Sexual Wellness and Safe Sex related Discussions

[Captain Solo]

To date US has 1.54 M confirmed infection with 290 K recovered and 90,694 deaths in a population of 330 M. About 25% confirmed infected recovered.

That translates to 467 confirmed infection and 27 deaths per 100 K population, or 1 death per 3,638.

The confirmed infected had obvious symptoms and were tested by healthcare. The infected population with no or mild symptoms who went untested are unknown. The infected rate may be 10 times or 5,000 per 100 K pop and going higher. It's unknown that if even recovered they still carry the virus and can infect others. The probability for US population to get infected is conservatively estimated 1 in 20 presently and going higher. For guys who are going to La Zona to hump chicas, the probability is much higher due to mingling in close proximity to a high risk population, may be 10 times higher, or 1 in 2.

A strong and healthy bro was infected, lost taste and smell for 2 days then returned to normal. He said he may have contracted it in La Zona or at his health club. He's going in for antibodies test this week. I urged him to post his infos but he was reluctant, probably does not want to be avoided by his favoritas or ridiculed by the bullies in this forum.

A few bros have decades of experiences with lots of local contacts and good intelligence in La Zona that would be very helpful, but are reluctant to post primarily to avoid being roughed up. I urge the bros to go easy on other posters. If disputing someone, make sure you do your homework, providing solid facts, reliable data or credible witnesses.

[Sound7]

Alameda County has about 141 cases and 5 deaths for every 100,000 residents, although that varies significantly by race. *Black Alameda County residents had disproportionally high death rates, with 9.6 deaths for every 100,000 residents compared to death rates of 5.3 for Latinos, 5.1 for white residents and 2.7 for Asian residents.

Will Tijuana transmission rate drop for HK to reopen?

Just a new normal.

https://www.welikela.com/how-safer-a...nty-to-reopen/

[Sound7]

Will Tijuana transmission rate drop for HK to reopen?

Just a new normal.

https://www.welikela.com/how-safer-a...nty-to-reopen/

Would require more Southern California counties robust roll out to Phase II Stay at Home Order modification to visit Tijuana. CBP warning are crystal clear in the Phase I period, "Stay at Home."

As of May 13, 2020.

Phase I.

All other counties.

LosAngeles County Mid July Phase II? Dr. Ferrer May 12.

Phase II Rollout.

Amador County.

Butte County.

El Dorado County.

Lessen County.

Neveda County.

Placer County.

Shasta County.

Cdph. Ca. Gov / Programs.

[Captain Solo]

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/13/212550...th-count-cases

Mexico is severely — and maybe purposely — undercounting its coronavirus deaths.

By some estimates, Mexico's coronavirus cases are 17 times higher than officially reported.

By Alex Ward@AlexWardVoxalex.warthe at vox.com May 13,2020, 1:40 pm EDT.

The coronavirus has killed thousands of people in Mexico. But suspicions swirl that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's administration is severely — and perhaps purposely — undercounting Mexico's Covid-19 deaths.

As of May 13, Mexico reported more than 38,000 infections and nearly 4,000 deaths. Those are by no means small numbers (even if they're leaps and bounds less than America's). But the problem, experts say, is that the real totals are likely orders of magnitude higher. How high, though, is anyone's guess.

"The numbers do not appear to reflect the death toll for certain," Donna Patterson, an expert on Mexico's health care system at Delaware State University, told me. "At the federal level, the numbers aren't being reported accurately."

Indeed, Mexican mayors, doctors, funeral home directors, and even former officials have said in recent weeks that they have reported death toll numbers only not to see them reflected in official federal government counts.

While the Mexican government itself has effectively acknowledged an undercount — saying it assumes the number of actual coronavirus cases is eight times higher than the numbers it has — its estimate is still far below what other experts contend.

A woman wears a mask while washing her hands in Mexico City on May 12. Ricardo Castelan Cruz / Eyepix Group / Barcroft Media via Getty Images.

It's not clear if the case-counting disparity comes from inefficiency, incompetence, or deliberate obfuscation, but it's a damning state of affairs. Some experts, like Dr. Laurie Ann Ximénez-Fyvie, the molecular genetics lab chief at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), think the undercount might be a deliberate decision by the federal government.

"If Mexico is good at anything, it's hiding numbers," she told me.

Recent media investigations, including by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Spain's El País, appear to support those claims. In fact, El País says that Mexico likely has between 620,000 and 730,000 coronavirus cases — about 17 times higher than the official count.

On top of that, Mexico also has one of the lowest testing rates among developed countries, and it doesn't appear that it'll increase anytime soon. Combined with the undercount, some experts say, the nation is flying blind as to the extent of its true coronavirus woes.

