43 people being monitored for possible exposure to coronavirus
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EVERETT — The first person diagnosed with the Wuhan coronavirus in the United States is being treated by a few medical workers and a robot.
The robot, equipped with a stethoscope, is helping doctors take the man’s vitals and communicate with him through a large screen, said Dr. George Diaz, chief of the infectious disease division at the Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett.
Image of the robot caring for a Snohomish County man with coronavirus (CNN photo)
The man, who is in his 30s, was diagnosed with the virus on Monday. He initially went to an urgent care clinic on January 19 and told the staff that he was concerned about possibly having symptoms of the novel coronavirus because he recently traveled to Wuhan, China, Diaz said.
The Snohomish County resident was in stable condition Thursday and remains in isolation, Diaz said.
Washington state health officials confirmed Thursday that they have reached out to 43 people considered “close contacts” of the 30-year-old man, who identified the people he had interacted with since returning from Wuhan, China. Those contacts will be called daily and actively monitored for signs of any illness.
He arrived at the hospital in a special isolated gurney called an ISOPOD and has been treated in a two-bed isolated area away from busy sections of the hospital, the doctor said.
The gurney that brought in the Snohomish County man who has Wuhan coronavirus (CNN photo)
“The nursing staff in the room move the robot around so we can see the patient in the screen, talk to him,” Diaz said, adding the use of the robot minimizes exposure of medical staff to the infected man.
It’s unclear when the patient will be released because the CDC, which is set to provide the discharge details, has recommended additional testing.
“They’re looking for ongoing presence of the virus,” Diaz told CNN on Thursday. “They’re looking to see when the patient is no longer contagious.”
About two weeks ago, the hospital tested its protocol for treating patients with highly contagious diseases such as MERS and Ebola. The hospital made changes after the Ebola outbreak.
“That’s why we set up protocols that will allow us to treat patients with infectious diseases in a way that we can isolate them without spreading the virus to anyone,” Diaz told CNN en Español.
Washington state health officials confirmed Thursday they have been reaching out to 43 people considered to be “close contacts” of the patient.
The department defined “close contacts” as anyone who interacted with the patient and came within 3 to 6 feet of the infected person, for a prolonged period of time while infectious or had direct contact with his secretions.
The virus has killed at least 25 people in China, seven of whom did not have preexisting conditions before they contracted the illness, and sickened more than 800, as far afield as the US.
The true extent of the Wuhan coronavirus is unclear, however, and official figures may be an underestimation as mild symptoms and delayed onset mean cases are likely to have been undetected, a team of scientists have said.
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) emergency committee has said it’s too early to declare the outbreak an international public health emergency.
US President Donald Trump’s position on climate change has been in the spotlight again, after he criticised “prophets of doom” at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
At the event, which had sustainability as its main theme, and activist Greta Thunberg as its star guest, Mr Trump dismissed “alarmists” who wanted to “control every aspect of our lives” – while also expressing the US’s support for an initiative to plant one trillion trees.
If you judge the president based on his words alone, his views on climate change appear contradictory – and confusing.
He has called climate change “mythical”, “nonexistent”, or “an expensive hoax” – but also subsequently described it as a “serious subject” that is “very important to me”.
Still – if you sift through his multitude of tweets and statements, a number of themes emerge.
In 2009, Mr Trump actually signed a full-page advert in the New York Times, along with dozens of other business leaders, expressing support for legislation combating climate change.
“If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet,” the statement said.
But in the years that followed, he took an opposite approach on Twitter, with more than 120 posts questioning or making light of climate change.
In 2012, he famously said climate change was “created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive” – something he later claimed was a joke.
He regularly repeated claims that scientists has rebranded global warming as climate change because “the name global warming wasn’t working” (in fact, both terms are used, but experts at Nasa have argued that climate change is the more scientifically accurate term).
And he also has dozens of tweets suggesting that cold weather disproves climate change – despite the World Meteorological Organization saying that the 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years.
He has tweeted less about climate change in recent years – and, since being elected president, he has adopted an ambiguous, inconsistent stance in interviews and speeches.
But even when he acknowledges the significance of climate change, he tends to frame it in terms of clean air and water (which are not directly related to climate change), or the cost to business:
“I think there is some connectivity [between human activity and climate change]. There is some, something. It depends on how much. It also depends on how much it’s going to cost our companies.” – NYT interview, November 2016.
