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The crowded sports stadiums for soccer games during early February in the Lombardy region accelerated the spread of coronavirus in Italy by the end of February. The sports stadiums soccer games spread the virus like wildfire in northern Italy. This is why along with nursing homes, sports stadiums pose the greatest threat from coronavirus. The tens of thousands of people from a single game can contaminate as many as 40,000 or 50,000 people as these 10,000 people go on subways, restaurants and other places. This spreads to millions very quickly creating a wildfire effect. Airports and sports stadiums or music venues, theatres have this wildfire spreading effect that is then compounded by the use of public transport and restaurants other close proximity places, spreading it far and wide. These are also not essential activities as work and office, employees working at companies or in manufacturing, which are essential to the economy.  This is why in terms of priority sports and leisure travel can be deferred till a vaccine is developed. Business travel is increasingly being substituted by using videoconferencing and other ways of staying in touch remotely. ...

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Christian Seifert, chief executive of the German Football League acted quickly to get the Bundesliga played by teams in empty soccer stadiums but reaching millions on televsion. Following the example of the Bundesliga which started with games on May 16, the La Liga in Spain starts on June 11, and the Premier League in Britain on June 17. Two rounds of play are done and seven more to go for Bundesliga. Even the sounds of fans were brought back for television. Bayern Munich played Borussia Dortmund in  1-0 game that brought the old games and rivalries back to life for sports fans on television. Seifert says he was just doing his job. It helped that the German health infrastructure was good and handled the coronavirus well, making it possible for sports not to be seen as a potential burden for hospitals. The empty stadiums- all the teams and team fans accepted this. It wasn't that some teams had different views on how to proceed. A $300 million broadcast rights payment was one more incentive to get going and still be safe by keeping the stadiums empty-  and everybody calmly accepting that as a necessary aspect of the modified way for 2020. You could still enjoy the game and be thankful you could - on television. ...

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Dortmund's coach speaks of a very odd experience, "surreal" as his team beats Schalke 4-0 in the Bundesliga in front of an empty stadium that normally holds 80,000 people. Over 175,000 coronavirus cases by May 16 in Germany and France and 240,000 in Britain. Still life moves on and televised matches in the Bundesliga, the French and Premier Leagues, will bring back sports to millions of football fans around the world. Dortmund is now 1 point behind leaders Bayern Munich. 

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European Union countries, Britain and the US face the risk of a resurgence of coronavirus through the Delta variant and other variants. The Delta variant detected in India is 40% to 80% more transmissible than the Alpha variant detected in the UK, with the Alpha variant 50% more transmissible than the original coronavirus that originated in Wuhan.    Virologists in Italy feel they are flying blind at this time because of the lack of genetic sequencing in Italy, Spain, France and across most European Union countries. The UK has done genetic sequencing on 27% of recent covid positive tests. The figure drops to 1% for Italy and is tiny for most of the EU countries including Spain and France. Without genetic sequencing it is hard to predict and take steps. Another problem in the EU is that the southern economies Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Croatia are dependent on summer tourism for the economy. The UK economy can handle a delay to a full opening for 6 weeks without serious impact to the economy, says WSJ. Southern European economies can afford only short delays to full reopening. Croatia acted as a door to spread of coronavirus into central Europe when Germans and Austrians went to vacation spots in Croatia in summer 2020. This situation could be happening again in 2020 with British and other tourists visiting vacation areas in Portugal, and Germans visiting Greece and other summer tourism spots. Portugal's national health institute says the Delta variant represents 60% of new cases in the area around Lisbon based on early data. The government of Portugal is facing criticism for letting a Champions League soccer final to take place in Porto, Portugal between two English teams. Thousands of English fans watched the game at the stadium. Other problems are in relaxing of mask rules in France and Italy, last week in France and in the coming week in Italy. French nightclubs open July 9 without mask requirement. Germany is maintaining some social distancing measures and this includes mandating medical masks in closed public spaces and on public transport. Half of French, Italians, Germans are vaccinated and quarter fully vaccinated. Yet the gaps of unvaccinated people is large enough to cause serious concern of another wave. The relaxation of mask rules- the entire stadium in Budapest was packed for a recent game between Hungary and Italy for a soccer Euro 2021 game with no masks to be seen. Stadiums played a key role for the spread of the original coronavirus in Italy with a game in Bergamo, Italy, in the area near Milan. All this makes health officials concerned about the risks of still another wave of the coronavirus.   ...

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The best US cities for jobs is changing rapidly in 2021 after the spread of coronavirus. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston lost jobs. Jobs shifted to hubs in the interior of the country as remote work changed the workplace. Salt Lake City in Utah, Austin in Texas, and Denver became new hubs with environments that included mountains, healthier living, quieter lifestyle, lower costs and efforts to attract employers. Tourist spots suffered with Orlando in Florida moving to 47th place in terms of jobs. The US lost 9 million jobs in 2020 changing how the jobs market in cities looks. The WSJ looks at the changes in this report. Tech hubs such as Raleigh in North Carolina, and San Francisco suffered decline as remote work created new opportunities for cities in the interior of the country. By contrast Salt Lake City was growing twice as fast from 2000 to 2017, and has increased in popularity with surrounding areas of Provo and Ogden in Utah. It is now known as Silicon Slopes as it becomes a new tech hub city. The WSJ looks at Salt Lake City in some detail.  ...