"The numbers are really not the problem," Ximénez-Fyvie said. The issue is that "we don't even know who the sick people are, and we don't know where they are," meaning Mexican health officials can't identify clusters of infection that may overwhelm the nation's health care system.

It's also not good news for North America in general. The US has a major crisis of its own, with roughly 1. 3 million cases and more than 80,000 deaths as of May 13. Having a southern neighbor with similar issues will only make the disease in both countries — and throughout Central America — harder to quash.

For those and other reasons, experts want Mexico not only to ratchet up its coronavirus response but also to come clean with its statistics. Otherwise, former Mexican Health Minister José Narro Robles tweeted last month, the government will further foment "distrust and uncertainty. ".

"We can't keep up".

It's important to note that most countries are likely missing (and therefore undercounting) pandemic-caused deaths. But all it takes to realize that Mexico has a bigger problem on its hands is to listen to what local leaders are telling the media.

Jesús Roman, the mayor of Chimalhuacáand, a city near the nation's capital, told Al Jazeera on Sunday that the federal government "counted us as having 24 dead, but we had 87 — more than three times more than that."

Mayor Maricela Serrano of the central city of Ixtapaluca also told the outlet that "up until Saturday night, we had 54 people die of Covid-19. . And in the daily roundups from the state and federal government, they've only registered 16 deaths."

Those dealing with the bodies have been overwhelmed in recent weeks. "We are working triple what we usually do. We can't keep up," José Jardines, a crematorium official near Mexico City, told Al Jazeera. "Before, we cremated one to three bodies a day. Now, it's up to 15 or 20. " Cremation centers are so overworked that staff sometimes leave bodies at hospitals for an extra day because they don't have the space.

Even the president's allies are aware of the problem.

Mexico City's mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, suspected the federal government's data was wrong and had staff call public hospitals in the capital to get their death counts, the New York Times reported. They found that the hospitals' numbers were about three times higher than the federal government's. However, she has yet to lambaste President López Obrador because of their close political ties.

Despite what local political and medical leaders say, the federal government isn't listening. And that's only likely to make Mexico's coronavirus recovery efforts much, much harder. "Maybe Mexico will be the textbook case of what happens when the government just did nothing," UNAM's Ximénez-Fyvie told me.

The major problems in Mexico's coronavirus response.

To understand how Mexico got into this mess, you need to understand two things: how slowly the government responded, and its current, controversial strategy.

Even as the coronavirus made its way into the country, Mexico's president — who goes by AMLO — made repeated statements to assure the country that everything was fine.

"Live life as usual," he said in a video posted to Facebook on March 22, six days after US President Donald Trump first debuted his "15 days to slow the spread" plan. "If you're able and have the means to do so, continue taking your family out to eat. Because that strengthens the economy," he said in the video, seated outside at a restaurant.

In fact, he proceeded to hold political rallies, kiss supporters, and request that Mexicans go out shopping to keep the nation's businesses humming. Only 250 cases had been reported by the end of March.

AMLO's dithering delayed Mexico's reaction to the growing crisis, and gave thousands of Mexicans a false sense of security. Recent Google mobility reports, which track how often people in a country roam around outside, showed that Mexicans observed social distancing measures less seriously than nations in Europe or even the US.

However, an important caveat is that nearly 60 percent of Mexicans work in the "informal economy" as street chefs, artists, construction workers, and the like. Their livelihoods depend on working outside to sell their goods and services. Without doing so, their ability to purchase food and necessities for themselves and their families becomes near impossible.

Without a major intervention from AMLO and his government, then, a major coronavirus spread was going to be the likely outcome.

The government did, eventually, start to counter the disease in March. But as Ximénez-Fyvie told me, the three phases of Mexico's initially promising coronavirus strategy quickly faltered.

The government's "Phase 1" plan, she said, was to test imported cases of coronavirus and track their contacts. That made sense as a start, she said, as the only way the disease was likely to get into the country was from abroad. In her mind, Mexico's government responded appropriately and well.

But the strategy broke down in "Phase 2. " Using the Sentinel surveillance program at more than 250 labs around Mexico, the government could track local transmissions of Covid-19. This system, which is also used in the US and Canada, allowed health officials to estimate the number of coronavirus cases in the country.

That's all well and good, but the problem is the government had no idea who, exactly, these people were, if they were symptomatic, or if they were isolating. The only way to do that would be not just to estimate the number of cases, but to confirm them with a widespread testing and tracing program. But since Mexico had (and still has) the lowest testing rate per 1,000 people among developed nations, its ability to figure any of that out was next to impossible.

World Economic Forum.

