Warning that the number of coronavirus cases in the United States was expected to grow, the Trump administration on Monday evening said that testing for the virus would ramp up quickly in the coming weeks while declining to estimate how many Americans had already been tested for the virus. From a report: The evening news conference at the White House came as the stock market plunged and an increasing number of Americans wondered how the official count of virus cases in the country, still in the mid-three-figures, could remain so low despite the aggressive spread of coronavirus elsewhere. Trump addressed economic concerns, telling reporters his administration would ask Congress to pass payroll tax relief and other quick measures. He also said he was seeking help for hourly-wage workers to ensure they're "not going to miss a paycheck" and "don't get penalized for something that's not their fault."

Since Covid-19 began to spread, Google has aggressively intervened in some of its most popular online services to limit the spread of misinformation. This is a departure for a company that has relied heavily on software and automation to index and rank information throughout its 22-year existence. From a report: Google searches related to the virus now trigger an "SOS Alert," with news from mainstream publications including National Public Radio, followed by information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization displayed prominently. In contrast, a recent search for "flu season" showed the website verywellhealth.com at the top, while another search for "flu" produced tweets, including one from U.S. President Donald Trump comparing coronavirus to the common flu. The coronavirus has killed more than 3,900 people out of 113,000 confirmed cases.

Online platforms have been inundated with rumors and misinformed concerns about the pathogen as it spread west from Asia, particularly in floods of messages on Twitter, according to Carl Bergstrom, a professor at the University of Washington. Google is swept up in this because it has a deal with Twitter to show tweets in search results, especially for queries about live and recent events. "It's really just a churning mess right now," Bergstrom said. On YouTube, Google's video service, the company is trying to quickly remove videos claiming to prevent the virus in place of seeking medical treatment. And some apps related to the virus have been banned from the Google Play app store, prompting complaints from developers who say they just want to help. The company is also giving up revenue.

As COVID-19 spreads rapidly around the world, people are eager to keep up with developments at its epicentre in Wuhan, China. But government censorship, partisan media and misinformation have led many to feel the public isn't seeing a full picture of life in a city on lockdown. So some have developed a creative solution to bypass the gatekeepers and go straight to the source: Tinder. From a report: Most Tinder users use the app to match with people nearby, for obvious reasons. But the world's most used dating app has a premium feature, Passport, that allows a user with Tinder Plus or Tinder Gold memberships to choose to swipe in any location -- like, say, Wuhan -- no matter where they are. And despite Tinder being banned in China, users say they're having luck setting their location to Wuhan, allowing them to match with and chat to residents to hear their perspective on the global story. US-based Twitter user @drethelin tweeted "Setting my tinder to Wuhan so I can get the real scoop on what's going on" on Jan. 28 -- just before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 was a public health emergency.

"A study published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine confirms the recommended 14-day quarantine period for those suspected of having been infected by the COVID-19 virus," writes Slashdot reader RNLockwood. "I'm going to stock up on essentials." From the abstract: Results: There were 181 confirmed cases with identifiable exposure and symptom onset windows to estimate the incubation period of COVID-19. The median incubation period was estimated to be 5.1 days (95% CI, 4.5 to 5.8 days), and 97.5% of those who develop symptoms will do so within 11.5 days (CI, 8.2 to 15.6 days) of infection. These estimates imply that, under conservative assumptions, 101 out of every 10,000 cases (99th percentile, 482) will develop symptoms after 14 days of active monitoring or quarantine.

Limitation: Publicly reported cases may overrepresent severe cases, the incubation period for which may differ from that of mild cases.

Conclusion: This work provides additional evidence for a median incubation period for COVID-19 of approximately 5 days, similar to SARS. Our results support current proposals for the length of quarantine or active monitoring of persons potentially exposed to SARS-CoV-2, although longer monitoring periods might be justified in extreme cases.

First known U.S. case offers lessons in how and how not to fight the outbreak. From a report: The man who would become Patient Zero for the new coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. appeared to do everything right. He arrived Jan. 19 at an urgent-care clinic in a suburb north of Seattle with a slightly elevated temperature and a cough he'd developed soon after returning four days earlier from a visit with family in Wuhan, China. The 35-year-old had seen a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention alert about the virus and decided to get checked. He put on a mask in the waiting room. After learning about his travel, the clinic drew blood and called state and county health officials, who hustled the sample onto an overnight flight to the CDC lab in Atlanta. The patient was told to stay in isolation at home, and health officials checked on him the next morning.

