I’m a pretty laid-back person. I’m not one to get wrapped up in mass hysteria.I’m tempted to laugh at coronavirus memes and Corona beer jokes. But when you hear experts talk about how the coronavirus will mostly affect “high risk” populations — that’s me. I have multiple sclerosis, and a suppressed immune system.What’s more, I’m deeply familiar with the worst-case scenario. A decade ago my older sister died from H1N1, then known as “swine flu.”At the time, the flu wasn’t high on my list of concerns. I traveled overseas a couple times in 2009 — I doubt I even bothered to get the flu shot. As far as I can recall, H1N1 in no way altered my life.Until H1N1 changed everything.My sister Denise, 37 years old and a doting mom whose kids ranged in age from 3 to 17, was the sweetest, most caring, most generous woman you could ever meet. She was a beloved member of her church and the heart of our family. She was the mother I aimed to be one day. Unfortunately, my sister also had autoimmune hepatitis, a disease in which the body’s immune system attacks the liver cells. Afflicted with a chronic illness, she was at higher risk for H1N1.Trending stories,celebrity news and all the best of TODAY.Heather Millen, right, and her older sister, Denise.Courtesy Heather MillenIn October 2009, she caught what seemed like a cold, maybe the flu, but it quickly grew into something more. She went to the hospital for tests, and then it all happened so fast. One minute she was planning a trip with her family, the next she was sedated to deal with the pain she was experiencing as a result of her fragile body fighting this powerful virus.Denise was in the hospital for several weeks and I was there for every painful moment. I’ll never forget walking the halls of the “swine flu” wing: so many scared people, an overwhelmed hospital staff desperate to do more, families left blindsided and wondering “how did this happen to us?” In the end, Denise’s body just was too weak. I was left without a sister, my parents without a daughter, her children without a mother.There were 12,469 U.S. deaths from H1N1. For my sister to be a part of that statistic — not a day goes by when that doesn’t break my heart.Ten years later, things have changed a bit for me. I’m now a mother to two funny, adorable, rambunctious little boys. My sister’s children have grown into beautiful teenagers and young adults, blazing their own paths, which would make her so proud.Heather Millen is now a mom of two boys and lives with multiple sclerosis.Courtesy of Heather MillenTen years later, we’re again staring a new outbreak in the face. There’s no way to know how this one will play out. So far, older people and people with underlying health conditions are about “twice as likely to develop serious outcomes versus otherwise younger, healthier people,” according to Dr. Nancy Messonnier from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).I understand why a government agency like the CDC would reassure the general public that they have little to be worried about because the disease is mainly dangerous to high-risk groups. But what about those high-risk people? The ones on chemotherapy with suppressed immune systems, the elderly, those living with chronic illness or another underlying disease?People like my sister, and like me.A year after my sister died, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis — a different autoimmune disease than the one she had, but autoimmune diseases do tend to run in families. Multiple sclerosis is a neurological condition in which the immune system attacks the body’s central nervous system, especially the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves, leading to a wide range of symptoms throughout the body.The disease is a risk factor on its own, but like many autoimmune patients, I take immunosuppressant drugs to fight it. Those drugs help minimize the immune system’s attack on the body but, true to their name, they also suppress the immune system itself. That’s bad enough with all the colds and stomach bugs my aforementioned adorable children bring home.What if they bring home something worse?Panic is not the answer, even in the face of the increasingly scary coronavirus. But take reasonable precautions. Just because you’re not at risk doesn’t mean people around you aren’t. I realize how easy it is to assume these “exotic” outbreaks could never happen to you. I thought that way too. Until it happened to my family.
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The testing of three suspected cases of coronavirus reported in Lagos on Thursday has emerged negative, Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Professor Akin Abayomi, said on Friday.
Earlier on Friday, the nation’s Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, had confirmed that two out of three suspected cases had turned out negative.
READ ALSO: Two Out Of Three Suspected Coronavirus Cases Are Negative, Says Health Minister
However, in a tweet on Friday evening, Professor Abayomi said all three do not carry the virus.
Breaking! #COVID19Lagos
All the three #COVID19 suspected cases; travellers from France, England and China whose samples were collected yesterday for analysis have tested negative and they have been dischsrged. #ForAGreaterLagos @jidesanwoolu @drobafemihamzat @NCDCgov @SegsDr pic.twitter.com/thVQcOAAS5— Prof. Akin Abayomi (@ProfAkinAbayomi) March 6, 2020
“All the three #COVID19 suspected cases; travellers from France, England and China whose samples were collected yesterday for analysis have tested negative and they have been discharged,” he said.
The Netherlands has recorded its first death in the novel coronavirus outbreak, health officials said on Friday.
“An 86-year-old man with COVID-19 who was admitted to the Ikazia hospital in Rotterdam has died,” the National Institute for Public Health (RIVM) said.
“This is the first patient in the Netherlands to die of the coronavirus,” the RIVM said, adding that the source of the patient’s contamination was unknown.
The number of novel coronavirus cases in the world is approaching 100,000 and more than 3,400 have proved fatal.
The Netherlands has seen a jump in cases from 82 to 128 over the last two days.
“The man was isolated as soon as it became clear that he had COVID-19,” the RIVM said.
Everyone who had contact with the patient — including visitors and health workers — is being questioned about their health, the institute said.
“All those in contact with the patient who are suffering from a cold or have a fever have been asked to remain at home. If necessary, they will be tested,” the RIVM added
A lawyer, Andrew Emwanta has filed a complaint against a judge of the Federal High Court In Kano, Justice Lewis Allagoa, for alleged misconduct as a presiding judge.
Justice Allagoa on Thursday set aside a ruling of the FCT High Court suspending the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole.
According to a petition filed by Mr Emwanta and obtained by Channels Television, the interim order by justice Allagoa was hurriedly granted in favour of the defendants in the suit, less than 24 hours after Mr Oshiomhole was stopped by an injunction from Justice Danlemi Senchi, from parading himself as the APC National Chairman.
READ ALSO: Alleged Fraud: Iwu’s Case Remains In Lagos, Court Insists
He stated that justice Allagoa’s ruling has inflicted a transitional crisis in the National Headquarters of the APC.
Below is the petition filed by Mr Emwanta:
Gunmen have abducted five female students from a private boarding school in Mariga Local government Area of Niger state.
Also kidnapped were a teacher and two local security guards on duty.
The affected students were taken from the Tular Academy at Moruba in state where one of them already escaped.
The State Police Command said the attack took place late on Sunday, but for lack of communication, it only got the information late on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the Police Commissioner, Adamu Usman, has led a combined team of police and Military personnel to Tular Academy school Moruba, in Mariga local Government.
READ ALSO: EFCC Arrests 42 Suspected Internet Fraudsters In Ogun
According to CP Usman, the bandits had taken advantage of poor communication network service to attack the school.
Only reporters from the Nigerian Television Authority and the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria were however on the team.
He said the command has deployed additional security measures against further attacks.
“We have since deployed Special Technical Squad and Armed Anti-Kidnapping Squad to identify areas with a view to rescuing the victims unhurt,” he said.
The police boss also expressed displeasure over the porous state of the fence at the school and its location which to him are contributory factors to the attack.
He however solicited the cooperation of the public in volunteering useful information to the police to enhance their investigation and prompt response at all times.
As the world grapples with the spread of novel coronavirus, in remote western DR Congo, officials are fighting a deadly outbreak of measles.
More than 6,000 people have died from measles in the Democratic Republic of Congo in a year, the world’s worst outbreak and triple the toll of the country’s Ebola epidemic. It is also nearly double the 3,404 people who have died from the coronavirus so far.
Last year, more than 18 million children under the age of five were vaccinated for measles across DR Congo and around 310,000 suspected cases were reported.
The UN agency World Health Organisation had said more emergency funds were needed from donors for a six-month immunisation plan for children to help curb the epidemic.
The second stage of vaccinations just started this week. Vaccines are loaded onto motorbikes in the villages around Temba, a six-hour drive along dirt roads from the western community of Seke-Banza.
Around 73,000 children from six months to 15 years old will be vaccinated in the Kongo Central province as part of the second phase.
Efforts to halt the spread of both Ebola and measles in DR Congo are hampered by a lack of access, weak health care and unrest across the country, especially in the east.
