Emergency measures have arrived and while these would always be necessary in this kind of crisis, but we are starting off at a very bad place of under-staffing and decades of policy that have limited the growth of hospital services.

It is a market model that caused this crisis where excess beds in a hospital is considered a bad thing; where minimum staffing is the goal.

The crisis is showing what levels of investment and workers would be necessary to absorb any crisis in society. We have been given advanced notice of the coming storm this time and we are still woefully unprepared. Next time, we may not be so lucky.

It's never been more evident than in this time of pandemic panic that internet access is as essential as electricity and running water.

The United States Department of Justice has announced that it has indicted Venezuela's socialist leader Nicolas Maduro and several key aides on charges of narco-terrorism.

The department accused them on Thursday of conspiring with Colombian rebels "to flood the United States with cocaine".

"This pandemic has shone a light on the indispensability of child care to our society and exposed how child care workers — 97 per cent of them women — are taken for granted."

Legislation brought in by the former B.C. Liberal government in 2002 allows long-term care homes to contract out such services.

The nurses who work at the Lynn Valley Care Centre are represented by the BC Nurses' Union, but the facility's other care aides — who previously fell under the Hospital Employees' Union — haven't been unionized since 2012. It also stopped representing the home's kitchen aides and dietary staff after those services were contracted out in 2017.

Care aides at the facility told the Globe and Mail recently that wages and benefits have since slipped dramatically.

Services and products for people in need are going to be the problem in the coming weeks. Current supply chains are complex and some businesses …

"The analysis, using data from governments, hospitals and other sources, predicts that the number of U.S. deaths could vary widely, ranging from as low as around 38,000 to as high as around 162,000."