A voter casts a ballot in the South Carolina primary election, Saturday, Feb. 29, 2020, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) (Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
The Democrats’ 2020 nominating fight has turned to South Carolina for the first-in-the-South presidential primary.
Here are the results as they come in:
Copyright 2020 by WJXT News4Jax and The Associated Press - All rights reserved.
The former two certainly left their mark Saturday in LA’s season-opening draw (1-1) at the Houston Dynamo, with Pavon netting a highlight-reel golazo and Katai, acquired as a free agent after playing for Chicago, striking the post with an early header.
But, all things considered, it was a relatively quiet afternoon for Chicharito, who captained head coach Guillermo Barros Schelotto’s side and helped deliver a sold-out crowd to BBVA Stadium. The Mexican striker, acquired to spearheaded LA’s attack in life after Zlatan Ibrahimovic, showed moments of frustration.
Chicharito was isolated somewhat, though did supply a great pass in the 74th minute to midfielder Sebastian Lletget. The cutback prompted a save from Dynamo goalkeeper Marko Maric, and Chicharito’s deft off-ball runs on Pavon’s opener shouldn’t be ignored either.
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But his only shot, an 11th-minute effort from range, was off target and he registered just one positive defensive action, a clearance in the 53rd minute. Chicharito’s two dribbles were also both unsuccessful, further adding to a lukewarm game from the El Tri star.
Perhaps a more robust showing from Chicharito comes next Saturday, when the Galaxy host Vancouver at Dignity Health Sports Park (10 pm ET | TSN 1/4 in Canada; MLS LIVE on ESPN+ in US). It’d be an ideal time for Chicharito to open his MLS account, with pressure flowing after Zlatan’s 2019 campaign of 30 goals and seven assists.
For better or for worse, those comparisons will continually surface throughout the 2020 MLS season. It’ll be up to Chicharito to produce, as he so often did during a decade-long career in top European leagues, and improve the broader collective.
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Back in 2002, when the SARS virus made its fateful leap from bats to civet cats to humans, global health experts warned that the ensuing outbreak was a harbinger of things to come: Climate change and globalization were conspiring with an array of other forces to make it much easier for old animal diseases to morph into new human ones. It was only a matter of time before one of those diseases proved truly catastrophic. The world could avert the worst consequences if it started planning.
But SARS was quickly contained (in part because the virus itself was so deadly that it was easy to detect). The disease faded from public consciousness and, with it, any sense of urgency over future outbreaks.
In 2009, when swine flu first emerged in the United States — scientists later traced the virus to pig farms in Mexico — experts warned again that a longer-term game plan was needed, one that was proactive rather than reactive. Again, headlines and hand-wringing followed. Again, the outbreak proved mild and passed quickly. Again, the world and its leaders moved on without heeding the warnings.
The panic-then-forget cycle was broken briefly in 2014, when Ebola tore through West Africa. President Barack Obama created a new office and established a special emergency fund to improve federal response efforts. His administration also launched a global initiative meant to help high-risk, low-income countries prepare for future outbreaks. By 2018, that progress had been undone. The office was disbanded and the funds were rescinded, even as a second Ebola outbreak emerged in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Here we are again. In December, another new virus — SARS-CoV-2 — made the leap from animals to humans. It has now infected more than 83,000 people across more than 50 countries. Nearly 3,000 people have died, most of them in China where the outbreak began. Global health experts are once again sounding the alarm. It’s unclear how bad things might get this time around. Covid-19, the disease caused by this new virus, appears to be between seven and 20 times more deadly than seasonal flu, which on average kills between 300,000 and 650,000 people globally each year. But that fatality rate could prove to be much lower, especially if it turns out that many milder cases have evaded detection.
In the meantime, this much is not in dispute: SARS-CoV-2 spreads easily — more easily than SARS or seasonal flu — and is tough to detect. It’s the kind of virus that would be extremely difficult to contain even in a best-case scenario, and the world is hardly in a best-case scenario now. Rising nationalism, waning trust and lingering trade wars have undermined cooperation between global superpowers. Rampant misinformation and growing skepticism of science are imperiling public understanding of the crisis and governments’ response to it.
In the United States, a coming general election has politicized what should be a clear public health priority. On Tuesday, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, warned that a global pandemic was all but inevitable and asked the American public to brace itself for impact. That same day, her boss’s boss, President Trump, insisted that everything was well under control.
Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), at a news conference in January.Credit...Amanda Voisard/Reuters
Mr. Trump has requested from Congress only $2.5 billion to address Covid-19 — far less than the $15 billion that experts say is needed. He has also made some curious personnel choices in recent days: putting Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the federal response, and muzzling Dr. Anthony Fauci, the long-serving director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Fauci has guided the nation through just about every outbreak and epidemic since 1984, and is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on managing such crises. As governor of Indiana, Mr. Pence badly botched the response to an H.I.V. outbreak, which resulted in hundreds of preventable infections.
There is still a chance that Covid-19 will prove to be more fire drill than actual fire. A global pandemic is all but certain, but there are many unknowns: Will the virus itself prove to be less contagious or far less deadly than is currently feared? Will it show a tendency to recede in warmer weather the way that seasonal flu does? Can a vaccine be made quickly available? (Dr. Fauci says that one may be ready for testing in as little as two months, and could be commercially available in about a year.) Any of these developments may yet break the global transmission chain, and the vortex of fear and market-tumbling anxiety in which the world now finds itself may yet pass.
If the next few weeks or months bring calm — and scientists increasingly worry that they will not — the world would do well to remember this time what it seems to have forgotten again and again. Another pathogen will emerge soon enough, and another after that. Eventually, one of them will be far worse than all its predecessors. If we are very unlucky, it could be worse than anything in living memory. Imagine something as contagious as measles (which any given infected person passes to 90 percent of the people he or she encounters) only many times more deadly, and you’ll have a good sense of what keeps global health officials up at night.
