CP says US bases not 'viable'

[reader]

From South China Morning Post

Cathay Pacific to lay off nearly 300 cabin crew in US, calling bases in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles ‘no longer viable’

Cathay Pacific will lay off almost 300 employees in the United States and close its cabin crew bases there, in its biggest cutback of employees during the

coronavirus pandemic

 

Cathay has virtually grounded all passenger services, operating 3 per cent of its schedule in April and May, with just two flights a week to Los Angeles instead of the about 120 it would usually fly weekly to the US.

Hong Kong’s flag carrier will also furlough 129 pilots in Australia and 72 in Britain with similar plans under consideration in the US and Canada for cockpit crew.

The airline’s Australian Airbus pilots would be stood down from May 1 until June 30 and, similarly with London-based Boeing pilots, the company said it would seek to put aircrew on job protection schemes involving the respective government paying a portion of a worker’s salary per month.

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From Bangkok Post

China virus epicentre Wuhan raises death toll 50%

WUHAN (CHINA) - China's coronavirus ground-zero city of Wuhan on Friday admitted missteps in tallying its death toll, and abruptly raised the count by 50 percent following growing world doubts about Chinese transparency.

The United States has led the charge in questioning China's handling of the pandemic and how much information it has really shared with the international community since the virus emerged late last year.

Authorities in Wuhan initially tried to cover up the outbreak, punishing doctors who had raised the alarm online in December, and there have been questions about the government's recording of infections as it repeatedly changed its counting criteria at the peak of the outbreak.

Wuhan's epidemic control headquarters said in a social media posting on Friday that it had added 1,290 deaths to the tally in Wuhan, which has suffered the vast majority of China's fatalities from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

That brings the total number of deaths in the city to 3,869. But the city government only added 325 cases, raising the city's total number of infections to 50,333.

China has come under increasing pressure over the coronavirus pandemic from Western powers, with Washington raising doubts about Chinese transparency and probing whether the virus actually originated in a Wuhan laboratory.

"We'll have to ask the hard questions about how it came about and how it couldn't have been stopped earlier," British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Thursday.

French President Emmanuel Macron told the Financial Times it would be "naive" to think China had handled the pandemic well, adding: "There are clearly things that have happened that we don't know about."

 

[vinapu]

31 minutes ago, reader said:

 

"We'll have to ask the hard questions about how it came about and how it couldn't have been stopped earlier," British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Thursday.

 

not to defend China but this is question many countries should ask themselves as early warning was there

[Guest]

7 hours ago, vinapu said:

not to defend China but this is question many countries should ask themselves as early warning was there

We should also question the WHO role in all of this.  

The WHO was persistently recommending no travel restrictions to & from China for all of January.     Having failed to close the stable door there, they now want the whole planet shut down. 

Meanwhile, the country with one of the best records in dealing with Covid is Taiwan and they are not even allowed to join the WHO.

 

 

[PeterRS]

7 hours ago, z909 said:

Meanwhile, the country with one of the best records in dealing with Covid is Taiwan and they are not even allowed to join the WHO.

z909 is 100% correct. Taiwan obviously learned its lesson from the 2003 SARS outbreak and reports suggest that life there seems to be normal apart from mandatory wearing of facemarks and use of hand sanitisers. Given the lessons that other countries should have learned from SARS and the other killer virus outbreaks that have appeared since then, the WHO bears as much responsibility for the Covid19 spread as most ignorant and arrogant world leaders. These are the people gladly spend trillions on weapons of war but mere pence (sic) on preparing their countries for a virus  outbreak that was bound to happen spooner rather than later,

[spoon]

spooner than later? I take offense!

[vinapu]

7 minutes ago, spoon said:

spooner than later? I take offense!

Soon, don't be too sensitive 

[spoon]

2 minutes ago, vinapu said:

Soon, don't be too sensitive 

This lockdown made me sensitive to everything! Oh how i miss spooning and cuddling lol

[PeterRS]

Apologies to spoon. Id love to say it was an accidental spoonerism  but it was merely a simple slip of the finger.