Chaos rocks Trump White House on virus' most tragic day
Updated 1138 GMT (1938 HKT) April 8, 2020
The chaos and confusion rocking President Donald Trump's administration on the most tragic day yet of the coronavirus pandemic was exceptional even by his own standards.
Trump set out Tuesday to cement his image of a wartime leader facing down an "invisible enemy" at a dark moment as the country waits for the virus to peak and with the economy languishing in suspended animation.
"What we have is a plague, and we're seeing light at the end of the tunnel," the President said, on a day when a record number of Americans succumbed to the wicked respiratory disease.
100 Days That Changed The World
By Michael Safi
8 April 2020
It started with a warning. It turned into a pandemic that has transformed life as we know it
A turbulent decade had reached its final day. It was New Year’s Eve 2019 and much of the world was preparing to celebrate.
The obituaries of the 2010s had dwelt on eruptions and waves that would shape the era ahead: Brexit, the Syrian civil war, refugee crises, social media proliferation, and nationalism roaring back to life. They were written too soon.
It was not until these last hours, before the toasts and countdowns had commenced, that the decade’s most consequential development of all broke the surface.
At 1.38pm on 31 December, a Chinese government website announced the detection of a “pneumonia of unknown cause” in the area surrounding the South China seafood wholesale market in Wuhan, an industrial city of 11 million people.
Coronavirus: 16-year-old pilot selflessly flies medical supplies to hospitals in need
‘Every hospital is hurting for supplies, but it’s the rural hospitals that really feel forgotten,’ TJ Kim says
A 16-year-old is using his skills as a budding pilot to bring desperately needed medical equipment to rural hospitals.
TJ Kim carries a variety of supplies including gloves, masks and gowns to small hospitals during his flying lessons, The Associated Press reported.
The teenager undertook his first delivery on 27 March to a 25-bed hospital in Luray, where he was overwhelmed by the gratefulness at his efforts, AP said.
Quarantine isn’t the only weapon
Putting profit before healthcare
Germany is testing half a million people a week while France only tests those with severe symptoms. Has big pharma’s pursuit of profit left a nation woefully under-equipped?
by Quentin Ravelli
As stock markets plummeted in March, shares in pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences rose by 20% on the news of clinical trials of their antiviral remdesivir for the treatment of Covid-19. Inovio Pharmaceuticals gained 200% after they announced an experimental vaccine, INO-4800. Alpha Pro Tech, which makes protective masks, gained 232%. And shares in Co-Diagnostics rose 1,370% on the announcement of a test kit for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) which causes Covid-19.
North Korea's Kim Jong Un responds to coronavirus with missiles
As the coronavirus crisis rages worldwide, North Korea’s regime has reported zero cases, and instead forges ahead with rocket launches. What is happening behind the borders?
Attempting to access information about the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus crisis in North Korea is much like attempting to research other issues in the hermit country: reliable facts are in short supply, and instead propaganda, guesswork and rumors circulate. Only one thing is certain — the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un began to react to the invisible threat at the end of January, long before Europe did so. The state newspaper Rodong Sinmum described the fight against the virus as a matter of "national survival."
However, on March 13 the North Korean government told the World Health Organization (WHO) that the country did not have a single case of the virus' resulting disease COVID-19 in the country. At the same time, neighboring China reported over 80,000 people were infected, and in South Korea, the other half of the divided Korean peninsula, there were just under 8,000.
Major Japanese cities quiet after state of emergency declared
Tokyo and some other major cities in Japan appeared unusually quiet Wednesday with many stores shut and fewer people in the streets, a day after a state of emergency was declared over the new coronavirus outbreak.
Aside from supermarkets, drugstores and others providing critical services, many businesses in Tokyo, Osaka and the five other prefectures for which the emergency was declared have decided to stay closed through May 6 in line with the government's request for people to stay at home and limit social contact.
Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings Ltd. closed all of its six Mitsukoshi and Isetan department stores in the metropolitan area, while Matsuya Co's store in Tokyo's Ginza shopping area was also closed. At some other department stores, however, sections selling food continued to operate.
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