Here’s what is certain: Despite many warnings over many years, we are still not ready. Not in China, where nearly two decades after that SARS outbreak food markets that sell live animals still thrive and authoritarianism still undermines honest and accurate communication about infectious diseases. Not in Africa, where basic public health capacity remains hobbled by a lack of investment and, in some cases, by political unrest and violence. Not in the United States, where shortsighted budget cuts and growing nationalism have shrunk commitments to pandemic preparedness, both at home and abroad.
To be sure, some broad progress has been made in the past few years. Vaccine development and deployment now proceed faster than at any point in history. The World Health Organization has corrected many of the institutional shortcomings that thwarted its responses to previous outbreaks. Other countries, in both Europe and Africa, have stepped up to fill the global health leadership position that America appears to have vacated.
But, as Covid-19 makes clear, much more is still needed.
Plan and prepare. The national stockpile has only a fraction of the personal protective equipment that may be needed to respond to Covid-19 — or that would be needed in any pandemic situation. The Food and Drug Administration says that Covid-19-related supply chain disruptions have led to at least one drug shortage already. Public health experts say that more will almost certainly follow. Federal officials, responding directly to the Covid-19 crisis, have also apparently failed to adhere to even the most basic principles of infection control. Americans expect more from their government. Experts have been warning about the importance of proper training, and the need to plan for equipment shortages and supply chain disruptions since at least the anthrax scare of 2001.
Invest in state health departments. They are the front line of every public health emergency, from vaping-related lung illnesses to resurgent syphilis to the opioid epidemic to Covid-19. They are underfunded and deeply strained, and the vast majority of them do not have the capacity to respond to a full-blown pandemic. They cannot do the work of rapid diagnosis and contact tracing, or promote public awareness and combat misinformation in real time, without financial and human resources. A 2019 reauthorization of The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which includes state-level funding for public health emergencies, was a step in the right direction, but it was not enough to compensate for nearly two decades of steady funding cuts.
Fund federal health agencies. To wage the best fight against any pandemic, the country needs more than vaccines and medical supplies. It needs reliable diagnostics, advanced disease monitoring systems and sensible drug development. One of the most reliable ways to develop those things is through federal research and development. It’s disconcerting that for every fiscal year of his presidency so far, Mr. Trump has called for deep cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. He has also scaled back or shut down programs meant to study infectious diseases and prevent outbreaks in developing countries — including ones aimed at finding viruses like Covid-19 before they make the leap to humans.
Forget isolationism. One thing the current moment shows is the folly of presuming that viruses will respect borders — that they can be kept out by walls or wrangled into submission with good intentions. They cannot. Restricting and rescinding foreign health and development aid, pulling global health workers from outbreak zones abroad and undermining health care at home makes Americans more vulnerable to threats like Covid-19.
The best strategy for thwarting this epidemic, and for preventing the next, is to help other nations — wherever they are — fight humanity’s common enemy over there before we have to fight it over here.
The Times is committed to publishinga diversity of lettersto the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are sometips. And here’s our email:letters@nytimes.com.
Ragam perabot perlengkapan usaha café dan resto saat ini banyak jenisnya, mulai dari kursi, meja, hingga pelengkap berupa lampu atau lampion. Melihat fungsi café dan resto yang saat ini juga sebagai tempat leisure, maka perabot di dalamnya juga harus tampil dengan desain-desain khusus yang bisa dibilang berbeda dengan perabot pada umumnya.
Tak heran perkembangan produk perabot semakin kreatif dengan desain-desain yang dihadirkan oleh para pelaku usaha. Baik dari bahan maupun modelnya. Hal penting yang harus diperhatikan dalam membuat perabot untuk retso dan café adalah harus berfungsi sesuai dengan kebutuhan, praktis, nyaman dipakai, dan desainnya menarik.
Dari bahannya, perabot café dan resto bisa dibuat dari berbagai jenis bahan, seperti kayu jati, triplek lapis, rotan alami hingga rotan sintetis. Namun saat ini bahan baku yang sedang banyak diminati untuk perabot café dan resto menurut Evan, pemilik Zimmer Rattan adalah rotan sintetis.
Hal itu karena rotan sintetis memilki kelebihan tersendiri, lantaran anyamannya lebih halus dan mempunyai daya tahan yang lebih kuat, baik jika sering dijemur di bawah terik matahari maupun terhadap kelembaban udara. Selain itu, anyaman rotan sintetis gampang dibersihkan, lebih ringan, dan tidak dimakan rayap.
Perabot dari rotan sintetis juga memiliki bobot yang ringan, jadi lebih mudah dipindah-pindahkan. Mudah pula dibersihkan. Untuk menghilangkan debu yang menempel, cukup dilap dengan kain lembab.
Namun sebaiknya rotan sintetis dipilih dari bahan yang aman. Saat ini ada dua bahan plastik yang banyak digunakan untuk membuat rotan sintetis, yaitu Polyethilene dan Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC).
Polyethilene lebih aman daripada PVC karena PVC bisa mengeluarkan zat beracun melalui asap jika terbakar. Rotan sintetis yang terbuat dari PVC biasanya dijual dengan harga lebih murah, daripada yang terbuat dari polyethilene. Selain faktorbahan, kualitas pengerjaan juga menjadi hal penting dalam usaha produksi perabot café dan resto. Misalnya dengan membuat anyaman lebih rapat dan finishing yang baik.
Kreasi Desain. Perabot café dan resto yang biasanya diinginkan pemesan disesuaikan dengan konsep interior café atau resto tersebut. Seperti halnya Plaza Jaya Kitchen Set di Tangerang Selatan yang membuat perabot dengan menyesuaikan desain interior café dan resto sesuai permintaan pemilik café dan resto, mulai dari meja café/resto, kursi, mini bar, meja counter, panel dinding dan lainnya.
Kreasi desain perabot café dan resto perlu dihadirkan oleh pelaku usaha. Seperti halnya Joko Sriyono, pemilik Joglo Indah Furniture membuat perabot café/resto dengan desain unik, yang disebut meja tarik berbentuk oval atau kotak yang dapat dipanjang-pendekkan.