Several hours into the remote bush by motorbike from the regional capital of Matadi in western DR Congo, measles has killed six people in Seke-Banza, a small part of this forgotten epidemic.
The latest victim was a small boy who died during the week in hospital.
“There are two categories of patients: those who are in the acute phase of measles, with respiratory signs, conjunctivitis, fevers,” says Mederic Monier with Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
“A few months later, as their immune system is weak, they can trigger other diseases like malaria so we also take care of them.”
Adolphe Kiakupuati, a hunter like most men in the region, came with his three children for a vaccination. Lack of information is a problem in this area in the middle of the forest, on the borders of the two Congos.
“During the vaccination period for the children, I was busy in the forest and I was not aware of it. But now they are on treatment,” the father said.
Logistics are a major challenge, especially trying to keep vaccines at the required temperature as they are transported.
“The big challenge is to be able to supply all of these vaccines in all of these villages, while respecting quality,” says MSF logistics manager Jean Pletinckx.
The DRC recorded more than 335,413 suspected cases and 6,362 deaths from January 1, 2019 to February 20, 2020, according to WHO statistics.
Measles has killed more than the Ebola epidemic declared on August 1, 2018 in the east of the country, which has caused 2,264 deaths.
Measles is a highly-contagious disease caused by a virus that attacks mainly children. The most serious complications include blindness, brain swelling, diarrhoea, and severe respiratory infections.
Arsenal captain, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, has said he will still be regarded as a top striker, even if he never wins any trophy.
Aubameyang is currently the Premier League’s joint-top goalscorer with 17 goals.
The 30-year-old has been linked with a summer exit and clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona and Inter Milan are interested.
Aubameyang will have only one year left on his current deal by the end of the season and is yet to win silverware since joining the Gunners in January 2018.
The FA Cup represents this season’s last chance for Aubameyang to win his first trophy in England and he is yet to win a league title in his career, despite spending more than four years at Borussia Dortmund.
“I’m a striker so I will defend my side – I don’t think you need trophies to be a top striker.
“Of course, it can help you but we’ve seen a lot of great players that didn’t win trophies but we respect them because of their quality.
“You don’t need to win trophies but if you win it, it’s better,” he told Soccer Saturday.
Manchester City manager, Pep Guardiola, has warned his players that they will look to Manchester United on Sunday, if they feel the game is more important to the Red Devils.
City go into Sunday’s Derby, knowing they have little to no chance of catching runaway leaders Liverpool, who hold a 22-point lead over them.
Guardiola’s side are however ahead of fifth-placed United with 15 points, with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s men fighting to play Champions League football next term.
“When we believe it’s more important for them, we’re going to lose.
“We have to have belief that it’s more important to us. I’ve never played a game thinking about points or that the game is more or less comfortable.
“I’ve said many times about the determination we’ve shown in these moments, the desire and commitment in every single game, not just for the last year,” Guardiola told a press conference on Friday.
A Federal High Court sitting in Kano State has granted an interim injunction restraining Kano Public Complaints and Anti-Corruption Commission from further investigating Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II.
In an exparte order granted by Justice Lewis Allago on Friday, the court instructed the state Anti-Corruption and its Chairman, Barr. Muhuyi Magaji, Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice of Kano state and Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje to maintain the status quo pending the hearing and determination of the substantive motion.
The order dated 6th, March, 2020 and signed by the court registrar Bello Nuhu Ahmed, also directed suspension of any attempt by the commission or any one acting on its behalf pending the hearing which has been fixed for 18th, March 2020.
The seven page application for interim order filed by Barr. Nureini Jimoh, counsel to Emir Sanusi, was supported by affidavit of urgency, which was deposed to by Mahammad Minor Sanusi, Chief of staff to the emir of Kano.
This came after the state Anti-Corruption agency on Thursday disclosed fresh investigation on Emir Sanusi over alleged illegal sale of landed property.
Besides, the commission has issued fresh invitation on the emir to appear before it on Monday 9th of March, 2020, to clear himself of the allegation.
The commission’s investigation came two days after the state House of Assembly directed the House committee on public petition to also investigate petition filed against the monarch.
Although the agency had told journalists that the fresh investigation had noting to do with the pending matter on alleged mismanagement of N3.4bn, the commission had earlier submitted a report to Kano state government recommending the suspension of the emir.
The Ibadan Zonal Office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has arrested 42 suspected internet fraudsters aka ‘Yahoo boys’.
Tony Orilade, EFCC Head of Media, said this in a statement on Friday.
The spokesman noted that the suspects were arrested at different locations in Ilaro.
The operation followed intelligence received on their alleged illegal activities.
Orilade further listed items recovered. These includ eight exotic cars, mobile phones and laptops.
The EFCC disclosed that the suspects were aged between 18 and 33.
The agency said they would be charged to court after investigations were concluded.
President Muhammadu Buhari led federal government, in its update on coronavirus, on Friday, said the Isolation Centre in Abuja will be ready in April.
Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, said this while responding to the remarks of Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, on the poor state of the facility, NAN reports.
The Isolation Centre is located in Gwagwalada, a suburb in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Lawan, during his visit on Wednesday, condemned what he saw and lamented that not a kobo of the N620 million earmarked to fight coronavirus had been released.
But the minister claimed that funds approved to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), had been disbursed.
Ehanire added that construction is ongoing and the contractor has also been asked to fast-track it.
“They said it will be finished by next month. So they used the building which they wanted to use for intensive care. It has been furnished and prepared, staff have been trained and all protocols have been established.
“The Senate President went there when the finishing touches were being put and I think he expected that the bed was already made.
“Another team visited the next day, they saw that it was already completed and the chairman of the senate committee said there has been a lot of improvement.
“All monies approved got to NCDC, but had to go through a lot of process, but NCDC had made procurement on credit from its regular suppliers, they were given materials on credit, but many of them have been settled,” Ehanire said.
Millennials are the generation most worried about coronavirus. They’ve stopped shopping in physical stores, while tech conferences and music festivals are canceling events. But will millennials give up “Netflix and Chill” to avoid getting sick with COVID-19? Record high STD outbreaks in the U.S. suggest they probably won’t. It’s not just their portfolios that millennials are changing in response to coronavirus. Although they are doing exactly that by betting big on “plague stocks.” But the nation’s youth are also staying away from crowds in droves to avoid infection. Millennials Are Taking Drastic Steps to Avoid Coronavirus Millennials are taking drastic steps to avoid coronavirus. But maybe not the one that would matter most. | Source: Pcess609/Shutterstock.comMillennials are taking drastic precautions to stay safe from coronavirus. Consequently, the industries that cater to them are canceling events left and right. And the businesses that employ them are testing out more work-from-home arrangements. A First Insight survey from last week found that 54% of millennials have already significantly or somewhat changed their shopping habits. For example: 39% have cut down on brick-and-mortar shopping trips. 46% are spending less time in public places. It’s no surprise that shopping mall retailers are expecting to take a hard hit to sales in the coming months. Meanwhile, concert cancellations across Asia are beginning to spread stateside. Organizers canceled this year’s Miami Ultra Music Festival Friday. Several artists have pulled out of SXSW as coronavirus fears mount. And Coachella 2020’s fate hangs in the balance too. Kevin Lyman, founder of Vans Warped Tour – the largest and longest-running traveling music festival in the U.S. – said: I wouldn’t doubt over the next 20 days if we see a festival a day canceled. You Could Catch Coronavirus from ‘Netflix and Chill’ Will coronavirus fears lead to a decrease in “Netflix and Chill?” Rising STD rates suggest the answer is no. | Source: Proxima Studio/Shutterstock.comBut the real question for millennials is: If you are this anxious about coronavirus, will you give up your “Netflix and Chill” to keep from getting sick? Bet you won’t wear that face mask on your hot Tinder date. While millennials are taking extra precautions around coronavirus, the CDC says young people are responsible for record-high rates of STD infection in the U.S. In 2018, the most recent year of CDC data, STD outbreaks ravaged the country at staggering levels: The number of primary and secondary syphilis cases – the most infectious stages of syphilis – increased 14 percent to more than 35,000 cases, the highest number reported since 1991. Gonorrhea increased 5 percent to more than 580,000 cases – also the highest number reported since 1991. Chlamydia increased 3 percent to more than 1.7 million cases – the most ever reported to CDC. Further, it was the fifth straight year of increases in STD infections in the country. One of the main factors was young people Netflix and chilling with no condoms: Decreased condom use among vulnerable groups, including young people… Contrary to some reports in recent years of a “sex recession,” a majority of millennial and Gen Z singles surveyed last year reported having sex in the past seven days. So while they’re avoiding the stores and concert halls, the close proximity of “Netflix and Chill” situations is the most likely to transmit coronavirus: Indeed, data from China’s cases show that most of the spread is happening among family members who live together. If syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia haven’t been enough to scare promiscuous younger Americans away from having casual “hook ups” (or even using condoms), coronavirus might not either. But now that the virus is spreading in the United States, Netflix and Chill could be riskier than ever. This article was edited by Josiah Wilmoth.