So the government started to guess what the scope of the outbreak really was. On April 8, Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez, Mexico's Covid-19 response chief, told CNN he and his team would multiply the total of confirmed, tested coronavirus cases by eight. He said he arrived at that number because the estimates from the Sentinel program were eight times higher than the confirmed infections total.

Such a back-of-the-envelope calculation, experts say, isn't typical for governments, though all countries must do some educated guesswork during a pandemic. What's more, Ximénez-Fyvie told me, López-Gatell's own numbers from March and April show that Sentinel estimates were about 24 to 31 times higher than the tested, confirmed cases.

López-Gatell has yet to amend his government's estimation plan. In fact, he's defended the unknown spread in Mexico because he claims it will lead the country toward a herd immunity against the disease faster.

"How many cases are there? A lot, a lot. Hundreds of thousands," he said during a May 7 press conference. "If only it were millions, because that's what would stop the epidemic: to have a lot of infected people. ".

Importantly, however, the science is still not clear if a country can achieve herd immunity from the coronavirus, and any attempts to achieve such a status puts the most vulnerable people in danger.

López-Gatell 7-may: "en la medida en que hay enfermedad, infecciones, contagios. Siempre puede regresar a un país. Excepto que alcancemos un elemento que técnicamente se llama «inmunidad de rebaño»."

The situation is likely to get worse now that Mexico has been in "Phase 3" of its coronavirus plan since late April. The goal is to prevent hospitals from getting overrun with sick patients and no longer emphasize tracking the estimated number of cases through the Sentinel program.

There's a good reason for this focus: Mexico's health care system is in poor shape. It has about 1. 4 hospital beds per 1,000 people, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, just over 2,000 ventilators in the entire country, and few coronavirus tests.

But on its own, boosting health care would be a major undertaking for Mexico. AMLO has severely cut the health care sector in an effort to control government spending. In 2019, for example, around 10,000 health professionals were laid off due to a 44 percent cut to a public health and welfare agency. That's led to delays in surgeries for children, reductions in staff, and cancellations of many forms of treatments for patients.

The bigger issue, though, is that prioritizing hospital capacity won't do anything to stop the spread of infection, which has been poorly tracked and may end up overwhelming medical facilities in the long term.

"It's like your house was flooded because you left your faucet on, and you decided to solve the problem by grabbing a bucket to scoop the water out. The house will continue to flood until you turn the faucet off," said Ximénez-Fyvie.

[Sound7]

Would require more Southern California counties robust roll out to Phase II Stay at Home Order modification to visit Tijuana. CBP warning are crystal clear in the Phase I period, "Stay at Home."

As of May 13, 2020.

Phase I.

All other counties.

LosAngeles County Mid July Phase II? Dr. Ferrer May 12.

Phase II Rollout.

Amador County.

Butte County.

El Dorado County.

Lessen County.

Neveda County.

Placer County.

Shasta County.

Cdph. Ca. Gov / Programs.

[Captain Solo]

Just as suspected, AMLO government is reporting only about 30% of CoVid-9 deaths.

Mexico is trying to keep its economy going at the same time killing off the marginal population.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/w...sultPosition=3

Hidden toll: Mexico ignores Waves of Coronavirus deaths in Capital.

By Azam AhmedPhotographs by Daniel Berehulak May 8, 2020.

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican government is not reporting hundreds, possibly thousands, of deaths from the coronavirus in Mexico City, dismissing anxious officials who have tallied more than three times as many fatalities in the capital than the government publicly acknowledges, according to officials and confidential data.

The tensions have come to a head in recent weeks, with Mexico City alerting the government to the deaths repeatedly, hoping it will come clean to the public about the true toll of the virus on the nation's biggest city and, by extension, the country at large.

But that has not happened. Doctors in overwhelmed hospitals in Mexico City say the reality of the epidemic is being hidden from the country. In some hospitals, patients lie on the floor, splayed on mattresses. Elderly people are propped up on metal chairs because there are not enough beds, while patients are turned away to search for space in less-prepared hospitals. Many die while searching, several doctors said.

"It's like we doctors are living in two different worlds," said Dr. Giovanna Avila, who works at Hospital de Especialidades Belisario Domínguez. "One is inside of the hospital with patients dying all the time. And the other is when we walk out onto the streets and see people walking around, clueless of what is going on and how bad the situation really is. ".

Mexico City officials have tabulated more than 2,500 deaths from the virus and from serious respiratory illnesses that doctors suspect were related to Covid-19, according to the data, which was reviewed by The New York Times. Yet the federal government is reporting about 700 in the area, which includes Mexico City and the municipalities on its outskirts.