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WSJ looks at how businesses are coping and how the government and the financial institutions are trying to make handling the stress of coronavirus easier and recovery easier. Bedrock is one of the financial firms that is forgiving rent for small bookshops, retailers, restaurants, gyms and other stores in Detroit, Michigan. Bedrock owns 50% of the leasable commercial real estate space in Detroit's 1.4 square mile downtown business district. In all it covers about 40% of downtown Detroit and retail. A similar program is underway in Seattle with help from Amazon. This story shows how Mr. Cullen who is Bedrock's CEO is doing this. He reports to Mr. Gilbert, a billionaire, who is also owner of Quicken Loans lender, Cleveland Cavaliers sports team. Mr. Gilbert is recovering from a severe stroke he had this year. This makes the job harder for Cullen as he has to seek approval from Mr. Gilbert and show this is something that will also benefit Mr. Gilbert. This will make recovery in Detroit easier. He says Detroit suffered badly in the 2008 economic crisis, and he does not want to see this happen again. Fortunately Mr. Gilbert, who is in therapy, has approved the action of Mr. Cullen. Cullen has to show that out of work local people in Detroit and empty storefronts hurts Mr. Gilbert as well as Detroit. So both come out winners from forgiveness for rent for a couple of months.   ...

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Germany has shown that low tech contact tracing efforts work- no apps needed, a phone, a desktop computer with a centralized database, and most important the human relations skills of the person doing the calls. The  sensitivity to the situation facing each person being called, being able to talk to the person in the language they speak in a multilingual environment such as California, is shown here. A 40 person team operates in San Francisco consisting of public health officials, clinicians, medical students and librarians. They call the contacts of people with coronavirus, arrange tests, and as needed send packages of food and medicines to hotel rooms or homes. Every call is expected to last 15 minutes but all sorts of questions are handled.  English and Spanish are used. Here one of the persons doing the contact tracing says she does not use apps, just an open source software used in the fight against Ebola. Definitely low tech, no waiting, get going is the message to every city in the world. She says apps software such as what Google and Apple are putting out can tell you whether the person went to some place, but cannot tell you more about that person, cannot tell you about problems the person is having being tested, and how they are having difficulty providing for families. One of the big lessons from Germany and efforts such as this one in San Francisco, and in other places such as Paris, Singapore, Taiwan, is that there is a complex nature to contact tracing that cannot be solved by tech. In fact the best thing to do is to get started immediately, with a phone and a database on a computer, as long as you have a person who has the motivation and skills, empathy with people, a lot can be done. Waiting for apps is a dangerous waste of time is shown by the low tech German experience, and the experience in other places. Most important is starting immediately. The example shown here of working with migrant workers in contact tracing shows in the most vulnerable places it is these human relations skills that count, that no tech app can do. It requires detective skills to find out and get people to share their history of movements and contacts for 14 days . In Singapore crowded dormitories house 300,000 of 1.4 million migrant workers. Singapore using an app also but its use is secondary. Apps don't work in many situations but fail in the most critical situations such as these dormitories and other eccentric or atypical situations such as faced by South Korea with religious groups and gay communities, elderly people in Europe, that generate the worst dangers of spread and need to be cluster isolated quickly. Human contact tracing has a history of being an effective method and was used in China and South Korea during the 2003 SARS epidemic. More countries need to adopt the method used in Asia and in Germany, particularly Britain, the U.S., France and India. It is OK that Britain's NHS and India's national government with Aarogya Setu app have put out their own apps which balance privacy concerns with the need to act immediately and cover the entire country, but the hard slog of human contact tracing teams in each district is indispensable. This is why the former Health minister in Britain calls it Britain's national mission to do this. Speed is key- putting together teams across the country in every district from skilled volunteers or government workers, and pulling together the phone and a centralized database on a computer as basic equipment. The fact that this is easily doable and people with human skills needed can always be recruited as they have been in Germany- from public officials in local government who are less busy in lockdowns, medical students, clinicians, volunteers, people from different professions- makes it inexcusable not to learn from others experience and get going. Just Do It. You want to reopen business, professions, offices and public services- Just Do It, it makes this possible. You want to prevent spread of the virus- Just Do It, it makes this possible. You want to limit damage to the economy and get the recovery going- Just Do It, it makes this possible. People of all shades of opinion can agree on this- its the only thing that works, even when there is a lack of enough proper accurate testing. ...