“I don’t think there’s a hoax. I do think there’s probably a difference. But I don’t know that it’s man-made… I don’t wanna give trillions and trillions of dollars.” – CBS interview, October 2018
“Climate change is very important to me. I’ve done many environmental impact statements in my life, and I believe very strongly in very, very crystal clear clean water and clean air.” – December 2019
“Nothing’s a hoax about that. It’s a very serious subject… I want the cleanest air, I want the cleanest water. The environment is very important to me. I also want jobs. I don’t want to close up our industry because somebody said you have to go with wind.” – January 2020
So what does Trump actually believe?
Commentators have suggested that Mr Trump tends to conflate climate change with environmentalism more generally.
“He doesn’t really understand what climate change is about,” says Professor Michael Gerrard, an environmental law professor at the University of Columbia.
Media captionClimate change: How 1.5C could change the world
Meanwhile, Joseph Goffman, executive director of Harvard’s Environmental Law Programme, argues that Mr Trump “believes nothing on climate change – he’s a climate nihilist”.
Mr Trump’s position is based on his need to appeal to “the part of the Republican establishment that rejects climate policy,” Mr Goffman, who previously worked as Democratic staff director on the Senate environmental committee, adds.
“He’s not going to win running on the environment,” Mr Pinion says. “In America, climate is not an issue, so the reason it is not an issue for President Trump is because he cares about winning. And the reason Democrats are OK with it not being a priority for them, is because they want to beat him.”
“Ultimately it doesn’t matter what President Trump believes, what matters is what he’s doing – we need to recognise climate change is not a priority of his administration.”
What has Trump done on climate change?
The Climate Deregulation Tracker, run by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, has documented more than 130 steps the Trump administration has taken to scale back measures to fight climate change.
High-profile rollbacks include:
Deciding to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, which committed the US and 187 other countries to keep rising global temperatures below 2C.
Replacing President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which would have limited carbon emissions from coal and gas-fired power plants, with the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which had weaker regulations
Attempting to freeze the fuel efficiency standards imposed on new vehicles, and prevent California from setting its own emissions rules
“He’s completely halted and reversed the momentum that was built up during the Obama administration in fighting climate change,” Prof Gerrard says.
While withdrawing from the Paris Agreement was “terrible symbolically”, the agreement had “virtually no specifics on what the US had to do”, so other rollbacks, especially the attempt to limit fuel economic standards of cars, were more damaging, he adds.
Media captionGreta Thunberg and Donald Trump gave very different speeches at Davos
Dan Costa worked at the Environmental Protection Agency for more than 30 years, including as the National Director of the Air, Climate & Energy Research Program.
He said he noticed an “anti-science stance” once the Trump administration’s team took over.
“One of the folks who came as part of the transition team said ‘if climate change is such a bad thing, why are so many people moving to Arizona? Anyway, you can turn up the air conditioning.'”
He noticed that budget documents from the president’s office and Congress began to refer to his Air, Climate & Energy Research Program (ACE) as the Air and Energy research programme instead.
“There was a fair amount of anxiety and self censorship… people would start to keep the word ‘climate’ out of titles,” he said, adding that he also noticed a policy of “benign neglect” where many employees were not replaced after they left.
In 2018, Mr Trump made headlines after he cast doubt on the government’s own National Climate Assessment.
When asked about the findings that climate change would have a devastating economic impact, Mr Trump said: “I don’t believe it.”
Prof Costa said some in the EPA responded with “derisive laughter” when they heard this. “Everybody knows that what he says doesn’t necessarily reflect what he really thinks.”
A softer tone?
The Trump administration’s actions have widely rolled back on climate change measures. But some have seen a recent shift in his tone, as he has described himself as “an environmentalist” several times in the past few months.
AFP
I’m an environmentalist. I am. I want the cleanest water on the planet. I want the cleanest air anywhere.”
“We’ve seen him really soften his rhetoric on the issue of climate change. He’s no longer talking about it being a hoax, and he’s talking about his care for the environment,” says Quillan Robinson, government affairs director at the American Conservation Coalition.
His group is led by young Republicans who want more to be done on the environment – and he argues that, while Mr Trump often talks about climate change in more general environmental terms, it was still a “promising sign”.
“We would like him to come out and talk about where the scientific consensus is at… at the same time, talking about it in terms of clean air and water appeals to broader factions of the country, so it’s something people can get behind.”
Not everyone agrees there is a shift in Mr Trump’s rhetoric – Prof Gerrard argues that it is “sporadic, and not substantive… the administration continues to go all out on repealing regulations”.
But if Mr Trump does change his tone – or his actions – on climate change in the future, it is likely to be for political reasons.
