Given the urgency of the situation and the risk to the lives of the sick passengers, the Cuban government has decided to allow the docking of this vessel and will adopt established sanitary measures to receive all citizens on board, in accordance with protocols established by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Cuban Ministry of Public Health.
The urgent need for a vaccine
Public health experts say that if the COVID-19 epidemic is not successfully contained, it could become a global pandemic, perhaps spreading to 80% of the world’s population. With a 1% mortality rate, this would mean that 70 million people would die of the disease. With a 2% mortality rate, the total number of deaths would be twice that number, 140 million people. Comparable numbers of people have died in the tragic wars and pandemics of the past. There is a serious danger that it might happen again.Read More »
Editor’s note: The University of California at San Francisco Hospital is considered a leading health institution in the U.S. with specialization in treatment and handling of infectious disease. Like many other institutions of this type, it has put together one or more panels of experts to study the current crisis and to make proposals to the government and suggestions to the public. Unlike the press briefings prepared by the task force put together by the Trump administration, these doctors and experts do not filter their findings through a president more interested in the stock market than the health of the American people.
Peoples World prints what follows as a service to our readers and the public. The following are notes describing the main assessments of the UCSF panel when it met on March 10. They were posted online by Dr. Jordan Schlain at UCSF. The notes summarize the assessment of the official meeting on that date of the University of California, San Francisco BioHub Panel on COVID-19. While some of the findings are extremely troubling the assessments also include practical suggestions people can follow in dealing with this serious pandemic, particularly given that we have a health care system in this country which is in and of itself worthy of being declared a national emergency.
John Wojcik, editor in chief
German government officials are expressing anger about attempts by the Trump administration to bribe German scientists into selling their work on a cure for coronavirus exclusively to the United States.
Top ministers in the government in Berlin are confirming reports over the weekend that Trump secretly offered huge sums of money so he could get exclusive access to a coronavirus vaccine currently under development in Germany.
Since signing of the U.S-Taliban deal, some revealing reports are coming out. A Washington, March 11, 2020 datelined AFP report, “Taliban fought IS with ‘limited’ U.S. military support, U.S. general reveals”, said:
“The Taliban has shown that it can fight and defeat Islamic State group jihadists in Afghanistan, a top U.S. general said Tuesday, revealing for the first time that it had done so in recent months with “very limited” U.S. military support.
“‘It was a bloody mess, but they did it,’ General Kenneth McKenzie, head of the U.S. Central Command, said of the Taliban’s virtual defeat of IS in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province in recent months.Read More »
Caracas, March 14 (RHC)–Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab denounced Friday that coercive and unilateral measures imposed by the United States prevent the purchase of drugs and supplies to confront COVID-19.
Speaking about the confirmation of the first two cases of the disease this Friday, the magistrate reaffirmed that in the midst of the situation the world is going through because of the pandemic, it is unacceptable that punitive actions be maintained, which constitute a massive violation of human rights.
“It is ethically unacceptable that such sanctions be maintained against Venezuela. Those who radically oppose the Venezuelan State must take a step forward and ask for the cessation of these measures,” the Venezuelan official said in reference to sectors of the opposition.
China released a report titled “The Record of Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2019” prepared by the State Council Information Office. It focused attention on income inequality, racism, gender discrimination, gun violence, cruelty to migrants, imperialism through propaganda, sanctions, and war.Read More »
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