As businesses slowly reopen, experts warn that social distancing may need to be dialed back up: ‘It’s not an on-off switch’ * Coronavirus – latest US updates * Coronavirus – latest global updatesSome California businesses on Friday began opening their doors for business – at least partially.As states and counties across the nation contend with pressure to lift the stay-at-home measures that have destroyed local economies, California is taking an especially cautious approach, walking a fine line between political and economic pressure to reopen and the public health imperative to stop the spread of disease.Public health experts told the Guardian that while no US state was equipped with enough coronavirus testing and surveillance to feel fully confident reopening, California’s slow, piecemeal recovery plan – though far from perfect – seemed like the least risky option. The planSeven weeks after the governor, Gavin Newsom, ordered his 40 million constituents to shelter in place and all non-essential businesses to close, California on Friday entered phase two of its grand reopening plan.Some retail stores, including bookshops, florists, music stores, clothing and sporting goods retailers, can reopen if they organize curbside pickup. Some manufacturing and logistics in the retail supply chain can restart as well, as long as they follow safety and hygiene protocols. And local authorities are allowed to ease regulations further than the state guidelines if they meet certain testing and sanitation requirements.Phase three of the plan – potentially months away – could see salons, gyms, movie theaters and in-person church services resume. Phase four would end all restrictions. The timingFriday’s reopenings come as California has avoided the surge of infections states like New York have seen. And although California has seen more than 61,000 cases and 2,500 deaths, its hospitals have not been overwhelmed.Last week, state officials reported the first week-over-week decline in Covid-19 deaths.The new guidelines also follow small but sustained protests across the state to demand a relaxation of regulations to revive the state’s crippled economy, and some rural counties have partially reopened in defiance of the lockdown measures. The caveatsHowever, California still hasn’t seen the two weeks of declining cases that the White House suggested as a criterion for easing restrictions and that several European countries have used as a benchmark.The state also lacks the robust testing and tracking systems that countries such as Germany and South Korea have used.The state has ramped up its ability to administer and process tests, although for now, its rate of 29,414 tests a day is below the figure required by some analyses.Authorities are working to put a robust contact tracing effort in place to make sure those who test positive get the care they need and are able to isolate themselves until they recover. Although some counties and communities have spearheaded community-wide testing and tracing programs, overall, the state isn’t at the point where its system is as widespread or efficient as a country like Germany’s.Experts say California should also have a system in place to make sure vulnerable, unhoused populations have access to shelter and medical care – to prevent infection flare-ups in homeless shelters and encampments. Progress on those measures heavily varies county by county.And ideally, there would be a treatment or a vaccine before reopening, said Dr Richard Jackson, a professor emeritus at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and the former head of the California department of public health. While we await a cure, Jackson cautioned, “no one should feel completely safe as we remove restrictions.” The trade-offsCalifornia’s reopening strategy stands in sharp contrast to the approach of states like Georgia, which suddenly allowed gyms, barber shops, hair salons, tattoo parlors and bowling alleys to welcome customers last week.“What certain places have done, where they’ve just thrown open the doors and said, ‘OK, we don’t have to keep our distance any more,’ is a colossal mistake,” Jackson said. Reopening businesses that put lots of people into close contact and speed the spread of disease will reverse the success of shelter-in-place rules, he noted, and overwhelm hospitals as cases surge. “Doing it very cautiously and carefully does make sense at this point in time,” he said.“I get that governors have to balance the public health goals with the economic goals,” said Dr Robert Tsai, surgeon and health policy researcher at Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. “But this stage of the pandemic is really all about trade-offs,” he noted. The weeks aheadIn the coming weeks, state and local leaders will have to watch closely and prepare to dial the distancing back up if the number of cases surges, said Tsai.“Social distancing isn’t an on-off switch. What it needs to be is a dial, which can be turned up or down depending on what the data show on the ground in terms of how the Covid-19 epidemic is progressing.“Reopening is going to be a very complicated process, and it should be complicated,” he added. “Because this is about making sure that people don’t end up in the hospital or dying.”That California’s plan allows for counties to maintain stricter distancing guidelines or ease up measures could be both a strength and a liability.The flexibility has allowed hotspots like the Bay Area and Los Angeles to take a more cautious approach, but it has also already caused confusion. In San Diego, where curbside shopping has already begun, business owners were unsure what, if anything, would change on Friday. In Bakersfield, restaurants allowed patrons to dine in on Monday and Tuesday, in defiance of the state’s guidelines.A hodgepodge reopening could cause surges in cases; Californians who travel between more lax and more strict counties could spread infections. Moreover, a rush to reopen fast in some areas could be counterproductive to economic recovery, said Alessandro Rebucci, an economist at the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business.“If you reopen when the pandemic is still out there, people and businesses will not just go back to normal,” Rebucci noted. Based on research from China, it seems clear that fear of contracting the illness will keep businesses owners and patrons home until they feel it’s safe enough, he said.

(American Geriatrics Society) For only the second time in its near 80-year history, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) will award one of its highest honors typically reserved for individuals to West Health, a family of nonprofit organizations dedicated to lowering healthcare costs to enable older adults to successfully age in place.

As the COVID-19 pandemic begins to take root in Africa, experts say that digitizing financial services could help keep the continent safe

Economists project a shortage of 5 million U.S. workers with postsecondary education and training by 2020. Yet 2 million immigrant college graduates in the United States are either unemployed or work in jobs that require no more than a high school degree. How can this skill underutilization, known as "brain waste," be remedied? MPI asked the experts, and this report summarizes their discussion and recommendations.