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This important WSJ report shows how the CDC labs failed to come with the test after contamination of a component and failure of the third part of the three part test components. In the absence of a working test from CDC where delays cost three weeks of February the private labs all over the country and state labs could have developed their own test, yet HHS and FDA required approval for these labs to develop their own test and use it. From Feb. 8 when state and city public health labs detected problems with the CDC test to Feb 29 when solutions were developed including simply excluding the third part of the three component test, and letting labs around the country do their own test, were 3 crucial weeks that let the virus spread out of control. The CDC, HHHS, and the FDA and their managers and heads of departments bear responsibility for these errors. Week after week the delays continued, instead the two component test which detects if the genetic material in the sample is coronavirus material, could simply have been approved at the outset instead of the approval for this given weeks later. The third component of the test checks if the virus mutated, according to this report. There is no explanation why the labs all over the U.S. were not allowed to go ahead on February 9 itself or within a few days after that to develop their own tests once it was clear the CDC test did not work on that day. CDC officials failed to recognize that there was a possibility that they may not be able to fix the faulty third component of the test and the risks if they gave false reassurances. There is also no explanation of why a German designed test was not used once the CDC test failed on Feb. 9, which would be a proper way for action considering that this pandemic had already shutdown parts of China by this time. Alarming also is the mention in this report that on Feb. 22 a FDA official in charge of lab diagnostics  flies to Atlanta where the CDC Respiratory Diagnostic lab which developed the test is located. His boss FDA medical device center director is cited from later information as describing the lab as "filthy" meaning the lab had the potential to contaminate, and going so far as saying that if it had been any other lab it would have been shut down. Considering that investment in public health has deteriorated over the last two decades and that there has been a massive misallocation of capital in the country away from public infrastructure this is appalling. The thought of critical labs for emergency health needs as not being up to high quality standards in the U.S. as a result of two decades of misspending, that this shows, is very disturbing.  This WSJ report is based on interviews with people who know about the testing crisis, and undisclosed emails, correspondence on the issues involved. Community transmission began in January 2020 in the U.S. These delays were costly in February and could have been prevented either by going with the German design on Feb 10 or asking labs across the U.S. to develop their own test, and letting other labs immediately use the modified 2 component test of CDC that worked instead of doing this action weeks later. Mardi Gras on Feb 25 and other places where large crowds gathered in sports stadiums could have been stopped had testing gone forward and shown the true extent of the community transmission in these critical weeks.  First China delayed a U.S. team of experts coming into the country for weeks, and then the CDC, FDA, HHS, failed to get testing started, creating  a false sense of complacency. Two crucial errors outside and inside the country that caused so much damage to America and the world.   ...

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The US vaccination drive appears to be stalling when it comes to getting younger people vaccinated. On a recent day 1.13 million persons were vaccinated. About 150 million Americans are fully vaccinated or about 47% of the population. About 53% of the population have one dose. This still leaves the rest of the population close to one half unvaccinated as the US is opening up fully and removing the social distancing and mask mandates that existed before. The problem is that the coronavirus delta variant is about twice as transmissible than the original coronavirus of March 2020. Vaccination is uneven across the US. Large parts of the southern states and the western states lag behind. In these areas as well as areas with large urban concentrations of population, the densely populated cities where social distancing and mask mandates are being lifted as if the coronavirus crisis is over, are at risk of seeing a more powerful virus spread quickly before gene sequencing catches up with new variants- making the response lag behind in terms of weeks. That lag in response could lead to another wave in the US. Consider also that tourism is opening up in Europe with removal of mask mandates, that gene sequencing to track variants is tiny in even countries such as Italy and France. A WSJ report on June 22 shows gene sequencing to track variants at 1% of positive tests in Italy, and virologists in Italy saying they feel as if they are flying blind. This report in the Washington Post says surveys show as many as one third of Americans have no immediate plans to get vaccinated. This is showing up in the low numbers for the vaccination drive, of around 1 million a day at this time in June 2021. In April this was 3 million vaccine doses adminstered on a single day on average. India where the new delta variant has had the most serious impact has stepped up its response with the federal government taking complete responsibility for vaccine supplies and vaccination drives. It is now vaccinating aggressively in the range of 6 million to 8 million doses a day during the last 7 days with a plan to ensure enough vaccine supplies for 1.2 billion people to get vaccinated by December 31.  The European Union and the US have  vaccinated just over 50% of their population for a variant that is more than twice as transmissible than the original virus. This leaves the unvaccinated at real risk because all the social distancing and mask mandates that existed earlier are being removed- in the US, in France, in Italy, and other countries. Soccer stadiums are filling up in Europe, the kind of sports events that later hit Bergamo, Italy, in March 2020. Summer tourism is back in Portugal and Greece. The best intentions will not be enough. Are mask and social distancing protocols being lifted too quickly especially in tourist locations reminiscent of last summer in Europe and elsewhere. Germany and Britain are holding on to them a bit longer. Will this be enough to tackle a new variant. ...