Jika ukuran standar meja 120 cm, maka bisa dipanjangkan ukuran 160 cm, Meja ini berbahan kayu jati Jawa Timur (Perhutani). Produknya juga pernah dipesan café Planet Baso Dunia Fantasi Taman Impian Jaya Ancol Jakarta Utara.
Dalam menghadirkan kreasi desain perabot, pelaku usaha harus merekrut tenaga kerja terampil, yang bisa diambil dari masyarakat di kawasan sentra pengrajin perabot, seperti di Cirebon ada di daerah Plumbon dan Plered Cirebon atau di Jepara Jawa Tengah antara lain Desa Senenan, Kecamatan Tahunan, Jepara dan Desa Teluk Wetan, Kecamatan Welahan, Jepara.
Paling Diminati. Saat ini jenis perabot yang paling diminati untuk café dan resto adalah kursi dan meja. Seperti diakui Dwi Teguh Santoso, pemilik Raihan Jati Furniture yang membuat perabot untuk kafe dan resto berbahan kayu jati.
Menurut Dwi, jenis perabot yang saat ini diminati para pemilik cafe maupun resto terutama perabot berupa meja dengan empat kursi dan tambahan payung parasol diameter 200-300cm untuk lokasi outdoor.
Selain itu perabot berupa meja bar minialis dan kursi bar juga cukup diminati pemilik café dan resto. Meja dan kursi bar ini memiliki ukuran kaki-kaki meja dan kursi lebih tinggi dibanding perabot biasanya.
Jika perabot meja pada umumnya ukuran kaki-kakinya sekitar 75 cm, maka perabot meja untuk cafe dan resto tingginya sekitar 110 cm, dan ketinggian kursinya juga ikut menyesuaikan.
Jenis perabot lain yang diminati kafe/resto berupa meja dan kursi makan ukuran 60×90 cm berisi 2 kursi. Namun meja tersebut bisa digabung untuk memuat kapasitas lebih dari 2 kursi.
Pemasaran. Pelaku usaha bisa menawarkan produk langsung ke pemilik usaha cafe dan resto, mengikuti pemeran-pameran mebel, promosi lewat banner, spanduk dan selebaran. Selain itu bisa menerapkan cara titip jual ke toko-toko furniture, dan melakukan promosi melalui jalur internet via website, Facebook, dan memasang iklan di beberapa media massa.
Dalam pemasaran, pelaku usaha harus memberikan pelayanan untuk membuat konsumen menjadi pelanggan loyal. Seperti dilakukan Evan Hiumawan, pemilik Zimmer Rattan produk perabotnya dari rotan sintetis dengan kerangka perabot dari aluminium memiliki garansi kerangka selama 1 tahun, dan garansi anyaman rotan sintetis selama 2 tahun.
Saat ini produk perabotnya sudah dipesan oleh beberapa café dan resto seperti Black Canyon Café, Coffee Club, Excelso, Java Village, Oh Lala Café di wilayah Jakarta dan lainnya.
Usaha perabot café dan resto dengan desain kreatif ini tidak bersaing terlalu ketat dengan perabot pabrikan. Hal ini karena perabot café dan resto umumnya didesain menyesuaikan selera pemesan, lain halnya dengan perabot pabrikan yang desainnya tidak bisa customized.
Sepak terjang para pelaku usaha perabot café dan resto, mampu menghasilkan pendapatan puluhan hingga ratusan rupiah dengan keuntungan lebih dari 50%.
PANDEGLANG, REDAKSI24.COM – Wisata Hotel Mutiara Carita di Kecamatan Carita, Pandeglang, Banten, kini menyediakan Coral Cafe untuk para pengunjungnya. Coral cafe sengaja dididirikan untuk memberikan pelayanan wisata kepada para wisatawan yang berkunjung ke kawasan tersebut.
Artinya, coral café tidak hanya bisa menikmati tamu hotel, namun pengunjung pantai juga bisa menikmatinya. Pengunjung bisa menikmati suasana pantai dan beragam olahan menu makanan di cafe tersebut.
General Manajer Hotel Mutiara Carita, Alfanshah Abdullah mengakui, saat ini kawasan wisata Hotel Mutiara Carita tersedia coral cafe. Kata dia, cafe itu sengaja disediakan untuk para wisatawan yang berkunjung ke Hotel Mutiara yang saat ini dikelolanya.
“Coral cafe ini untuk nongkrong wisatawan kalangan muda-mudi, dan disiapkan juga untuk kalangan dewasa. Jadi yang berkunjung ke hotel ini tidak hanya menikmati wisata pantai saja, tapi ada cafe juga yang namanya coral cafe,” ungkapnya, Sabtu (29/2/2020).
Bagi wisatawan yang nongkrong di cafe itu, kata Alfanshah, selain bisa menikmati kuliner ada ada di cafe juga bisa menikmati pemandangan laut. Karena lokasinya tepat di bibir pantai. “Kami ingin lebih meningkatkan pelayanan lagi bagi para wisatawan, makanya kami sediakan coral cafe untuk dinikmati pengunjung,” katanya.
Menurutnya, penyediaan sarana coral cafe tersebut juga salah satu upaya dalam menarik perhatian wisatawan. Tidak hanya cafe yang saat ini disediakan, tapi di kawasan wisata Hotel Mutiara Carita juga disediakan sarana flying fox.
“Jadi para wisatawan juga bisa bermain flying fox sepuas mungkin, dan menikmati sarana wisata yang ada,” tandasnya. (Samsul Fathoni/Difa)
I’ve been trying to figure out this whole global warming thing. I’m failing horribly.
My son has been all over me to go skiing, and other than the fact that I don’t ski, I’ve been very amenable to the proposition. I was contemplating a family trip to the snow when I came to the realization that I was deciding when to make the big ski junket while driving my car with the top down on a balmy 75-degree February day in Marin County.
