Highly reliable test kits are available from Germany at a cost of Bd$346 per hundred tests. We immediately need to acquire 1 million tests for under 4 million dollars (that includes chartering a private jet to bring them here).
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/24/asia/testing-coronavirus-science-intl-hnk/index.html
This is the most important way of dealing with the pandemic because without data about infection rates we are simply pissing into the wind with every other measure that we take.
We need mass testing now.
– Peter Lawrence Thompson
There has been a call by a BU commenter and philanthropist Peter Thompson for the Barbados government to initiate mass testing for the COVID-19 virus, NOW.
Discuss for 50 marks.
Know what industry is doing very well as everyone is in lockdown??? that’s right creative and performing arts delivered via the internet (NASDAQ: NFLX) up 27% since March 16th
In your rush to bless us with your profound wisdom you miss the simple point.
Besides, Netflix is in the a technology and media business. They are doing very well. The average musician, entertainer, comedians is struggling. Theaters, cinemas, movie studios, art galleries are closed.
No one is dismissing the arts but the issue is priorities. Why not provide the training so someone can create the next Netflix rather than the next documentary or film
@PLT
Oh I almost forgot.
You cherry pick Netflix but other companies are getting pummelled. Disney is down like 20% in the last month. The Nasdaq media index is down like 10% over teh same period.
Context my friend. Context.
Abbott’s newly FDA-approved test touted by Trump that can diagnose coronavirus in just 5 MINUTES will ship its first batch of 50,000 kits tomorrow
Abbott Laboratories’ new coronavirus test that can detect a positive result in just five minutes was approved by the FDA last week
The medical device company, based in Illinois, expects to roll out its test beginning April 1
Officials hope to manufacture at least 50,000 tests per day to use in hospitals, urgent care clinics and doctors’ offices
President Trump presented the test to reporters during a press conference on Monday and called it ‘highly accurate’
In the US, there are more than 164,000 confirmed cases of the virus and more than 3,000 deaths
Coronavirus symptoms: what are they and should you see a doctor?
By MARY KEKATOS SENIOR HEALTH REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 16:08 BST, 31 March 2020 | UPDATED: 20:14 BST, 31 March 2020
Abbott Laboratories’ newly-approved five-minute coronavirus test will begin shipping tomorrow, on April 1.
The medical device company, based in Illinois, received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration on two weeks ago under Emergency Use Authorization.
Abbott said it is ramping up production to 50,000 nasal swab tests – known as ID NOW COVID-19 – per day.
Officials at the company say the test can be used anywhere, including hospitals, urgent care clinics and even doctors’ offices.
The US has more cases of the virus than other country, but healthcare workers are still struggling to keep up with the demand and test the thousands of people that are needed to contain the novel coronavirus.
‘A point of care test is a test that gives you a result where you’re getting care,’ FDA Commissioner Dr Stephen Hahn said.
‘Just like tests for flu or strep, where you go to the doctors, you get the test done, you can get an answer within minutes having this test done.’
It is the second test to be approved by the FDA that can be used directly in physicians’ offices and other community healthcare settings and promptly provide results to patients.
Last week, the FDA approved a test made by Cepheid that can be used at the point of care.
‘The COVID-19 pandemic will be fought on multiple fronts, and a portable molecular test that offers results in minutes adds to the broad range of diagnostic solutions needed to combat this virus,’ said Robert Ford, president and chief operating officer at Abbott, in a statement.
A 13-year-old boy who tested positive for coronavirus has died, King’s College Hospital Trust in London said.
A spokesman for the trust said the boy’s death had been referred to the coroner but gave no further details.
It comes as the biggest daily increase in the number of people who have died with coronavirus in the UK – 381 – was reported.
As of 17:00 BST on Monday, the number of UK deaths linked to the virus was 1,789.
“Sadly, a 13-year old boy who tested positive for Covid-19 has passed away, and our thoughts and condolences are with the family at this time,” King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said.
“The death has been referred to the Coroner and no further comment will be made.”(Quote)
Condolences to his family. @ Quaker John, do you think he was a smoker, or a Barbados Scholar who went to Harrison College?
Notes From a Native Son: The China Panic Shows a Weakness in Liberal Capitalism (Written five years ago)
By Hal Austin
When all the people around you are going hysterical and prophets of doom are emerging from the woodwork, the best thing to do is not to panic.
