Preparing for Coronavirus?

[paultuttle]

From my states public health website,
I see a daily tally of tests, cases, those hospitalized, and deaths. If only as a morale boost, I would like to see numbers for those recovered, those released from hospitals, and
for folks released from quarantine, corellated.

Yes, absolutely.

[Anselm]

From my states public health website,
I see a daily tally of tests, cases, those hospitalized, and deaths. If only as a morale boost, I would like to see numbers for those recovered, those released from hospitals, and
for folks released from quarantine, corellated.

If you look at just Italy then I would say they have flattened the curve.  Cumulative total cases plotted on a logarithmic axis is approaching a horizontal line.   Daily new cases have been steady for a week at about 5,000 people per day.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

[spork]

I've replenished my soy milk supply. But the supermarket was contagion central -- not a single employee wearing a mask, only a few customers wearing them, and no one staying six feet away from anyone else.

[clean]

But the supermarket was contagion central -- not a single employee wearing a mask, only a few customers wearing them, and no one staying six feet away from anyone else.

My understanding is that the businesses dont want to frighten customers and are not letting employees wear masks.  I did see cashiers wearing gloves.

My understanding is also that wearing a mask is not necessarily protective.

[hmaria1609]

It's now "Stay at Home" orders from Annapolis to Richmond:
https://wtop.com/coronavirus/2020/03/coronavirus-updates-dc-maryland-virginia-march-30/
I got the notification on my iPhone this afternoon.

[Cheerful]

My understanding is also that wearing a mask is not necessarily protective.

Austria now requires all to wear a mask in a supermarket.  Germany encourages such.  Long common in parts of Asia.  My sense has long been that, ideally, we should have all been wearing masks from the start to help contain the virus, but officials (including WHO, CDC) want to preserve inadequate supplies for health care workers.  One of several recent articles:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/30/coronavirus-masks-trump-administration-156327

[science.expat]

It's much more important that health workers have masks than members of the public.

[Cheerful]

It's much more important that health workers have masks than members of the public.

I agree.  That's why I said "ideally" in my post.  Ideally, all members of the public would be wearing masks when out and about.  Given the lack of adequate supplies, medical personnel must have full priority.

[pigou]

There's no shortage of N95 masks. See this report of a journalist who spent a day in the N95 mask trade world and saw 280 million US-manufactured masks get sold. They all got exported: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2020/03/30/i-spent-a-day-in-the-coronavirus-driven-feeding-frenzy-of-n95-mask-sellers-and-buyers-and-this-is-what-i-learned/

US hospitals have a shortage because they can't make fast procurement decisions. No supplier is going to wait around for a week to get some middle-manager to approve a purchase. If those details aren't worked out in advance, they're going to sell to someone who can move faster. Seems like a good month into this crisis, hospitals still haven't figured out how to adjust their bureaucracy to make these sales happen. That's on them.

[Cheerful]

Thanks, pigou!  Enlightening.
Why is the U.S. not banning exports of medical supplies desperately needed in the U.S.?

[mamselle]

There's no shortage of N95 masks. See this report of a journalist who spent a day in the N95 mask trade world and saw 280 million US-manufactured masks get sold. They all got exported: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2020/03/30/i-spent-a-day-in-the-coronavirus-driven-feeding-frenzy-of-n95-mask-sellers-and-buyers-and-this-is-what-i-learned/

US hospitals have a shortage because they can't make fast procurement decisions. No supplier is going to wait around for a week to get some middle-manager to approve a purchase. If those details aren't worked out in advance, they're going to sell to someone who can move faster. Seems like a good month into this crisis, hospitals still haven't figured out how to adjust their bureaucracy to make these sales happen. That's on them.

I'm having difficulty believing this.

I worked as an accounting office assistant in a hospital before becoming a ward clerk on the floors.

There were weird backups that had to do with a balky, first-generation computer payment and ordering sytem, but there were workarounds, and the buyers could always pick up the phone, talk to the suppliers, and get STAT orders directly sent and billed.

Both the online ordering systems and the communications systems are more streamlined now than they were then. And no hospital president in their right mind is going to put a hold on orders of necessary equipment right now.

So I'd want to know more about that. In fact, sounds like a job for Snopes.

M.

[pigou]

Thanks, pigou!  Enlightening.
Why is the U.S. not banning exports of medical supplies desperately needed in the U.S.?

Because that would almost surely lead to retaliation. The US is getting much of its testing capacity from Switzerland, for example, so shutting down their supply of masks wouldn't be great. And that's just immediate consequences: the US would run out of most lifesaving drugs in a matter of weeks as they are imported. And if somehow, the government forced manufacturing in the US (which would take a long time to set up), the components to manufacture the drugs come out of China and India.