Nationwide, the federal government has reported about 3,000 confirmed deaths from the virus, plus nearly 250 suspected of being related, in a country of more than 120 million people. But experts say Mexico has only a minimal sense of the real scale of the epidemic because it is testing so few people.

Far fewer than one in 1,000 people in Mexico are tested for the virus — by far the lowest of the dozens of nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which average about 23 tests for every 1,000 people.

The government says Mexico has been faring better than many of the world's largest countries, and on Monday its Covid-19 czar estimated that the final death toll would be around 6,000 people.

"We have flattened the curve," Hugo López-Gatell, the health ministry official who has become the face of the country's response, said this week.

But the government did not respond to questions about the deaths in Mexico City. It also denied repeated requests by The Times over the course of three weeks to identify all deaths related to respiratory illnesses since January, saying the data was incomplete.

One former health secretary, José Narro Robles, has accused Mr. López-Gatell of lying to the people of Mexico. And some state governments are beginning to draw similar conclusions: that, much like Mexico City found, the data presented by the government does not reflect reality.

Official counts in many countries have understated the number of deaths during the pandemic, especially where limited testing has prevented the virus from being diagnosed, a Times review of mortality data has found. In Ecuador, six times more people have died than official figures reflect, the data show. In Italy, the overall increase in deaths in March was nearly twice official counts.

In Mexico City, the doubts started a month ago, when the city's mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, began to suspect that federal data and modeling on the epidemic were flawed, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

She had already instructed her staff to call every public hospital in the Mexico City area to ask about all confirmed and suspected Covid-19 deaths, the people said. In the last week, that effort found that the deaths were more than three times what the federal government reported.

The disagreements have taken place largely behind the scenes, as Ms. Sheinbaum, who declined to comment for this article, has been loath to publicly embarrass President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, her close political ally. The city and the federal government continue to work together on a number of fronts, including getting ventilators.

But the data from Mexico City calls into question the federal government's grasp of the crisis in the country.

With such limited testing and doubts about the government's models, experts say federal estimates for when the nation will reach its peak, how long the epidemic will last and how bad the damage will be may not be reliable.

That disconnect has left cities and states across the country scrambling to meet the demand for protective equipment and ventilators. It also underplays the severity of the epidemic for millions of Mexicans, making it hard for them to determine how bad the situation is — and how seriously to take it.

Image Coffins of Covid-19 victims were stacked behind the crematorium at a cemetery in Xochimilco on Thursday.

"That is shocking," said Fernando Alarid-Escudero, who has a Ph. The. In health decision sciences and who developed an independent model in collaboration with scientists at Stanford University to chart the curve of the epidemic in Mexico. "If that is case, and we are not really capturing all those people who eventually die, we are not getting a sense of the picture."

"We are way underestimating the magnitude of the epidemic," he added.

In Tijuana, hospitals are already overwhelmed. Doctors and nurses across the country have held public protests against the lack of protective gear, and several hospitals along the border have suffered outbreaks of the virus among medical personnel. Federal officials have been scrambling to buy respirators, long after seeing the outbreaks grip China, Europe and the United States.

One big reason for the competing death tolls in Mexico has to do with the way the federal government is testing, vetting and reporting the data. The official results include a two-week lag, people familiar with the process say, which means timely information is not available publicly.

More worrisome, they say, are the many deaths absent from the data altogether, as suggested by the figures from Mexico City, where the virus has struck hardest of all. Some people die from acute respiratory illness and are cremated without ever getting tested, officials say. Others are dying at home without being admitted to a hospital — and are not even counted under Mexico City's statistics.

Beyond that, Mexico appears to be vastly underreporting suspected deaths from coronavirus. Data published by the federal government on May 7 show only 245 suspicious deaths nationwide.

The gap in information has left many Mexicans with a sense that their country has avoided the harrowing outbreaks afflicting nations like the United States, where nearly 1. 2 million people have been infected and more than 70,000 people have died, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Publicly, Mr. López-Gatell, the health ministry official, has become something of a celebrity, steering nightly news conferences in which he assures the public that things are moving according to plan.

But there have been problems with the government's assumptions from the very beginning, according to three people familiar with its preparations. As early as February, they said, the government was using Wuhan, China — the city where the pandemic originated — to model the potential needs and response in Mexico.

But those calculations quickly went awry, the people said, as officials realized the dynamic in China was entirely different from the one in Mexico. As the outbreak spread in Wuhan, Chinese officials locked down the city and the surrounding province, prohibiting tens of millions of people from traveling.

In Mexico, by contrast, the lockdown measures have been optional, with officials simply urging people to go to hospitals or stay at home, depending on symptoms. There are no travel restrictions in or out of Mexico City.