The test came back positive that afternoon, Jan. 20, the first confirmed case in the U.S. By 11 p.m., the patient was in a plastic-enclosed isolation gurney on his way to a biocontainment ward at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington, a two-bed unit developed for the Ebola virus. As his condition worsened, then improved over the next several days, staff wore protective garb that included helmets and face masks. Few even entered the room; a robot equipped with a stethoscope took vitals and had a video screen for doctors to talk to him from afar. County health officials located more than 60 people who'd come in contact with him, and none developed the virus in the following weeks. By Feb. 21, he was deemed fully recovered. Somehow, someone was missed. All the careful medical detective work, it's now clear, wasn't enough to slow a virus moving faster than the world's efforts to contain it.

Stanford University canceled in-person classes for the final two weeks of the quarter, switching to online instruction amid rising concern about the coronavirus outbreak. From a report: As the coronavirus first reported in China spreads in the United States, several schools have taken this step as a precaution, hoping to avoid further infections on campus. The University of Washington, which has more than 55,000 students on three campuses, announced Friday that it would switch to virtual classes, and some smaller schools in and near the hard-hit Seattle area, such as Pacific Lutheran University, announced similar plans.

On Sunday, Rice University in Houston canceled in-person classes for the week of March 9 and canceled gatherings of 100 or more people through the end of April. An employee tested positive for covid-19 last week after international travel, university officials said in issuing the alert. [...] In New York, where multiple cases have been identified, Columbia University announced Sunday that classes are canceled Monday and Tuesday and that the university strongly discourages nonessential gatherings of more than 25 people. There are no confirmed cases among Columbia students, faculty or staff, but the Ivy League school's president wrote that someone had been quarantined and that the suspension of classes will allow the school to prepare for a shift to remote classes for the remainder of the week.

Italy has placed up to 16 million people under quarantine as it battles to contain the spread of coronavirus. From a report: Anyone living in Lombardy and 14 other central and northern provinces will need special permission to travel. Milan and Venice are both affected. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte also announced the closure of schools, gyms, museums, nightclubs and other venues across the whole country. The measures, the most radical taken outside China, will last until 3 April. Italy has seen the largest number of coronavirus infections in Europe, with the number of confirmed cases jumping by more than 1,200 to 5,883 on Saturday. Among the latest people to test positive is the army's chief of staff. Salvatore Farina said he felt well and was self-isolating.

Medical researchers are trying to make history, reports CNBC -- including a 100-person R&D group within AWS: Amazon is working on a cure for the common cold in a years-long, top secret effort called "Project Gesundheit," according to three people familiar with the effort... The team is hoping to develop a vaccine, but is exploring a variety of approaches to the problem. Internally, the effort is sometimes referred to as the "vaccine project...."

Amazon isn't the only organization throwing resources into a cure for the cold. Researchers at Stanford and the University of California are working on a new approach that involves temporarily disabling a single protein inside our cells. Researchers at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, which is funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, the physician Priscilla Chan, also chipped into the effort. The researchers behind that group said, in a statement, that they were close to a cure.

An anonymous reader quotes the Seattle Times: Testing for the novel coronavirus in the Seattle area will get a huge boost in the coming weeks as a project funded by Bill Gates and his foundation begins offering home-testing kits that will allow people who fear they may be infected to swab their noses and send the samples back for analysis. Results, which should be available in one to two days, will be shared with local health officials who will notify those who test positive.

Via online forms, infected people can answer questions about their movements and contacts, making it easier for health officials to locate others who may need to be tested or quarantined, as well as to track the virus' spread and identify possible hot spots.

Initially, the lab will be able to conduct about 400 tests a day, eventually expanding to thousands of tests a day, said Scott Dowell, leader of coronavirus response at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The project is ramping up as quickly as possible, but it's not clear exactly when it will launch, he added. Among other things, software needs to be upgraded to handle the expected crush of requests, and a detailed questionnaire finalized for people who request tests. "Although there's a lot to be worked out, this has enormous potential to turn the tide of the epidemic," Dowell said.
The article points out that the kits "will reduce the need for sick people to visit a doctor's office or clinic, lowering the chance of exposing others."

The foundation has already committed up to $100 million to the global response to COVID-19, including up to $20 million to accelerate international efforts to control the spread, up to $20 million to help partners in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia strengthen their response, and up to $60 million to kick-start the development of vaccines and treatments.

The five years between 2013 and 2017 saw a 200% increase in the number of commercially-insured Americans diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease or early-onset dementia between the ages of 30 to 64. "While the underlying cause is not clear, advances in technology are certainly allowing for earlier and more definitive diagnosis," says a Blue Cross executive.

