| Two years before coronavirus, CDC warned of a coming pandemic Posted: 02 Apr 2020 02:01 AM PDT  Long before the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China, and then soon spread to nearly every country on Earth, a conference in 2018 offered proof that epidemiologists at the CDC and other institutions were aware that a new pandemic was poised to strike.
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| Flattening the curve on coronavirus: What California and Washington can teach the world Posted: 02 Apr 2020 06:04 AM PDT  New data suggests the two West Coast states may have slowed the spread of coronavirus. How they did it.
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| Americans purchasing record-breaking numbers of guns amid coronavirus Posted: 01 Apr 2020 05:50 PM PDT  The pandemic has created a surge in demand, with some gun stores inundated with panic-buyers * Coronavirus – latest US updates * Coronavirus – latest global updates * See all our coronavirus coverageAmericans have responded to the coronavirus epidemic with a record-breaking number of gun purchases, according to new government data on the number of background checks conducted in March.More than 3.7m total firearm background checks were conducted through the FBI's background check system in March, the highest number on record in more than 20 years. An estimated 2.4m of those background checks were conducted for gun sales, according to adjusted statistics from a leading firearms industry trade group. That's an 80% increase compared with the same month last year, the trade group said.Nearly 1.2m total gun background checks were conducted in a single week, starting 16 March, breaking all previous records going back to 1998, according to FBI data.While the number of background checks doesn't correlate one-to-one in terms of guns sold, the number of firearm background checks conducted through the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System is the best available proxy for gun sales in the United States. The figures highlight how the pandemic has created a surge in demand for gun ownership, with some gun stores finding themselves inundated with panic-buyers, including, at least anecdotally, many Americans purchasing a gun for the first time.The record-breaking week of 16 March was when California residents were photographed lining up by the dozens outside local gun stores, as the Bay Area and then California as a whole announced the first emergency stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of coronavirus in the United States.Friday 20 March broke records for the highest number of firearms background checks conducted nationwide in a single day: 210,308.Americans can buy multiple guns from a licensed gun dealer with a single background check, meaning that the number of checks conducted does not reflect the total number of guns sold.In most states, private citizens can also sell guns to each other without a background check, and these private sales are not included in the FBI's numbers. There is no way to track how many guns were bought and sold in private sales over the past month. Some states also allow residents who have a license to carry a concealed firearm in public to buy guns without a background check, another category of gun sales not included in the FBI's statistics.Federal firearms background checks are also conducted for reasons other than gun sales, including for validating permits to allow people to carry a concealed firearm in public, and, in California, for ammunition sales.The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade group for the American firearms industry, produces regular "adjusted" estimates for gun background checks that subtract out background checks that the FBI tags as related to concealed carry permit applications, or to period checks by officials to make sure permits are still valid. This produces a lower number that is a closer proxy for gun sales.The trade group's adjusted numbers for March are still "simply eye-popping", Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the industry group, wrote in an email.The second-highest week of total firearms background checks on record was 17 December 2012, the week after a mass shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, left 20 children dead, and sparked fears that the United States would pass sweeping national gun control measures.More than 950,000 firearms background checks were conducted that week, though US lawmakers ultimately failed to pass any additional gun control legislation after resistance from gun rights activists and many Republican politicians.While the FBI statistics do not include any information on what kind of purchasers are driving the spike in gun sales, some gun sellers have said they are seeing increased numbers of new gun owners."Retailers have been telling us that the overwhelming majority of those buying firearms over the last month have been first-time gun owners," Oliva, the spokesman for the firearms industry trade group, wrote in an email.American gun control advocates said they found the statistics on record-breaking numbers of firearms background checks concerning, and urged Americans to think twice before panic-buying a gun, particularly if they had never owned one before.Concerns have also been raised about children sheltering at home in houses where they might have access to guns, as well as the risk of gun suicide, which amount to approximately two-thirds of US gun deaths each year."We need to prepare for the increased risk of more firearms in untrained hands," David Chipman, a senior policy adviser at Giffords, a leading gun violence prevention expert, said in a statement. "If you didn't think you needed a gun prior to March of this year, you certainly don't need to rush out and get one now."Activists said that the number of guns sold in the past month could have been even higher, if some cities and states had not told gun retailers to close during stay-at-home orders, deeming them non-essential businesses. However, some of these orders have been changed under pressure from gun rights activists, particularly after the Trump administration included firearms manufacturers, retailers and shooting ranges as part of the national's "essential critical infrastructure workforce".
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| Politics aside, US relies on China supplies to fight virus Posted: 02 Apr 2020 05:06 PM PDT  US politicians have voiced fury over Beijing's handling of the coronavirus crisis but they face a harsh truth -- the United States desperately needs China's supplies. China before the crisis produced nearly half of the face masks imported into the United States -- which in normal times cost less than a dollar but have disappeared from shelves amid growing calls for ordinary Americans wear them when outside. As China appears to have contained its own outbreak of SARS-CoV-1, which has infected more than one million people worldwide since first emerging late last year in Wuhan, it is now the first resort for protective gear sought across the world.
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| Pakistan worshippers clash with police trying to enforce coronavirus lockdown Posted: 03 Apr 2020 12:26 AM PDT  Pakistani Muslims at a Karachi mosque clashed with baton-wielding police trying to enforce new curbs on gatherings to prevent Friday prayers and contain coronavirus infections, officials said. After failing to persuade worshippers to pray at home last week, the government in Pakistan's southern province of Sindh, home to the financial hub of Karachi, enforced a lockdown for three hours beginning at noon on Friday, officials said. Pakistan has so far reported 2,458 coronavirus infections, fuelled by a jump in cases related to members of the Tablighi Jamaat, an orthodox Muslim proselytising group.
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| After ignoring warnings, Israeli ultra-Orthodox hit by virus Posted: 02 Apr 2020 11:43 PM PDT  Early this week, the streets of the central Israeli city of Bnei Brak were bustling with shoppers as ultra-Orthodox residents, obeying their religious leaders, ignored pleas to stay home in the face of the coronavirus threat. The military will soon be sending troops in to assist local authorities. The city has become a lightning rod for anger and frustration by some secular Israelis who allege insular Haredi communities — with disproportionately high numbers of confirmed cases — are undermining national efforts to contain the virus.