GM will launch 22 new electric vehicles by 2023: Details, names, specs – Business Insider
General Motors plans to launch 22 new electric vehicles by 2023.At an EV day near Detroit, executives showcased electric vehicles from Chevy, Buick, Cadillac, GMC’s Hummer, and the Cruise self-driving/ride-sharing startup.All the vehicles will be powered by GM’s new Ultium battery technology and be built on a new EV platform.Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
GM held an EV day for investors, media, and dealers at the company’s Technical Center near Detroit this week. The automaker intends to launch 22 new electrified vehicles by 2023, pursuing what CEO Mary Barra has called an “all-electric future.”Four EVs are launching in 2020. According to GM, the balance should follow at a rapid clip, and Barra said the program should be profitable “in its first cycle.”GM president Mark Reuss presented the fleet of forthcoming EVs that GM showcased at the event, stressing that “everything” is real — the company showed no vaporware concepts that it doesn’t intend to bring to market.Here’s a rundown of the vehicles, from each GM brand:Cadillac
A Cadillac EV concept.
Cadillac
In addition to revealing the Celestiq, a hand-built, limited-production, all-electric luxury sedan that has Bentley-level scale, GM provided a closer look at Lyriq, slated to roll out in April 2020. That SUV has an all-new exterior and interior design. The exterior’s standout is a multilayered, lighted grille, framed by vertical headlamps. The interior strives to seamlessly integrate various features and has a showstopping, curved LED instrument cluster and LED screen that covers most of the dashboard.
Lyriq is topped by a new, three-row SUV that will probably wear the Escalade nameplate. The large, sleek SUV had an LED setup that runs from pillar-to-pillar on the vehicle’s dash.Each new Cadillac will be built on GM’s new dedicated EV platform at the company’s retooled Hamtramck factory in Michigan. The new Caddys will also utilize GM’s Ultium battery pack, an innovative, modular pouch design delivering up to 200 kWh capacity and more than 400 miles per charge, with 0-60 mph as low as three seconds.Cadillac has been designated as GM’s lead electric brand, so it was no surprise that GM provided a lot of detail about its new lineup.BuickTwo new Buick electric SUVs are on the way. As-yet unnamed, they’ll also use Ultium battery packs and feature a slightly more subdued version of the Cadillac instrument-infotainment LED-screen setup.Chevy
The first-gen Bolt.
Hollis Johnson/Business Insider
The next-generation of the pioneering Chevy Bolt EV arrives in late 2020. A crossover Bolt follows in summer of 2021, and it’s the first vehicle outside the Cadillac brand to get the Super Cruise handsfree highway self-driving technology.
Super Cruise itself has been upgraded. It can now navigate highway interchanges without disengaging, has been tweaked as far as driver-attention monitoring is concerned, and is now easier overall to engage, an adjustment GM made in response to owner feedback.GMC Hummer
The teaser photo for the new GMC Hummer.
GMC
The Hummer returns! First as a GMC pickup truck in May 2020, then as an SUV. Again, the resurgent brand’s vehicles will be Ultium-powered and be built using a new EV platform and up to three electric motors.Unlike Cadillac and Buick, the updated GM infotainment system will be less luxuriously high-tech in Hummer, designed instead to be robustly interactive when taken into rough, off-road conditions. Still, a large central touchscreen will be the centerpiece.Cruise
The Cruise Origin.
Cruise
The self-driving/ride-sharing startup acquired by GM in 2016 and a standalone company valued at nearly $20 billion showed its Origin shuttle at GM’s EV day.Built with Honda, it’s the first vehicle to use the third-generation GM EV platform. Cruise won’t launch its commercial service in San Francisco with the Origin — that duty falls to modified Chevy Bolts — but Origin will be Ultium-powered when Cruise is ready to set it loose.
A Michigan lawmaker who was disciplined after an investigation found “credible” claims that he sexually harassed three women says he harassed no oneBy DAVID EGGERT Associated PressMarch 6, 2020, 7:18 PM2 min readLANSING, Mich. —
A Michigan lawmaker issued a statement Friday denying that he sexually harassed three women, a day after the Senate leader removed him from a committee he led and ordered him to undergo training.
Sen. Peter Lucido, a Republican from Macomb County’s Shelby Township, noted that the Senate Business Office and its outside lawyers determined the allegations could not be “unequivocally substantiated”.
The review, though, found all of the accusers “credible” and concluded it was “more likely than not” that each incident occurred as reported.
“Given that I have not sexually harassed anyone nor were there any citations of a violation of Senate rules determined by the investigation, I look forward to continuing to work on behalf of the people I represent,” Lucido said. “It is my honor and a privilege to serve the people of the 8th Senate District. I have always done my best for them, and I will continue to do so with the same level of hard work and service that they deserve from their public officials.”
Lucido’s comments were criticized by Allison Donahue, a Michigan Advance reporter who was the first woman to complain about his behavior, specifically that he made inappropriate comments to her in front of a group of high school boys at the Capitol.
“I’m disappointed that Sen. Lucido is choosing to gaslight and lie despite the results from the investigation,” she said in a statement. “The Senate Business Office clearly said that after dozens of interviews and multiple articles of evidence, the results showed that the allegations made my Sen. Mallory McMorrow, Melissa Osborn and myself were credible.”
Donahue said she appreciates both the investigation and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey’s decision.
“It’s time for everyone else to put in the work to change the culture,” she said. “This is the time where we should be choosing to believe women, to right our wrongdoings and make sure that everyone has a comfortable and safe work environment.”
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Follow Eggert on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidEggert00
Washington Examiner’s top editor orders staff not to write negative stories about Fox News
New York (CNN Business)The top editor at the Washington Examiner, a leading conservative news organization, instructed staff in recent months to refrain from writing negative stories about Fox News, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The peop…
What McKinsey and Bain are telling their clients about how to prepare for coronavirus – Business Insider
Major companies and businesses can prepare for the economic impact caused by the coronavirus outbreak.McKinsey and Bain & Co. brought their problem-solving approaches to all the available data on the virus.Both firms broke down the industries most likely to be affected. The leading consultancies shared their advice on how businesses can prepare for the coronavirus outbreak and change their market approaches accordingly. Click here for more BI Prime stories.
As the coronavirus has spread to every province and region in China and at least 88 other countries, many companies are uncertain about what the outbreak means for their business. Leading consultancies McKinsey and Bain & Company recently shared reports advising clients to set up company contingency plans to help combat the virus outbreak. At their best, management consultants are essentially business doctors that leaders rely on to help fix complex problems. And in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, these experts shared you can make smarter business decisions to soften the financial blow. Here’s exactly how businesses should prepare for the coronavirus outbreak, according to McKinsey and Bain consultants.Industries most impacted According to McKinsey’s breakdown, the industries likely to be impacted for the longest amount of time include hospitality, aviation, automotive, and tourism. As Chinese tourism accounted for $277 billion, or 16% of international tourism in 2019, McKinsey predicted a 40% reduction to demand in the tourism and hospitality industries until the disease is under control.
