“It’s not a matter of if, but when, we will deal with an asteroid collision threat on Earth.”
— Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator, NASA’s Science Mission DirectorateClick for report.
“The magnitude of this crisis is extraordinary and federal-state-local government coordination will be more critical than ever before.”
— Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, March 19, 2020
“Tonight our responsibility is to save as many lives and flatten that COVID-19 curve. This is an act of love.”
— Eric Garcetti, Mayor of Los Angeles, California, March 19, 2020
“States should not provide numeric values (of rapidly increasing unemployment claims) to the public.”
— Gay Gilbert, Administrator, Labor Dept. Office of Employment Insurance, Washington, D. C.Click for report.
“When you look at the number of people that are projected that may need ventilators, 2,000 doesn’t really put much of a dent into it. The key thing is the private sector, the manufacturing side, whoever makes medical machines of this type. How do you prime that pump to get production up? Because we are simply not going to be able to meet the demand if the demand fits some of the profiles as we’ve seen in the CDC brief.”
— Mark Esper, U. S. Secretary of Defense, The Pentagon, March 17, 2020
If Iranians fail to follow stricter government guidance now, “it could collapse Iran’s already-strained medical system and cause 4 million coronavirus cases and 3.5 million deaths.”
— Afruz Eslami, M. D., Iranian State Television, March 17, 2020Click for report.
“Several tests of remdesivir in lab animals infected with the MERS coronavirus have researchers still hopeful when it comes to the new coronavirus. In studies in both rhesus macaques and mice, remdesivir protected animals from lung damage whether the drug was given before or after infection. … It may also have utility for related coronaviruses such as the novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV” that emerged from Wuhan, China.
— Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 13, 2020Click for report.
“I am officially declaring a national emergency, two very big words. I’m urging every state to set up emergency operations centers effective immediately.”
— Donald Trump, President of the United States, March 13, 2020Click for report.
“Now that the COVID-19 coronavirus has a foothold in so many countries, the threat of a pandemic has become very real.”
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director, World Health Organization, March 9, 2020
“The future depends on us and everyone must do their part. There won’t be just a red zone for Lombardy. There will be Italy.”
— Gieuseppe Conte, Italy’s Prime Minister, March 9, 2020Click for report.
“We are facing an emergency, a national emergency.”
— Prime Minister Giuseppte Conte in a 2 AM Sunday news press conference, March 8, 2020
“The head of the Italian Lombardy region’s intensive care crisis unit says the health system is on the brink of collapse, intensive care being set up in hallways. By March 26, they predict ~ 18,000 COVID-19 cases in Lombardy, of which ~ 3,000 will need intensive care.”
— Twitter feed from Rachel Donadio, Lombardy Province, Italy, March 8, 2020
“Well, it’s arrived. I also have the coronavirus.”
— Rome-based leader of Italy’s Democratic Party and president of the Lazio region, Nicola Zingarette, announced on Facebook, Saturday, March 7, 2020
“It’s a false hope to say, yes, that COVID-19 will disappear like the flu (with summer). We have to assume that the virus will continue to have the capacity to spread.”
— Mike Ryan, M. D., Executive Director, World Health Organization Health Emergencies Program, Geneva, Switzerland, March 6, 2020Click for report.
“England’s first COVID-19 death was an older woman believed to have contracted the virus in the U.K.,” another example of community spread to someone who had not been to China, Italy or other infected countries.
“Indian authorities on Tuesday, March 3, 2020, ordered India’s vast pharmaceutical industry to stop exporting 26 drugs and drug ingredients, most of them antibiotics, without explicit government permission. The reason: shortage of Chinese drug ingredients because of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
— The New York Times, “With Suppliers in China Hobbled, India Curbs Exports of Vital Drugs,” March 4, 2020Click for report.