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| The Trail Leading Back to the Wuhan Labs Posted: 03 Apr 2020 10:20 AM PDT  It is understandable that many would be wary of the notion that the origin of the coronavirus could be discovered by some documentary filmmaker who used to live in China. Matthew Tye, who creates YouTube videos, contends he has identified the source of the coronavirus — and a great deal of the information that he presents, obtained from public records posted on the Internet, checks out.The Wuhan Institute of Virology in China indeed posted a job opening on November 18, 2019, "asking for scientists to come research the relationship between the coronavirus and bats."The Google translation of the job posting is: "Taking bats as the research object, I will answer the molecular mechanism that can coexist with Ebola and SARS- associated coronavirus for a long time without disease, and its relationship with flight and longevity. Virology, immunology, cell biology, and multiple omics are used to compare the differences between humans and other mammals." ("Omics" is a term for a subfield within biology, such as genomics or glycomics.)On December 24, 2019, the Wuhan Institute of Virology posted a second job posting. The translation of that posting includes the declaration, "long-term research on the pathogenic biology of bats carrying important viruses has confirmed the origin of bats of major new human and livestock infectious diseases such as SARS and SADS, and a large number of new bat and rodent new viruses have been discovered and identified."Tye contends that that posting meant, "we've discovered a new and terrible virus, and would like to recruit people to come deal with it." He also contends that "news didn't come out about coronavirus until ages after that." Doctors in Wuhan knew that they were dealing with a cluster of pneumonia cases as December progressed, but it is accurate to say that a very limited number of people knew about this particular strain of coronavirus and its severity at the time of that job posting. By December 31, about three weeks after doctors first noticed the cases, the Chinese government notified the World Health Organization and the first media reports about a "mystery pneumonia" appeared outside China.Scientific American verifies much of the information Tye mentions about Shi Zhengli, the Chinese virologist nicknamed "Bat Woman" for her work with that species.> Shi — a virologist who is often called China's "bat woman" by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years — walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. "I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong," she says. "I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China." Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical areas of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals — particularly bats, a known reservoir for many viruses. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, "could they have come from our lab?"> > . . . By January 7 the Wuhan team determined that the new virus had indeed caused the disease those patients suffered — a conclusion based on results from polymerase chain reaction analysis, full genome sequencing, antibody tests of blood samples and the virus's ability to infect human lung cells in a petri dish. The genomic sequence of the virus — now officially called SARS-CoV-2 because it is related to the SARS pathogen — was 96 percent identical to that of a coronavirus the researchers had identified in horseshoe bats in Yunnan, they reported in a paper published last month in Nature. "It's crystal clear that bats, once again, are the natural reservoir," says Daszak, who was not involved in the study. > Some scientists aren't convinced that the virus jumped straight from bats to human beings, but there are a few problems with the theory that some other animal was an intermediate transmitter of COVID-19 from bats to humans:> Analyses of the SARS-CoV-2 genome indicate a single spillover event, meaning the virus jumped only once from an animal to a person, which makes it likely that the virus was circulating among people before December. Unless more information about the animals at the Wuhan market is released, the transmission chain may never be clear. There are, however, numerous possibilities. A bat hunter or a wildlife trafficker might have brought the virus to the market. Pangolins happen to carry a coronavirus, which they might have picked up from bats years ago, and which is, in one crucial part of its genome, virtually identical to SARS-CoV-2. But no one has yet found evidence that pangolins were at the Wuhan market, or even that venders there trafficked pangolins.On February 4 — one week before the World Health Organization decided to officially name this virus "COVID-19" — the journal Cell Research posted a notice written by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology about the virus, concluding, "our findings reveal that remdesivir and chloroquine are highly effective in the control of 2019-nCoV infection in vitro. Since these compounds have been used in human patients with a safety track record and shown to be effective against various ailments, we suggest that they should be assessed in human patients suffering from the novel coronavirus disease." One of the authors of that notice was the "bat woman," Shi Zhengli.In his YouTube video, Tye focuses his attention on a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology named Huang Yanling: "Most people believe her to be patient zero, and most people believe she is dead."There was enough discussion of rumors about Huang Yanling online in China to spur an official denial. On February 16, the Wuhan Institute of Virology denied that patient zero was one of their employees, and interestingly named her specifically: "Recently there has been fake information about Huang Yanling, a graduate from our institute, claiming that she was patient zero in the novel coronavirus." Press accounts quote the institute as saying, "Huang was a graduate student at the institute until 2015, when she left the province and had not returned since. Huang was in good health and had not been diagnosed with disease, it added." None of her publicly available research papers are dated after 2015.The web page for the Wuhan Institute of Virology's Lab of Diagnostic Microbiology does indeed still have "Huang Yanling" listed as a 2012 graduate student, and her picture and biography appear to have been recently removed — as have those of two other graduate students from 2013, Wang Mengyue and Wei Cuihua.Her name still has a hyperlink, but the linked page is blank. The pages for Wang Mengyue and Wei Cuihua are blank as well.(For what it is worth, the South China Morning Post — a newspaper seen as being generally pro-Beijing — reported on March 13 that "according to the government data seen by the Post, a 55 year-old from Hubei province could have been the first person to have contracted Covid-19 on November 17.")On February 17, Zhen Shuji, a Hong Kong correspondent from the French public-radio service Radio France Internationale, reported: "when a reporter from the Beijing News of the Mainland asked the institute for rumors about patient zero, the institute first denied that there was a researcher Huang Yanling, but after learning that the name of the person on the Internet did exist, acknowledged that the person had worked at the firm but has now left the office and is unaccounted for."Tye says, "everyone on the Chinese internet is searching for [Huang Yanling] but most believe that her body was quickly cremated and the people working at the crematorium were perhaps infected as they were not given any information about the virus." (The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that handling the body of someone who has died of coronavirus is safe — including embalming and cremation — as long as the standard safety protocols for handing a decedent are used. It's anyone's guess as to whether those safety protocols were sufficiently used in China before the outbreak's scope was known.)As Tye observes, a public appearance by Huang Yanling would dispel a lot of the public rumors, and is the sort of thing the Chinese government would quickly arrange in normal circumstances — presuming that Huang Yanling was still alive. Several officials at the Wuhan Institute of Virology issued public statements that Huang was in good health and that no one at the institute has been infected with COVID-19. In any case, the mystery around Huang Yanling may be moot, but it does point to the lab covering up something about her.China Global Television Network, a state-owned television broadcaster, illuminated another rumor while attempting to dispel it in a February 23 report entitled "Rumors Stop With the Wise":> On February 17, a Weibo user who claimed herself to be Chen Quanjiao, a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, reported to the public that the Director of the Institute was responsible for leaking the novel coronavirus. The Weibo post threw a bomb in the cyberspace and the public was shocked. Soon Chen herself stepped out and declared that she had never released any report information and expressed great indignation at such identity fraud on Weibo. It has been confirmed that that particular Weibo account had been shut down several times due to the spread of misinformation about COVID-19.That Radio France Internationale report on February 17 also mentioned the next key part of the Tye's YouTube video. "Xiaobo Tao, a scholar from South China University of Technology, recently published a report that researchers at Wuhan Virus Laboratory were splashed with bat blood and urine, and then quarantined for 14 days." HK01, another Hong Kong-based news site, reported the same claim.This doctor's name is spelled in English as both "Xiaobo Tao" and "Botao Xiao." From 2011 to 2013, Botao Xiao was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital, and his biography is still on the web site of the South China University of Technology.At some point in February, Botao Xiao posted a research paper onto ResearchGate.net, "The Possible Origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus." He is listed as one author, along with Lei Xiao from Tian You Hospital, which is affiliated with the Wuhan University of Science and Technology. The paper was removed a short time after it was posted, but archived images of its pages can be found here and here.The first conclusion of Botao Xiao's paper is that the bats suspected of carrying the virus are extremely unlikely to be found naturally in the city, and despite the stories of "bat soup," they conclude that bats were not sold at the market and were unlikely to be deliberately ingested.> The bats carrying CoV ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometers away from the seafood market. Bats were normally found to live in caves and trees. But the seafood market is in a densely-populated district of Wuhan, a metropolitan [area] of ~15 million people. The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market. According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization could not confirm if bats were present at the market. Botao Xiao's paper theorizes that the coronavirus originated from bats being used for research at either one of two research laboratories in Wuhan.