Sylvia Frühwirth-Schnatter.

Source: Brazilian Journal of Probability and Statistics, Volume 33, Number 4, 706--733.

Abstract:
Finite mixture models and their extensions to Markov mixture and mixture of experts models are very popular in analysing data of various kind. A challenge for these models is choosing the number of components based on marginal likelihoods. The present paper suggests two innovative, generic bridge sampling estimators of the marginal likelihood that are based on constructing balanced importance densities from the conditional densities arising during Gibbs sampling. The full permutation bridge sampling estimator is derived from considering all possible permutations of the mixture labels for a subset of these densities. For the double random permutation bridge sampling estimator, two levels of random permutations are applied, first to permute the labels of the MCMC draws and second to randomly permute the labels of the conditional densities arising during Gibbs sampling. Various applications show very good performance of these estimators in comparison to importance and to reciprocal importance sampling estimators derived from the same importance densities.

The New York City police department (NYPD) is conducting an internal investigation into a May 2 incident involving the violent arrests of multiple people, allegedly members of a group who were not social distancing

The snails are an invasive crop pest that are known to eat more than just coffee rust

The CDC recommends wearing a fabric mask in public where social distancing is difficult, like at the grocery store

In a pandemic, it’s not just truth against misinformation. Every choice is an experiment.

As editor Wilhelm Crous puts it, "We haven't seen this movie before."

Fin24 asked financial experts how they would grow R10 000 in the new year. Here's what they said.

Many investors do not fully understand the tax incentive and structure of a Section 12J venture capital investment, according to a managing director involved in this sector.

Instability in local and international stock markets – mainly due to concerns over the impact of the coronavirus – might have you concerned about preserving your retirement savings.

Finance Minister Tito Mboweni has announced that transfer duty will no longer apply to properties that cost R1 million or less.

This semester, due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, students will be doing their finals at home on their computers. This creates a few potential challenges, such as inability to access physical library resources, faulty internet connections, and lingering stress from upcoming final exams. Luckily, faculty and staff are doing their best to accommodate their students’ needs in these trying times -- through virtual means.

Economists and market experts may be trumpeting an economic and stock market recovery, but private investors and business owners are less convinced, a survey shows.

Former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requesting a scientific probe into Vizag gas leak...

How industry experts define loyalty and why Chipotle's program doesn't fit the bill.

The assistant professor of anaesthesia at AIIMS said there are contradictory reports on HCQ usage for treating COVID-19.

The state's TMC government has been drawing consistent criticism from the Centre and opposition parties over the way it has tackled the pandemic, and has been accused of under-reporting data about the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths.

The e-way bill generated on or before March 24 and expiring during the March 20-April 15 period would now be valid till May 31.

Ananth Narayan, professor-finance at SPJIMR, believes that while TLTRO 2.0 is welcome, it does not address the core issue.

Weeks of lockdown in the country to fight coronavirus may have reduced greenhouse gas emissions enabling people to breathe cleaner air and feast on blue skies, but it is only a temporary phase and will not benefit the environment in the long run.

Weeks of lockdown in the country to fight coronavirus may have reduced greenhouse gas emissions enabling people to breathe cleaner air and feast on blue skies, but it is only a temporary phase and will not benefit the environment in the long run.

Hello Experts, I want a legal opinion. I was having a conversation with my friend and he told me that in certain situation clear title of property can be transferred from one person to another without Registry and without paying any stamp duty. eg. Partnership firms property. If a Plot is owned by a partnership firm with some partners. If the plot is brought by reconstituting the partnership firm by getting our names added in the partnership firm and retiring the existing partners in the partnership firm. By this process--- PLOT CAN BE BROUGHT BY NOTARISED PARTNERSHIP DEED ONLY NO REGISTY IN SUB REGISTRAR NEEDED NO STAMP DUTY HAS TO BE PAID TO GOVERNMENT . CLEAR TITLE WILL BE TRANFFERED BY THIS PROCESS I Don't what law says, BUT IS IT REALLY TRUE??????

Following the gas leak incident, the National Green Tribunal ordered LG Polymers India to pay interim damages of Rs 50 crore and issued notices to the company, Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), state and Centre.

Community stakeholders and climate experts from the University of Arizona are helping Tucson Electric Power to build an energy portfolio that supports reliable, affordable and increasingly sustainable service over the next 15 years.

Utilities and other energy experts convene each year at DISTRIBUTECH International (DTECH) to discuss the future of energy and this week Clarion Energy, organizer of the event, announced that the call for abstracts for the 2020 event is open.

Buildings account for nearly four-tenths of U.S. energy consumption through heating, cooling and other electricity use, according to the Energy Information Administration. And if that energy comes from fossil fuels, it releases more greenhouse gases that drive human-caused climate change.

Developing carbon capture and storage technology and low-carbon hydrogen is “a necessity not an option” for the UK to achieve a net zero carbon economy by 2050.

Community stakeholders and climate experts from the University of Arizona are helping Tucson Electric Power to build an energy portfolio that supports reliable, affordable and increasingly sustainable service over the next 15 years.

Last week, Siemens and Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) announced a new new academic partnership that they say will provide students with the skills needed to operate and advance the nation’s energy grid.

Buildings account for nearly four-tenths of U.S. energy consumption through heating, cooling and other electricity use, according to the Energy Information Administration. And if that energy comes from fossil fuels, it releases more greenhouse gases that drive human-caused climate change.