A Pew survey last year found that 52% of young Republicans felt the government was doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change, while a Monmouth University poll found that almost two thirds of Republicans now believe in climate change – a 15% increase from just three years ago.
“The trajectory of the GOP of old consider climate change a hoax, but the future of the GOP is comprised of individuals who take the issue just as seriously as Democrats,” says Mr Pinion.
“You can find ways to win elections by slimmer and slimmer margins, but we are quickly arriving at the day when a party that does not have solutions on climate change is not going to be viable with the overall majority of the electorate.”
The symbolic Doomsday Clock, which indicates how close our planet is to complete annihilation, is now only 100 seconds away from midnight.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) said on Thursday that the change was made due to nuclear proliferation, failure to tackle climate change and “cyber-based disinformation”.
The clock now stands at its closest to doomsday since it began ticking 1947.
The idea began in 1947 to warn humanity of the dangers of nuclear war.
Last year the clock was set at two minutes to midnight – midnight symbolises the end of the world – the same place it was wound to in 2018.
By James GallagherHealth and science correspondent
22 January 2020
Which animal?
Once the animal reservoir (where the virus normally camps out) is detected, then the problem becomes much easier to deal with.
The coronavirus cases have been linked to the South China Seafood Wholesale Market, in Wuhan.
But while some sea-going mammals can carry coronaviruses (such as the Beluga whale), the market also has live wild animals, including chickens, bats, rabbits, snakes, [ALL BEING HELD CAPTIVE!], which are more likely to be the source.
Officials in China have confirmed the cases are caused by a coronavirus.
These are a broad family of viruses, but only six (the new one would make it seven) are known to infect people.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), which is caused by a coronavirus, killed 774 of the 8,098 people infected in an outbreak that started in China in 2002.
“There is a strong memory of Sars, that’s where a lot of fear comes from, but we’re a lot more prepared to deal with those types of diseases,” says Dr Josie Golding, from the Wellcome Trust.
How severe are the symptoms?
It seems to start with a fever, followed by a dry cough and then, after a week, leads to shortness of breath and some patients needing hospital treatment.
But most of our knowledge is based on the severe cases that end up in hospital. It is unknown how many mild or even symptomless cases are out there.
The coronavirus family itself can cause symptoms ranging from a mild cold all the way through to death.
“When we see a new coronavirus, we want to know how severe are the symptoms. This is more than cold-like symptoms and that is a concern but it is not as severe as Sars,” says Prof Mark Woolhouse, from the University of Edinburgh.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering declaring an international public health emergency – as it did with swine flu and Ebola.
How deadly is it?
Seventeen people are known to have died from the virus – just over 3% of the known cases.
But the infection seems to take a while to kill, so more of those patients may yet die.
And it is unclear how many unreported cases there are.
Where has it come from?
New viruses are detected all the time.
They jump from one species, where they went unnoticed, into humans.
“If we think about outbreaks in the past, if it is a new coronavirus, it will have come from an animal reservoir,” says Prof Jonathan Ball, a virologist at the University of Nottingham.
Sars started off in bats and then infected the civet cat, which in turn passed it on to humans.
And Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), which has killed 858 out of the 2,494 recorded cases since it emerged in 2012, regularly makes the jump from the dromedary camel.
Which animal?
Once the animal reservoir (where the virus normally camps out) is detected, then the problem becomes much easier to deal with.
The coronavirus cases have been linked to the South China Seafood Wholesale Market, in Wuhan.
But while some sea-going mammals can carry coronaviruses (such as the Beluga whale), the market also has live wild animals, including chickens, bats, rabbits, snakes, which are more likely to be the source.
Why China?
Prof Woolhouse says it is because of the size and density of the population and close contact with animals harbouring viruses.
“No-one is surprised the next outbreak is in China or that part of the world,” he says.
How easily does it spread between people?
At the beginning of the outbreak, the Chinese authorities said the virus was not spreading between people – but now, such cases have been identified.
“It is crystal clear there is human-to-human transmission,” says Prof Peter Horby, from the University of Oxford.
“The critical question is how transmissible is it. Is this going to be sustainable?”
Sars spread between people but Mers finds it quite difficult and requires close contact.
The new virus infects the lungs, so coughs and sneezes are a likely route of transmission.
It will also be important to find out whether some people are more vulnerable to infection or likely to transmit the virus.
When the virus is infectious is also unknown.
Is it before symptoms appear, which is when flu spreads, or when they are most severe?
How fast is it spreading?
It might appear as though cases have soared, from 40 to more than 500 in less than a week. But this is misleading.