I grew up in San Francisco’s Outer Richmond District and a 75-degree day in July happened with the regularity of a total eclipse. If a 75-degree day occurred in February, my mother would be convinced that a direct plunge into a fiery inferno would immediately follow.
It seems that all around the world (with the exception of almost any place I’ve had to travel this winter), we are experiencing conditions that lend some pretty convincing credence to the prospect that we soon will be able to dangle our feet in the water while sitting on the Golden Gate Bridge.
It all drove me to a National Geographic study that would lead a peanut mind like my own to think that it would be a judicious thing to do to get out there and practice treading water. For me, this is even more of a burden, because I’ve never learned to swim. (For an explanation, see the Jewish Mother’s Guide to Childhood Sinus Infections).
The study describes, in a type style that almost literally screams at you, that glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, cloud forests are dying and wildlife is scrambling. It adds that sea levels will rise between a foot and 2½ feet by 2050.
Now, if you happen to be a Bedouin, this probably is in no way alarming to you. I live on the water, and a 2½-foot rise in tide levels would basically mean that I could have a swim-up bar in my kitchen. A nice idea for serving pina coladas to my dinner guests, but a pretty lousy idea for lounging in the living room and watching “Project Runway.”
Rising sea levels, it tells us, also would result in more intense major storms and more rain, followed by longer and drier droughts. Our little county here has just experienced its driest February since 1864. I don’t know whether to build an ark or buy a dune buggy.
And then there’s those pesky greenhouse gasses. Their level is higher now than anytime in the last 800,000 years. I know, I was a kid when they took that measurement. My mother blamed me.
And, how about wildlife scrambling? I saw a photo just the other day of a bear swimming in a river looking for fish, thinking it’s summer and its hibernation time is over. Any day now, I expect a tired grizzly to show up at my door asking to borrow a cup of lox.
I have some friends who sent me photos of their vacation in Antarctica. The penguins were wearing shorts. These are little-known facts that I feel, as a public servant, I should let you in on.
The “Farmer’s Almanac” used to have a list of items that foretold of a long winter. Just a few of them were:
• Thicker than normal corn husks
• Woodpeckers sharing a tree
• Thick hair on the nape of a cow’s neck
• Ants marching in line
I’m not trying to be an alarmist here, but the husks of the corn I bought yesterday were pretty darn skinny. I saw no woodpeckers with roommates. Every cow in my neighborhood was neatly shaved around the neck. And the ants were all over the place.
Think about it. In the meantime, enjoy the hot winter.
Barry Tompkins is a longtime sports broadcaster who lives in Marin. Contact him at barrytompkins1@gmail.com.
By ROBERT JABLON, LISA BAUMANN and ANDREW SELSKY, The Associated Press
Three patients on the West Coast were infected with the coronavirus by unknown means, leaving health officials in California, Oregon and Washington state worried about the novel virus spreading.
The patients — an older Northern California woman with chronic health conditions, a high school student in Everett, Washington and an employee at a Portland, Oregon-area school — hadn't recently traveled overseas or had any known close contact with a traveler or an infected person, authorities said.
Earlier U.S. cases include three people who were evacuated from the central China city of Wuhan, epicenter of the outbreak; 14 people who returned from China, or their spouses; and 42 American passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, who were flown to U.S. military bases in California and Texas for quarantining.
Convinced that the number of cases will grow but determined to keep them from exploding, health agencies were ramping up efforts to identify patients.
California cases
The California Department of Public Health said Friday that the state will receive enough kits from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to test up to 1,200 people a day for the COVID-19 virus — a day after Gov. Gavin Newsom complained to federal health officials that the state had already exhausted its initial 200 test kits.
Santa Clara County in the San Francisco Bay Area reported two cases where the source of infection wasn't known. The older woman was hospitalized for a respiratory illness, and rapid local testing confirmed in one day that she had the virus, health officials said.
"This case represents some degree of community spread, some degree of circulation," said Dr. Sara Cody, health officer for Santa Clara County and director of the County of Santa Clara Public Health Department.
"But we don't know to what extent," Cody said. "It could be a little, it could be a lot."
"We need to begin taking important additional measures to at least slow it down as much as possible," she said.
Cody said the newly confirmed case in Santa Clara County is not linked to two previous cases in that county, nor to others in the state.
The Santa Clara County resident was treated at a local hospital and is not known to have traveled to Solano County, where another woman was identified Wednesday as having contracted the virus from an unknown source.
Dozens of people had close contact with the Solano County woman. They were urged to quarantine themselves at home, while a few who showed symptoms of illness were in isolation, officials said.
At UC Davis Medical Center at least 124 registered nurses and other health care workers were sent home for "self-quarantine" after the Solano County woman with the virus was admitted, National Nurses United, a nationwide union representing RNs, said Friday.
The case "highlights the vulnerability of the nation's hospitals to this virus," the union said.
Oregon case
Earlier Friday, Oregon confirmed its first coronavirus case, a person who works at an elementary school in the Portland area, which will be temporarily closed.
The Lake Oswego School District sent a robocall to parents saying that Forest Hills Elementary will be closed until Wednesday so it can be deep-cleaned by maintenance workers.
Washington cases
Washington state health officials announced two new coronavirus cases Friday night, including a high school student who attends Jackson High School in Everett, said Dr. Chris Spitters of the Snohomish County Health District.
The other case in Washington was a woman in in King County in her 50s who had recently traveled to South Korea, authorities said.
Both patients weren't seriously ill.
The number of coronavirus cases in the United States is considered small. Worldwide, the number of people sickened by the virus hovered Friday around 83,000, and there were more than 2,800 deaths, most of them in China.
But health officials aren't taking any chances. Some communities, including San Francisco, already have declared local emergencies in case they need to obtain government funding.
In Southern California's Orange County, the city of Costa Mesa went to court to prevent state and federal health officials from transferring dozens of people exposed to the virus aboard a cruise ship in Japan to a state-owned facility in the city. The passengers, including some who tested positive for the virus and underwent hospital care, had been staying at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California.
