Lifeboat Foundation

PG&E is donating nearly 1 million protective masks from the supply it keeps on hand for crews responding to fires and construction zones, to distribute to California hospitals and first responders, company officials said Friday.

The 480,000 N95 masks and 470,000 surgical masks will go to the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, for hospitals and those on the front lines facing a critical shortage of protective equipment.

The company maintains a supply of masks for utility crews working in construction zones or responding to wildfires, Andy Vesey, PG&E CEO and president said.

European nations tightened restrictions designed to check the spread of the coronavirus, with Germany banning gatherings of more than two people, Spain moving to extend a state of emergency and Italy ordering a halt to domestic travel.

While Germany stopped short of confining people to their homes, it will prevent citizens meeting in groups for at least two weeks, with only families and people sharing a home exempt, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday. Restaurants will be closed except for takeout and delivery services.

“No one wants to stand before the people and discuss such rules,” Merkel said at a news conference in Berlin after a video conference with regional leaders.

At least five downtown Denver hotels have closed temporarily to stem the coronavirus spread, and the statewide industry is bracing for a hit that could lead to as many as 72,000 job losses in a sector that produces a $13.4 billion annual gross domestic product statewide.

While only a handful of mountain resorts had shut down by early this week, that number has ballooned in recent days as hotels across the metro region are reporting vacancy levels below 10% during a month many had predicted would be record-setting, Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association President/CEO Amie Mayhew said. Among those that have announced they will shutter until May 11 or 12 are the Grand Hyatt Denver, the Oxford Hotel, the Crawford Hotel and The Maven Hotel at Dairy Block.

All of those except for the Grand Hyatt are operated by Sage Hospitality Group of Denver, whose CEO, Walter Isenberg, issued a letter Thursday saying he’d made “the very difficult decision to temporarily suspend business operations at a portion of our hotels and restaurants in order to protect the health and safety of our guests, our associates and our communities.”

So pathetic 😢😢😢.

A column of military vehicles crossed the heart of Bergamo last night, from the monumental cemetery to the highway.

Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have created a new, rubber-like material with a unique set of properties, which could act as a replacement for human tissue in medical procedures.

A new device enables researchers to observe hundreds of neurons in the brain in real-time. The system is based on modified silicon chips from cameras, but rather than taking a picture, it takes a movie of the neural electrical activity.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an American oncologist and bioethicist who is senior fellow at the Center for American Progress as well as Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, said on MSNBC on Friday, March 20, that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told him it would probably take 8–10 weeks to get ventilator production started at his factories (he’s working on this at Tesla and SpaceX).

Continue reading “Elon Musk: Should Have 1000 Ventilators Next Week, + 250,000 N95 Masks For Hospitals Tomorrow Exclusive” »

Egyptian blue is one of the oldest manmade colour pigments. It adorns, for instance, the crown of the world famous bust of Nefertiti.

“Infusions of antibody-laden blood have been used with reported success in prior outbreaks, including the SARS epidemic and the 1918 flu pandemic.”

John Hopkins University

With a vaccine for COVID-19 still a long way from being realized, Johns Hopkins immunologist Arturo Casadevall is working to revive a century-old blood-derived treatment for use in the United States in hopes of slowing the spread of the disease.

Continue reading “Antibodies from COVID-19 survivors could be used to treat patients, protect those at risk” »