Most of the “new” cases were already out there but have only just been detected as China steps up its surveillance.
There is actually very little information on the “growth rate” of the outbreak.
But experts say the number of people becoming sick is likely to be far higher than the reported figures.
A report by the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London said: “It is likely that the Wuhan outbreak of a novel coronavirus has caused substantially more cases of moderate or severe respiratory illness than currently reported.”
Our estimate at 4,000 cases is more than double the past estimate due to increase of number of cases outside China. This should not be interpreted as implying the outbreak has doubled in size.
While the outbreak is centred on Wuhan, there have been cases reported in Thailand, Japan, South Korea and the US.
All but one of those cases had travelled from Wuhan – but one, in Thailand, was due to local spread there.
There are concerns that the virus could be spread by the hundreds of millions of people travelling for Chinese New Year later this month.
Could the virus mutate?
Yes, you would expect viruses to mutate and evolve all the time. But what this means is harder to tell.
The novel coronavirus has jumped from one species to another. It could mutate to become easier to spread from one person to another or to have more severe symptoms.
This is something scientists will be watching closely.
How can the virus be stopped?
There is no vaccine, so the only way of stopping the virus spreading is to diagnose people early and treat them in isolation.
Tracing and monitoring people who have come into contact with patients can help prevent further spread.
Further measures could include travel restrictions and banning mass gatherings.
How have Chinese authorities responded?
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionTemperature screening can help identify people who have been infected
China’s National Health Commission said travellers should avoid Wuhan and residents should not leave the city.
Infected people have been treated in isolation to minimise the risk of the bug spreading.
Extra checks such as temperature scans have been put in place to screen travellers.
And the seafood market was closed for cleaning and disinfection.
How is the world responding?
Most Asian countries have stepped up screenings of travellers from Wuhan and the WHO has warned hospitals worldwide a wider outbreak is possible.
Singapore and Hong Kong have been screening air passengers from Wuhan and authorities in the US and the UK have announced similar measures.
However, questions remain about the effectiveness of such measures.
If it takes five days for symptoms to appear, then someone could easily be halfway round the world and have passed through any screening checks before starting to feel ill.
How worried are the experts?
Dr Golding says: “At the moment, until we have more information, it’s really hard to know how worried we should be.
“Until we have confirmation of the source, that’s always going to make us uneasy.”
Prof Ball says: “We should be worried about any virus that explores humans for the first time, because it’s overcome the first major barrier.
“Once inside a [human] cell and replicating, it can start to generate mutations that could allow it to spread more efficiently and become more dangerous.
“You don’t want to give the virus the opportunity.”
We’re not even through the first month of 2020, and we already broke the record for the day with the most carbon dioxide in all of human history.
Carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere hit 415.79 parts per million (ppm) at Mauna Loa Observatory on Tuesday. It’s not surprising carbon dioxide levels hit a new daily high, but the new atmospheric record underscores the fact that carbon emissions are rising to new all-time highs when they need to be dropping.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide follow seesaw pattern over the course of a year, rising from fall into spring as plants decay and…
<p>’No ban on public land’ is what dozens of signs read on Wednesday on the Capitol grounds. (Kyreon Lee/KRCG 13){/p}
JEFFERSON CITY — ‘No ban on public land’ are what dozens of signs read on the Capitol grounds Wednesday.
We believe that public property belongs to the public and that’s why we’re here because we don’t want a ban on public property because we’re the ones that live in this atrocity.
‘No ban on public land’ is what dozens of signs read on Wednesday on the Capitol grounds. (Kyreon Lee/KRCG 13)
Members of the Missouri Hunting and Working Dog Alliance, farmers, landowners, commissioners, etc. traveled from the southern parts of the state to be heard. They came on a mission to voice their concern about the ban of hunting feral hogs on federal and state land.
Editor’s note: Contact7 seeks out audience tips and feedback to help people in need, resolve problems and hold the powerful accountable. If you know of a community need our call center could address, or have a story idea for our investigative team to pursue, please email us at contact7@thedenverchannel.comor call (720) 462-7777. Find more Contact7 stories here.
LAKEWOOD, Colo. — A Lakewood woman said the laws need to be changed after her condominium has been trapping and killing squirrels.
“I don’t think this is a humane way to deal with this at all,” Klaudia Sekulska said.
The traps are placed on the roof outside her window.
She said someone in the building complained the squirrels were getting into the attic, and a local pest control company was called.
“There are different ways to go about it. You don’t have to let an animal freeze to death overnight and then put it in a black garbage bag. That’s not dignified for anyone,” she said.
