Free Republic

Britons, brace yourselves. The scenes I have witnessed unfolding here in Italy could, sooner or later, be coming your way. Soldiers and policemen patrolling the streets. Food stores with empty shelves and only three people allowed in at a time. Flights cancelled and police checks at railway stations to ensure your travel is absolutely necessary. Too late, some say. Too much, say others. Whatever your take, as of yesterday, this was the reality for 60 million people living in Italy.

... State health officials joined Chu in asking the CDC and Food and Drug Administration to waive privacy rules and allow clinical tests in a research lab, citing the threat of significant loss of life. The CDC and FDA said no. "We felt like we were sitting, waiting for the pandemic to emerge," Chu told the Times. "We could help. We couldn't do anything." They held off for a couple of weeks, but on Feb. 25, Chu and her colleagues "began performing coronavirus tests, without government approval," the Times reports. They found a positive case pretty quickly, and after discussing...

Confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus are swiftly ballooning across the United States, and President Trump's former Homeland Security Adviser Thomas Bossert says time is running out to control the spread. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), who is overseeing one of the country's largest clusters, said "if you do the math" there could be 64,000 cases of COVID-19 in the Evergreen State by May, while New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the positive cases in the city are "coming in so intensely now" that public officials are struggling to keep up with them. He said he wasn't in...

Health minister Nadine Dorries' coronavirus diagnosis has caused chaos in Parliament today as her two offices were sealed off, one of her staff fell ill and fearful MPs planned to dodge the budget in the Commons in case they get the virus, MailOnline can reveal. Ms Dorries, 62, who began feeling ill on Friday, has said one of her office workers has 'gone down' with the killer illness and the Tory MP is now in self-isolation for the next fortnight at home in Gloucestershire. This morning she came to the bay window at the front of the sprawling house in...

For over eight decades sports fans have dreamt of attending the Masters, golf’s best event held on the sport’s most exclusive grounds, Augusta National in Georgia. Amen Corner. Blooming azaleas. Towering loblolly pines. Pimento cheese sandwiches. Witnessing Tiger Woods march up the hill on No. 18, the way Hogan, Arnie and Jack once did. This is golfing heaven. The problem is getting in. You either need to know someone, get lucky in the low-odds ticket lottery or hit the overheated secondary market where a one-day badge routinely soars over $2,000 and sometimes $3,000. Well, welcome to 2020 and what could...

Dozens of passengers have been held in quarantine on a Cambodian river cruise boat after a British woman tested positive for coronavirus. The vessel was placed under police guard after it was moored on the Mekong River near Kampong Cham, southeastern Cambodia, on Tuesday. The British woman, 65, was transported to the Kampong Cham Hospital for observation and treatment after it emerged she was infected with COVID-19. Health Minister Mam Bunheng confirmed the remaining 62 passengers and crew aboard the Viking River Cruises vessel would be tested for the virus and quarantined for 14 days.

An analysis of the novel coronavirus’ spread inside the United States suggests that thousands of Americans are already infected, dimming the prospects for stomping out the outbreak in its earliest stages. Researchers estimate that by March 1, the virus had already infected about 1,000 to 10,000 people who have not yet been accounted for. At the start of this month, about 80 U.S. cases had been confirmed and officials were still expressing confidence they could contain the new virus. Quarantines, contact tracing and other public health measures have likely tamped down the COVID-19 outbreak here, the researchers said. But from...

Dr. Helen Y. Chu, an infectious disease expert in Seattle, knew that the United States did not have much time. In late January, the first confirmed American case of the coronavirus had landed in her area. Critical questions needed answers: Had the man infected anyone else? Was the deadly virus already lurking in other communities and spreading? As luck would have it, Dr. Chu had a way to monitor the region. For months, as part of a research project into the flu, she and a team of researchers had been collecting nasal swabs from residents experiencing symptoms throughout the Puget...

The cruise ship industry is reeling. The outbreak of the new coronavirus has made the basic fundamentals of the business medically inadvisable to the point that the State Department has issued a warning to U.S. travelers—chief among them the elderly—to stop taking cruise ships until the threat has passed. And yet, even as thousands of people have found themselves stuck on ocean liners, in close confines with others suffering from a deadly virus, not everyone is ready to bag their cruise ship getaway. Indeed, while some shudder at the prospect of enduring severe flu-like symptoms and a 14-day quarantine, others...