(2020-03-28). Detroit mayor confirms denial of treatment to "extremely sick" patients: "What they put out is honest" wsws.org One ICU nurse at a local hospital posted a video to social media from her car in tears as she described the COVID unit in her hospital saying that "it felt like I was working in a war zone."
(2020-03-28). Netizens Crack up Over Viral Video of Reporter 'Social Distancing' From a Herd of Bison. sputniknews.com A reporter has recently taught social media users a great lesson on social distancing at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. The park has been closed until further notice because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(2020-03-28). From Coronasutra to Racy Use of Hand Sanitisers: Netizens Come Up With #SafeSexTipsDuringQuarantine. sputniknews.com While everything is more or less clear regarding working from home, as by far not all employment is about close contact, the same cannot by definition apply to one's sex life. However, savvy self-isolated (or not yet) netizens have offered up quite a few options to bump uglies and still stay germ-free.
(2020-03-28). Kazakh bodybuilder's 'marriage' to sex doll girlfriend on hold because of coronavirus. rt.com 
Kazakh bodybuilder Yuri Tolochko has revealed his planned nuptials with sex-doll fiancee Margo have fallen victim to the coronavirus pandemic. Yes, you read that right. | Muscleman Tolochko recently sent social media into a spin when he announced his plans to wed plastic lover Margo, having first shared news of their relationship back in May of 2019. | Also on rt.com | | Silicone sex doll Margo has her own Instagram page run by Tolochko, where the details of their intense preparat…
(2020-03-27). 'Open your STUPIDLY abandoned plant': Trump lashes out at GM & Ford over ventilator delay. rt.com 
President Donald Trump has lost his patience with automakers who promised to produce ventilators to treat Covid-19 patients, threatening to invoke his emergency powers to force General Motors and Ford to live up to their pledge. | "They said they were going to give us 40,000 much needed Ventilators, 'very quickly,'" Trump tweeted on Friday. "Now they are saying it will only be 6000, in late April, and they want top dollar." | He added that it's "always a mess" with GM CEO Mary Barra, and that he will invoke the Defense Production Act, a piece of wartime legislation giving the president the power to order manuf…
(2020-03-27). How austerity and anti-immigrant politics left Italy exposed to viral blitzkrieg. peoplesworld.org 
As the viral blitzkrieg rolls across one European border after another, it seems to have a particular enmity for Italy. The country's death toll has far surpassed China's, and scenes from its hospitals look like something out of Dante's imagination. Why? Italy has the fourth-largest economy in the European Union, and in terms of health …
(2020-03-27). Misinformation and the Coronavirus: On the Dangers of Depoliticization and Social Media. counterpunch.org Bill Gates created the coronavirus. China secretly developed it in a lab as a biological weapon. A cure exists and the government controls it, but won't release it to the public. The virus is no more dangerous than the seasonal flu. Coronavirus is a "fake news" hoax manufactured by the news. You can use hand
(2020-03-27). VIDEO: Israeli Soldiers Spit on Palestinian-owned Property in Hebron. imemc.org Israeli soldiers, on Friday morning, in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, reportedly spat on Palestinian-owned vehicles and property in a Hebron suburb, according to a local official. In video footage, shown on social media, Israeli soldiers were seen spitting on Palestinian vehicles, which were parked in an industrial …
(2020-03-27). The Tories' latest coronavirus response is peak hypocrisy. thecanary.co 
The UK government has Coronavirus: more UK government action: | Sky News tweeted on Friday 27 March: | The Government has written to all local authorities in England asking them to house all people sleeping rough,those in hostels and night shelters by the w…
(2020-03-26). Bolivia: TSE Gives Possible Date for Presidential Elections. telesurenglish.net Bolivia's Supreme Electoral Tribunal announced a possible date for the next presidential elections. The elections were supposed to be held on May 3, but were postponed due to the threat of Covid-19. | RELATED: | On its official Twitter profile, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal published a statement announcing the date of the elections between Sunday, June 7 and Sunday, September 6, 2020. | According to t…
(2020-03-24). Economist Jeffrey Sachs: Trump "Understands Nothing, Listens to Nothing" as Pandemic Surges in U.S. democracynow.org 
As #NotDying4WallStreet trends on Twitter, President Trump defies his top scientists and soaring infection rate, saying he will ease restrictions soon to jumpstart the economy. We speak with economist Jeffrey Sachs about the stimulus package that failed to pass again Monday, as Democrats called the measure a slush fund for corporations. Sachs also led the WHO's Commission on Macroeconomics and Health from 2000 to 2001 and played a key role in conceiving and establishing the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which helped distribute new medicines to fight infectious diseases.