Karen Harris, managing director at Bain, generated her insights based on a coronavirus Situational Threat Report Index (SITREP) that combined data with her firm’s problem-solving approach. She recommended that all businesses focus on mitigating the threats of disease transmission to their staff and halting unnecessary investments for now. Moreover, Bain predicted that the coronavirus would cost China more than $72 billion.About 51,000 companies worldwide have direct suppliers in the affected regions to date, and the entire global economy has been put at risk due to the spread of the coronavirus, according to the Federal Reserve. The coronavirus, which causes a disease known as COVID-19, has killed more than 3,400 people and infected more than 100,000 worldwide. The vast majority of cases — just over 80% — are in China. Protect your workforce Your employees come first. Both McKinsey and Bain consultants advised clients to prioritize the safety and well-being of their workforces, and many major companies are trying to do just that. For example, Google and Apple restricted international travel and encouraged employees to work remotely, Business Insider previously reported. Consulting firm Accenture also cancelled “any non-essential international travel and do not plan any additional until further notice,” according to an internal memo sent to employees seen by Business Insider. That memo stated that an Accenture employee had been diagnosed with coronavirus and that more than 100 Accenture workers were quarantined in China and Italy. A company spokesperson confirmed the memo’s authenticity.
Bain consultants also advised companies to start preparing for future talent needs, as “uncertain market conditions often make critical talent available,” according to the report. In other words, recruiters should start hiring people they’re going to need in the long term. On top of focusing on softening the economic slowdown, think about how you’re going to grow and profit after the virus blows over, the report said. Neither report commented on fears of the virus becoming a permanent part of life, like flu season, as the virus remains unpredictable and is rapidly changing.How to grapple with a break in the supply chain — take stockThe coronavirus has disrupted many companies’ supply chains, and McKinsey made several recommendations about how companies can cope. First, McKinsey said to monitor your company’s supply shortage, and then to draft predictions on how this will impact your business in a year’s time. Look for other opportunities to build partnerships with vendors, and design a new approach for the future to prevent another major interruption of the partnership.”Create a sufficient supply buffer that factors in traffic suspensions and supplier shutdowns, and monitor the end-to-end supply chain, including raw materials, inventory and delivery challenges,” Harris and consultants wrote.Create a response team to deal with rapid change Adaptability is the key to overcoming change.
Bain advised clients to be ready to move quickly if opportunities present themselves. If you have a company plan for 2020, make sure to adjust your budget and rework investment deals. You want it to make sense considering the current market conditions.McKinsey recommended that you set up a cross-functional response team specifically for any issues related to COVID-19. “Companies should nominate a direct report of the CEO to lead the effort and should appoint members from every function and discipline to assist,” the report noted. “Team members will need to step out of their day-to-day roles and dedicate most of their to virus response.”Nevertheless, both consultancies stressed that company crisis responses are a group effort, in which employees and managers should prepare for on switching gears and taking on unfamiliar responsibilities to deal with an unpredictable outbreak.
One of the frequent claims of the Sia network is that over the long term, storage will be cheaper than $2 / TB / Mo, assuming that storage economics do not change. Though we’ve claimed this many times, we’ve never published a detailed model explaining where this number comes from. Until now.For the purposes of this model, we are going to be assuming an endgame where Sia has substantially outgrown all of the latent / unused storage in the world, where the only way Sia can continue to grow is by having new datacenters established for the sole purpose of profiting from selling data to the Sia network. You can follow along with the math using this spreadsheet.One of the key ways that the Sia network distinguishes itself from traditional cloud storage is its datacenter architecture and requirements. The Sia network only expects hosts to have a 95–98% uptime. Despite this, the Sia network is able to achieve 99.9999% uptime for files. This is because each piece of data on the Sia network is stored on many hosts, requiring only a subset of them to be online in order for the file to remain available.Today, data is typically stored on the Sia network with a 10-of-30 redundancy scheme. This means that there’s a 3x overhead, and that as long as any 10 hosts are online, the file itself is still retrievable. Once the Sia network is more mature, we will likely be switching to 64-of-96 hosts.If we assume that the 30 hosts go offline independently, and each host has a 95% chance of being online over a given time interval, the equation to determine the probability that a file is unavailable looks like this, giving a result of 10^-19, or 18 nines of uptime. Practically speaking host failures are not truly independent and you have to account for black swan situations like world war three. The true reality is that no system actually hits 18 nines of uptime (nor 11 nines of reliability).Amazingly, even though 64-of-96 is only 1.5x redundancy, exactly half of the total copies of 10-of-30, the uptime equation has a nearly identical result — 17 nines of uptime.In Sia’s endgame, 1.5x redundancy is the number that is most likely to be used in production contexts, so that is the number we are going to be using when we model the long term cost of storage.An efficient storage rig is going to need the following parts:32x 6 TB HDD: $41601x Mobo with 8 SATA slots: $1508x 4 way SATA data splitters: $501x CPU 4 cores: $9532 GB RAM: $1401x PSU with 8 SATA cables: $808x SATA power splitters: $5016x Stackable HDD cage: $160Bare shelf: $60What’s going here is we’re buying 32 HDDs, and then finding a low cost way to put them together. This is a technique that was championed by the Bitcoin mining industry, with unprecedented levels of corner cutting, bitcoin mining farms were able to get prices to be absurdly low. We can employ the same strategies here. With 95% uptime requirements, we don’t need to splurge on expensive parts like a full computer tower. The mobo selected above supports 48 gbps in data transfer, which means we still end up with over 1gbps per HDD even though we are doing a ton of splitting. It also turns out that 32 HDDs only consume 200w, so the 750w PSU we picked is more than sufficient.In total, we’re spending $4945 to get a rig with 192 TB, or about $26/TB. And this is all paying consumer prices. This rig was assembled using consumer parts, when buying a large number of rigs at scale, a datacenter should be able to get much better pricing. So we will be using a rig cost of $4500 in our spreadsheet.Often times for datacenter buildout, you budget around $1mm per megawatt in costs, or about $1 per watt. These rigs are going to consume about 400w each (6 watts per HDD, 65 for the CPU, 70 for RAM and mobo, and then loss from the PSU and datacenter PUE). In total, that means budgeting about $500 in capex for datacenter buildout.Another cost that needs to be considered is networking equipment. If we’re assuming that you can fit about 8 machines per rack, and you need $2,000 of networking equipment in the datacenter per rack, you get $250 per rig.Finally, everything is going to have to be assembled and constructed. Including screws and such, each rig has in the ballpark of 400 parts. That means about 2 hours of labor per rig. We’ll call that $50, bringing our total buildout expenses to $800 per rig.The whole purpose of understanding capex for the purposes of a profitable datacenter build is to model depreciation. We need to understand how much value we are losing on our hardware every year that the datacenter is in operation. Hard drives last on average about 7 years. Hard drives also go down in price over time, meaning that you lose value a little faster than hard drives break. For this example, we are going to assume a 15% depreciation rate on our storage rigs, and a 5% depreciation on our build-out. That means our total depreciation costs are $785 per year.Investors putting money into datacenter buildout are going to expect to make more revenue than just operational costs and depreciation costs. I think a reasonable profit expectation for a datacenter built to support a mature Sia ecosystem is around 10%, because the risk of building storage for a mature platform should be relatively low. Earlier in the life of the Sia network, risk may be higher, therefore profit requirements may be higher. At 10% profit expectation, the rigs will need to earn $570 per year in profit to be considered a good investment.Our rig takes up about 2 square feet. The shelf that I linked should actually be able to hold about 3 of these rigs, and should be able to stack 3 or more of these shelves together. If you account for leaving space for airflow and aisles, you end up with about 1 square foot per rig, meaning a 2,000 square foot datacenter can hold 200,000 TB. The cost of rent is going to be negligible compared to other expenses, and is therefore excluded. Electricity aside, utilities should be approximately negligible as well.If we assume a PSU efficiency of 93% (this is easily attained at datacenters) and a PUE of 1.4 (generally attainable for this type of setup), you get about 400w per rig. Mining farms often have electricity costs at low as 4 cents, but Sia datacenters are restricted by the fact that they need to have access to good network connections, so we will budget 10 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity. At 500 watts per rig, this comes out to $450 per year in electricity expenses.On Sia, bandwidth is priced separately, renters pay for upload bandwidth and download bandwidth independently from storage, which means that we can exclude all ISP costs from this equation. Those expenses are covered as renters utilize the bandwidth.Typical datacenters often