> We screened the area around the seafood market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus. Within ~ 280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention. WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research purpose, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification. In one of their studies, 155 bats including Rhinolophus affinis were captured in Hubei province, and other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province. The expert in Collection was noted in the Author Contributions (JHT). Moreover, he was broadcasted for collecting viruses on nation-wide newspapers and websites in 2017 and 2019. He described that he was once by attacked by bats and the blood of a bat shot on his skin. He knew the extreme danger of the infection so he quarantined himself for 14 days. In another accident, he quarantined himself again because bats peed on him.> > Surgery was performed on the caged animals and the tissue samples were collected for DNA and RNA extraction and sequencing. The tissue samples and contaminated trashes were source of pathogens. They were only ~280 meters from the seafood market. The WHCDC was also adjacent to the Union Hospital (Figure 1, bottom) where the first group of doctors were infected during this epidemic. It is plausible that the virus leaked around and some of them contaminated the initial patients in this epidemic, though solid proofs are needed in future study.> > The second laboratory was ~12 kilometers from the seafood market and belonged to Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences . . .> > In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories. Regulations may be taken to relocate these laboratories far away from city center and other densely populated places.However, Xiao has told the Wall Street Journal that he has withdrawn his paper. "The speculation about the possible origins in the post was based on published papers and media, and was not supported by direct proofs," he said in a brief email on February 26.The bat researcher that Xiao's report refers to is virologist Tian Junhua, who works at the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control. In 2004, the World Health Organization determined that an outbreak of the SARS virus had been caused by two separate leaks at the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing. The Chinese government said that the leaks were a result of "negligence" and the responsible officials had been punished.In 2017, the Chinese state-owned Shanghai Media Group made a seven-minute documentary about Tian Junhua, entitled "Youth in the Wild: Invisible Defender." Videographers followed Tian Junhua as he traveled deep into caves to collect bats. "Among all known creatures, the bats are rich with various viruses inside," he says in Chinese. "You can find most viruses responsible for human diseases, like rabies virus, SARS, and Ebola. Accordingly, the caves frequented by bats became our main battlefields." He emphasizes, "bats usually live in caves humans can hardly reach. Only in these places can we find the most ideal virus vector samples."One of his last statements on the video is: "In the past ten-plus years, we have visited every corner of Hubei Province. We explored dozens of undeveloped caves and studied more than 300 types of virus vectors. But I do hope these virus samples will only be preserved for scientific research and will never be used in real life. Because humans need not only the vaccines, but also the protection from the nature."The description of Tian Junhua's self-isolation came from a May 2017 report by Xinhua News Agency, repeated by the Chinese news site JQKNews.com:> The environment for collecting bat samples is extremely bad. There is a stench in the bat cave. Bats carry a large number of viruses in their bodies. If they are not careful, they are at risk of infection. But Tian Junhua is not afraid to go to the mountain with his wife to catch Batman.> > Tian Junhua summed up the experience that the most bats can be caught by using the sky cannon and pulling the net. But in the process of operation, Tian Junhua forgot to take protective measures. Bat urine dripped on him like raindrops from the top. If he was infected, he could not find any medicine. It was written in the report.> > The wings of bats carry sharp claws. When the big bats are caught by bat tools, they can easily spray blood. Several times bat blood was sprayed directly on Tians skin, but he didn't flinch at all. After returning home, Tian Junhua took the initiative to isolate for half a month. As long as the incubation period of 14 days does not occur, he will be lucky to escape, the report said.Bat urine and blood can carry viruses. How likely is it that bat urine or blood got onto a researcher at either Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention or the Wuhan Institute of Virology? Alternatively, what are the odds that some sort of medical waste or other material from the bats was not properly disposed of, and that was the initial transmission vector to a human being?Virologists have been vehemently skeptical of the theory that COVID-19 was engineered or deliberately constructed in a laboratory; the director of the National Institutes of Health has written that recent genomic research "debunks such claims by providing scientific evidence that this novel coronavirus arose naturally." And none of the above is definitive proof that COVID-19 originated from a bat at either the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention or the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Definitive proof would require much broader access to information about what happened in those facilities in the time period before the epidemic in the city.But it is a remarkable coincidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was researching Ebola and SARS-associated coronaviruses in bats before the pandemic outbreak, and that in the month when Wuhan doctors were treating the first patients of COVID-19, the institute announced in a hiring notice that "a large number of new bat and rodent new viruses have been discovered and identified." And the fact that the Chinese government spent six weeks insisting that COVID-19 could not be spread from person to person means that its denials about Wuhan laboratories cannot be accepted without independent verification.
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| 27 Best Home Office Decor Ideas to Keep You in the Zone Posted: 03 Apr 2020 02:33 PM PDT |
| Many Americans may have to wait months for coronavirus relief checks Posted: 02 Apr 2020 07:41 PM PDT  The first Americans to get relief payments from the government won't see checks till mid-April, and many will have to wait longer.
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| Coronavirus poses special risk to millions of Americans with diabetes Posted: 02 Apr 2020 12:39 PM PDT  As the worsening coronavirus pandemic continues to spread across the country, millions of Americans living with diabetes face heightened risks from COVID-19.
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| BofA Prepares for Deluge of Small-Business Loan Applications Posted: 03 Apr 2020 05:33 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. is preparing for a flood of applications from U.S. small businesses seeking government relief to weather the coronavirus outbreak."We know for these businesses speed is of the essence," the bank said in a statement. "We can move fastest with our nearly 1 million small-business borrowing clients. That is our near-term priority. As the administration has made clear, going to your current lending bank is the fastest route."The Charlotte, North Carolina-based company had staff working overnight Thursday to prepare for expected high volumes of applications Friday. The initiative is part of the $2.2 trillion government stimulus package and is aimed at helping small businesses survive the devastating impact of the pandemic."We're setting up shop and activating thousands of people to be able to take the applications," Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said in an interview Wednesday on Bloomberg Television. The bank has been heavily involved in talks with the White House and Treasury on the program, he said.On Thursday, the Small Business Administration bumped up to 1% the interest rate lenders may charge small businesses after banks complained that the previous approved rate of 0.5% was below even their own cost of funds.U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza released additional guidelines for the program just a few hours before it's expected to become widely available Friday."This is a very important program," Mnuchin said in a news conference Thursday. "Please bring your workers back to work if you've let them go."(Updates with Mnuchin's comment in last paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Coronavirus map of the US: latest cases state by state Posted: 03 Apr 2020 03:50 AM PDT  * Coronavirus: world map of deaths and cases * Coronavirus – latest global updates * See all our coronavirus coverageThe number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 continues to grow in the US. Mike Pence, the vice-president, is overseeing the US response to the coronavirus.So far, 80% of patients experience a mild form of the illness, which can include a fever and pneumonia, and many of these cases require little to no medical intervention. That being said, elderly people and those with underlying conditions such as diabetes or heart and lung issues are the most vulnerable. The coronavirus death rate in China for people 80 or over, in the government's study of more than 72,000 cases, was 14.8%.default default default * Due to the unprecedented and ongoing nature of the coronavirus outbreak, this article is being regularly updated to ensure that it reflects the current situation as best as possible. Any significant corrections made to this or previous versions of the article will continue to be footnoted in line with Guardian editorial policy.
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| Coronavirus live updates: Cloth masks in public now recommended; US death toll tops 7,000; nation lost 701K jobs in March Posted: 03 Apr 2020 05:27 PM PDT  New research has prompted authorities to change their position Friday on the widespread use of non-medical masks in public.
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| Colombia quarantine brings evictions for Bogota's poorest Posted: 02 Apr 2020 01:01 PM PDT  Jose Ramirez - whose total belongings fit into a scratched black suitcase and a backpack - is resigned to spending the night in a scruffy park in the depressed center of Colombia's capital, Bogota. Mayor's office officials said it was unclear where he could be housed.
