Ranger #007 said:

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I saw something about them having hospitals close under the weight of social medicine. The post seemed a little self serving so I'm not sure I trust it, but that's one possible reason.

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Legal Custodian said:

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MLB & MLBPA discussing starting season in May in greater Phoenix area with no fans.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29004498/mlb-union-focused-plan-allow-season-start-early-arizona

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So far we are about one-sixth of the way to a normal flu season worldwide, and a little under one-fifth of the way to the death total in the U.S. due to the seasonal flu virus two years ago.
The best news is economic rather than medical, in my opinion. Over the last 36 hours, both Larry Kudlow and Steven Mnuchin have said that the Trump administration wants to re-start the economy in the relatively near future:

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President Donald Trump's administration hopes that "in the next four to eight weeks, we will be able to open the economy," Kudlow told Politico in an interview on Tuesday, as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin issued similar statements to Fox News about the administration's desire to re-start the economy.
"The president is very much looking at how we can reopen parts of the economy," Mnuchin said on the network. "There are parts of the country, like New York, where obviously this is very, very concerning. There are other parts of the country where it's not."

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Geography is one way to approach the process. Most of the U.S. has in fact been little affected by the virus.

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"The president would like to reopen the economy as soon as he can and we are planning internally," Kudlow said on the network, adding that the spread of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus is what will determine when the economy is reopened. "I am hoping we're only a few weeks away from a reopening. We'll see," he said.

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Depending on what "a few" and "reopening" mean, that could be excellent news. The administration needs to push aggressively to end the shutdowns that have unemployed millions, destroyed countless businesses, devastated the financial markets and put the economyand the lives of hundreds of millionsin a state of suspended animation.

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Proposition Joe said:

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How much of a chode do you have to be to mock "coronavirus bros" after getting on your soapbox 2 weeks ago and proclaiming this wasn't even as bad as the flu.

Give a guy a microphone and suddenly he'll spew whatever garbage gets him the most "shares" and "likes" from his base. Talk about a guy that was initially an enjoyable read and just completely lost his way in pandering for popularity by being "edgy".

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• "There is good news," Governor Cuomo said, pointing to a decrease in hospitalizations and a lower number of new infections than originally projected. "What we are doing is actually working and making a difference," he said.
• The number of new patients hospitalized has declined significantlywith the last four days marking the lowest numbers in almost two weeks, and the number of daily patients admitted to intensive care is also down, Cuomo said on Wednesday.
  

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dude95 said:

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These charts are interesting

Page 2 - % change from previous day. Around 3/20 or so we were at 30-40% increase each day. Stark trend to now where we've been in single digits each day for last 3 days. Not out of woods, but good trends.

On the bad side, noticed how badly mortality is trending. Obviously, couple of weeks difference in catching and deaths, but it snuck up on me that we're at 5.8%.

BTW...ignore the forecast. Done with John Hopkins data that really isn't appropriate for forcasting.

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Pfizer Inc. said it's making "important advances" in the drug company's battle against the coronavirus.

The New York-based pharmaceutical giant (NYSE: PFE) said its researchers and scientists "have been relentlessly working" to find a treatment for coronavirus, as well as working on a vaccine to prevent it.

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The company said it's "confirmed a lead compound and analogues (which) are potent inhibitors of" SARS-CoV-2, which causes the current pandemic of coronavirus infections (COVID-19).

In addition, Pfizer said it's working with German biotech BioNTech SE to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, with clinical trials expected to begin later this month, and "there is potential to supply millions of vaccine doses by the end of 2020 subject to technical success of the development program and approval of regulatory authorities and then rapidly scale up to capacity to produce hundreds of millions of doses in 2021."

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The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Pfizer said it will begin testing its rheumatoid-arthritis drug Xeljanz in coronavirus patients in Italy this week to see if that drug works as a therapy.

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