have multiple redundant power agreements, backup power setups, batteries, etc, so that they can maintain 99.99% uptime. They will also have technical staff at the datacenter 24/7 to react quickly to any failures or outages. None of these things are required when your uptime target is 95%, and therefore this is a huge set of costs we can ignore when designing Sia datacenters.Sia datacenters will however need at least a bit of maintenance. For a 32 HDD system, you expect about 5 drives to fail per year. This takes time to repair and you will need on-site staff (just not 24/7). To account for these costs, we will budget $50 per year per rig.All told, we are at about $1850 per year in expected revenue. This combines the depreciation costs, the electricity costs, the utility costs, and the profit requirements.A mature datacenter should be able to maintain a utilization of 90% or more by purchasing equipment on an as-needed basis. Assuming that a datacenter does achieve 90% utilization, a 192 TB storage rig is going to need to earn all of its revenue on only 172 TB.Something that is unique to the Sia network is collateral lockup. When hosting someone’s data, you need to lock up collateral to retain that data. When storing 172 TB of data, a host should expect to have about 6 months worth of revenue locked up. At a 10% profit expectation, that comes down to losing about 1 month worth of revenue to capital expenses per year on actively used storage. So really, we should only be counting 11 months of revenue, as that 12th month is going to pay for our collateral lockup expenses. We compute the collateral expenses as a number of months lost because it can be computed independently of other values this way and simplifies the math.The final expense is the siafund fee. All storage on the network incurs a roughly 10% fee, which means the renter is going to be paying more than the host is earning.With a total revenue requirement of about $1750, an effective utilization of about 172 TB, and an effective earnings period of 11 months, we compute that the host needs to be earning about 90 cents per TB per month in revenue for an investment to make sense. Accounting for siafund fees, the renter needs to pay about $1.00 per TB per month. And then accounting for 1.5x redundancy, the final cost of redundant storage is about $1.50 per TB per month.This is possible because the Sia network is designed so that datacenters can take shortcuts while building. The traditional model for the cloud assumes that datacenters need to be ultra high reliability, and often also assumes certain performance requirements on the internal network and servers of the datacenter. Sia is much more relaxed, everything needs to happen on the order of milliseconds as opposed to microseconds, and is perfectly comfortable with datacenters and storage rigs that have over a day of downtime per month on average.More to the point, as a whole the Sia network has been carefully designed to be optimal as a decentralized system. Many of the fundamental design choices for Sia had to be different to achieve decentralization, and we have been able to leverage the strengths and weaknesses of these requirements to create something entirely new, and ultimately far superior to the traditional cloud.Try out Sia’s personal storage solution at https://sia.tech or Sia’s content publishing and distribution solution at https://siasky.net
Google, Facebook, Twitter to pay hourly workers as offices go remote – Business Insider
Google, Facebook, and Twitter are planning to keep paying hourly workers even as staffing needs decline, according to Axios.The coronavirus outbreak has led many companies adopt remote work policies, raising concerns about what will happen to food service, janitorial, and other workers whose hours may be reduced.Microsoft announced Thursday that it would continue paying vendors who work hourly jobs, leading other companies to follow suit.Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Google, Facebook, and Twitter said they will continue to pay hourly workers even if remote work policies and office closures in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak reduce staffing needs, Axios reported on Thursday evening.As COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, continues to spread throughout the Bay Area and Seattle, many tech companies are implementing work-from-home policies, leaving massive office buildings largely empty.That shift aised concerns about about the fate of food service, janitorial, administrative, security and other hourly workers who will likely see their hours reduced as a result and cannot do their jobs from home.In response, Microsoft announced Thursday that it would continue to pay hourly workers in affected regions even if conditions leave them unable to come into the office, leading other companies to follow suit.”Facebook will pay contingent workers that cannot work due to reduced staffing requirements during voluntary work from home, when we close an office, when we choose to send an employee home, or when they are sick,” a spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider.
Google has similar plans, including continuing to pay hourly workers as well as temporary employees, vendors, and contractors — which the company refers to as TVCs — independent of any reduced staffing needs surrounding the coronavirus outbreak, a spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider.A Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider: “For contractors and hourly workers who are not able to perform their responsibilities from home, Twitter will continue to pay their labor costs to cover standard working hours while Twitter’s WFH guidance and/or travel restrictions related to their assigned office are in effect.”Twitter also said it will reimburse workers for expenses related to setting up their home office and that it’s working with outside vendors to make sure its contractors’ remote work needs are met.In the past few weeks, as more coronavirus cases have been discovered throughout the US, many companies have encouraged or required employees to work from home.On Wednesday, Facebook confirmed that a contractor in its Seattle office had tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, while Google halted international travel after an employee in its Zurich office was confirmed to have the disease.
How this P.E.I. program helps women take back control after leaving abusive relationships | CBC News
A program unique to P.E.I. called Circles of Safety is helping keep women at high risk of being killed by their former partners safe.Hannah Povey feels safe in her new home and free to take moments to write in her journal. (Virginia Smart/CBC)This story is part of Stopping Domestic Violence, a CBC News series looking at the crisis of intimate partner violence in Canada and what can be done to end it. Hannah Povey was just getting used to feeling safe again in her home and neighbourhood when she found out her abusive ex-partner could be getting out of prison as early as this summer.”I’m worried that even with electronic monitoring he may end up going to stores that he knows I frequent and trying to look for me,” she said. “And I’m scared that will initiate that obsession again of wanting to have control over me.” Her former boyfriend, William Wesley Gunning, 24, was sentenced in December 2019 to two years in jail for assault, forcible confinement and uttering a death threat. Povey and Gloria Dennis meet to discuss her safety plan, along with Povey’s boyfriend and a co-worker. (Andy Hincenbergs/CBC) It was a year ago that Povey left Gunning, and with the help of an outreach worker, set up a personalized safety plan. Povey, 28, is one of the latest in a series of women to take part in a program unique to P.E.I. called Circles of Safety. It’s run by P.E.I. Family Violence Prevention Services for women who have left an abusive relationship and are considered at high risk of being killed by their former partners. “I knew I was completely out of control of the situation,” recalled Povey. The circle The idea for Circles of Safety came about when Gloria Dennis, an outreach worker with Family Violence Prevention Services, was at a loss as to how to help a client — a woman living in fear because her former boyfriend, who had violently assaulted her over a three-hour period, was about to be released from jail. Dennis decided to get those close to the woman together in one room, and she credits Kirstin Lund, a trained mediator who had worked in conflict resolution, with working out how they would support the woman in coming up with a plan to help her feel safe. ‘It’s kind of like my baby,’ says Dennis of the Circles of Safety program. (Sally Pitt/CBC) “I’m not saying we’re going to necessarily be able to cover off every single risk,” she said. “But certainly, the more people you have around the table, the more people who are involved in working toward safety, then the more likely we are to be successful.” Since 2010, Dennis has pulled together three to four support circles a year for women. She’s had circles with as few as four participants and as many as 18. ‘He was going to kill somebody’ One of the first circles was for Kelly MacAulay, 50. “I don’t think I was ever happy,” she said, remembering her ex-husband’s drinking, swearing, and violent behaviour over their 20-year marriage. After she left her abusive marriage, MacAulay was given a personal alarm by P.E.I. Family Violence Prevention Services. She takes it with her when she goes out walking. Activated, it emits a loud wail. (Sally Pitt/CBC) She’d taken her children to an emergency women’s shelter a dozen times over the years but always returned home. Then in March 2011, her husband, Joel Clow, violently assaulted her and threatened to shoot her. “I really did think I was going to die,” MacAulay said. She left wearing her pyjamas and slippers, took her kids — and never went back. “I’m lucky. I got a second chance.” She worked with Dennis, police, victim services, probation services and her nurse supervisor from work, and credits the circle for keeping her alive by helping her find her independence and not return to an abusive situation. Povey, left, and MacAulay both credit Circles of Safety with helping to keep them alive. (Sally Pitt/CBC) Four years after she left, Clow killed his then girlfriend, Traci Lynch. He’s in prison now and will be eligible for parole in 2031. “I told them he was going to kill somebody. I really thought it was going to be me,” MacAulay said. Having control ‘centred me’ People taking part in a support circle can include family, friends, neighbours, co-workers or work supervisors, as well as police, counsellors and victim services, which refers women to the program. Generally, the group meets several times to brainstorm ideas, come up with a plan and put it into action. MacAulay, left, Povey, centre, are two of the dozens of P.E.I. women who have taken part in Circles of Safety, working with outreach worker Dennis. (Virginia Smart/CBC) They help women identify what would make them feel safe — everything from installing security alarms and taking self-defence courses, to moving to a less-visible location at work and ensuring former partners released from prison get counselling. “Having them ask me questions about what I wanted was a huge difference to how I had lived for the last year and a half,” Povey said of her experience with the support circle. “To have that control really centred me and allowed me to think more rationally about the situation, and really think about what I wanted because it wasn’t typical for me to be asked that question.” WATCH | Hannah Povey says she’s afraid her abuser will look for he when he is released from jail Hannah Povey was just getting used to feeling safe again when she found out her abusive ex-boyfriend could be getting out of jail as early as this summer. Now a P.E.I. program that helped her leave him is bringing her support network together in preparation. 