FROM MY NECK OF THE WOODS: Coronavirus in Tennessee: Knox County reports 77 COVID-19 cases, drive-thru testing coming. “Knox County reported a total of 77 on the health department website Wednesday, up from 63 reported on Tuesday. The number of recovered cases grew to 28. Twelve of the 77 cases have resulted in hospitalization at any point during the illness. This figure does not reflect the number of patients currently hospitalized in the county. . . . The KCHD is also declining to give additional condition information on those who have been hospitalized with the coronavirus since there are so few cases hospitalized with COVID-19.” Well, I’m glad we’re not seeing many in the hospitals yet.

AS SAM JACKSON SAYS, “STAY THE F*** AT HOME”: How a bridge tournament led to 4 coronavirus deaths in El Paso County and exposed hundreds to COVID-19. “El Paso County is home to the country’s sixth-highest case fatality rate from the coronavirus.”

I live in El Paso County.

(Neoclassical reference in the headline.)

OUT: THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS. IN: THE MOON IS A GRATEFUL URINAL. Astronaut Pee Could Be a Great Building Material For Future Moon Bases.

PROGRESS: Coronavirus: Japan begins clinical trials of anti-flu drug Avigan.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Hollywood’s ‘Trump Is Hitler’ Argument Even More Pathetic Now. “The current crisis reveals how badly far-left celebrities embarrassed themselves.”

To be fair, embarrassment requires a degree of self-awareness rarely seen in Hollywood.

GIVEN CUBA’S FAMOUSLY GREAT HEALTH CARE, WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO BE ANYWHERE ELSE DURING A PANDEMIC? COVID-19 strands Chilean leftist and Castro regime supporter in socialist Cuba, pleads for help to escape.

POWERING SMART SENSOR NETWORKS with wireless waste energy. “The electricity that lights our homes and powers our appliances also creates small magnetic fields that are present all around us. Scientists have developed a new mechanism capable of harvesting this wasted magnetic field energy and converting it into enough electricity to power next-generation sensor networks for smart buildings and factories.”

PRIVACY: Two more macOS Zoom flaws surface, as lawsuit & government probe loom.

The second flaw, which is arguably more concerning, allows a local user or piece of malware to piggyback on Zoom’s camera and microphone permissions. An attacker can inject malicious code into Zoom’s process space and “inherit” camera and microphone permissions, allowing them to hijack them without a user’s knowledge.

While local exploits like these typically require physical access to a computer, they’re usually much more common and difficult to prevent should the rest of the criteria that are needed are fulfilled.
…
The class action, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Zoom gave personal user information to third parties without being explicitly clear about the data-sharing practices, CBS News reported. New York Attorney General Letitia James has also launched a probe into Zoom’s privacy policies.

In a separate development, Zoom may also be inadvertently leaking user email addresses and photos to complete strangers, according to Motherboard.

It’s pretty safe to conclude that Zoom is Chinese spyware masquerading as a videoconferencing app.

OUT ON A LIMB: Chinese government lying about coronavirus could impact U.S. business ties: Experts.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Toys & Games.

WHAT? Virginia Clerk Is Locked Up for Shooting at 3 Masked Robbers in His Store. Not a Typo.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Lessons Learned by NYC Makers Producing Personal Protective Equipment for Medics. “Focus on what health workers actually need, rather than what you think you can invent.”

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? 87-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg has different rules than the rest of us, refuses to stop working out with her personal trainer.

JOURNALISTS ARE SELDOM HEROES, EXCEPT IN THEIR OWN MINDS: Mike Lindell, Not Yamiche Alcindor, Is the Hero.

BATTLESWARM BLOG: Dispatches from the Texas Lockdown.

FACEMASKS: Have we been asking the wrong question all along? Officials in the UK say face masks don’t protect us. In China they agree but wear them because they protect others.

