Glenn gives the latest coronavirus numbers, updating YOU on everything needed to know as Americans and officials monitor China's new COVID-19 virus:
Daily Stats as of 5:30 AM CT (from John's Hopkins)
- Total Confirmed Cases Worldwide: 486,702 (up from 434,595 Yesterday)
- Total Confirmed Deaths Worldwide: 22,022 (up from 19,603 Yesterday)
- Total Confirmed Recovered Worldwide: 117,448 (up from 111,853 Yesterday)
- 4% of Active Cases are considered serious (requiring hospitalization) Steady from 4% Yesterday, and down from 19% in February
- Note that 12% of US Confirmed Cases do currently require Hospitalization, but that number is expected to drop toward the international average as more people are diagnosed through testing.
- US has 65,581 Confirmed cases and 1,036 Deaths, up from 54,941 cases and 784 Deaths yesterday
- US has 428 total officially recovered, against 1,036 official deaths. Again, US numbers are expected to normalize toward international averages as more mild cases are diagnosed.
Brother, Can You Spare $2 Trillion? https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/25/coronavirus-stimulus-bill-updates-whats-in-the-2-trillion-relief-plan.html
- US Senate Passes the largest economic stimulus bill in world history.
- The Senate passes a roughly $2 trillion economic relief plan in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
- It includes direct payments to Americans, strengthened unemployment insurance, loans to businesses small and large and increased health care resources for hospitals, states and municipalities.
- Loans to small businesses are technically 'grants' covering payroll and rent payments. Grants do not have to be repaid.
- It is unclear when the House will pass the legislation, though it aims to do so Friday.
- Workers will get four months of unemployment pay plus additional $600 each.
- Direct checks to Americans include 1,200 per adult making up to $75,000 a year before phasing out and ending altogether for those earning more than $99,000
- That would result in $2,400 to a married couple making up to $150,000, with an additional $500 per child for each household.
- 'Our expectation is within three weeks we will have direct payments out,' Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said.
- Stringent density control measures may be working to contain the coronavirus in New York state, the epicenter of COVID-19 outbreak in the US, as the rate of hospitalization shows early signs of abating, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Wednesday.
- New York, which has 19 million residents and nearly 31,000 infections, now accounts for 56 per cent of the confirmed cases in the country and more than 7 percent of the world's total.
- Cuomo had ordered all but essential businesses to shutter by Sunday evening and residents to limit their outdoor activities and practice social distancing, effectively putting the state on pause.
- On Tuesday, the number of hospitalized patients had doubled every 4.7 days, slowing from the rate of every 3.4 days on Monday and every two days on Sunday, Cuomo said at his daily coronavirus briefing.
- "This is a very positive sign," he said. "The arrows are heading into the right direction."
- "Mardi Gras was the perfect storm, it provided the perfect conditions for the spread of this virus," said Dr. Rebekah Gee, who heads up Louisiana State University's health care services division.
- She noted that Fat Tuesday fell on Feb. 25, when the virus was already in the United States but before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and national leaders had raised the alarm with the American public.
- "New Orleans had its normal level of celebration, which involved people congregating in large crowds and some 1.4 million tourists," Gee said. "We shared drink cups. We shared each other's space in the crowds. People were in close contact with catching beads. It is now clear that people also caught coronavirus." New Orleans is on track to become the next coronavirus epicenter in the United States, dimming hopes that less densely populated and warmer-climate cities would escape the worst of the pandemic, and that summer month could see it wane.
- Authorities have warned the number of cases in New Orleans could overwhelm its hospitals by April 4.
- New Orleans is the biggest city in Louisiana, the state with the third-highest caseload of coronavirus in the United States on a per capita basis.
- The growth rate in Louisiana tops all others, according to a University of Louisiana at Lafayette analysis of global data, with the number of cases rising by 30% in the 24 hours before noon on Wednesday.
- On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a major federal disaster declaration for the state, freeing federal funds and resources.
- Defense Secretary Mark Esper has issued a "stop all movement" order to the U.S. military halting travel and movement abroad for up to 60 days in an effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus through the ranks.
- The measure is by far the Defense Department's most sweeping to date and will affect forces around the world.
- Esper said in an interview that the order applied to all U.S. troops, civilian personnel and families, but noted that there would be some exceptions.
- "The purpose is to make sure that we're not bringing the virus back home, infecting others, that we're not spreading it around the military," Esper said.
- The order does include personnel who were to have been scheduled to be formally discharged from the Military in April or May.
- Esper said one exception to the order would be the drawdown underway in Afghanistan, which will continue.
- In Minnesota, the MyPillow company is refocusing 75 percent of its production to face masks for health care workers.
- "We have the capacity to make a lot of things at big rates and we're going to be going hopefully from 10,000 units a day to 50,000 units a day in a very short period of time," CEO Mike Lindell told FOX 9 of Minneapolis-St. Paul.
- The masks will go to hospitals in Minnesota as well as other states, he said. "Whatever it takes."
- MyPillow worked with the Trump administration to get the proper design, Lindell told local Fox News 9.
- Lindell joins literally hundreds of other companies in the US who have heeded the call of the Trump Administration to covert production to respirators, masks, ventilators, gowns and other needed medical equipment.
- There is a strong chance the new coronavirus could return in seasonal cycles, a senior US scientist said Wednesday, underscoring the urgent need to find a vaccine and effective treatments.
- Anthony Fauci, who leads research into infectious diseases at the National Institutes of Health, told a briefing the virus was beginning to take root in the southern hemisphere, where winter is on its way.
- "What we're starting to see now... in southern Africa and in the southern hemisphere countries, is that we're having cases that are appearing as they go into their winter season," he said.
- "And if, in fact, they have a substantial outbreak, it will be inevitable that we need to be prepared that we'll get a cycle around the second time," Fauci said, referring to a 2nd cycle in the US late next fall in November or December.
- "It totally emphasizes the need to do what we're doing in developing a vaccine, testing it quickly and trying to get it ready so that we'll have a vaccine available for that next cycle."
- Fauci's comments suggesting the virus does better in colder weather than it does in hot and humid conditions follows a recent Chinese research paper -- still preliminary and awaiting peer-review -- that reached the same conclusion.