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| New Yorkers Are Right to Be Skeptical of Evangelical-Run Coronavirus Ward in Central Park Posted: 02 Apr 2020 09:26 AM PDT  If New York City wasn't under a strict stay-at-home order right now, protesters might be marching along Central Park. That's where an evangelical Christian organization called Samaritan's Purse is preparing to open a makeshift COVID-19 ward. The 60-bed emergency field hospital is composed largely of tarp-wrapped tents and will function as a respiratory unit servicing overflow patients from Mount Sinai Hospital.Some New York residents have criticized Samaritan's Purse's presence, citing their spotty record in the field and expressing fears that the conservative religious group's beliefs could even open the door to substandard care or discrimination. City Mayor Bill de Blasio admitted he was "very concerned" about the operation and was sending people from his office to monitor Samaritan's Purse.As a result, conservative Christians exploded on social media, citing the controversy as further proof that their faith is under attack by intolerant liberals and coastal elites who care little about human life.Andrew Walker, a professor at Southern Baptist Seminary, tweeted, "Cultural decadence is allowing intersectionality to determine the acceptability of emergency response." And Peter Hasson, a Catholic editor for conservative news site The Daily Caller, tweeted, "If you're getting mad at the people taking care of the sick during a pandemic, maybe consider the fact that you're not the good guy in this story."As my therapist often reminds me, the human brain is capable of understanding that two things can be true at the same time. In this case, a person can believe that the brave doctors and nurses currently deploying to Central Park to help combat this terrible virus are brave and necessary and also believe that the organization chosen to manage the work of these doctors and nurses is deeply problematic. Holding both of these ideas in your mind at the same time doesn't make you a bad person; it demonstrates that you're a thinking person. We're in the midst of a public-health crisis and must take an all-hands-on-deck approach to caring for the sick.And upon closer inspection, New Yorkers have plenty of good reasons to feel uncomfortable about this new coronavirus hospital.Of chief concern is the person overseeing the Central Park ward: Samaritan's Purse's president and CEO Franklin Graham. He is the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham and a spiritual adviser to President Donald Trump who has a surprisingly long history of controversial comments and hate speech.Graham seems to harbor a special level of disdain for followers of Islam, which he characterizes as a "wicked and evil religion" that encourages adherents to beat their wives and murder their disobedient children. In 2015, he recommended banning all Muslims from immigrating to America and suggested our government treat them like the Japanese and German during World War II. As rationale, he argued that Muslims have "the potential to be radicalized" and participate in "killing to honor their religion and Muhammed."That's the man running Samaritan's Purse's coronavirus hospital, so yes, Muslim New Yorkers are right to be skeptical.Graham's hate speech is also often aimed at LGBTQ people. He has called same-sex marriages "detestable" and has drummed up fear toward gays and lesbians—whom he believes should burn in hell—by claiming they want to "drag an immoral agenda into our communities." In an article that has mysteriously disappeared from the Decision Magazine website, Graham wrote that the architect of the LGBTQ rights movement was "none other than Satan himself." And when Vladimir Putin initiated a violent crackdown on LGBTQ rights in Russia, it sparked a wave of beatings, abduction, public humiliation and other forms of violence against sexual minorities there. Graham responded by praising Putin's policy, lauding the authoritarian leader for "[protecting] his nation's children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda."Given such history, it makes complete sense that Mount Sinai Hospital asked Samaritan's Purse to "sign a written pledge to treat all patients equally."Some conservative Christians have dismissed this as harassment, claiming that a scenario in which evangelicals discriminated against gays and lesbians is ridiculous to imagine. But our fair city has a long memory. We remember all the gay men who fled communities across America where evangelicals pastors condemned them as "abominations" and found safe harbor in New York. We remember that when masses of them contracted HIV/AIDS and filled our hospital beds, evangelical preachers on TV called it God's judgment. We remember Jerry Falwell and the religious right lobbying against HIV research and relief in the '90s, leading to untold deaths.All this occurred in my lifetime, and I am only 37. So please pardon New Yorkers if they feel uneasy, given American evangelicals' often-unacknowledged track record coupled with Graham's comments, and want to take some minor precautions to ensure all citizens are protected. Gay, lesbian, and transgender New Yorkers are right to be skeptical.Even some conservative Christians who've acknowledged the disturbing nature of Graham's comments have attacked Samaritan's Purse's critics for intolerance. Anyone should be able to help anyone in this time, the argument goes. It's wrong to prevent people from serving the sick. I totally agree; but Samaritan's Purse does not. The organization is requiring that all personnel serving in its pop-up hospital be Christians who agree to Samaritan's Purse's 11-point "Statement of Faith," which includes the beliefs that non-Christians will burn in hell and that same-sex relationships are sinful.It's unsurprising, if lamentable, that a Christian aid group would turn away a Buddhist doctor looking to help its efforts. But if a lung doctor shows up in Central Park with the knowledge and experience to save lives, she could be sent home if she happens to be a liberal Episcopalian who voted for Hillary Clinton and supports marriage equality.If it is wrong to quibble over who is fit to help save lives in the middle of a crisis, then we must admit that Samaritan's Purse is no better than its critics. The group's defenders are correct, however, that the organization has laudably worked to meet emergency needs in crisis regions since its founding. They have accomplished much good in places like Kosovo, Sudan, Somalia, and Darfur. But their record is not unblemished, and many in the humanitarian world have questioned the quality of some of Samaritan's Purse's work.After USAID gave Samaritan's Purse a large grant to help victims of the earthquake in El Salvador, they were disturbed to learn that the Christian group "blurred the lines between church and state" by using funds to evangelize victims instead of just help them. An official with Samaritan's Purse dismissed the criticism by claiming, "We are first a Christian organization and second an aid organization."That wasn't the first time such blurring occurred, however. During the first Gulf War, respected U.S. General Norman Schwarzkopf publicly criticized the group for trying to coerce American troops serving in Saudi Arabia to covertly distribute Arab-language Bibles under the guise of humanitarian work. And Samaritan's Purse's popular "Operation Christmas Child" has recently been drawn fire when people learned that the holiday shoeboxes given to poor children in non-Christian families around the world were stuffed with Christian evangelism materials.The vast majority of New Yorkers are not Christian, and if they find themselves wheezing for air due to COVID-19, they don't want to be proselytized while receiving treatment. They too have reason to be skeptical of the organization's makeshift hospital."This is what Samaritan's Purse does—we respond in the middle of crises to help people in Jesus' Name. Please pray for our teams and for everyone around the world affected by the virus," Graham declared in a press release announcing the ward.None of Samaritan's Purse's detractors have argued that the Central Park ward should be shuttered or that the organization be barred from offering care. And no one is casting aspersions on the many courageous health-care professionals who will put their lives at risk when this hospital opens. Most agree with the letter from Mount Sinai staff and doctors—at least one of whom is LGBTQ—that concerns about Samaritan's Purse, while valid, must be set aside at the moment because "the higher mission at present is to preserve human life."To this, I say "yes and." New Yorkers can admit that Samaritan's Purse should have a role to play in this vital work, and they can also acknowledge the many valid reasons that might make vulnerable and marginalized residents a little more than nervous.—Jonathan Merritt is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and author of Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words are Vanishing—And How We Can Revive Them.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Birx: 5 states could be among next coronavirus 'hot spots' Posted: 02 Apr 2020 05:01 PM PDT  Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, listed several states that could be the next "hot spots" for large numbers of COVID-19 cases, based on how many positive cases they have now.
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| Mosques stay open in Pakistan even as virus death toll rises Posted: 03 Apr 2020 01:50 AM PDT  Mosques were allowed to remain open in Pakistan on Friday, when Muslims gather for weekly prayers, even as the coronavirus pandemic spread and much of the country had shut down. Prime Minister Imran Khan is relying on restricting the size of congregations attending mosques and advice to stay at home from religious groups like the country's Islamic Ideology Council. In eastern Punjab province, where 60% of Pakistan's 220 million people live, checkpoints have been set up in major cities stopping people from congregating.
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| 'It is everywhere already': Fox News hosts amp up the pressure on Trump to give up on coronavirus lockdowns and reopen the economy Posted: 03 Apr 2020 02:47 PM PDT  Primetime host Tucker Carlson attacked "the public health establishment," which he argued "failed us badly" by recommending stay-home orders that are hurting the economy.
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| Stacey Abrams trends after Georgia governor said he didn't know about asymptomatic spread Posted: 03 Apr 2020 08:00 AM PDT  "This is a criminal level of negligence," said a Twitter user over Republican Gov. Brian Kemp's comments.
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| WHO Official Warns Against ‘Profiling’ China, Says Observers ‘Over-Focused’ on Coronavirus Data Posted: 03 Apr 2020 05:12 AM PDT  Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Program, defended China on Thursday against accusations that the country has underreported cases and deaths from the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak."I think we need to be very careful also to not to be profiling certain parts of the world as being uncooperative or non-transparent, and we need to look at transparency across the board," Ryan said at a Geneva press conference."We need to be balanced in that, and we need to recognize that systems under pressure find it hard to share everything on a minute-to-minute basis," Ryan continued. "Frankly, at times I think we get over-focused on this issue."Ryan claimed that there was a "lack of precise information from Italy," whose medical system has been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of coronavirus patients. "Are we saying they're lacking in transparency and not sending WHO all the data every day? No."As of Friday morning, Italy has over 115,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 13,915 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker. However, a Wall Street Journal analysis suggests the Italian coronavirus death toll could be much higher than was reported, because health workers did not have the time or resources to test all the casualties for the illness.The U.S. Intelligence Community has reportedly concluded that China covered up the extent of the outbreak in the country. One recent study found that roughly 95 percent of global cases could have been prevented if China acted earlier to stem the outbreak. Meanwhile, Senator Rick Scott (R, Fla.) has called for a congressional hearing on the WHO's ties to China, while Senator Martha McSally on Thursday called on the director of the WHO to resign.