On Friday, state officials said the federal decided it no longer had a crucial need to move those people to the Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa. That's because of the imminent end of the isolation period for those passengers and the relatively small number of persons who ended up testing positive, officials said.
The new coronavirus cases of unknown origin marks an escalation of the worldwide outbreak in the U.S. because it means the virus could spread beyond the reach of preventative measures like quarantines, though state health officials said that was inevitable and that the risk of widespread transmission remains low.
California public health officials on Friday said more than 9,380 people are self-monitoring after arriving on commercial flights from China through Los Angeles and San Francisco. That's up from the 8,400 that Newsom cited on Thursday, though officials said the number increases daily as more flights arrive.
Officials are not too worried, for now, about casual contact, because federal officials think the coronavirus is spread only through "close contact, being within six feet of somebody for what they're calling a prolonged period of time," said Dr. James Watt, interim state epidemiologist at the California Department of Public Health.
The virus can cause fever, coughing, wheezing and pneumonia. Health officials think it spreads mainly from droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes, similar to how the flu spreads.
As infectious disease experts fanned out in the Solano County city of Vacaville, some residents in the city between San Francisco and Sacramento stocked up on supplies amid fears things could get worse despite official reassurances, while others took the news in stride.
The woman in the community who has coronavirus first sought treatment at NorthBay VacaValley Hospital in Vacaville, before her condition worsened and she was transferred to the medical center in Sacramento.
Sacramento County's top health official told The Sacramento Bee on Friday that he expects several medical workers to test positive themselves in the next few days. Numerous workers at both hospitals have been tested, but the tests were sent to labs approved by the CDC and generally take three to four days to complete.
Peter Beilenson, Sacramento County's health services director, said he expects even those who test positive to become only mildly ill.
Confusion over how quickly the woman was tested for coronavirus concerned McKinsey Paz, who works at a private security firm in Vacaville. The company has already stockpiled 450 face masks and is scrambling for more "since they're hard to come by." The company's owner bought enough cleaning and disinfectant supplies to both scrub down the office and send home with employees.
But they appeared to be at the extreme for preparations.
Eugenia Kendall was wearing a face mask, but in fear of anything including the common cold. Her immune system is impaired because she is undergoing chemotherapy, and she has long been taking such precautions.
“We’re not paranoid. We’re just trying to be practical,” said her husband of 31 years, Ivan Kendall. “We wipe the shopping carts if they have them, and when I get back in the car I wipe my hands — and just hope for the best.”
HOUSTON – After an 8-foot diameter water main pipe burst in east Houston Thursday, sparking a days-long boil water advisory, city officials said Saturday it is no longer necessary to boil your water.
So what now? Now that boil water notice is lifted, here’s what Houston residents should do, according to the city’s health department:
Flush water systems by running all hot water faucets in your home for at least five minutes. Run every cold water faucet for five minutes. Finally, clean faucet screens.
Clean water line strainers on mechanical dish-washing and glass washing machines and run three complete cycles prior to use.
Clean automatic ice makers by by following the manufacturer‘s instructions. Make and discarding three batches of ice.
Flush, clean and sanitize all equipment and fixtures with water line connections - post-mix beverage machines, spray misters, steam kettles, coffee or tea urns, sinks and other equipment with water connections in accordance with manufacturer’s instructions.
Run water softeners through a regeneration cycle.
Run drinking fountains continuously for two minutes to flush the system.
Clean and sanitize all fixtures and sinks connected to water lines.
Change out all filters after water lines have been flushed.
The water main that ruptured Thursday provides up to half the city’s water. Mayor Sylvester Turner said a City of Houston contractor was onsite doing exploratory work for a City of Houston water line project when soil was moved from the the 96-inch water line and it burst.
The rupture lowered water pressure in areas throughout the city, prompting the closure of several schools and businesses. Restaurants without water were ordered to cease operations immediately by the city’s health department. Officials said Saturday morning water pressure readings were normal.
Turner said repairs will likely continue through the weekend.
A map released by Houston Public Works shows the area that fell under the boil water notice:
If you have more concerns or questions, you can call 311 or (713) 837-0311.
Copyright 2020 by KPRC Click2Houston - All rights reserved.
Briana Zamora-Nipper joined the KPRC 2 digital team as a community associate producer in 2019. During her time in H-Town, she's covered everything from fancy Houston homes to tropical storms. Previously, she worked at Austin Monthly Magazine and KAGS TV, where she earned a Regional Edward R. Murrow award for her work as a digital producer.
Oregon reported its first coronavirus case on Friday. Here’s the latest news:
Coronavirus in Oregon: A Lake Oswego elementary school employee contracted Oregon’s first apparent case of coronavirus, causing the closure of the 430-student school as health officials try to figure out how many people may have been exposed.
Coronavirus in Washington state: Washington state health officials announced two new coronavirus cases Friday night, a woman who had recently traveled to South Korea and a high school student whose school will be closed and sanitized.
Explaining it to kids: Need to talk to kids about coronavirus? Here’s a handy comic packed with a lot of good information. (Wouldn’t be a bad idea for adults to read it, too.)
We’re ready: The new coronavirus is spreading rapidly around the world, and federal officials said this week the disease is bound to proliferate in the United States, as well. Oregon officials say they’re ready.
Wash. Your. Hands: Washing your hands sounds easy enough. But chances are you may not be doing it properly. Here are the CDC’s recommended five steps for properly washing your hands.
Virus spreads to Mexico:Mexico now has two confirmed cases of the new coronavirus. Officials said neither patient is seriously ill; one is in isolation at a hospital, the other is isolated at a hotel. Both men had traveled to the northern Italian region where there has been an outbreak and had returned to Mexico between last Friday and Saturday.
Take precautions: With words like quarantine, outbreak and isolation being thrown around, it’s important to educate yourself about the virus and how it could impact you — emotionally, physically and financially. Here’s what you need to know and do.