In the last month, the government has added experts to review the data and analysis, after urging from the country's foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, and other officials. But even those newer models make assumptions that experts feel are inadequate.

The main model the country is believed to now be using assumes only 5 percent of the infected population show symptoms, and that only 5 percent of those patients will go to the hospital, according to modeling documents obtained by The Times.

"Their model is wrong" said Laurie Ann Ximénez-Fyvie, a Harvard-trained Ph. The. At the National Autonomous University of Mexico, adding that symptomatic and severe cases could be significantly higher. "There is very good consensus on that."

Several experts also questioned Mexico's assumptions of how quickly the epidemic will pass. Its model shows a sharp rise in infections, followed by a sharp decline. But in almost no other country in the world has there been a rapid decline after a peak.

"There is a long tail for the curve, and the number of deaths does not drop to zero anytime in the near future," said Nilanjan Chatterjee, a professor in the department of biostatistics at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. "The graph they are using is inconsistent with the shapes of the curve in other countries.

[Travv]

Should be a Headline: German Autopsy Study Finds every Coronavirus Victim had Previous Illness — All Had Cancer, Lung Disease, Were Heavy Smokers or Morbidly Obese.

Gateway Pundit .

05/11/2020.

Jim Hoft.

The WHO Director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, estimated on March 3, 2020 that the coronavirus mortality rate was 3. 4% This was a completely inaccurate number that caused a global panic. Via Dr. Andrew Bostom.

Head of Forensic Pathology in Hamburg on covid19 autopsy findings: "not a single person w / out previous illness has died of the virus in Hamburg. All had cancer, chronic lung dis, were heavy smokers or heavily obese, or had diabetes or cardiovasc dis" 1/3 https://t.co/u4Pi9ntRT0 pic. twitter.com/ PaSdh2 UnF5.

— Andrew Bostom (at andrewbostom) May 11,2020.

3/3 "By focusing strongly on the rather few negative processes, fears are created that are very burdensome. Covid-19 is a deadly disease only in exceptional cases, but in most cases it is a mostly harmless virus infection".

Add it to the pile:

New York City: 99% of fatalities of all age groups had underlying conditions.

Italy: 98%.

Britain: 95%https://t.co/uAhgn5I9anhttps://t.co/....co/TUNgUyFcJf.

— Karl Dierenbach (at Dierenbach) May 11,2020.

The data provided by NHS England shows that, as of 5 pm on 26 April, 18,749 people had died in hospital with the virus.

In a small number of cases, it was not possible to confirm if a patient did or did not have an underlying health condition.

But for those where it was, 95% were found to have serious pre-existing issues. . ."
Commenter: Instead of mandated sheltering and protection of the institutionalized elderly, and strongly recommending supporting the most vulnerable, the main USA Approach was trying to shelter all the healthy from all the healthy but doing not much to insure the most vulnerable most of all were sheltered. What a waste.

[Captain Solo]

A good article in LA Times today.

CoVid-19 is causing widespread famine all over the world, including Mexico. Millions people are facing death by starvation.

A lot of bar and street girls in Tijuana live hand to mouth with large families to support. They are definitely going hungry. Perhaps you pervs can think of ways to help at least a few girls whom you know in this horrible human-caused global disaster, started by a dishonest and brutal political regime.

http://origin.misc.pagesuite.com/pdf...591d4464cb.pdf

[Captain Solo]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/10/h...c-history.html

How pandemics end.

An infectious outbreak can conclude in more ways than one, historians say. But for whom does it end, and who gets to decide?

By Gina Kolata May 10,2020 Updated 9:43 am ET.

When will the Covid-19 pandemic end? And how?

According to historians, pandemics typically have two types of endings: the medical, which occurs when the incidence and death rates plummet, and the social, when the epidemic of fear about the disease wanes.

"When people ask, 'When will this end? They are asking about the social ending," said Dr. Jeremy Greene, a historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins.

In other words, an end can occur not because a disease has been vanquished but because people grow tired of panic mode and learn to live with a disease. Allan Brandt, a Harvard historian, said something similar was happening with Covid-19: "As we have seen in the debate about opening the economy, many questions about the so-called end are determined not by medical and public health data but by sociopolitical processes. ".

Endings "are very, very messy," said Dora Vargha, a historian at the University of Exeter. "Looking back, we have a weak narrative. For whom does the epidemic end, and who gets to say?

In the path of fear.

An epidemic of fear can occur even without an epidemic of illness. Dr. Susan Murray, of the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, saw that firsthand in 2014 when she was a fellow at a rural hospital in Ireland.