Colorado law allows pest control companies to operate under the same rules as homeowners. It’s legal to trap and, in some cases, poison squirrels that are damaging property.
Sekulska said the laws should change.
“It’s a permit to kill, and that’s what’s happening here. We’re proud of our animals and our wildlife, and it was National Squirrel Day yesterday,” Sekulska said.
Sekulska brought her concerns to animal control, property managers and her HOA.
She said they haven’t done enough to patch the holes in the roof or bring in proper trash bins before resorting to killing the animals.
Denver7 reached out to the HOA for comment but did not hear back.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife recommends removing pet food and trash that may be attracting squirrels, create barriers, and use ammonia as a deterrent.
If you believe any animal is being abused or is being treated inhumanely, you can file a complaint with Colorado Parks and Wildlife or your local animal control.
Staff move bio-waste containers past the entrance of the Wuhan Medical Treatment Centre in China, where some people infected with the new virus are being treated. Photo: AP
Sometimes history seems to unspool in a continuous playback loop. That is the feeling from watching Hongkongers donning face masks, dousing hands with sanitiser and once again bracing for the possibility of a deadly new virus outbreak originating in mainland China spreading here.
Chinese authorities’ delayed response, the secrecy breeding mistrust, the lack of full transparency and efforts to control the narrative by downplaying the seriousness – it all rings sadly familiar.
‘That’s what I get for betting against the vegan movement’
Reuters
Beyond Meat for sale at a market in Encinitas, California.
By
SHAWNLANGLOIS
SOCIAL-MEDIA EDITOR
For veteran Wall Street types, $12,000 is a rounding error, but for a guy getting his feet wet in the options pits, losing that much will leave a scar.
Unfortunately, that’s what happened this week to an anonymous trader whom we’ll call “Juice,” if the sob story he shared on Reddit is accurate.
“I thought I’d give options a try because I was doing pretty well swing trading and it was probably the biggest mistake of my life,” he wrote in a post. “I’m going to liquidate everything and pretend I didn’t just YOLO away a large chunk of my savings today on a stupid play I didn’t fully understand.”
YOLO, or “you only live once,” is the rally cry for Reddit’s WallStreetBets bunch, where excessive risk and sideways trades are celebrated daily. For most trading novices, options are best avoided—but apparently not for these guys.
When a trader buys a put option, he is buying the right, but not the obligation, to sell a stock at a specified price until the contract expires worthless. Buying puts is often used as a way to bet against a stock, like Juice did with Beyond Meat, which has surged more than 60% over the past month.
“That’s what I get for betting against the vegan movement,” he explained to readers as his post gained traction. “Definitely the hardest financial lesson I’ve learned to date. Only 23 so I guess there’s plenty of time to make it up.”
The bet, in some ways, reflects growing appetite by average investors for risky plays as the stock market roars to new heights. At last check, the Dow DJIA, -0.05% was up modestly but further distancing itself from the 29,000 level.
The Wall Street Journal (paywall) reported earlier this month that over the past 20 years, stock-options volume has grown more than six times, to around 4.4 billion options contracts in 2019, citing Options Clearing Corp.
One benefit to purchasing equity options is that they can often be bought for a fraction of the underlying stock price and can be used as a way to hedge one’s exposure, or in the case of Juice, to make a speculative directional bet on an asset, that can sometimes deliver a gut punch.
WallStreetBets isn’t typically the place to go for a sympathetic shoulder, but, considering Juice’s age and inexperience, there were plenty on offer:
“Your main problem is going against the trend. We’re in a strong bull with very good investor sentiment,” Zer033x wrote. “No reason to go against it, even if you think something will drop, guess what? It’ll just be bought back up, so why not get it after the drop? That’s how you play the current market.”
Another Redditor looked at the bright side and called it, “A college semester of learning condensed into one afternoon of trading.”
‘Joe Exotic’ sentenced in murder-for-hire plot01:04
(CNN)He called himself Joe Exotic and once lorded over a popular exotic animal park in Oklahoma.
Then he shot and killed five tigers, sold baby lemurs and falsified paperwork to say they were donated, and tried to pay a hit man $3,000 to kill a rival.
Now, the man once known as the “Tiger King” is going to prison for 22 years.
Joseph Maldonado-Passage was sentenced Wednesday for the murder-for-hire plot and several wildlife violations.
A federal jury found Maldonado-Passage guilty in April of trying to hire someone to kill animal rights activist Carole Baskin in…
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Reuters
Exposing the Big Game 