Testing is ramping up: Federal health officials said Friday they’re scrambling to get coronavirus testing up and running in every state, as President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser urged Americans not to overreact to plunging financial markets.
Virus infects economy: The coronavirus outbreak’s impact on the world economy grew more alarming on Saturday, after President Donald Trump denounced criticism of his response to the threat as a “hoax" cooked up by his political enemies.
As the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak deepens, biotech and big pharma companies are entering the race to find a treatment or a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus causing the illness. And the stock market is already rewarding some of them.
Shares of Gilead Sciences(NASDAQ:GILD) rose nearly 5% on Monday, after the World Health Organization said its drug might help people with COVID-19. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals(NASDAQ:REGN) has climbed more than 30% since its Feb. 4 announcement of an expanded agreement to work on a treatment with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
More positive news may give these and other companies developing coronavirus treatment and prevention a lift. And of course, their involvement in such a high-profile subject is getting these companies plenty of attention.
That's the good news. The bad news is, it's unlikely coronavirus treatment and prevention projects will add much to earnings, so stock market gains may be transient.
Image source: Getty Images.
Limited in time
Why won't work on such a massive project with worldwide attention make a significant contribution to earnings? There are a few reasons. Outbreaks are usually limited in time, offering companies a short window of opportunity for revenue. For example, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was first identified in 2003 and resulted in more than 8,000 cases. Since 2004, cases have dwindled to almost none. Though the current outbreak of COVID-19 includes more than 80,000 cases and more than 2,000 deaths, one could expect that, as with SARS, transmission will slow and result in fewer and fewer cases. In the meantime, if a company is first to market with a treatment or vaccine, it might offer revenue a short-term boost. The problem is, as soon as the outbreak is over, so is that revenue stream.
By comparison, a company such as Gilead Sciences has more to gain with filgotinib, the rheumatoid arthritis treatment currently under priority review at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. That market is vast -- Fortune Business Insights forecasts it will reach $34 billion globally by 2025 -- and isn't limited in time. Clearly, drug companies have more to gain over the long term by treating diseases instead of addressing outbreaks.
So, how much can a company make by developing a vaccine or treatment for COVID-19? According to press reports, Bank of America predicts that Gilead Sciences' remdesivir may result in one-time revenue of about $2.5 billion. To put that figure into perspective, a blockbuster drug brings in at least $1 billion annually. The Bank of America analysts said the unfavorable economics of addressing epidemics and pandemics might be explained both by the relatively short time frame of most outbreaks and by ethical questions behind the pricing of vaccines and treatments.
Letter to the president
In the case of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, lawmakers recently stepped in to address the question of ethics. Nearly 50 members of Congress wrote a letter to President Donald Trump this month requesting that any vaccine or treatment developed with taxpayer money be reasonably priced. Citing Regeneron's work with HHS, the lawmakers wrote that "there must be guardrails in place to prevent Regeneron from monopolizing the medicine and maximizing profits." Whether the government manages to control prices on an eventual vaccine or treatment remains to be seen. But it is clear that if Regeneron or any other company working on coronavirus therapies doesn't propose a price that is considered reasonable, the move will be damaging to that company's reputation and will likely result in a political battle.
As if those issues aren't enough to weigh on profit prospects, here's one more: the question of patents. Gilead Sciences filed a patent application in China to use remdesivir against other coronaviruses four years ago and is still waiting for an answer, the Associated Press reported. This year, amid the current outbreak, the Wuhan Institute of Virology applied for a Chinese patent covering the use of the drug to treat coronaviruses. The institute said its move was to protect national interests. Separately, Chinese company BrightGene recently said it has copied remdesivir and manufactured the drug -- but BrightGene said it wouldn't pursue commercialization without licensing from Gilead. Following those moves by the Wuhan Institute and BrightGene, investors might wonder about the consequences if remdesivir is commercialized. Will Gilead Sciences truly be able to sell the product in China, or would it be pushed to license the drug to a local company? Would China grant the Wuhan Institute the patent it's requesting, and what would that mean for Gilead Sciences? There are too many significant questions without answers.
And all of these points lead to one more concern: a rise in short-selling. When investors sell a stock short, they bet on its eventual declines by borrowing the stock today to sell it at a high price -- then purchasing it later at a lower price. Gilead Sciences, Regeneron, and Novavax(NASDAQ:NVAX), which is working on a vaccine effective against SARS-CoV-2, have each seen an increase in short interest recently; it's likely some investors are trying to benefit from gains on short-term news while expecting a subsequent drop.
Investor takeaway
This doesn't mean avoiding Gilead Sciences, Regeneron, or any other drugmaker developing coronavirus treatments. Instead, biotech investors should look at these companies' other programs, and base buying decisions on their full pipelines, or on specific products addressing markets that represent growth over time. That increases the chance of a long-term gain, one that will play out well beyond the temporary outbreak.
The formerly stealthy startup Astra aims to win $2 million with its first-ever orbital launch today (Feb. 29), and you can watch the liftoff live.
Astra's Rocket 3.0 is scheduled to lift off today from the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak Island, Alaska, during a three-hour window that opens at 3:30 p.m. EST (2030 GMT). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), or directly via DARPA.
DARPA is streaming the event because the liftoff is part of the DARPA Launch Challenge, an effort to spur the development of private American rockets capable of lofting small military satellites cheaply and on short notice.
If Astra aces today's launch, the California-based company gets $2 million. If it succeeds in a second launch from a different pad at the Pacific Spaceport Complex by March 18, another $10 million will come Astra's way.
Astra was founded in 2016 but just came out of stealth mode earlier this month. The company has conducted extensive testing at its Bay Area facilities but has not yet attempted an orbital launch, so success today is far from guaranteed.
Still, operational satellites are aboard the two-stage, 38-foot-long (11.6 meters) Rocket 3.0 for today's flight. The payloads are a Department of Defense communications cubesat called Prometheus; two other cubesats provided by the University of South Florida, which aim to demonstrate new communications tech; and a space traffic management beacon built by Virginia-based company Tiger Innovations.