Plus, bureaucracy at work:

It is a matter of orthodoxy at the UK Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) that surgical facemasks are a no-no as far as the public are concerned. Officials have long taken the view that paper masks do not protect against viruses and do not hold emergency stocks of them.

That thinking, like so much else, is now being tested. On Tuesday, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) – a long standing ally of Whitehall in the no-mask camp – was reported to be about to change its advice. Surgical masks should be used, not for personal protection, but to protect others from Covid-19, it was expected to announce.

It’s another virus-fighting lesson that has been borrowed from the east and raises important questions. Might population-wide use of face masks have slowed the spread of the pandemic in the west? And were our public health officials asking the wrong question all along?

I first thought about face masks at around 4pm on Wednesday, November 28, 2007, when a small but agitated civil servant flung open the door of my office shouting, “Take it down! Take it down!”. I was editing the NHS website and we had just published a story which suggested that face masks had helped bring the 2003/4 Sars epidemic under control in south east Asia.

The official was part of the DHSC’s pandemic planning team. She was very angry and wanted the story taken down immediately. She had just been to see the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and had explained to him, “in terms he could understand”, that there was really no need for the UK to hold a stockpile of masks, she said. The story we had just published threatened to undo all of that by giving credence to an “minor academic paper” which said the opposite. I told her to hop-off.

Good.

EVERY SHEET IS SACRED: 18-wheeler carrying toilet paper crashes in Dallas.

HOW CAN HE BE RIGHT WHEN HE DOESN’T BELIEVE IN SCIENCE^TM? Trump Was Right: Coronavirus Death Rate Much Lower Than Previous Estimates, Study Says.

CHINA LIED, PEOPLE DIED: The Comprehensive Timeline of China’s COVID-19 Lies.

NO GOOD REASON: There Is No Reason to Believe China Is Reporting Its Coronavirus Cases Accurately. “And yet media outlets have taken the numbers at face value.”

Pushing the Communist Party line makes Trump look bad, and anyway is a longstanding habit for the American press.

WELL, THERE WAS MORE GRAFT AVAILABLE IN THE FORMER: Focused on climate change, Mayor Bill de Blasio failed to equip New York for the coronavirus crisis.

DUMB: 28 University of Texas Spring Breakers Who Flouted Health Advice Are Now Sick With Coronavirus. “About 70 students from the University of Texas at Austin, all in their 20s, chartered a plane to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, in late March. They took the trip despite public health advice to avoid crowding as well as nonessential air travel. On Tuesday, Austin public health officials announced that 28 students, more than a third of the young people who took the trip, had returned and tested positive for the coronavirus. Many of the remaining students are under public health monitoring.”

THE POWER LINE MIDWEEK IN PICTURES: April Fool’s Day Edition.

FROM MICHIGAN, WHERE THE GOVERNOR JUST FLIP-FLOPPED FROM DENOUNCING THIS TREATMENT AS A TRUMP LIE TO DEMANDING THAT THE FEDS SHARE STOCKS OF THE DRUG: Henry Ford Health System uses hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 symptoms, says benefits outweigh risks.

“We feel that there is data both from the early published studies as well as from our colleagues in China that have treated a number of patients to justify its use in the therapy of sicker patients that are hospitalized with coronavirus infection.”

Dr. Zervos says the goal of using hydroxychloroquine is to prevent patients with symptoms like shortness of breath and pneumonia from progressing further in their illness, and to get those patients already in an intensive care unit and on a ventilator off the ventilator earlier and out of the hospital.

“What we know about the drug now is that it does reduce viral shedding, you know, the amount of virus a person has, it’s lower. There have been studies from China to show that patients have shorter hospitalizations, fewer complications, lower likelihood of progression.”

It’s not the best drug imaginable, but it is the best drug available. They’re combining it with Azithromycin and also with Doxycycline.

ABOUT AS SHOCKING AS FINDING ME AT A BAR: Democrats and U.S. Media Star in New Chinese Propaganda Video.