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| In This European Country, Hospitals Are as Scary as the Coronavirus Posted: 03 Apr 2020 08:00 AM PDT |
| Defense Secretary Esper backed firing of carrier captain Crozier Posted: 03 Apr 2020 02:21 PM PDT  U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper backed the Navy's firing of the commander of a coronavirus-striken aircraft carrier, the Pentagon said on Friday, amid a backlash from Democrats in Congress as well as the crew of the vessel, who hailed their captain as a hero. Captain Brett Crozier was relieved of command of the Theodore Roosevelt on Thursday after a scathing letter was leaked to the public in which he called on the Navy for stronger action to halt the spread of the virus aboard the vessel. "The secretary of defense supported the secretary of the Navy's decision to remove him," Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman told a news briefing, saying Esper's decision was based on acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly's conclusion that he had lost confidence in Crozier.
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| Passover on Zoom: Jewish leaders split on digital Seders Posted: 02 Apr 2020 07:01 PM PDT  The Jewish holiday of Passover has long inspired intense debate, with favourite topics including whether Moses actually parted the Red Sea or if the Ten Plagues were an ethical response to enslavement. The videoconferencing application has emerged as an essential tool during a crisis that has confined people across the globe in their homes. Passover, an eight-day holiday that marks the Jewish people's biblical exodus from Egypt, begins Wednesday evening with a Seder, one of the most important events of the year for Jews.
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| Justice Department will send seized medical supplies to New York, New Jersey Posted: 02 Apr 2020 09:22 AM PDT  The FBI located the supplies on March 30, as part of its work under the department's Covid-19 hoarding and price gouging task force.
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| 'This is just so anti-consumer': Southwest early-boarding fee policy reversed after coronavirus backlash Posted: 02 Apr 2020 03:41 PM PDT  Southwest Airlines wasn't offering refunds or credit for some EarlyBird fees, but the airline announced a temporary change Thursday.
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| Duterte vows to 'shoot dead' lockdown violators as unrest grows in Philippines Posted: 02 Apr 2020 12:46 AM PDT  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has told security forces they should shoot dead anyone causing "trouble" in areas locked down due to the coronavirus pandemic. About half the country's roughly 110 million people are currently under quarantine - including millions in deep poverty, left jobless by tough restrictions on movement. Hours before Duterte gave the order in a speech late Wednesday, nearly two dozen people from a slum community in the capital Manila were arrested for holding a protest that accused the government of failing to provide food aid to the poor. "My orders are to the police and military, also village officials, that if there is trouble or the situation arises that people fight and your lives are on the line, shoot them dead," Duterte said. "Instead of causing trouble, I'll send you to the grave," he said, adding that the outbreak is getting worse more than two weeks into the lockdown.
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| USPS mail carriers say the service isn't doing enough to protect them from the coronavirus and are mixing DIY sanitizer and buying gloves online to stay safe Posted: 03 Apr 2020 08:52 AM PDT  The USPS says it has implemented a raft of measures to fight the virus. Two postal workers we spoke with said it hasn't materialized.
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| Report: Federal Agency Shipped Face Masks Overseas as Veterans Affairs Hospital Rationed Them Posted: 03 Apr 2020 01:48 PM PDT  A federal agency reportedly shipped face masks overseas from a Miami warehouse even as a nearby Veterans Affairs hospital was rationing them due to the coronavirus outbreak.The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) had a warehouse of face masks sitting unused in Miami while a Veterans Affairs hospital in the city was telling its health care workers to use the same face mask for an entire week, Fox News reported.Later, USAID exported the masks overseas. Since then, however, the administration has reportedly halted USAID shipments of personal protective equipment out of the country.The administration is also considering cracking down on private companies that persist in shipping supplies out of the country even as U.S. states grapple with a shortage of the life-saving supplies, potentially increasing the death toll from the coronavirus. The restrictions will likely come in an order President Trump intends to sign Friday targeting American "shady brokers," who sell masks and ventilators to foreign countries at high prices.Governor Cuomo of New York, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak with more than 92,000 cases, said Thursday that the state only has enough ventilators to last six more days. On Friday, Cuomo signed an order allowing the state National Guard to appropriate ventilators and personal protective equipment from hospitals and medical institutions and transfer them where they are most needed. Ventilators are desperately needed to treat cases of the coronavirus, a respiratory virus that attacks the lungs and causes shortness of breath."It's not that we're going to leave any health care facility without adequate equipment, but they don't need excess equipment now," Cuomo said.States have also turned to buying ventilators from private manufacturers, where they compete with both the federal government and other states."It's like being on eBay with 50 other states bidding on a ventilator," the New York governor said of the process.Meanwhile, the federal government is evaluating which states should receive the nearly 10,000 ventilators it had available in its stockpile as of Thursday. The government has also been unable to fill more than 90 percent of the requested number of N95 protective face masks.
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| Dr. Fauci Shuts Down ‘Fox & Friends’ on Coronavirus Cure: ‘We Don’t Operate on How You Feel’ Posted: 03 Apr 2020 07:44 AM PDT  Top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci left the hosts of Fox & Friends disappointed and frustrated Friday when he threw cold water on their insistence that the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine is a game-changing cure for the coronavirus.Citing a recent poll showing that 37 percent of doctors around the world feel the drug is currently the most effective treatment of COVID-19, co-host Steve Doocy added that frequent Fox News guest Dr. Mehmet Oz recently touted a small Chinese study that found the drug had some efficacy in treating the virus.Doocy went on to play a clip of Dr. Oz wondering whether Fauci was impressed with the results of that study. The Fox host asked the top physician to respond to the TV doctor."That was not a very robust study," replied Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force. He also pointed out that while there's still a possibility of a "beneficial effect," the scale and strength of the evidence is not "overwhelmingly strong.""But getting back to what you said just a moment ago that 'X percent'—I think you said 37 percent—of doctors feel that it's beneficial. We don't operate on how you feel. We operate on what evidence is, and data is," he continued. "So although there is some suggestion with the study that was just mentioned by Dr. Oz—granted that there is a suggestion that there is a benefit there—I think we've got to be careful that we don't make that majestic leap to assume that this is a knockout drug."Co-host Brian Kilmeade, meanwhile, pushed back against the disease expert, claiming a large percentage of doctors in other countries are now prescribing the drug to treat coronavirus. He then speculated as to whether those taking the drug for other conditions were prevented from infection of COVID-19.Seth Meyers Exposes Fox News' Sean Hannity Over Huge Coronavirus 'Hoax' Lie"I would be very curious, doctor, to see if anyone who was taking this for lupus or arthritis has gotten the coronavirus, that would be one way to go the other way to see about this study," Kilmeade wondered aloud."I mean, obviously this is a good drug in many respects for some of the diseases you mentioned, and the one thing we don't want to happen is that individuals who really need a drug with a proven indication don't have it available," Fauci responded, adding that it doesn't matter if a large percentage of doctors "think that it works."Co-host Ainsley Earhardt then jumped in, suggesting that "Democratic leaders" are preventing patients from receiving hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the disease and asking Fauci what could be done to make sure we're giving it to everyone in need."Well first of all, this is an approved drug for another indication, and doctors can, and the FDA has made it very clear that doctors can prescribe it on what we call off label," he explained. "There's no inhibition for that. So a considerable amount of drug was made available, as you remember, just a few days ago. But the FDA was very clear that they're not going to be inhibiting anyone from doing an off label prescription of the drug. So they're free to do that if they want to."While President Donald Trump and many Fox News personalities have been bullish on the possibility that the drug is a miracle cure for the virus, Fauci has repeatedly attempted to temper expectations, noting that the benefits have largely been anecdotal and that there are other studies showing no noticeable effects at all.This isn't the first time that pro-Trump Fox News hosts have tried to get Fauci to boost hydroxychloroquine. Laura Ingraham, who has been at the forefront of touting the drug, asked the doc last week if he would take it if he were stricken with the virus. Fauci, for his part, said only if it were part of a clinical trial.Dr. Anthony Fauci: I Don't Want to 'Embarrass' TrumpRead more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Exclusive: Jump in Jakarta funerals raises fears of unreported coronavirus deaths Posted: 03 Apr 2020 11:58 AM PDT  The number of funerals in Jakarta rose sharply in March, a development the governor of Indonesia's capital city said suggested that deaths from the new coronavirus may be higher than officially reported. The city has been at the epicentre of novel coronavirus infections in Indonesia, accounting for 971 cases and 90 deaths, according to central government data, or roughly half the country's total for both. Jakarta's governor, Anies Baswedan, and some public health experts suspect the number of infections and deaths in Jakarta has been significantly under-reported due to one of the world's lowest rates of testing.