6:55 For MacAulay, the feeling of being supported made all the difference. “I remember them all sitting around the table and thinking ‘Oh my God! All these people. Look, they’re all here for me,'” she said. “They wanted to keep me safe, and that’s exactly what they did.” Strength with support Dennis said the circle allows victims to share the burden of dealing with the consequences of their abuse. “There’s an element of not feeling like you’re doing it on your own,” Dennis said. Dennis, Povey and MacAulay link arms to take part in the Walk in Silence in Charlottetown. It’s an annual event to show support for women living with domestic violence. (Virginia Smart/CBC) MacAulay said the circle was essential to her moving forward in her life. “It got me through hard times, court dates. Just even needing someone to talk to if I couldn’t sleep,” MacAulay said. But the process is not for everyone. “It’s pretty intimidating,” Dennis said. “Baring your soul and telling all of the things that have gone on.” Making a plan In Povey’s case, police flagged addresses and phone numbers for her workplace and her home as part of her safety plan, so if an emergency call came in, a cruiser would be dispatched right away. MacAulay remembers police doing the same and reassuring her that if she heard or saw anything that scared her, to call and they would come right away. Povey’s friends and family knew where she was at all times, and she was dropped off and picked up at work. Her employer offered to let her use a secure underground parking lot and work from home if necessary. Povey and MacAulay met for the first time at the Walk in Silence in Charlottetown in February. They shared an instant connection, given they’ve both survived abusive relationships and taken part in the Circles of Safety program. (Virginia Smart/CBC) And the emergency women’s shelter was alerted in case she needed a safe place to stay in a hurry. MacAulay’s workplace posted a photo of Clow, so security could recognize him and call police if he showed up there. She and her supervisor agreed on a word that she would say if she called in sick to signal that she was in danger. And since she worked shift work, often leaving at 11 p.m., security escorted her to her car in the parking lot. ‘Not your job alone’ For Povey, similar measures may need to be set up in the event that her ex-partner is granted parole this summer. She’s in the process of reviewing her safety plan and preparing to meet with her support circle. “It’s not your job alone,” Dennis told Povey recently. “Everybody can take a piece of this.” MacAulay and Dennis light a candle at the Dec. 6 ceremony in memory of the 14 women killed at Montreal’s École Polytechnique in 1989 and the 10 P.E.I. women murdered since. MacAulay has taken part for the past four years. (Becky Tramley/P.E.I. Advisory Council on the Status of Women) Povey worries that if Gunning is granted parole, she’ll have to start looking over her shoulder again and take different routes to work. Gunning was sentenced to two years in prison last December for assault, forcible confinement and threatening to kill Povey, and she said that sentencing was the first time in two years that she felt truly safe. Learning of Gunning’s application for parole in January has ripped open painful memories for Povey that haven’t had a chance to heal. She thinks it’s too soon for him to have come to terms with the harm he caused. Povey is still dealing with the effects of the extreme violence she endured, including several instances when Gunning suffocated her for 15 seconds at a time over several hours. WATCH |’There is help out there’: Kelly MacAulay talks about her experience with Circles of Safety Four years after Kelly MacAulay left her abusive marriage, her ex-husband murdered his next partner. She credits a P.E.I. program for keeping her alive by helping her find independence. 5:57 The circle grows P.E.I. Family Violence Prevention Services is financed by grants and donations, but doesn’t have stable funding to promote the program. Circles of Safety is not well-known, but word of the program is spreading. Dennis, far left, is helping to train shelter workers from three rural communities so they can set up their own safety circles. This is training that took place in Edmonton. (Craig Ryan/CBC) This year, Dennis and Lund began training nine workers with women’s shelters in three rural communities to set up their own safety circles: Peace River, Alta., La Ronge, Sask., and Watson Lake, Yukon. “I think that it’s a really good fit for the North,” said Rosemary Rowlands, executive director of Help and Hope for Families Society, a shelter in Watson Lake that is getting the training. Crisis situations “create the snowball effect where everybody’s always on guard for when’s the next thing that’s going to happen,” she said. The circle program allows shelter workers to plan ahead and work to avoid those crises by “really looking at one situation at a time,” she said, “and taking the time to work together to be more thorough, more supportive and responding to what women need rather than what we think they need.” ‘I’m taking every day to move forward’ Povey and MacAulay say they decided to share their stories in the hope that women in abusive relationships would see there is help available. “It’s hard. I understand that because I went back many’s a time,” MacAulay said. “But every time I went back, it got worse. So, they should understand that it starts off small, but then it ends big.” Povey is in a new relationship now and feels much safer. Her boyfriend often drops her off at work and picks her up. (Virginia Smart/CBC) Povey, whose case was covered in the media at the time of Gunning’s trial, says she wants to be more than just a “sensationalized headline.” “I’m a real person,” she said. “These things happened to me, and it was awful, but I’m here and I’m taking every day to move forward.” If you need help and are in immediate danger, call 911. To find assistance in your area click here. To read all the stories in CBC’s Stopping Domestic Violence series, visit cbc.ca/stoppingdomesticviolence
Two more presumptive travel-related coronavirus cases reported in Fort Bend County – KHOU.com
CORONAVIRUS
All eight of the local positive and presumptive positive patients traveled to Egypt in February.
HOUSTON — Three more Houston-area cases of coronavirus were reported Friday. Two women in Fort Bend County are considered presumptive positive but neither required hospitalization and are under “mandatory quarantine.”A Houston woman who tested positive was also added to the list Friday. All eight of the local positive and presumptive positive patients traveled to Egypt in February.
City of HoustonWoman, age 60 to 70; traveled to Egypt last month; positiveMan, age 60 to 70; traveled to Egypt last month; presumptive positiveHarris CountyWoman from NW Harris County; age 60 to 70; works at Rice; traveled to Egypt; positiveMan from NW Harris County; age 60 to 70; traveled to Egypt; positiveMan from NW Harris County; age 60 to 70; traveled to Egypt; presumptive positive.Fort Bend CountyWoman in her 60s; traveled to Egypt; mild symptoms Woman in her 60s; traveled to Egypt; symptoms have resolvedStafford man; 70 years old; traveled to Egypt; presumptive positive.The five presumptive positive cases are waiting for final results from the CDC. All patients traveled to Egypt”All the cases in the Houston area have international travel in common and we’ve been actively monitoring these individuals since they were identified as being at-risk,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said. “I encourage Houstonians to limit international travel for the time being and heed the advice of public health officials about healthy hygiene habits. If you are feeling sick, stay at home. But do not be paralyzed by fear.”RELATED: Coronavirus live updates: Trump signs $8.3B bill to combat outbreak, Vatican reports 1st caseRELATED: Rice University staffer who tested positive for coronavirus is one of two Harris County casesThere are also 14 Rice doctoral students and staffers who traveled to Egypt who are self-quarantined.Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said in a news conference on Thursday that the county is treating everyone associated with the trip as presumptive positives, whether or not they show symptoms.
RELATED: Coronavirus fact sheets in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and KoreanHarris County responseHidalgo said the county is in containment mode, mapping the network of people who may have come in contact with those who tested positive or presumptive positive.More positive cases are expected to be announced in the coming days, according to Hidalgo.Hidalgo said the next level of concern would be discovering cases that can’t be traced, but that hasn’t happened yet in our area. Hidalgo said the Harris County Office of Emergency Management is currently operating at a Level 3. County officials have been running exercises and organizing plans for how to respond to more positive coronavirus cases. The county is working closely with the hospital system and school districts in order to properly respond to the situation.
