" Today the CORE 4 partners of Jackson County, Missouri; Johnson County, Kansas; Kansas City, Missouri, and the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas, based on the urgency of the COVID-19 public health emergency and the imminent rapid progression of the pandemic in our area, announce that beginning Tuesday, March 24, residents will be directed to stay at home except for essential needs. "

Update (0940ET): After one of his aides tested positive, VP Pence was tested, and as it turns out, has tested negative, along with his wife, Karen Pence.

Update (1510ET): Across Europe on Saturday, deaths accorded to COVID-19 soared, with Italy reporting a record 793 deaths on Friday, and Spain reporting another 300 cases, bringing their totals to 4,825 and 1,326.

Update (1415ET): Just as Gov. Cuomo hinted earlier this week, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has signed an executive order mandating that all non-essential workers living in the state stay home.

"Young Italians attending college in Italy’s heavily-infected northern regions have returned home to the nation’s south, putting its health system at risk of collapse. Southern regions are now seeing a steady increase of coronavirus patients — many of whom are the parents of students who come back from the north."

"After watching the outbreak of COVID-19 for the past two months, I’ve followed the pace of the infection, its severity, and how our world is tackling the virus. While we should be concerned and diligent, the situation has dramatically elevated to a mob-like fear spreading faster than COVID-19 itself. When 13% of Americans believe they are currently infected with COVID-19 (mathematically impossible), full-on panic is blocking our ability to think clearly and determine how to deploy our resources to stop this virus. Over three-fourths of Americans are scared of what we are doing to our society through law and hysteria, not of infection or spreading COVID-19 to those most vulnerable."

This is a long but nicely done article. Many informative graphs are included. This article was taken down by Medium, its publisher, because of too much traffic. Zero Hedge has it up now.

"In the wake of coronavirus and tanking stocks, cruise companies have sought assistance from the US government. But for decades, the industry has done everything in its power to avoid paying into the system."

"(1230ET): New cases are being reported out of New York State and NYC are being reported faster than we can keep up, as the state ramps up testing.

NYC officials just announced that the total number of confirmed cases in the city has climbed to 7,530. An hour ago, Gov. Cuomo put the number at 6,211.

By our count, this puts the new total cases in New York State at 11,675.

Last night, de Blasio described NYC as the "epicenter" of the US outbreak."

"Update (0850ET): Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte blamed the Italian people earlier this week when he said he would extend Italy's nationwide lockdown until April 3, claiming that too many were still violating the lockdown despite stiff penalties.

As the country's death toll passes the death toll from mainland China (or the 'official' death toll at least), whispers about even restrictive measures appear to have just been validated: Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on Friday effectively declared martial law Friday morning in Italy's worst-hit region of Lombardy, claiming that he will now be bringing in the Army to enforce the lockdown, something that the region's governor swiftly confirmed."

"The World breathed a sigh of relief Thursday night when China reported no new domestically-transmitted cases of the coronavirus for a second straight day. "

We think the swiftness of the FDA in allowing drugs to be used is quite remarkable. These are never before seen changes to the bureaucratic process.

"During the task force briefing, President Trump announced authorizing to the FDA to relax regulations to speed up clinical trials for several anti-viral remedies to treat coronavirus. Specifically citing a therapeutic drug known as chloroquine President Trump noted trials are underway and could be made available for treatment “almost immediately.”

We are going to get some readers upset. Not that we matter much in the world but this is our opinion. Nature has published a Paper on the proximal origin of Sars-CoV-2. We think the paper is misleading. The authors propose that there are 2 reasons for believing that Sars-CoV-2 is not genetically engineered.  The first reason is that the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein is not optimal. Well, whatever does optimal mean? They do not explain. But they go on and say that the receptor-binding domain has high affinity for the human ACE2 receptor. Ok, this is high enough affinity to cripple Northern Italy and probably Iran's healthcare system so, what more do you need?

The author's do comment is that the Sars-CoV-2 spike protein does not resemble any known spike protein in the NCBI GenBank database related to this family of coronavirus. They discuss the furin cleavage site of the spike protein (S1-S2 junction) and note that this particular cleavage site is not found in other B'betacoronaviruses. So, they note that this is a novelty for this family of coronaviruses. This particular site was noted in India for resembling a segment of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus.

The author's second argument or reason is that the Sars-Cov-2 virus backbone does not resemble any other backbone in the NCBI GenBank database. Their reasoning is that if someone were to manufacture this virus they would start off with an already known virus that has the good fortune of showing up in a public database. Keep in mind that while many of the viruses in the database were categorized recently the came from old material dating back 20-years to Sars. Who knows what those backbones would look like after 20-years of mutation?

In their conclusion, they go on to state, " it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other theories of its origin described here".

We call BS. This is merely expert conjecture and not science.  We will let you be the judge. For you conspiracy theorists, The Open Society Foundations have contributed to the Wellcome Trust.