There are over 1.2 million cases of the coronavirus worldwide, according to tracking from Johns Hopkins University. The number of global fatalities has passed 66,000 while the U.S. leads the world with more than 300,000 reported cases. U.S. President Trump warned Saturday that “it’s going to be really some very bad numbers” in the U.S., where the death toll reached 8,500 over the weekend.
Media reports said: Food lines are growing in the U.S., long lines of people have been filmed at food distribution centers seeking in Pittsburgh, Chicago, New York City, Dallas, Fayetteville in Arkansas.
State of emergency is in Japan, say Tokyo medical staff
As Japan faces a fresh wave of coronavirus infections and the government prepares for a state of emergency, medical staff say a rise in cases linked to hospitals is pushing Tokyo’s medical system to the brink of collapse.
In Japan, Eiju General Hospital reported 140 cases of COVID-19 in the past 2 weeks. Of those, at least 44 are doctors, nurses and other medical staff.
Growing U.S. Food Lines
A HuffPost report said on April 5, 2020:
As food lines increase across the U.S. amid the pandemic, the chef responsible for feeding countless people in field kitchens in response to disasters around the world warns that the “worst is yet to come.”
Celebrity chef Jose Andres founded the nonprofit World Central Kitchen 10 years ago to serve people whose communities had been devastated by such natural disasters as hurricanes, floods and earthquakes. Now the organization is mobilizing to respond to the spread in the U.S. of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, with food for shut-ins, meals for health-care workers and stranded cruise ship passengers. The group is preparing “grab-and-go” boxed meals in several cities, and setting up food centers in some abandoned restaurants.
The help comes as hunger grows with the exploding ranks of unemployed in the pandemic. Evoking images from the Great Depression, long lines of people in cars and on foot have been filmed at food distribution centers seeking in Pittsburgh, Chicago, New York City, Dallas, Fayetteville in Arkansas, and in the shadow of U.S. President Trump’s now closed “winter White House” at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
Andres is all about food in a crisis. Starvation is already burgeoning, largely out of sight, he wrote last month in a New York Times op-ed.
Dr. Fauci warned in 2017 of ‘surprise outbreak’
Another HuffPost report by Nina Golglwski said on April 6, 2020:
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease specialist, warned in early 2017 that a “surprise outbreak” would occur during the Trump adminstration, and he said that more needed to be done to prepare for a pandemic.
“There is no question that there will be a challenge to the coming administration in the arena of infectious diseases,” he said in a speech titled “Pandemic Preparedness in the Next Adminstration” at Georgetown University Medical Center. He delivered it just days before Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017.
Fauci, who has overseen the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, warned that looming health challenges would involve both chronic diseases ― ones already ongoing ― as well as “a surprise outbreak.”
“No matter what, history has told us definitively that [outbreaks] will happen,” he said. “It is a perpetual challenge. It is not going to go away. The thing we’re extraordinarily confident about is that we are going to see this in the next few years.”
Fauci ticked off a list of measures needed to prepare for such a crisis, including creating and strengthening global health surveillance systems, as well as public health and health care infrastructure; practicing transparency and honest communication with the public; coordinating and collaborating on both basic and clinical research, and developing universal platform technologies to better facilitate the development of vaccines.
“The mistake that so many people have made … is a failure to look beyond our own borders in the issue of the globality of health issues, not only things that are there that will come here but surprises that we’ll have,” he said in his prescient remarks.
Despite Fauci’s early warnings and calls for action, a report on Sunday analyzing the Trump adminstration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic found that federal agencies waited until the middle of last month to order vital medical supplies and equipment to fight the coronavirus, despite warnings about its pandemic potential being made in January. As the virus has spread across the country, reports persist of mass shortages of supplies in hospitals and medical centers.
“We basically wasted two months,” Kathleen Sebelius, who served as the Health and Human Services secretary during the Obama administration, told The Associated Press of the government’s response.
Fauci has also expressed exasperation over the efforts to stem to tide of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. On Thursday, he spoke out against states that have not issued a stay-at-home order to help prevent the virus from spreading.
“I don’t understand why that’s not happening,” he said on CNN of stay-at-home orders in all 50 states. “The tension between federally mandated versus states’ rights to do what they want is something I don’t want to get into. But if you look at what is going on in this country, I do not understand why we are not doing that. We really should be.”
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