The modern world just doesn't work without trade and the restrictions that are starting to pop up are just causing much bigger problems with some delays, that inevitably we will hear nobody could have seen coming. Incidentally, it also took the US some time to eliminate tariffs on ventilators and masks from China, which meant nobody imported them early on when international shipping was still more easily available than it is now. At this point, pharmaceutical companies are chartering cargo planes to keep lifesaving drugs flowing, but there's a shortage of those, too, and shipping prices have gone up as much as 10-fold. Cargo ships, the usual and much more affordable channel, are facing massive delays and container shortages due to quarantine measures.

I'm having difficulty believing this.

Forbes isn't generally known for manufacturing fake news. Here's some corroborating information: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/3m-ramps-up-n95-respirator-production-amid-global-coronavirus-outbreak.html

Prestige Ameritech, based in North Richland Hills, Texas, said it received a total order of 100 million N95 respirators from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

I'm sure it's not an issue with the IT system, but there are often procedures that require multiple offers before a purchase can be made. Making a multi-million dollar purchase in a matter of hours just isn't something hospitals are set up to do. And a couple days ago, the mayor of Pittsburgh was pretty active on Twitter about how he can't procure any supplies without going through a formal bidding process, which in turn had to be open for a minimum 30 days (I believe it was). No mask supplier is going to wait 30 days to perhaps make a sale when they can have a buyer signing by the end of day instead. Basically, same reason why houses in some markets are sold cash-only: the seller doesn't need to risk the mortgage process falling through when there are plenty of interested buyers.

[ciao_yall]

There's no shortage of N95 masks. See this report of a journalist who spent a day in the N95 mask trade world and saw 280 million US-manufactured masks get sold. They all got exported: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2020/03/30/i-spent-a-day-in-the-coronavirus-driven-feeding-frenzy-of-n95-mask-sellers-and-buyers-and-this-is-what-i-learned/

US hospitals have a shortage because they can't make fast procurement decisions. No supplier is going to wait around for a week to get some middle-manager to approve a purchase. If those details aren't worked out in advance, they're going to sell to someone who can move faster. Seems like a good month into this crisis, hospitals still haven't figured out how to adjust their bureaucracy to make these sales happen. That's on them.

That's ridiculous.

Routine supply items such as masks, gowns, and gloves are on blanket purchase orders with set suppliers. They just increase the PO and the order size when they need more. Which happens, one would imagine, pretty regularly.

[ciao_yall]

Thanks, pigou!  Enlightening.
Why is the U.S. not banning exports of medical supplies desperately needed in the U.S.?

Because that would almost surely lead to retaliation. The US is getting much of its testing capacity from Switzerland, for example, so shutting down their supply of masks wouldn't be great. And that's just immediate consequences: the US would run out of most lifesaving drugs in a matter of weeks as they are imported.  And if somehow, the government forced manufacturing in the US (which would take a long time to set up), the components to manufacture the drugs come out of China and India.

The modern world just doesn't work without trade and the restrictions that are starting to pop up are just causing much bigger problems with some delays, that inevitably we will hear nobody could have seen coming. Incidentally, it also took the US some time to eliminate tariffs on ventilators and masks from China, which meant nobody imported them early on when international shipping was still more easily available than it is now. At this point, pharmaceutical companies are chartering cargo planes to keep lifesaving drugs flowing, but there's a shortage of those, too, and shipping prices have gone up as much as 10-fold. Cargo ships, the usual and much more affordable channel, are facing massive delays and container shortages due to quarantine measures.

This, I agree with.

Apparently the medical supply manufacturers are flooded with orders and have asked the CDC to help them prioritize which orders to fill nationally based on the greatest need. CDC has visibility into this - they don't.

[ciao_yall]

There's no shortage of N95 masks. See this report of a journalist who spent a day in the N95 mask trade world and saw 280 million US-manufactured masks get sold. They all got exported: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2020/03/30/i-spent-a-day-in-the-coronavirus-driven-feeding-frenzy-of-n95-mask-sellers-and-buyers-and-this-is-what-i-learned/

Okay, I just read this article.

The issue is that the market price is allowed to change. Those other countries probably have fixed government prices so they can easily extend their PO's without negotiating. That is causing the hangup.

Same with transportation costs suddenly shooting up.

And that poor guy who was stocking up on hand sanitizer is stuck?

Guess profiteering is only allowed if you are a big wheel with a big lobbyist.