Published on Mar 6, 2020As the coronavirus spreads across the country and around the world, “CBS This Morning’s” special, “Coronavirus: The Race to Respond,” addresses critical information on how the virus is being tracked and treated. Reporters in multiple countries share the latest on infection numbers, supply shortages and the economic impact. Medical experts answer pressing questions, and share how to protect yourself and your family.Subscribe to the CBS News Channel HERE: https://bit.ly/2uz8qYEWatch CBSN live HERE: http://cbsn.ws/1PlLpZ7Follow CBS News on Instagram HERE: https://www.instagram.com/cbsnews/Like CBS News on Facebook HERE: http://facebook.com/cbsnewsFollow CBS News on Twitter HERE: http://twitter.com/cbsnewsGet the latest news and best in original reporting from CBS News delivered to your inbox. Subscribe to newsletters HERE: http://cbsn.ws/1RqHw7TGet your news on the go! Download CBS News mobile apps HERE: http://cbsn.ws/1Xb1WC8Get new episodes of shows you love across devices the next day, stream CBSN and local news live, and watch full seasons of CBS fan favorites like Star Trek Discovery anytime, anywhere with CBS All Access. Try it free! http://bit.ly/1OQA29B—CBSN is the first digital streaming news network that will allow Internet-connected consumers to watch live, anchored news coverage on their connected TV and other devices. At launch, the network is available 24/7 and makes all of the resources of CBS News available directly on digital platforms with live, anchored coverage 15 hours each weekday. CBSN. Always On.
NASA still doesn’t know if it wants Boeing to perform another test flight of its passenger spacecraft – The Verge
NASA still doesn’t know if it wants Boeing to perform another test flight of its new passenger spacecraft without people on board — three months after the vehicle’s first test flight failed to go according to plan.
Today, NASA announced that it had finished an investigation into the botched debut flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, a new crew capsule designed to take NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station. NASA’s team identified 61 corrective actions that Boeing needs to take in order to fix all the issues the Starliner experienced during that first mission. But NASA officials will not say whether Boeing needs to repeat the flight or if the company’s next flight will have its first passengers on board.
“Quite frankly, right now, we don’t know,” Doug Loverro, NASA’s associate administrator for human spaceflight, said during a press conference on the investigation. “The findings and the corrective actions that Boeing has laid out — they have to now come back to NASA with a plan, how they’re going to go ahead and address all of those.”
No people were on board Starliner’s first flight on December 20th from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission was a test, meant to demonstrate that the vehicle can do what it’s supposed to do: safely dock with the International Space Station and then return to Earth. But that didn’t happen. A glitch with Starliner’s clock prevented the capsule from firing its main engines at the right time, and the vehicle got into the wrong orbit. As a result, Starliner never made it to the space station and had to come back to Earth earlier than planned. The capsule landed safely in the New Mexico desert using its parachutes two days after launch.
Boeing’s Starliner, after landing in the desert in December(NASA/Bill Ingalls)
At the time of the mission, NASA and Boeing only detailed the software issue with Starliner’s clock. But in the months since, even more problems have come to light. On February 7th, Boeing and NASA admitted there was a second software glitch the Boeing team caught before the Starliner landed. If it hadn’t been corrected, it’s possible the Starliner could have fired its thrusters incorrectly during the descent to Earth, and it might have bumped into a piece of hardware it shed on the way down. NASA noted that both of these software bugs went unnoticed before the flight, even though there were “multiple safeguards” in place. Today, NASA claimed that the investigation team identified 49 gaps in software testing at Boeing.
It’s unclear exactly what Boeing’s 61 corrective actions entail, though NASA said they will be both “organizational and technical.” Loverro said there will be a discussion with the company on whether to make the list of corrective actions public. While Boeing implements these corrections, NASA plans to embed more of its own software experts within Boeing’s software team.
In the meantime, NASA has also decided to do another review at Boeing, one that will look at both the company’s and NASA’s organizational processes. This new review is in addition to a more rigorous safety review that NASA announced it would do with Boeing in February.
Back in 2018, Boeing and SpaceX (NASA’s other human spaceflight partner) had to undergo safety reviews, after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk smoked marijuana on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Boeing got away with a much smaller review at the time, but the Starliner flight prompted a more extensive look from NASA. This new review, according to Loverro, is meant to “make sure we truly do learn from this event, and that we know how to fix it and make sure it does not happen again.”
NASA did not say when to expect a decision on how Boeing will proceed with its next Starliner flight. Boeing claims the company is prepared to conduct a second uncrewed test flight if NASA wants and has set aside $410 million of its own budget if that’s the case. However, NASA officials have repeatedly argued that performing an uncrewed test flight was not an original requirement from the agency when it set up the Commercial Crew Program. NASA only made the decision to include the requirement after both companies suggested doing test missions. Loverro argued that there are other ways Boeing might be able to prove that its Starliner can perform in orbit — without the vehicle going to space.
“There are many things that we can do to provide the confidence that we can fly safely without docking,” Loverro said. “I’m not saying we will or we won’t. I’m saying that Boeing will come back to us with a plan. They will propose to us whether they intend to go ahead and do another flight to dock or if they propose to do other things that give us the confidence they can do it. And we’ll make sure that every decision we make is with crew safety and spacecraft safety in mind.”
As Boeing tries to move on from the Starliner debut, SpaceX is gearing up for the next test flight of its crew capsule, the Crew Dragon. After performing an uncrewed flight of the Crew Dragon one year ago, SpaceX is poised to finally put people on the spacecraft in the months ahead, though NASA has not formally announced a target date for the launch. If everything goes to plan, SpaceX will likely be the first commercial company to send astronauts to space for NASA.
Tool fans in New Zealand may have been exposed to coronavirus. The New Zealand Herald reports that the fourth person in the country to be diagnosed with COVID-19 attended Tool’s show at the Sparks Arena in Auckland last Friday.
The man has been in self-isolation since Wednesday and has appropriate support from health officials, according to Director-General Of Health Ashley Bloomfield. He does not require hospital-level care.
Although he potentially could’ve exposed hundreds of other concertgoers to the virus through casual contact, Bloomfield says that “the risk is very low for all others who attended this concert.”
“There was no way of tracking the people who were in that area of the concert, they are classed as causal contacts and the advise to them is to call Healthline if they have any symptoms,” Bloomfield adds. “The people we are focused on tracking down the close contacts and health officials have been in touch with all those people.”
There have been 96,500 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 3330 deaths resulting from it around the world.
I live in Kirkland, epicenter of the US outbreak. We need Trump to take this seriously
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner is executive director and co-founder of MomsRising.org, a nonprofit national organization that supports policies to improve family economic security. She is the author of “Keep Marching: How Every Woman Can Take Action and Change Our W…
NASA Can’t Contact Voyager 2 Until 2021, as Deep Space Antenna Gets Much-Needed Upgrades – Gizmodo
The DSS43 radio antenna at the Deep Space Network’s Canberra facility in Australia.Image: NASA/Canberra Deep Space Communication ComplexA radio antenna in Australia in dire need of upgrades will be offline for the next 11 months, during which time NASA mission controllers won’t be able to transmit commands to the Voyager 2 probe, which is currently in interstellar space.Measuring 230 feet wide and standing 20 stories high, the DSS43 radio antenna at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex is currently the only system on Earth capable of communicating with NASA’s Voyager 2 probe, which is currently 18.5 billion kilometers (11.5 billion miles) from Earth. The Canberra facility is a critical component of NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN), but it’s now 40 years old and in need of repair and modern upgrades. Trouble is, the scheduled maintenance, which is set to start this month and last until January 2021, means NASA controllers will temporarily be unable to transmit commands to Voyager 2, according to a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory press release. Thankfully, the probe will still be able to send information to us during this time, so it’ll continue to transmit valuable scientific data from its fascinating location beyond the heliosphere.Should something go wrong over the course of the next 11 months, however, NASA won’t be able to transmit the required remedy. Artist’s conception of Voyager 2 in interstellar space. Image: NASA/JPL-CaltechThat something could go wrong between now and January 2021 is a troubling possibility. Just a few weeks ago, for example, Voyager 2 failed to execute a required spin maneuver, causing the spacecraft to shut down its science instruments to conserve energy. NASA, after diagnosing the problem, issued a series of commands, restoring Voyager 2 to normal operating conditions.That said, NASA has placed Voyager 2 in a kind of quiet mode, to prevent something like this from happening during the coming months. “We put the spacecraft back into a state where it will be just fine, assuming that everything goes normally with it during the time that the [Canberra] antenna is down,” explained Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager and JPL director for the Interplanetary Network, in the press release. “If things don’t go normally—which is always a possibility, especially with an aging spacecraft—then the onboard fault protection that’s there can handle the situation.”It may seem surprising that only one radio antenna in the world is capable of talking to Voyager 2. The DSN currently consists of three stations, in Australia, California, and Spain. Collectively, these facilities allow NASA to communicate with deep space probes at any point during Earth’s rotation. Trouble is, Voyager 2 is dipping in a downward direction relative to Earth’s orbital plane. This means the probe is only accessible from our planet’s southern hemisphere, hence the importance of the Australian facility.Another reason has to do with the now-outdated technology that was used for Voyager 2, which was launched in 1977. The spacecraft can only receive S-band transmissions. The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex is the only facility in the southern hemisphere currently capable of transmitting across the S-band at the required strength and frequency.The risk to Voyager 2 is real, but repairs and upgrades to the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex are most crucial. It’s a nonstop, 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-per-year facility, but at four decades old, it’s becoming “increasingly unreliable,” as NASA noted in its press release. The upgrades will reduce the risks of unplanned outages, make the system more reliable, and add state-of-the-art tech to improve the Voyager 2 mission as well as other ongoing and future projects, such as the NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, the upcoming Artemis mission to the Moon, and a future mission to Mars. NASA will steadily monitor signals from Voyager 2 over the course of the next 11 agonizing months. Should a problem occur, however, mission controllers will only be able to watch on in dismay and hope that, when the Canberra facility returns to full capacity, they’ll still be able to talk to this historic probe.
