Martin World News

I'm forgoing the usual logo tonight, because I want to find us a positive in all this Coronavirus scare.  I wanted to find something good in the hardest hit areas, something we can all hang on to...

Xinhua

BEIJING, March 16 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping has encouraged young medics who are fighting the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on the front line to make their contributions in places where the Party and the people need them most.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks Sunday when answering a letter from 34 young Party members of the medical team sent by Peking University to assist the anti-epidemic battle in the outbreak epicenter Hubei Province.


In the letter, Xi extended his regards to the young medics and all youth fighting the epidemic in various fields...

More than 12,000 of the over 42,000 medical workers sent to aid Hubei in fighting the epidemic were born in the 1990s, so were the 34 medics who wrote the letter to Xi.

A nation will be full of hope and a country will have a brilliant future when its younger generations have ideals, ability, and a strong sense of responsibility, said Xi.


Communist Party rhetoric aside, this was a heartwarming article, and I commend Pooh... er, I mean, Xi for his comments.

Iran News Daily

Moreover, the top general assigned the Army Air Defense Department, the Air Force, and the Navy to establish bases in Arak, Bushehr, Bandar Abbas, Chabahr and Konarak as part of an inclusive plan to counter the COVID-19 outbreak, IFP reported.

Major General Mousavi also issued an emergency order to set up a host of medical centers across the country to help tackle the coronavirus epidemic, saying the Army will be establishing new health centers in 300 neighborhoods and areas across Iran to detect the coronavirus cases and prevent the spread of the disease.


As part of efforts to fight the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has in turn opened three field hospitals in northern and southern Iranian provinces.


Good to hear... although it's a shame that in this world, THIS has to be said...

The Army’s biodefense drills come in line with a Thursday edict by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, in which he warned the outbreak might be the result of a “biological attack” against the Islamic Republic.

“Since there is some evidence that this incident might be a ‘biological attack’, this measure could be also some form of biological defense drill, which would add to national power and strength [of the country],” the Leader said.


Italy (ANSA)

How about some morale building...

(ANSA) - Rome, March 16 - The national anthem, Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy), is no.1 in the 'balcony music charts' drawn up by indie organization MEI after Italians started singing from their rooftops, windows and balconies to spread cheer amid the coronavirus lockdown.
    Paolo Conte's Azzurro and Rino Gaetano's Il Cielo E' Sempre Piu' Blu feature in second and third place in the charts, while traditional songs from Romagna (Romagna Mia), Milan (O Mia Bela Madunina) and Naples (Abbraciame) are next.

Spain- El Pais

In the country that had the 3rd most new-deaths today, columnist Moises Naim pointed out something very important to remember...

The pandemic not only obliges experts and multilateral organizations to play a central role, but it also gives new urgency to the old debate between altruism and individualism. The altruist is willing to help others – including strangers – even at the expense of his own interests. In contrast, the individualist tends to act without regard to the effects that their actions have on the well-being of others.

In the coming weeks and months we will discover which people – and which countries – are willing to act with others in mind, and which will only think of themselves. This will be easy for us to see because the coronavirus has made it clear that we are all neighbors. Even with those on the other side of the world.

France- Le Monde

Here, I'm going to cut some lines out of an article by Damien LeLoup condemning social media- particularly WhatsApp- for spreading false rumors...

The message always starts in much the same way. It was "my wife's mother's best friend" who wrote it. Or the husband of an aunt who works in a ministry, the cousin of a friend who is in the army, a colleague of a journalist sister, a close relative who knows someone in the Senate, in the prefecture , at the gendarmerie…

Initially, these unsourced messages mainly concerned health recommendations - a widely shared and completely denied message thus advised in recent days to drink tea (which has no proven effect on the virus) or affirmed that the coronavirus would not survive a temperature of 26 degrees (C, or 79F, which is totally wrong). Other messages, such as this audio recording shared on the weekend of March 14 and 15, even fall into outright conspiracy, referring to a "third world war" and a "leak" of a Chinese bacteriological weapon - rumor totally unfounded. The information "is presented there as coming from " my wife's mother, her best friend works at the Pasteur Institute " ; the renowned research center has obviously never said anything like this.

Often with local variations, depending on the political context: in Germany , they sometimes evoke a conspiracy of the extreme right, or an anti-extreme right conspiracy, or even a closure of Aldi stores , completely denied. And sometimes even in ultralocal versions: in Madrid, audio recordings wrongly announced a concentration of pediatric emergencies in a single hospital; in Lausanne, the CHU had to deny rumors of panic in its services.

USA- Seattle Times

Staff Reporter Paige Cornwell describes life at the nation's ground zero:

KIRKLAND — Firefighters noticed they were getting more frequent calls to Life Care Center of Kirkland. It wasn’t unusual for the firefighters to be dispatched to the care center, or other senior-living facilities in the city.

But the calls started to stack up, and all patients reported flu-like symptoms.

On Feb. 27, the leaders of this Eastside city of 90,000 learned one of their residents was being tested for COVID-19, the disease caused the new coronavirus.

The leaders, including City Manager Kurt Triplett, began to tally up the number of seniors being taken to the hospital from the Life Care Center and how many first responders had assisted in the transfers.

Two days later, public-health officials reported at least one death in Kirkland attributed to COVID-19. And a fifth of the city’s firefighters were in quarantine.

Being at the epicenter can make you look like an expert...

Emergency departments in Colorado, Florida and New Mexico have called to ask questions: How do we prepare our firefighters? What kind of information do you share with the community? Can we use your communications materials?

...or not...

There are residents who think that the city could be doing more, though much of the criticism falls on state and federal agencies that they think haven’t put enough effort into Kirkland specifically.

“We are the Wuhan of North America,” said Rachel Brown, a Kirkland resident who moderates a 16,000-member Facebook group with dozens of daily posts about the outbreak. “Shouldn’t the city be telling us what clinics have COVID-19 testing available because we have had the most exposures? Shouldn’t our city have drive-through testing like South Korea does right now?”

City officials acknowledge they don’t have the means or power to do everything, and they have learned that they can’t work on normal city business for eight hours a day and then “emergency stuff in the cracks,” Triplett said. All — or most — of their energy is focused on the emergency response.


Folks, we've all done a lot of mouthing off about how bad or not bad this thing is.  Myself included.  But there are people putting their mouth on hold and their backs into the job, and they need your help.  Listen to what the experts tell us to do.  In the last new WHO report are over 800 new deaths.  You can do the math any way you want- and I have- but that's an awful lot of broken hearts.