The data was collected by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (and its licensee Independence Blue Cross) in a report titled Early-Onset Dementia and Alzheimer's Rates Grow for Younger Americans. schwit1 shared their announcement: Among that group, the average age of a person living with either form of dementia is 49... The number diagnosed with these conditions increased 373% among 30- to 44-year-olds, 311% among 45- to 54-year-olds and 143% among 55- to 64-year-olds from 2013 to 2017...

The study also took a deeper look into early-onset Alzheimer's disease and found that more than 37,000 commercially insured Americans between the ages of 30 and 64 were diagnosed with the condition in 2017 — a 131% jump in diagnoses since 2013.

Though SETI@Home has shut down, "users with a fondness for distributed computing might take a look at Folding@home, which is trying to figure out the structures of proteins on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus," writes Ars Technica. The coronavirus uses these proteins to latch on to proteins on the surface of human cells, a key step in its ability to infect them. Understanding the structure of this protein is a key to understanding the virus' vulnerabilities.

While it won't help in the production of a general vaccine, it can be extremely useful in developing therapies. Once we know where this protein interacts with its receptor on human cells, we can start searching for small molecules that could bind in this same location, potentially blocking this interaction. Alternatively, we can potentially generate antibodies that bind to this site on the virus' protein. Either of these options can help people who are already infected, as they can limit the virus' ability to spread to new cells.
Or, as their web site explains it, "The data you help us generate will be quickly and openly disseminated as part of an open science collaboration of multiple laboratories around the world, giving researchers new tools that may unlock new opportunities for developing lifesaving drugs."

Startup accelerator Y Combinator announced today that it has moved its demo day online, citing a "growing concern over COVID-19," or coronavirus. From a report: The demo day has historically drawn crowds of Silicon Valley elite, journalists and both national and international venture capitalists to watch more than 100 startups come out to the world. "While we won't be able to recreate every aspect of Demo Day, we'll try our best to create an amazing experience for our founders and investors," Y Combinator said in a blog post. Y Combinator's 30th annual demo day will be pre-recorded and released to investors on Monday March 23, per the post. Thanks to a mix of history and glamour, demo day is the culminating day of a YC startup's accelerator experience. It's a big audience full of check writers and fast typers, and at the least, they'll get a tweet or a couple of sign-ups. The move to remote, in some way, dims that excitement.

South by Southwest, the annual tech, film and music conference held in Austin, Texas, has been canceled due to concerns surrounding the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. From a report: Local government officials announced the update at a press conference Friday afternoon discussing the status of the outbreak and events in the city. Austin's Mayor Steve Adler said he had declared a local disaster in the city and issued an order canceling the conference. In a statement on its website, SXSW said it would "faithfully follow the City's directions." "We are devastated to share this news with you," organizers wrote in a statement on the SXSW website. The show must go on is in our DNA, and this is the first time in 34 years that the March event will not take place. We are now working through the ramifications of this unprecedented situation." Austin officials said there are no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Travis County, where Austin is located. But confirmed cases around the world passed 100,000 Friday.

The number of coronavirus cases has reached 100,276, with 55,694 recovered and 3,404 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering. From a report: The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, said it looked like the UK would face substantial disruption due to the coronavirus. He said: "It looks like there will a substantial period of disruption where we have to deal with this outbreak." When asked what help would be given to businesses struggling due to the outbreak, Johnson said next week's budget presented "a big opportunity" for the country. He added: "You will be seeing in the budget next week all sorts of ways in which we want to be using this moment, the UK coming out of the European Union. All the opportunities that we have -- but also dealing with this particular challenge, coronavirus, and set in the general low growth the world is seeing -- to make some fantastic investments in the long term."

bobthesungeek76036 writes: COVID-19 has another victim: RedHat has cancelled this year's Summit event in San Francisco and it will now be a virtual event. "We are taking this precautionary measure after closely monitoring developments with coronavirus (COVID-19) and guidance from the CDC, WHO, and other health authorities," reads a statement on Red Hat's website. "We know you have questions, and we will continue to share answers as they become available. Stay tuned to the Red Hat blog for additional information."

The free, multi-day, virtual event will take place April 28-29, 2020. Attendees who were registered for Red Hat Summit will automatically be registered for Red Hat Summit Virtual Experience at no charge. Those who registered will also have the option to either roll over their pass to Red Hat Summit 2021 or receive a refund.