Facebook on Friday said it was shutting its London office and part of its Singapore base for “deep cleaning” after an employee in the Asian city state was diagnosed with coronavirus.
A staff member working at the US technology giant’s Marina One office in Singapore was on Friday diagnosed with COVID-19, a spokesman told AFP.
“We have immediately closed the affected areas for deep cleaning and advised employees based in the affected area to work from home until 13 March,” he said in an emailed statement.
The infected employee had also visited Facebook’s London offices between February 24 and 26.
“We are therefore closing our London offices until Monday for deep cleaning and employees are working from home until then,” the spokesman said.
The company said it was getting in touch with individuals who had direct contact with the person infected, and had asked them to self-isolate and monitor for any potential symptoms.
Facebook has already closed its Shanghai office until further notice, while employees in Italy and South Korea have been encouraged to work from home.
In addition, staff in the San Francisco Bay area have been “strongly recommended” to work from home starting from Friday.
Coronavirus has infected more than 100,000 people across 91 countries globally, according to an AFP tally, while more than 3,400 people have died.
A total of 163 people have currently tested positive for the virus in Britain, and two people have died, health authorities said Friday.
AFP
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp says Brazil goalkeeper Alisson Becker will miss Wednesday’s crucial Champions League clash against Atletico Madrid after suffering a hip injury.
Alisson sustained the muscle problem in training this week and was sidelined for Liverpool’s FA Cup fifth-round defeat at Chelsea on Tuesday.
Scans confirmed the 27-year-old will be out for at least a week, starting with the leaders’ Premier League match against Bournemouth on Saturday and including next week’s last-16 second leg with Atletico.
Champions League holders Liverpool face Atletico at Anfield trailing 1-0 after the first leg in Spain.
Klopp hopes the injury is not serious, but he admitted Alisson may not return until after the international break later in March.
“Unfortunately Ali is out. He had a little incident in training before the Chelsea game,” Klopp told reporters on Friday.
“We all thought it was nothing and it was clear he would not play anyway, the plan was he was on the bench.
“There, we thought, ‘Come on, we don’t have to take any risks’ so left him out of the squad.
“There was a scan the next day and they found something. So now he is out. We will see next week for sure and then we will see.
“Next week no, that means Atletico. I don’t want to say no (to the Merseyside derby on March 16) but I don’t know if he will be available.
“He is not available for tomorrow and then the next week. We have to judge the situation anew.
“I would say after the international break 100 per cent. Whatever we can get before that, we will see.”
With Alisson sidelined, Liverpool will have to rely on reserve ‘keeper Adrian, whose mistake led to Chelsea’s opening goal for Willian on Tuesday.
AFP
Frank Lampard bemoaned on Friday the “worst injury” crisis among the Premier League’s top sides as his Chelsea team prepare to face Everton with as many as nine frontline players unavailable.
“It hasn’t been spoken about that much but we’ve had probably the worst injury list of certainly the top group of the table I think, lots of numbers injured, important players injured, (N’Golo) Kante, (Ruben) Loftus-Cheek and others,” Lampard said on Friday.
“We started the season that way and it’s happened again in the middle of the season. And we’re working against that to try to get the best results.”
Mateo Kovacic is out of Sunday’s match at Stamford Bridge with an Achilles problem while Brazil forward Willian will face a late fitness test on his own Achilles issue.
Lampard revealed Loftus-Cheek and Christian Pulisic played in an “in-house game” at Chelsea’s training ground on Friday.
Jorginho starts a two-match league suspension, while Kante is still out with an adductor problem, Andreas Christensen remains doubtful and Tammy Abraham is out with his ankle complaint.
Meanwhile Callum Hudson-Odoi suffered a recurrence of his hamstring injury in his first full training session back with Chelsea’s first team.
“Callum had a re-injury, yesterday. We’re having a scan on him this afternoon. So he will be longer than expected,” Lampard said.
“It’s tough, he wasn’t rushed back, and we had all the signs that he was fit to train. Then he re-injured it on his first training session with us.”
Lampard said former Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti, now in charge at Everton, would receive a warm reception on his return to Stamford Bridge on Sunday.
The Chelsea boss said he had enjoyed working as a player with the Italian during his spell at the London club, which included Premier League and FA Cup triumphs.
“Very well-respected in-house and to the fans, I think a well-respected period at the club,” said Lampard. “He’s a gentleman, a fantastic manager.
“I loved working with him personally. I think he’ll get a great reception.”
AFP
Pep Guardiola says Manchester City will face the “best” Manchester United team of the season in Sunday’s derby as they prepare to go head-to-head for the fourth time this season.
The 3-0 win over Derby in the FA Cup on Thursday made it nine matches unbeaten across all competitions and 22 goals scored for United, although City are also in top form after five straight wins.
City boss Guardiola said Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was having a positive influence on his team.
“From what I’ve seen in videos of their games, the players follow him (Solskjaer),” he told his pre-match press conference on Friday.
“I saw the commitment they had and it’s getting better. Now it is their best moment of the season.”
United’s upturn has coincided with the arrival of Bruno Fernandes for an initial £47 million ($61 million) from Sporting Lisbon.
The Portugal international has made and scored goals and he has had a galvanising effect at the club.
“Sometimes the big players can make a good influence,” said Guardiola. “He is an exceptional player and that is why Man United bought him.”
Away wins
All three derbies so far this season have been won by the away side, with United twice victorious at the Etihad and City winning 3-1 at Old Trafford in the first leg of the League Cup semi-final.
But Guardiola has won all three of his league derbies at Old Trafford.
United were described by Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp as defensive earlier in the season but that is not a view shared by the City boss.
“It doesn’t look like that from what I have seen,” he said. “I watched their recent games and they were incredibly aggressive and that will happen at Old Trafford.
“In some games they defended but I watched them at Goodison and they played a good game (the 1-1 draw at Everton last Sunday).”
The title has effectively gone for City, with Liverpool needing just four wins to wrap up the Premier League, while United, in fifth place, are embroiled in a battle for a Champions League spot.
Second-placed City are 15 points ahead of their cross-city rivals but Guardiola is not buying the theory that Sunday’s meeting matters more to United.
“When we believe it’s more important for them, we are going to lose,” he said.
“We have to have belief, that is so important. I’ve never played a game thinking about points or whether it is more or less comfortable. Every game we play, we try to win.”
Guardiola is hopeful that Kevin De Bruyne will be available to play at Old Trafford.
The Belgian injured his back in the League Cup final win over Aston Villa last week and did not feature in the FA Cup win at Sheffield Wednesday on Wednesday.
AFP