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| Mexico murder rate reaches new high as violence rages amid Covid-19 spread Posted: 03 Apr 2020 07:52 AM PDT  * March sees 2,585 homicides – highest monthly figure on record * Mexico tries to pour resources into containing coronavirusMexico's homicide rate raced to a new record in March, as violence raged even as Covid-19 spread across the country and authorities urged the population to stay home and practise social distancing.Mexico registered 2,585 homicides in March – the highest monthly figure since records began in 1997 – putting 2020 on track to break last year's record total for murders.The surge in killings comes as federal and state officials put resources into containing the Covid-19 crisis and confront the prospect of an already sluggish economy falling even further – potentially deepening the misery for the more than 40% of the population living in poverty."It's business as usual [for drug cartels] with a risk of further escalation, especially if at some point the armed forces are called away for pandemic control," said Falko Ernst, senior Mexico analyst at the International Crisis Group.Violence has flared throughout the country, but it has been especially intense in the central state of Guanajuato, where criminal groups have battled over lucrative territories rife with theft from pipelines.The bloodshed has hit shocking levels in the city of Ceyala – home to a major automotive manufacturing plant – with gunmen engaging security forces in shootouts, blockading streets and torching businesses.Francisco Rivas, director of the National Citizen Observatory, which monitors security issues, attributed the increasing violence in Guanajuato to the fallout of the federal government trying to stamp out petrol theft.The crackdown weakened the local Santa Rosa de Lima cartel, Rivas said, prompting the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG) to move in and attempt to take its territory.Other causes for rising violence, Rivas said, include growing pains with a new militarised police known as the national guard, the lack of a federal strategy and cutting the security budget to its lowest level in 20 years."We're seeing iolence hitting its peak and we're left asking, 'who's going to stop it?'" Rivas said.Calderón sends in the armyMexico's "war on drugs" began in late 2006 when the president at the time, Felipe Calderón, ordered thousands of troops onto the streets in response to an explosion of horrific violence in his native state of Michoacán.Calderón hoped to smash the drug cartels with his heavily militarized onslaught but the approach was counter-productive and exacted a catastrophic human toll. As Mexico's military went on the offensive, the body count sky-rocketed to new heights and tens of thousands were forced from their homes, disappeared or killed.Kingpin strategySimultaneously Calderón also began pursuing the so-called "kingpin strategy" by which authorities sought to decapitate the cartels by targeting their leaders.That policy resulted in some high-profile scalps – notably Arturo Beltrán Leyva who was gunned down by Mexican marines in 2009 – but also did little to bring peace. In fact, many believe such tactics served only to pulverize the world of organized crime, creating even more violence as new, less predictable factions squabbled for their piece of the pie.Under Calderón's successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, the government's rhetoric on crime softened as Mexico sought to shed its reputation as the headquarters of some the world's most murderous mafia groups.But Calderón's policies largely survived, with authorities targeting prominent cartel leaders such as Sinaloa's Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.When "El Chapo" was arrested in early 2016, Mexico's president bragged: "Mission accomplished". But the violence went on. By the time Peña Nieto left office in 2018, Mexico had suffered another record year of murders, with nearly 36,000 people slain."Hugs not bullets"The leftwing populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador took power in December, promising a dramatic change in tactics. López Obrador, or Amlo as most call him, vowed to attack the social roots of crime, offering vocational training to more than 2.3 million disadvantaged young people at risk of being ensnared by the cartels. "It will be virtually impossible to achieve peace without justice and [social] welfare," Amlo said, promising to slash the murder rate from an average of 89 killings per day with his "hugs not bullets" doctrine.Amlo also pledged to chair daily 6am security meetings and create a 60,000 strong "National Guard". But those measures have yet to pay off, with the new security force used mostly to hunt Central American migrants.Mexico now suffers an average of about 96 murders per day, with nearly 29,000 people killed since Amlo took office.President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on Friday that a drop in violence had been expected towards the end of March when coronavirus cases had started increasing in Mexico, "but it didn't turn out like that."López Obrador came to power promising to solve Mexico's security woes by tacking what he considered the root causes of crime: poverty and corruption. But the strategy has so far failed to rein in the violence."The [anti-crime] strategy isn't a strategy," said Rivas. "The national guard isn't pulling its weight because building an institution is difficult and expensive. Budget cuts to public security have been brutal. These all have serious effects."The president stirred further outrage during a visit to Sinaloa state on Sunday, when he stopped to greet the mother of convicted cartel kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán – breaking with social-distancing protocols to shake her hand.López Obrador downplayed the greeting as little more than a courtesy to a mother who hadn't seen her son in five years, but his comments prompted outrage from families of victims of violence, who say he has failed to extend the same courtesy to them."For society and victims, who have been having a hard time meeting or being listened to by the president," Ernst said, "it's a heavy slap in the face."
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| Coronavirus: Chinese explorers start Everest climb amid pandemic Posted: 03 Apr 2020 12:03 PM PDT  China has limited climbs to its nationals while Nepal has cancelled all expeditions.
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| Here's how to safely reopen America when coronavirus pandemic wanes Posted: 03 Apr 2020 12:13 PM PDT  It's important that we assess the threat of the virus region by region and consider reopening in phases or by industry.
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| Mayor taps ex-Dallas chief to head Chicago police force Posted: 02 Apr 2020 02:00 PM PDT  Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday named former Dallas police Chief David Brown to head the police force in the nation's third largest city, touting his humility and calling him "a leader who commands respect." Lightfoot introduced Brown as the next superintendent of the Chicago Police Department during a news conference, saying he's the right man for the job.
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| Japan Fears Country on ‘Brink of the Brink’ of Virus Surge Posted: 03 Apr 2020 12:00 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Japan is bracing for an explosive surge in coronavirus infections cases, senior government officials said, while continuing to resist calls to declare a state of emergency to fight the pandemic."We are really continuing on the brink of the brink," Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura told reporters Friday in Tokyo, one of several fresh warnings about the potential for a more widespread outbreak. Nishimura said that the government was concerned about the capital, where confirmed infections have more than doubled in a week to almost 700. Tokyo saw its biggest one-day tally of 97 on Thursday.Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has come under increasing pressure to declare a state of emergency to contain the disease's spread, with Rakuten Inc. founder Hiroshi Mikitani joining those urging such action. Abe told parliament Friday that the situation didn't yet warrant an emergency declaration, but said he wouldn't hesitate to do so when the time comes.Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said an emergency declaration twinned with economic aid would be effective. Abe has agreed to handouts of 300,000 yen ($2,780) for households whose income has been hit by the crisis, public broadcaster NHK said, without saying where it got the information.Speaking to reporters, Koike laid out some details of what a state of emergency would look like in the capital, saying she would ask people to avoid going out unnecessarily and to work from home where possible. By contrast with the national government's low-key approach, she said she had enlisted celebrities including popular Japanese YouTuber Hikakin to help get the message out.Medical staff, supermarket workers, bank tellers and people operating the stock exchange would remain on duty even under an emergency, Koike added.While Japan was one of the first countries outside of the original epicenter in neighboring China to confirm a coronavirus infection, it has fared better than most, with about 2,600 reported cases as of Friday. That's the lowest tally of any Group of Seven country, although Japan might be finding fewer mild cases because it has conducted a relatively small number of tests.Due to civil liberties protections enshrined in Japan's postwar constitution, an emergency declaration wouldn't give local governments power to clear the streets as China and some European countries have done. Still, it would increase their ability to procure essential materials and urge people to stay home.Besides Mikitani, who is one of Japan's most prominent business leaders, Koike has also pushed for an emergency declaration. Hirofumi Yoshida -- governor of the country's second most populous city Osaka -- said earlier this week that an emergency should be declared for his own prefecture as well as Tokyo, the Asahi newspaper reported.Abe urged people to cooperate with government recommendations to avoid more severe measures, telling parliament that 62 people infected with the virus were in serious condition as of Wednesday. The country has reported 63 deaths.Japan is at risk of a deepening recession due to the pandemic, a sales tax hike in October and the postponement of the Olympic Games. In the three months starting in April, some analysts see the economy shrinking more than 10%, the biggest plunge since Abe took the helm in 2012. If the Tokyo metropolitan area, which accounts for about one-third of the economy, heads into a lockdown, the damage would get even worse.Nishimura, the economy minister, also said the government was aiming to decide early next week on a stimulus package to support jobs and businesses. He said the government was considering cash handouts, as well as a variety of other fiscal, tax and deregulatory measures.(Updates with cash handout report, Tokyo governor comments)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| WHO concerned by 'rapid escalation' of virus, as U.S. death toll nears 5,000 Posted: 02 Apr 2020 03:22 AM PDT  "In the next few days we will reach 1 million confirmed cases, and 50 thousand deaths," the World Health Organization's Director-General warned.