In the preceding months, more than 11,000 people in West Africa had died from Ebola, a terrifying viral disease that was highly infectious and often fatal. The epidemic seemed to be waning, and no cases had occurred in Ireland, but the public fear was palpable.

"On the street and on the wards, people are anxious," Dr. Murray recalled recently in an article in The New England Journal of Medicine. "Having the wrong color skin is enough to earn you the side-eye from your fellow passengers on the bus or train. Cough once, and you will find them shuffling away from you. ".

The Dublin hospital workers were warned to prepare for the worst. They were terrified, and worried that they lacked protective equipment. When a young man arrived in the emergency room from a country with Ebola patients, no one wanted to go near him; nurses hid, and doctors threatened to leave the hospital.

Dr. Murray alone dared treat him, she wrote, but his cancer was so advanced that all she could offer was comfort care. A few days later, tests confirmed that the man did not have Ebola; he died an hour later. Three days afterward, the World Health Organization declared the Ebola epidemic over.

Dr. Murray wrote: "If we are not prepared to fight fear and ignorance as actively and as thoughtfully as we fight any other virus, it is possible that fear can do terrible harm to vulnerable people, even in places that never see a single case of infection during an outbreak. And a fear epidemic can have far worse consequences when complicated by issues of race, privilege, and language. ".

Black Death and dark memories.

Image Disinfecting an autopsy table at a plague hospital in Mukden, China, in 1910, during a wave of pneumonic plague, also caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis. Credit. Library of Congress / Corbis / VCG, via Getty Images.

Bubonic plague has struck several times in the past 2,000 years, killing millions of people and altering the course of history. Each epidemic amplified the fear that came with the next outbreak.

The disease is caused by a strain of bacteria, Yersinia pestis, that lives on fleas that live on rats. But bubonic plague, which became known as the Black Death, also can be passed from infected person to infected person through respiratory droplets, so it cannot be eradicated simply by killing rats.

Historians describe three great waves of plague, said Mary Fissell, a historian at Johns Hopkins: the Plague of Justinian, in the sixth century; the medieval epidemic, in the 14th century; and a pandemic that struck in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The medieval pandemic began in 1331 in China. The illness, along with a civil war that was raging at the time, killed half the population of China. From there, the plague moved along trade routes to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. In the years between 1347 and 1351, it killed at least a third of the European population. Half of the population of Siena, Italy, died.

"It is impossible for the human tongue to recount the awful truth," wrote the 14th-century chronicler Agnolo di Tura. "Indeed, one who did not see such horribleness can be called blessed. " The infected, he wrote, "swell beneath the armpits and in their groins, and fall over while talking. " The dead were buried in pits, in piles.

In Florence, wrote Giovanni Boccaccio, "No more respect was accorded to dead people than would nowadays be accorded to dead goats. " Some hid in their homes. Others refused to accept the threat. Their way of coping, Boccaccio wrote, was to "drink heavily, enjoy life to the full, go round singing and merrymaking, and gratify all of one's cravings when the opportunity emerged, and shrug the whole thing off as one enormous joke."

That pandemic ended, but the plague recurred. One of the worst outbreaks began in China in 1855 and spread worldwide, killing more than 12 million in India alone. Health authorities in Bombay burned whole neighborhoods trying to rid them of the plague. "Nobody knew if it made a difference," the Yale historian Frank Snowden said.

Image Dissecting rats in New Orleans in 1914 for signs that they might be carrying bubonic plague. Credit. Corbis, via Getty Images.

It is not clear what made the bubonic plague die down. Some scholars have argued that cold weather killed the disease-carrying fleas, but that would not have interrupted the spread by the respiratory route, Dr. Snowden noted.

Or perhaps it was a change in the rats. By the 19th century, the plague was being carried not by black rats but by brown rats, which are stronger and more vicious and more likely to live apart from humans.

"You certainly wouldn't want one for a pet," Dr. Snowden said.

Another hypothesis is that the bacterium evolved to be less deadly. Or maybe actions by humans, such as the burning of villages, helped quell the epidemic.

The plague never really went away. In the United States, infections are endemic among prairie dogs in the Southwest and can be transmitted to people. Dr. Snowden said that one of his friends became infected after a stay at a hotel in New Mexico. The previous occupant of his room had a dog, which had fleas that carried the microbe.

Such cases are rare, and can now be successfully treated with antibiotics, but any report of a case of the plague stirs up fear.

One disease that actually ended.

Image Edward Jenner, one of the early developers of the smallpox vaccine, inoculating a child from the disease in 1796. Credit. Hulton Archive / Getty Images.