(2020-03-22). Pakistan PM once again asks Trump to lift Iran sanctions. iranian.com Prime Minister of Pakistan who believes that US sanctions against Iran are cruel and unfair has once again called upon Donald Trump to lift economic sanctions from the Islamic Republic. Imran Khan in a tweet on Sunday said the people of Iran are facing untold suffering as sanctions are crippling Iran's efforts to fight COVID19. …
(2020-03-16). [Correspondence] COVID-19: consider cytokine storm syndromes and immunosuppression. thelancet.com As of March 12, 2020, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been confirmed in 125 048 people worldwide, carrying a mortality of approximately 3 ∑7%,1 compared with a mortality rate of less than 1% from influenza. There is an urgent need for effective treatment. Current focus has been on the development of novel therapeutics, including antivirals and vaccines. Accumulating evidence suggests that a subgroup of patients with severe COVID-19 might have a cytokine storm syndrome. We recommend identification and treatment of hyperinflammation using existing, approved therapies with proven safety profiles to addre…
(2020-02-27). [Comment] COVID-19: combining antiviral and anti-inflammatory treatments. thelancet.com Both coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) are characterised by an overexuberant inflammatory response and, for SARS, viral load is not correlated with the worsening of symptoms.1,2 In our previous Correspondence to The Lancet,3 we described how BenevolentAI's proprietary artificial intelligence (AI)-derived knowledge graph,4 queried by a suite of algorithms, enabled identification of a target and a potential therapeutic against SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2; the causative organism in COVID-19).
(2020-02-24). [Comment] COVID-19 pneumonia: what has CT taught us? thelancet.com In late December, 2019, a cluster of cases of viral pneumonia was linked to a seafood market in Wuhan (Hubei, China), and was later determined to be caused by a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2; previously known as 2019-nCoV).1 The genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 is similar to, but distinct from, those of two other coronaviruses responsible for large-scale outbreaks in the past: severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV; about 79% sequence identity) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV; about 50%).
(2020-02-24). [Correspondence] Viral load of SARS-CoV-2 in clinical samples. thelancet.com An outbreak caused by a novel human coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was first detected in Wuhan in December 2019,1 and has since spread within China and to other countries. Real-time RT-PCR assays are recommended for diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection.2 However, viral dynamics in infected patients are still yet to be fully determined. Here, we report our findings from different types of clinical specimens collected from 82 infected individuals.
(2020-02-20). [Comment] The burden of viral respiratory infections in young children in low-resource settings. thelancet.com Acute lower respiratory infections (ALRI), encompassing bacterial and viral pneumonias, acute viral bronchiolitis, and bacterial and viral bronchitis, remain the leading cause of global child mortality.1 The thrust of global prevention and treatment efforts has been directed against bacterial causes of ALRI, and deaths from bacterial pneumonia have decreased substantially since 1990 because of improved access to health care and life-saving antibiotics, as well as increased use of vaccines targeted at bacterial respiratory pathogens.
(2020-02-06). [Spotlight] Coronavirus epidemic: preparing for extracorporeal organ support in intensive care. thelancet.com Zoonotic viral infections are more frequently crossing species to infect human populations. In 2003, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus was transmitted to humans from exotic animals in wet markets in China, and in 2015, the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) virus was transmitted from camels in Saudi Arabia. In both cases, and with the 2019 coronavirus outbreak in China, the original host of the virus is likely to be bats.
(2020-02-05). [Correspondence] Nicotine patches with e-cigarettes for smoking cessation: Twitter discussion from a respirology journal club. thelancet.com On Dec 12, 2019, our Twitter-based University of Toronto Respirology and Sleep Journal Club1 discussed Walker and colleagues' pragmatic, randomised, parallel-arm trial designed to look at the effectiveness of combining nicotine patches with an e-cigarette (with and without nicotine) on 6-month smoking abstinence.2 Our discussions highlighted the challenges of studying populations of smokers in general, given the habitual nature of the exposure, challenges related to follow-up, and a need for reliable and valid objective measures of smoking abstinence (appendix).