).[1][2] Other recent pandemics are the 1918 influenza pandemic (Spanish flu), and the 2009 flu pandemic (H1N1).
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from the keep-the-taxpayer-money-flowing dept.
NASA OIG: Tell Congress that moon rocket is over budget and behind schedule:
NASA's moon rocket has reached a point in cost overruns and delays that should trigger Congressional review, a report by the NASA Inspector General says.
The NASA Office of Inspector General said the Space Launch System rocket being developed to fly astronauts to the moon exceeded cost and schedule baselines by more than 30 percent at the end of fiscal year 2019. That 30 percent threshold should prompt Congressional attention, the OIG said, though NASA disagreed.
"NASA continues to struggle managing SLS (Space Launch System) Program costs and schedule as the launch date for the first integrated SLS/Orion mission slips further," according to the report released Tuesday. "Rising costs and delays can be attributed to challenges with program management, technical issues, and contractor performance."
<sarcasm>News of SLS being behind schedule and over budget will come as a shock to many. But we should take comfort that no problem is so great it cannot be solved by throwing more taxpayer money at it.</sarcasm>
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