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| China Wants to Use the Coronavirus to Take Over the World Posted: 03 Apr 2020 03:30 AM PDT  What started as a catastrophe for China is shaping up to be a moment of strategic opportunity, a rare turning point in the flow of history. Suddenly, the protests in Hong Kong, carrying a mortal threat to political stability in the mainland, became a physical impossibility. More important, the pandemic set in motion a global competition, to contain the virus, for which China and the Chinese Communist Party seem uniquely prepared.As the virus spread to the whole world, it became apparent that Western societies — Beijing's true rivals — did not have the ability to quickly organize every citizen around a single goal. As opposed to China, which remains to a large extent a revolutionary society, their political systems were built for normal times. Chinese society is a mobilized army, which can quickly drop everything else and march in one direction.Mao once said, "Everything under heaven is in utter chaos, the situation is excellent." And so it seems at present, as seen from Beijing. Chinese diplomats stationed all over the world spend their time raising the stakes to a dangerous level. Following instructions from the very top, they have taken to the media to issue a challenge to America, to point out its failure, and to compare the chaos in American cities and hospitals with what they see as a singular success in stopping the epidemic in China.Several commentators have suggested that China may be winning the coronavirus battle by stepping forward in providing medical help to affected countries, mostly in Europe, at a time when the United States is consumed with its own difficulties. This misses the point.The cases have been multiplying where the medical equipment provided by Chinese companies and even the Chinese state turned out to be faulty, provoking justified ire in, for example, Spain, the Netherlands, and Turkey. Moreover, medical help is a normal occurrence in a crisis. China has done nothing different, except perhaps in the clumsy way it publicizes those efforts.Forget about "mask diplomacy." It is no more than a distraction. There are other ways for China to use the coronavirus pandemic to upturn the existing global order. I see three main levers.The first one is the direct comparison between the situation in China and elsewhere. The numbers of cases and fatalities provided by Chinese authorities almost certainly misrepresent the real figures by more than an order of magnitude, but the fact remains that a semblance of normalcy was achieved in a small period of time. If the United States fails to do the same, its prestige will suffer a severe blow. People all over the world will quickly change their perceptions about relative power and capacity.The second lever resides with industrial value chains. Last month General Motors, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler closed all their automotive production plants across the United States and Canada. Other sectors have followed. In the meantime, China contained the worst of the pandemic to one province, allowing economic activity to quickly resume elsewhere. The most recent data show renewed activity in the flow of goods across the country, as well as at ports worldwide that do business with China. If the freeze in Europe and America continues for much longer, Chinese companies will be able to dramatically expand market share and replace Western-led value chains. Just yesterday Chinese authorities announced that manufacturing activity expanded in March, defying expectations of a contraction. In February the official Purchasing Managers' Index hit a record low of 35.7. It bounced back to 52.0 in March. Prepare for a worldwide wave of Chinese acquisitions at knockdown prices.Finally, in a more extreme scenario, important countries could experience the kind of economic shock that leads to widespread social and political collapse. At that point, China would have a unique opportunity to step in, provide aid, and refashion these countries in its image. It would look like a repeat of the Marshall Plan and the beginning of the American world order after the ravages of World War II. Indonesia, South Asia, and even Russia might be of special interest in such a scenario.We knew that a generalized race or competition between alternative geopolitical models had started, but it was never clear what the background for such a competition would be. If the clash took place within the existing global trade and financial system, which was of course built according to Western rules and principles, the United States was confident the battle could be decisively won. But what if it took place on neutral ground? What if it took place in a kind of neutral landscape, a state of nature with few or no rules, against a chaotic and quickly evolving background? The outcome would become considerably more uncertain.To put it more bluntly: There was always an argument that the existing world order cannot change because only a momentous war has done that in the past and world wars have become impossible. But in pandemics — and soon in climate change — we may have found two functional equivalents of war.
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| What the coronavirus does to your body that makes it so deadly Posted: 02 Apr 2020 05:32 AM PDT  COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. Coronaviruses belong to a group of viruses that infect animals, from peacocks to whales. They're named for the bulb-tipped spikes that project from the virus's surface and give the appearance of a corona surrounding it.A coronavirus infection usually plays out one of two ways: as an infection in the lungs that includes some cases of what people would call the common cold, or as an infection in the gut that causes diarrhea. COVID-19 starts out in the lungs like the common cold coronaviruses, but then causes havoc with the immune system that can lead to long-term lung damage or death.SARS-CoV-2 is genetically very similar to other human respiratory coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. However, the subtle genetic differences translate to significant differences in how readily a coronavirus infects people and how it makes them sick.SARS-CoV-2 has all the same genetic equipment as the original SARS-CoV, which caused a global outbreak in 2003, but with around 6,000 mutations sprinkled around in the usual places where coronaviruses change. Think whole milk versus skim milk. Compared to other human coronaviruses like MERS-CoV, which emerged in the Middle East in 2012, the new virus has customized versions of the same general equipment for invading cells and copying itself. However, SARS-CoV-2 has a totally different set of genes called accessories, which give this new virus a little advantage in specific situations. For example, MERS has a particular protein that shuts down a cell's ability to sound the alarm about a viral intruder. SARS-CoV-2 has an unrelated gene with an as-yet unknown function in that position in its genome. Think cow milk versus almond milk. How the virus infectsEvery coronavirus infection starts with a virus particle, a spherical shell that protects a single long string of genetic material and inserts it into a human cell. The genetic material instructs the cell to make around 30 different parts of the virus, allowing the virus to reproduce. The cells that SARS-CoV-2 prefers to infect have a protein called ACE2 on the outside that is important for regulating blood pressure. The infection begins when the long spike proteins that protrude from the virus particle latch on to the cell's ACE2 protein. From that point, the spike transforms, unfolding and refolding itself using coiled spring-like parts that start out buried at the core of the spike. The reconfigured spike hooks into the cell and crashes the virus particle and cell together. This forms a channel where the string of viral genetic material can snake its way into the unsuspecting cell. SARS-CoV-2 spreads from person to person by close contact. The Shincheonji Church outbreak in South Korea in February provides a good demonstration of how and how quickly SARS-CoV-2 spreads. It seems one or two people with the virus sat face to face very close to uninfected people for several minutes at a time in a crowded room. Within two weeks, several thousand people in the country were infected, and more than half of the infections at that point were attributable to the church. The outbreak got to a fast start because public health authorities were unaware of the potential outbreak and were not testing widely at that stage. Since then, authorities have worked hard and the number of new cases in South Korea has been falling steadily. How the virus makes people sickSARS-CoV-2 grows in type II lung cells, which secrete a soap-like substance that helps air slip deep into the lungs, and in cells lining the throat. As with SARS, most of the damage in COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, is caused by the immune system carrying out a scorched earth defense to stop the virus from spreading. Millions of cells from the immune system invade the infected lung tissue and cause massive amounts of damage in the process of cleaning out the virus and any infected cells.Each COVID-19 lesion ranges from the size of a grape to the size of a grapefruit. The challenge for health care workers treating patients is to support the body and keep the blood oxygenated while the lung is repairing itself. SARS-CoV-2 has a sliding scale of severity. Patients under age 10 seem to clear the virus easily, most people under 40 seem to bounce back quickly, but older people suffer from increasingly