Prototype Robot that Carries Out Throat Swab Tests for Coronavirus Developed by Danish Researchers
May 28th, 2020Hmm hmm.
Via: Daily Mail:
A robot that is able to take throat swabs from coronavirus patients using a 3D printed arm was developed by a team of researchers from Denmark in just four weeks.
The University of Southern Denmark says the world’s first fully automated throat swab robot will be be able to test the first COVID-19 patients by late June.
Using disposable 3D printed parts, the robot holds a swab and hits the exact spot in the throat where a sample needs to be collected every time.
It puts the swab in a glass and screws the lid on to seal the sample without human input – reducing the risk of exposing healthcare workers to the deadly virus.
Civil Unrest Spreads to Los Angeles After Minneapolis Police Murder Captured on Video
May 28th, 2020Via: Daily Mail:
A protester was thrown from the hood of a police cruiser in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday night as a Black Lives Matter demonstration calling for justice for George Floyd turned violent.
About 1,000 protesters descended on LA following the 46-year-old father-of-two died in Minneapolis Monday, moments after a white cop knelt on his neck for eight minutes until he passed out.
As protests entered their second day in Minnesota, tensions began building between law enforcement and African-American communities across America, with demonstrators calling for the four officers involved in Floyd’s death to be charged with murder.
Related: Riots, Looting, Fires in South Minneapolis, National Guard Support Requested
Boeing Cutting More than 12,000 U.S. Jobs with Thousands More Planned
May 27th, 2020Via: Reuters:
Boeing Co said Wednesday it was eliminating more than 12,000 U.S. jobs, including involuntary layoffs of 6,770 U.S. workers as the largest American planemaker restructures in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
Boeing also disclosed it plans “several thousand remaining layoffs” in the next few months but did not say where those would take place.
Hong Kong Security Law Is Going to Devastate Its Economy
May 27th, 2020Via: Nikkei:
China’s announcement last week that it plans to impose national security legislation on Hong Kong raised grave concerns about the city’s democracy. But the economic toll could be sizable, too.
At the very least, Hong Kong can kiss goodbye its status as the world’s second-freest economy, a halo bestowed by the Heritage Foundation. The Washington-based think tank has long fetishized Hong Kong’s negligible tax rates, duty-free ports, ease of doing business, unfettered capital flows and transparent rule of law.
Worse, last year the U.S. passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which mandates an annual review of the city’s autonomy; if it finds that China has taken more control, as this move certainly suggests, the U.S. can remove economic and trade privileges Hong Kong enjoys. This would remove its attraction as a gateway to China.
All of this comes as Hong Kong’s economy reels from last year’s massive protests — which may now return — the U.S.-China trade war and the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak.
Related: U.S. Considering Suspension of Hong Kong’s Special Tariff Rates
Salaries Get Chopped for Many Americans Who Manage to Keep Jobs
May 27th, 2020Via: Bloomberg:
Companies across the U.S. are cutting salaries as they fight to survive the coronavirus, upending a key assumption in modern economics and raising another hurdle to rapid recovery.
Moderna Executives Cashed Out $89M in Shares as Stock Soared on Vaccine Hopes
May 27th, 2020Via: Stat News:
The top five executives at the biotech company Moderna have sold more than $89 million of stock so far this year — initiating nearly three times as many stock transactions than in all of 2019 — as the company’s share price has soared on hopes for its Covid-19 vaccine.
The trades, which led to about $80 million in profits, were prescheduled through a legal program that allows company insiders to buy and sell shares at a later date.
But the volume and timing might prove alarming to Moderna’s shareholders, especially in light of the company’s May decision to raise more than $1 billion in a stock offering. If Moderna’s early-stage vaccine can one day prevent coronavirus infection and the company’s best days lay ahead, why are insiders selling?
SpaceX Crew Demo-2: First Astronaut Launch from U.S. Since 2011
May 27th, 2020Live updates, NASA Commercial Crew.
SpaceX livefeed:
Meet Ella: New Zealand Police Unveil First Artificial Intelligence Officer
May 26th, 2020#nottheonion
Via: New Zealand Herald:
The police have unveiled their first AI officer, with hopes she’ll soon be smiling and blinking out of screens in stations all around New Zealand.
Ella, the artificial intelligence cop at the centre of the police’s new digital services, was revealed at the police national headquarters in Wellington this morning.
Ella, which stands for Electronic Lifelike Assistant, is part of two new digital kiosks police have designed to help reduce queues in stations and to provide a modern way to connect with the public.
Lockdown Suicide Data Reveal Predictable Tragedy
May 26th, 2020Via: American Institute for Economic Research:
On March 28, the American Institute for Economic Research ran a terrifying article that didn’t receive the attention it deserved, even though the research behind it was impeccable and detailed. It was Drugs, Suicide, and Crime: Empirical Estimates of the Human Toll of the Shutdown. On suicide in particular, the article said the following:
Whether it is the direct unemployment effect or the potential poverty produced from the economic shutdown that leads to greater suicides, an increase from the 48,344 suicides and 1,400,000 suicide attempts in the US in 2018 should give decision-makers pause during their response to this pandemic.
That article created in me a sense of dread. The warning was issued but unheeded. And sure enough, we now read that “California doctors say they’ve seen more deaths from suicide than coronavirus since lockdowns.”
Doctors in Northern California say they have seen more deaths from suicide than they’ve seen from the coronavirus during the pandemic.
“The numbers are unprecedented,” Dr. Mike deBoisblanc of John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, California, told ABC 7 News about the increase of suicide deaths adding that he’s seen a “year’s worth of suicides” in the last four weeks alone.
DeBoisblanc said he believes it’s time for California officials to end the stay-at-home order and let people back out into their communities.
“Personally, I think it’s time,” he said. “I think, originally, this was put in place to flatten the curve and to make sure hospitals have the resources to take care of COVID patients. We have the current resources to do that, and our other community health is suffering.”
Kacey Hansen, a trauma center nurse at John Muir Medical Center for over 30 years, says she’s not only worried about the increased suicide attempts but also about the hospital’s ability to save as many patients as usual.
“What I have seen recently, I have never seen before,” Hansen said. “I have never seen so much intentional injury.”…
By late March, more people had died in just one Tennessee county from suicide than had died in the entire state directly from the virus. Data out of Arizona show a similar trend.
Related: Many Americans haven’t seen or touched another person in 3 months because of COVID-19
How Fear, Groupthink Drove Unnecessary Global Lockdowns
May 26th, 2020Via: Real Clear Politics:
In the face of a novel virus threat, China clamped down on its citizens. Academics used faulty information to build faulty models. Leaders relied on these faulty models. Dissenting views were suppressed. The media flamed fears and the world panicked.
That is the story of what may eventually be known as one of the biggest medical and economic blunders of all time. The collective failure of every Western nation, except one, to question groupthink will surely be studied by economists, doctors, and psychologists for decades to come.
To put things in perspective, the virus is now known to have an infection fatality rate for most people under 65 that is no more dangerous than driving 13 to 101 miles per day. Even by conservative estimates, the odds of COVID-19 death are roughly in line with existing baseline odds of dying in any given year.
Yet we put billions of young healthy people under house arrest, stopped cancer screenings, and sunk ourselves into the worst level of unemployment since the Great Depression. This from a virus that bears a survival rate of 99.99% if you are a healthy individual under 50 years old.