China has got the entire western world in turmoil, not because of the spectacular growth of its economy, nor even falsely assumed, but much-publicised collapse.
What are getting people confused are three things: the volatility on the stock market, perceived threats to the wider economy and seeing China through a flawed prism.
First, the stock market is not the economy, a simple truth but one that most people tend to mix up; it is not the real economy; and, most important of all, China is not a liberal democratic country with market capitalism, but a communist state controlled by the central committee.
The other thing that is of upmost importance is that the Chinese play a long game, not stock market panics every morning by over-heated young men and women, but they think in decades, hundreds of years even.
For nearly 800 of the last millennium the Chinese economy was one of the two top economies in the world. It was only with the rise of mercantilism that Western Europe removed the Chinese from the top of the economic tree. Ever since then that has been the Chinese mission. It has only been over the last 30 years that China has found itself in a poison to topple the great capitalist economies.
Common sense tells us that the central committee would not let a few Foreign Direct investors to divest and crash their economy.
There are two lessons to learn from this slight hiccup: first, the economic consensus that growth could only come from FDI is, to my mind, wrong.
Foreign investors are carpetbaggers, they enter markets that look like they have potential growth; equally, as soon as there is volatility, they up sticks and leave.
Second, sound growth is based on domestic demand and what we are witnessing is the background noise caused when the tectonic plates are shifting from an export-led economy to one based on domestic demand.
China has a growing middle class of about 300m, while the US has a total population of about the same.
China’s economic flaw, so far, is the failure to develop a sustainable capital market and a strong shadow banking system free of state control.
This applies equally to other emerging markets, especially those that are over-dependent on foreign-owned banks with weak capital buffers.
But China has a huge advantage. The Chinese middle class are looking for the things we in the west take for granted: while good such as fridges, televisions, microwave ovens, motor vehicles, etc.
This is what stage two of the Chinese development model is based on. The recent devaluation of the yuan, shifting the economy back to exports, is just a temporary move.
China has rightly decided that growth will come from widespread infrastructural developments, a good banking system, widespread use of new technology and providing its young people with sound, top quality education and skills training.
Conclusion:
The fundamental problem is that after pumping over US$1trn in to the global economy by central banks – the Fed, Bank of England, European Central Bank, and the Bank of Japan – in real terms we have not moved very far away from where we were in 2009.
The eurozone is still underperforming, the US is making a number of false starts, so is the UK, and abenomics if faltering.
It us this uncertainty that has held interest rates at between 0 and 0.5 per cent in all major economies.
The disappointment for most of these analysts is that China is no longer taking up the slack but, as has been stated, has turned on domestic demand for the next stage of its growth.
This is precisely what Germany is doing to combat the problems it is having with Southern Europe and with the decline in sales of luxury goods in China – an export-driven economy that has shifted to a domestic demand-driven one.
A small, semi-open, independent island economy needs close stewardship. One example: a Trinidad-owned firm is making huge amounts of credit available to households in Barbados without as much as a single word from the prime minister, minister of finance or governor of the central bank.
This Trappist vow of silence would be laughable,, if the consequences were not so terrible for the nation.
So, quite clearly, households will borrow money (it is an economic truth that poorer people spend their money while the wealthy invest), buying imports or products and services, in effect shifting debt from the private sector to the state and households. This is the business strategy of mass suicide.
Condolences to his family. @ Quaker John, do you think he was a smoker, or a Barbados Scholar who went to Harrison College?
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We will never know as there will be no further comment as you have pointed out.
I work on facts.
peterlawrencethompson
March 31, 2020 10:20 AM
Know what industry is doing very well as everyone is in lockdown???
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Everybody is not in lock down!!!
@Dullard March 31, 2020 3:07 PM
I know that old media is dying… I wouldn’t touch Disney with a ten ft retirement plan. What I am saying is that Caribbean production companies can be writing, producing and filming series for Netflix to buy. Have you seen the South African series Queen Sono? It is first rate. We can sell our intellectual property to the world through Netflix and others.
@robert lucas March 31, 2020 3:26 PM
“Abbott’s newly FDA-approved test…”
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It would be huge if we could get an Abbott machine in Barbados this week.
@Peter
The government voted monies today to purchase food and other items for contingency. Was it only food or is heath equipment medication included.