These payloads weren't disclosed to Astra until Jan. 22. Keeping the company in the dark for so long is part of the DARPA Launch Challenge, which rewards flexibility and adaptability.
The cubesats will be deployed at a target altitude of 277 miles (445 kilometers), whereas the beacon will stay attached to Rocket 3.0's upper stage. But hitting the altitude mark precisely is not required to win the $2 million today. If Astra gets into Earth orbit above 93 miles (150 km), the mission will be considered a success, DARPA officials said during a media teleconference last week.
The DARPA Launch Challenge was first announced in 2018. Eighteen companies initially expressed interest, and three — Astra, Virgin Orbit and Vector Launch — eventually advanced to the "full participant" stage. Astra is the only competitor left.
Today's launch was originally scheduled for Tuesday (Feb. 25), but bad weather pushed the target date back.
Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated byKarl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter@michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter@SpacedotcomorFacebook.
TRI BUN-MEDAN-WIKI.com – Cafe-cafe yang menawarkan konsep yang unik dan intragamable sudah menjamur di Kota Medan.
Namun, cafe yang mengusung konsep lavender di Medan, hanya cafe Lavender The Purple. Cafe tersebut merupakan cafe pertama yang mnegusung konsep menunya dengan lavender di Medan, Sabtu (29/2/2020).
Konsep lavender lahir di cafe Lavender The Purple, karena kedua ownernya, Henny Wong dengan Yuli Jo menyukai travelling dan kuliner. Maka, lahirlah ide konsep tersebut untuk dipasarkan di Medan.
Hal itu tentunya, karena di Kota Medan, belum ada ditemui Cafe yang menawarkan konsep seperti itu.
“Lahirnya kosnesp ini, karena kami hobi jalan-jalan dan hobi kulineran di dalam kota maupun luar negeri. Maka kami memiliki ide membuat cafe dengan ukuran kecil, seperti container cafe yang ada di luar negeri. Dengan memasarkan minuman yang terbuat dari bahan lavender, karena lavender juga bisa di makan. Bukan hanya sekedar sebagai pewangi atau anti nyamuk. Sebab, ada jenis lavender yang bisa di Makan atau disantap,“ tuturnya.
Yuli Jo dengan Henny Wong mendirikan cafe Lavender The Purple dengan konep lavender, juga bertujuan untuk memberikan edukasi terkait lavender, bagi kalangan muda yang ada di Kota Medan. Lalu, ingin menjadikan bunga lavender yang dimix dengan buah markisa, sebagai ikon kuliner jenis minuman di Medan.
Hal tersebut memang tak mudah bagi mereka, sama sepertinya memasarkan dan membangun pangsa pasar cafe Lavender The Purple. Sebelum berdiri, cafe Lavender The Purple di Jalan H. Misbah, Kota Medan.
Awalnya mereka memasarkan minuman konsep lavender pada tahaun 2017 di acara-acara bazar-bazar yang diadakan mal-mal terbesar di Medan.
Ternyata, lambat laun, minuman tersebut disukai banyak orang terutama anak muda Kota Medan.
Oleh karena itu, berdirilah Cafe Lavender The Purple, pada bulan Mei 2019 di Medan. Selain mengusung konsep minuman dan makanan dari campuran daun lavender, juga mengusung konsep bangunan cafe ungu dan intagramable.
Each week, The News-Gazette will show a screenshot of a home from a movie or TV show and ask readers, “Who lives here?” Email your guess of a character who resides there to wholiveshere@news-gazette.com, and we’ll give a winner a shoutout on next week’s page. Be sure to include your full name and town of residence.
NBC
LAST WEEK’S ANSWER
DEBBIE GRIFFET of Champaign was the first to correctly guess the home of Judge PHILIP and VIVIAN BANKS (James Avery and Janet Hubert-Whitten/Daphne Maxwell Reed) and family — including nephew Will Smith from west Philadelphia — in NBC’s “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” (1990-96).
This story about working moms was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ameykay Stocks, a mail carrier and a mother of five, has sent all her children to local public schools here from the year they turned 3.
She and her husband, a sign installer, have been grateful to have free child care while they worked. And she said she’s thrilled with what her children, now ages 5 to 16, have learned.
“She’s mastered puzzles on her own,” Stocks said of her 5-year-old. “She’s not into electronics, more into the whole fantasy land of kitchen and playing with pots and pans.” In her daughter’s preschool classroom last year, “she had a whole pet center and was playing chef and taking orders.”
Stocks expects all five of her children to complete college, something she never achieved, and credits some of their academic success to having a highly qualified classroom teacher since the age of 3.
Most families in America lack such an option. Nationally, only 68 percent of 4-year-olds and 40 percent of 3-year-olds were enrolled in publicly funded preschool in 2017, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Hardly any children younger than 3 are enrolled in publicly funded child care of any kind.
But Washington is one of a growing number of cities to offer public preschool, and it’s more generous than most: All 4-year-olds and most 3-year-olds living here, regardless of their family’s income, get a spot in a free public preschool program. A handful of other cities, along with a few states, such as Oklahoma and West Virginia, offer free preschool as well, making public education available to children younger than 5.
Two students answer their teachers' questions about apples during their preschool class at Kimball Elementary School in Washington, D.C.Lillian Mongeau / The Hechinger Report
Led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., some of the Democratic presidential candidates have set their sights on an ambitious — and costly — national child care system that would constitute a vast expansion of these local programs. In early 2019, Warren proposed a policy that would provide working families with free child care. This month, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., followed suit, releasing his own universal child care plan. Warren, Sanders and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., all mentioned the importance of expanding child care during Tuesday’s South Carolina debate.
“Instead of giving tax breaks to billionaires,” Sanders said, “we're going to have high-quality, universal child care for every family in this country.”