Among the diseases to have achieved a medical end is smallpox. But it is exceptional for several reasons: There is an effective vaccine, which gives lifelong protection; the virus, Variola minor, has no animal host, so eliminating the disease in humans meant total elimination; and its symptoms are so unusual that infection is obvious, allowing for effective quarantines and contact tracing.

But while it still raged, smallpox was horrific. Epidemic after epidemic swept the world, for at least 3,000 years. Individuals infected with the virus developed a fever, then a rash that turned into pus-filled spots, which became encrusted and fell off, leaving scars. The disease killed three out of 10 of its victims, often after immense suffering.

In 1633, an epidemic among Native Americans "disrupted all the native communities in the northeast and certainly facilitated English settlement in Massachusetts," said Harvard historian Dr. David S. Jones. William Bradford, leader of the Plymouth colony, wrote an account of the disease in Native Americans, saying the broken pustules would effectively glue a patient's skin to the mat he lay on, only to be torn off. Bradford wrote: "When they turn them, a whole side will flay off at once as it were, and they will be all of a gore blood, most fearful to behold."

The last person to contract smallpox naturally was Ali Maow Maalin, a hospital cook in Somalia, in 1977. He recovered, only to die of malaria in 2013.

Forgotten influenzas.

The 1918 flu is held up today as the example of the ravages of a pandemic and the value of quarantines and social distancing. Before it ended, the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people worldwide. It preyed on young to middle-aged adults — orphaning children, depriving families of breadwinners, killing troops in the midst of World War I.

In the autumn of 1918, William Vaughan, a prominent doctor, was dispatched to Camp Devens near Boston to report on a flu that was raging there. He saw "hundreds of stalwart young men in the uniform of their country, coming into the wards of the hospital in groups of ten or more," he wrote. "They are placed on the cots until every bed is full, yet others crowd in. Their faces soon wear a bluish cast, a distressing cough brings up blood stained sputum. In the morning the dead bodies are stacked up in the morgue like cord wood. ".

The virus, he wrote, "demonstrated the inferiority of human inventions in the destruction of human life. ".

After sweeping through the world, that flu faded away, evolving into a variant of the more benign flu that comes around every year.

"Maybe it was like a fire that, having burned the available and easily accessible wood, burns down," Dr. Snowden said.

It ended socially, too. World War I was over; people were ready for a fresh start, a new era, and eager to put the nightmare of disease and war behind them. Until recently, the 1918 flu was largely forgotten.

Other flu pandemics followed, none so bad but all nonetheless sobering. In the Hong Kong flu of 1968, one million people died worldwide, including 100,000 in the United States, mostly people older than 65. That virus still circulates as a seasonal flu, and its initial path of destruction — and the fear that went with it — is rarely recalled.

How will Covid-19 end?

Will that happen with Covid-19?

One possibility, historians say, is that the coronavirus pandemic could end socially before it ends medically. People may grow so tired of the restrictions that they declare the pandemic over, even as the virus continues to smolder in the population and before a vaccine or effective treatment is found.

"I think there is this sort of social psychological issue of exhaustion and frustration," the Yale historian Naomi Rogers said. "We may be in a moment when people are just saying: 'That's enough. I deserve to be able to return to my regular life.'

It is happening already; in some states, governors have lifted restrictions, allowing hair salons, nail salons and gyms to reopen, in defiance of warnings by public health officials that such steps are premature. As the economic catastrophe wreaked by the lockdowns grows, more and more people may be ready to say "enough."

"There is this sort of conflict now," Dr. Rogers said. Public health officials have a medical end in sight, but some members of the public see a social end.

"Who gets to claim the end?" Dr. Rogers said. "If you push back against the notion of its ending, what are you pushing back against? What are you claiming when you say, 'No, it is not ending.'

The challenge, Dr. Brandt said, is that there will be no sudden victory. Trying to define the end of the epidemic "will be a long and difficult process."

[Goyo61]

Very sad. I didn't know who he was until now. I feel the say way he did. I have a lot of compassion for the girls in the Mexico sex industry etc.

Thanks for sharing.

Perhaps Scab is smart enough to start a Tijuana Putas' non profit in exchange for free, unlimited BBBJs and BBFSs in 5-star hotel Monito.

Jaime Montejo fought to protect sex workers from COVID-19 and much more. Then the virus came for him.

Mexico city. On a cloudy afternoon this week, a few dozen sex workers gathered outside a subway station in downtown Mexico City to remember their longtime leader.

Wearing surgical masks to protect against the coronavirus, the women prayed and sang and lighted candles around a photo of Jaime Montejo, who had devoted his life to giving these women a measure of dignity.

https://enewspaper.latimes.com/deskt...c-1cf40f61a5bb

[Captain Solo]

Looks like it's impossible to avoid CoVid-19 infection.