Twitter user Scott Bell is reporting that his uncle from Venice, California, has tested positive for the coronavirus. According to Bell, "he was skiing in the Italian alps with 6 other guys," 4 of which, including his uncle, now have the coronavirus. One is reportedly in a coma and two others are sick. Bell says his uncle "has not present any symptoms as of yet," but has chosen to self-quarantine himself. From the thread: A few days later they tested him and yesterday he found out he's positive. Meanwhile, they've told my aunt to wear a mask, stay 10 feet away from my uncle, and otherwise she is free to move about the community. And, she has -- to grocery stores, the hair salon, etc. [...] Believe me, I'm upset to hear that she did this. The crazier part is that they have not tested her, and will not, and again - advised her she is free to move at-will. This is how our health dept. is leading this effort. In an updated tweet, Bell says his aunt is now quarantined and the guy in the coma "is starting to improve."

Update: Patch is confirming the report.

Here's a screenshot of the thread:


UPDATE: A nurse from a northern California Kaiser facility issued a statement criticizing the CDC for delays in testing, and reporting that she is "currently sick and in quarantine after caring for a patient who tested positive."

You can breathe in harmful chemicals from tobacco use even in non-smoking venues because they are carried on smokers' bodies and clothes. From a report: Third-hand smoke -- the residue from cigarette fumes that sticks to surfaces and then wafts back into the air -- has previously been found indoors in places where smoking is allowed. To find out if third-hand smoke also pollutes non-smoking venues, Drew Gentner at Yale University and his colleagues monitored the air quality in a non-smoking cinema in Germany for four days, after first flushing it with clean air. Smoking is banned inside cinemas and other public places in Germany. They observed spikes of tobacco chemicals in the air just after audiences arrived, which decreased over time but didn't go away completely.

The polluting substances were probably brought in on the bodies and clothes of people who had recently smoked cigarettes or been near smokers, says Gentner. They observed larger spikes during movies rated for those aged 16 and above, most likely because the audiences were older and had greater tobacco exposure than those attending movies suitable for younger people, says Gentner. The amount of tobacco chemicals that people watching the films aimed at older teens and adults were exposed to per hour was equivalent to that inhaled while sitting directly next to someone as they smoke up to 10 cigarettes.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Whether it's calculating your risk of catching the new coronavirus or gauging the chance of rain on your upcoming beach vacation, you use a mix of statistical, physical, and social information to make a decision. So do New Zealand parrots known as keas, scientists report today. It's the first time this cognitive ability has been demonstrated outside of apes, and it may have implications for understanding how intelligence evolved. [...] The findings indicate that keas, like humans, have something known as "domain general intelligence" -- the mental ability to integrate several kinds of information, the researchers argue. That's despite the fact that birds and humans last shared a common ancestor some 312 million years ago and have markedly different brain anatomies. Previously, cognitive researchers have argued that domain general intelligence requires language. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

An Amazon employee at the company's Seattle headquarters has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, and has subsequently been sent to quarantine. CNET reports: The online retail giant has about 55,000 employees in the Seattle area, and reportedly said people working in close contact with the affected person have been notified. The employee went home sick on Feb. 25 and hasn't returned to work since, according to a message sent to Amazon employees seen by The Seattle Times. Amazon learned Tuesday that the employee had tested positive for the virus. So far, a total of nine deaths have been reported in Washington, with 27 confirmed cases in the state. There are more than 100 cases in 15 states as of Tuesday night.

The release of upcoming James Bond film "No Time To Die" has been pushed back from April To November due to coronavirus fears. "The 25th installment in the storied spy franchise will commence its run on Nov. 12 in the U.K., followed by the U.S. on Nov. 25," reports The Hollywood Reporter. "It was scheduled to open in North America on April 10." From the report: Relocating a tentpole and restarting a marketing campaign that was in full swing is a Herculean task but insiders say hundreds of millions of dollars hung in the balance decision of the ongoing cinema blackout in China and a downturn in moviegoing in markets where COVID-19 is a major issue, including South Korea, Italy and Japan. And there's concern that by early April, other markets could be impacted. "MGM, Universal and Bond producers, Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, announced today that after careful consideration and thorough evaluation of the global theatrical marketplace, the release of No Time to Die will be postponed until November 2020," read a statement issued by the three parties.

In its new date, No Time to Die has the advantage of going out over the lucrative Thanksgiving holiday in North America (many previous Bond movies also opened in November). The other major 2020 Thanksgiving tentpole is Godzilla vs. Kong, which debuts domestically on Nov. 20. As the coronavirus first began to spread, publicity tours for the movie in China, South Korea and Japan were canceled, and No Time To Die's release in Hong Kong was pushed back until April 30. Aside for the concerns over audience members, the letter said the ongoing coronavirus outbreak could seriously impact the film's box office, noting that the countries to have banned or restricted large public gatherings -- including China, Italy, France, Switzerland, Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea -- contributed some 38 percent of the total global earnings for the last Bond movie, 2015's Spectre.