Despite these overwhelming numbers, the federal government does little to subsidize child care. That hurts working moms, who are more likely than working dads to quit their jobs when they can’t find child care, according to a survey conducted by the liberal Center for American Progress think tank. And working moms were 40 percent more likely than working dads to say that child care issues had negatively affected their careers.
“We don’t have the supports that women need to stay in the workforce consistently if they want to,” said Julie Vogtman, the director of job quality at the National Women’s Law Center. “If women work, it’s difficult to earn enough to afford child care. But if they take time out of the workforce, both their family’s short- and long-term financial stability are harmed by that choice.”
For Stocks, Washington’s public preschool program has meant that she could keep the jobs she needed to make ends meet for her family and also have the time to earn the certifications she needed to improve her work prospects.
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When her oldest child, Justina, was born, Stocks was working at Macy’s and Kay Jewelers and was having trouble affording the $68 a week she owed for child care after receiving city subsidies for low-income families. Stocks needed multiple forms of public transportation to get to the child care facility, then to her two jobs and then back in time to get Justina. Some days, she’d end up spending $20 she could ill afford on a taxi to get back in time.
Things became easier when Justina turned 3 and became eligible for the preschool program at her neighborhood school: Garfield Elementary. The school was easier to reach, the cost of child care dropped (Justina still went at 6 a.m. before school started at 8 a.m.) and Stocks was happier with the quality of care.
“It relieved a lot of stress off of me,” she said.
Since then, Stocks earned a certification at University of the District of Columbia Community College that allowed her to qualify for a job at the U.S. Postal Service where she’s able to earn a higher and steadier salary. She said without free, full-time child care, she couldn’t have made that switch.
Washington’s publicly funded full-day preschool program was responsible for increasing the city’s maternal labor force by 10 percentage points from 2008 to 2017, according to research published in 2018 by the Center for American Progress. Researchers determined that the bump in employment affected women at both the upper and the lower ends of the pay scale. Those in the middle, already a highly employed group, did not see much change.
Teacher Irene Taguian leads a 4-year-old preschool class at Lafayette Elementary School in Washington, D.C.Lillian Mongeau / The Hechinger Report
Mary Charles and her husband, who have one child, live in Washington. She is an information technology manager at a government office and he is a government contractor. They are firmly middle-income earners in their city and say paying for child care in the years before their daughter could start preschool was a big stretch.
“It was $20,000 a year and that’s considered not expensive,” Charles said. “For us, that was a significant part of our budget.”
To make more money, they rented out their basement, which meant sharing their kitchen. And Charles’ husband worked as a DJ on the weekends for extra cash. They were not eligible for income-based child care subsidies. Charles said the availability of public preschool, which has exceeded her expectations for quality, was a large part of their decision to stay in the city rather than moving to the otherwise cheaper suburbs.
“I think it should be available more places,” Charles said.
But for now, most children with working parents are not eligible for subsidized child care on any significant scale until the school year following their fifth birthday. The federal funding that does exist — about $22.2 billion — is meant to help poor families cover child care costs, but only 1 in 6 eligible families get the aid because there is not enough money for all of them. And that figure does not take into account the many families who earn more than 85 percent of their state’s median income and are therefore ineligible for federal help but are still unable to cover the cost of child care.
Now that middle-class moms are facing many of the same challenges low-income moms have faced for decades — unaffordable, unavailable or unsatisfactory care for their children while they must work to put food on the table — the needs of the two groups may be aligning in ways that could drive real change.
“This issue has come to a head in the last couple years because families can’t make ends meet with one full-time worker,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank. “People are beginning to realize that it’s not their fault or an inability to manage their own finances” that is making the cost of child care unaffordable for them.
Both Warren’s and Sanders’ plans would offer subsidized care to a broader swath of the public. On a smaller scale, so would the Child Care for Working Families Act of 2019, sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, both Democrats. The bill boasted 209 co-sponsors in the House and the Senate (including Warren, Sanders and Klobuchar), but has not made it out of committee.
All of these plans depend on the federal government spending significantly more money.
President Donald Trump has presided over one of the most significant increases to subsidized child care funding — more than $3 billion since fiscal year 2017. And though Republicans in general are supportive of expanding child care subsidies, the bolder of the Democratic plans — from Warren and Sanders — count on a new wealth tax that is unlikely to gain conservative support.
The Economic Policy Institute report that calculated current federal spending at $22 billion per year estimated that a national early childhood system that compensated caretakers in line with K-12 teachers and served all children from infancy to age 5 would cost $337 billion to $495 billion a year.
Jan. 6, 201901:35
Warren’s plan, at an estimated cost of $1.07 trillion over the coming decade, would cost less on an annual basis in part because higher income families would pay a sliding-scale fee. Sanders has said his plan would cost $1.5 trillion over 10 years, but he hasn’t provided a detailed breakdown.
While most politicians have proposed incremental, less expensive solutions — the Child Care for Working Families Act has been priced at $40 billion a year — some experts say that more comprehensive plans are what’s needed to not only change the reality for working families but also to provide a needed jolt to the national economy. Offering subsidies to only the poorest families saves the government money, Gould said, but it “doesn’t get at the workforce issues for the providers or the parents.”
Increasingly, no one is left out of the delicate balance of how to afford having kids, ensure they are well-cared for, and work the hours necessary to make a living.
Jamie Smith is a lawyer by training but hasn’t worked full-time in law since her oldest, now 13, was born with severe disabilities. The mother of four said securing a place for her youngest, now 4, in her local public school’s preschool program in Washington marks the first time in more than a decade that she is able to contemplate saying yes to new work prospects.
“Up until this point, I haven't really been able to pursue a career, and I'm hoping that with these new opportunities, I'm on track to be able to do that now,” Smith said.
She and her husband, who works full-time as a lawyer for a union, live in Upper Northwest, one of the city’s more upscale neighborhoods. Still, private preschool was out of reach for them before their youngest son started public school this year.
“I absolutely would be willing to pay higher taxes, not just so that my own kids could attend pre-K,” she said, “but also to give the same opportunity to other kids and other moms.”
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