When the damages and the pains hit home, Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump will figure out creative ways to squeezed compensation out of the guilty parties.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/07/polit...-19/index.html

One of Trump's personal valets has tested positive for coronavirus.

By Kaitlan Collins and Peter Morris, CNN Updated 12:37 PM ET, Thu May 7, 2020.

(CNN) A member of the US Navy who serves as one of President Donald Trump's personal valets has tested positive for coronavirus, CNN learned Thursday, raising concerns about the President's possible exposure to the virus.

The valets are members of an elite military unit dedicated to the White House and often work very close to the President and first family. Trump was upset when he was informed Wednesday that the valet had tested positive, a source told CNN, and the President was subsequently tested again by the White House physician.

In a statement, the White House confirmed CNN's reporting that one of the President's staffers had tested positive.

"We were recently notified by the White House Medical Unit that a member of the United States Military, who works on the White House campus, has tested positive for Coronavirus," deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement. "The President and the Vice President have since tested negative for the virus and they remain in great health."

Valets assist the President and first family with a variety of personal tasks. They are responsible for the President's food and beverage not only in the West Wing but also travel with him when he's on the road or out of the country. Past presidents have relied on them not only for these matters, but also as confidants. The valets have an inside view to a president's personal life like few others.

A White House source said the valet, a man who has not been identified, exhibited "symptoms" Wednesday morning, and said the news that someone close to Trump had tested positive for coronavirus was "hitting the fan" in the West Wing.

Trump, who is a self-described germophobe, has chastised aides before who coughed or sneezed in his presence. He has claimed to rarely get sick himself.

Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and the senior staffers who regularly interact with them are still being tested weekly for coronavirus, two people familiar told CNN.

The White House is continuing to use the rapid Abbott Labs test, which provide results in about 15 minutes. Several officials who have received the test said it's often administered in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next door to the West Wing on the White House grounds. A medical official swabs the staffer's nostrils and informs them that they'll be notified within the next several minutes if it's positive.

Still, the White House has not enforced strict social distancing guidelines for staffers and few people inside the building wear masks during the day, including valets.

Trump said before traveling aboard Air Force One earlier this week that he was not concerned about being in close quarters with other people since those around him are regularly tested.

"The test result comes back in five minutes, and we have great testing. Or they wouldn't be allowed to travel with me," Trump said. "It's not my choice; it's a very strong group of people that want to make sure they are tested, including Secret Service."

Still, a negative test and lack of symptoms isn't a sure sign that someone can't spread the virus.

Doctors say the incubation period for the coronavirus varies. The incubation period is the time that it takes from when you are exposed to the virus to developing symptoms. It ranges anywhere from 2-14 days. The average incubation period is estimated to be five days, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

People can be infectious, meaning they can transmit the virus to somebody else, up to two days before they start showing symptoms. Like any other virus, this can vary from person to person.

The coronavirus is spread between people mainly through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes. These droplets can then spread to the nose or mouth of people nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs, according to the CDC. This type of spread is more likely when people are in close contact with each other, within about six feet.

The CDC says that people who feel healthy but recently had close contact with a person with Covid-19 should stay home and monitor their health. They should quarantine by staying home until 14 days after their last exposure and should check their temperature twice a day and watch for symptoms. The CDC also recommends they stay away from people who are at higher risk for becoming very ill.

The White House did not say whether Trump would adhere to those guidelines after his valet tested positive.

CNN's Kevin Liptak, Jacqueline Howard, Maggie Fox and Jamie Gumbrecht contributed to this report.

[Captain Solo]

Perhaps Scab is smart enough to start a Tijuana Putas' non profit in exchange for free, unlimited BBBJs and BBFSs in 5-star hotel Monito.

Jaime Montejo fought to protect sex workers from COVID-19 and much more. Then the virus came for him.

Mexico city. On a cloudy afternoon this week, a few dozen sex workers gathered outside a subway station in downtown Mexico City to remember their longtime leader.

Wearing surgical masks to protect against the coronavirus, the women prayed and sang and lighted candles around a photo of Jaime Montejo, who had devoted his life to giving these women a measure of dignity.

https://enewspaper.latimes.com/deskt...c-1cf40f61a5bb

[TheShyster]

[Personal message deleted by Admin]

==============================================

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[Captain Solo]

BodyAnyBody.

Would be ten times safer than standing downwind of Scab's pus-dripping GFs.

Thanks buddy.

[BodyAnybody]

BodyAnybodyNobody: You go right ahead and take your jog through the medical waste of your desires.

I'll be right with you.

Cheering you on.

Probably remotely.

Thanks buddy.