severe COVID-19. The ACE2 protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses as a door to enter cells is also important for regulating blood pressure, and it does not do its job when the virus gets there first. This is one reason COVID-19 is more severe in people with high blood pressure.SARS-CoV-2 is more severe than seasonal influenza in part because it has many more ways to stop cells from calling out to the immune system for help. For example, one way that cells try to respond to infection is by making interferon, the alarm signaling protein. SARS-CoV-2 blocks this by a combination of camouflage, snipping off protein markers from the cell that serve as distress beacons and finally shredding any anti-viral instructions that the cell makes before they can be used. As a result, COVID-19 can fester for a month, causing a little damage each day, while most people get over a case of the flu in less than a week.At present, the transmission rate of SARS-CoV-2 is a little higher than that of the pandemic 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, but SARS-CoV-2 is at least 10 times as deadly. From the data that is available now, COVID-19 seems a lot like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), though it's less likely than SARS to be severe. What isn't knownThere are still many mysteries about this virus and coronaviruses in general – the nuances of how they cause disease, the way they interact with proteins inside the cell, the structure of the proteins that form new viruses and how some of the basic virus-copying machinery works.Another unknown is how COVID-19 will respond to changes in the seasons. The flu tends to follow cold weather, both in the northern and southern hemispheres. Some other human coronaviruses spread at a low level year-round, but then seem to peak in the spring. But nobody really knows for sure why these viruses vary with the seasons. What is amazing so far in this outbreak is all the good science that has come out so quickly. The research community learned about structures of the virus spike protein and the ACE2 protein with part of the spike protein attached just a little over a month after the genetic sequence became available. I spent my first 20 or so years working on coronaviruses without the benefit of either. This bodes well for better understanding, preventing and treating COVID-19.[Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research. Sign up for our newsletter.]This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * Viruses live on doorknobs and phones and can get you sick – smart cleaning and good habits can help protect you * 10 misconceptions about the 1918 flu, the 'greatest pandemic in history'Benjamin Neuman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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| Exclusive: How elite U.S. college students brought COVID-19 home from campus Posted: 02 Apr 2020 02:35 PM PDT  The message was lost on many students. Before leaving campus and returning to their homes and families throughout the United States and abroad, more than 100 Vanderbilt students attended parties, ignoring the school's explicit instructions not to do so. One photo of a March 11 party, posted on Instagram and seen by Reuters, shows a student in a makeshift hazmat suit, a black mask and green bowler hat with shamrocks, as a large group of students party in the background.
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| Coronavirus: More than 500 die in New York overnight with 100,000 reported cases Posted: 03 Apr 2020 08:26 AM PDT  New York state has the biggest single-day increase of death toll with 592 people dying from the coronavirus yesterday, the governor said.Governor Andrew Cuomo started his daily press briefing on Friday with the grim news about the death toll increasing in the state.
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| Birx: Face masks not a substitute for handwashing, distancing to help prevent coronavirus spread Posted: 02 Apr 2020 04:45 PM PDT  At a press briefing, Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said the use of face masks should not be a substitute for social distancing and washing hands to prevent contracting the coronavirus.
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| Judge in Maryland weighs release of 2 detained immigrants Posted: 02 Apr 2020 01:41 PM PDT |
| Dr. Fauci to receive additional security following threats Posted: 01 Apr 2020 07:38 PM PDT  The increase in security came at the request of the Health and Human Services Inspector General, Department of Justice officials told CBS News.
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| Asian countries impose new restrictions as coronavirus cases come roaring back Posted: 02 Apr 2020 03:28 PM PDT  After appearing to have the virus under control, Singapore, Vietnam and Hong Kong are imposing new controls as COVID-19 infections continue to rise.
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| France Has Deadliest Virus Day as Infection Rate Slows in Spain Posted: 03 Apr 2020 11:41 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- France reported its deadliest day from the coronavirus amid tentative signs that the pandemic may be easing in Spain and Italy.The health ministry in Paris reported 588 hospital deaths, the most yet, bringing the figure to 5,091 since the beginning of the outbreak. In contrast, new infections slowed and fatalities declined in Spain for the first time in four days, as infections stabilized in Italy. Together, the three countries account for more than half the deaths worldwide in the pandemic.Austria could become one of the first in the region to loosen restrictions that have shut down much of public life. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's government will review data and consider a plan in coming days to gradually restart the economy, the Austrian leader told parliament in Vienna on Friday."Let's not jump to conclusions because there are some positive signals," Kurz said. "I can promise you, if the numbers support it, we'll do what we can to return to normality step by step."Despite the pockets of improvement, governments have little leeway to unwind lockdowns that have devasted the region's economy. IHS Markit said its monthly measure of services and manufacturing in the euro area points to an annualized contraction of about 10%. With new business, confidence and employment all down, there is "worse inevitably to come in the near future," it said.Signs emerged that squabbling national leaders are coalescing around an aid package. Euro-area finance ministers are set to agree on a coronavirus aid package of 500 billion euros ($540 billion) next week, the group's leader, Portugal's Mario Centeno told Sueddeutsche Zeitung.Germany is planning to set up an extra 300 billion-euro aid program to help small- and medium-sized companies, and Switzerland doubled the amount of state credit guarantees for businesses to 40 billion francs ($41 billion).In another positive development, German Chancellor Angela Merkel left her precautionary quarantine. After ending 12 days in voluntary self-isolation in Berlin, Merkel will continue to observe social-distancing standards, government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters.The chancellor, who this week prolonged a nationwide lockdown until April 19, addressed the public Friday from the chancellery for the first time since the quarantine, making a plea to stay home and avoid social contact through the Easter holiday.Even though a slight slowing of the spread of the disease offers "some hope," she said it was far too early to set a target date for easing restrictions.Europe's longest-serving leader took center stage in Germany's fight against the virus with a rare televised address to the nation on March 18, in which she called the pandemic the country's gravest challenge since World War II.Lockdown ReviewKurz, who wore a face mask before and after his speech, urged Austrians to persevere with measures to limit contact between people and asked them to refrain from celebrating the Easter holiday with large gatherings of families and friends. His government will review virus statistics with epidemiology experts on Sunday and present its plans on Monday.Growth in new infections in Austria has decreased to less than 5% per day. The number of daily fatalities has fallen for four straight days this week.Spain's Health Ministry on Friday reported 932 new deaths and 7,472 cases over the latest 24-hour period, both smaller gains than the previous day. The dip in the daily figures could lead to less pressure on overwhelmed hospitals. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's government is looking to extend the current lockdown for another two weeks beyond April 11, Spanish media reported.Italy reported 4,585 new infections, while there were 766 fatalities compared with 760 in the previous 24-hour period, civil protection authorities said at their daily news conference in Rome.The pace of both new deaths and new infections has flattened out over past days, even as the containment measures shuttering all non-essential activities and banning most movement take a heavy toll on the economy. In total, the country had 119,827 cases and 14,681 deaths.In France, daily intensive-care admissions fell for a fourth day, adding to signs that lockdown measures across Europe may be helping to bring the outbreak under control. The total number of fatalities is 6,507, including 1,416 deaths from nursing homes -- data that was partially included for the first time on Thursday.Despite Merkel returning to work, Germany's fight against the outbreak suffered a setback. Fatalities and confirmed cases rose by more than the previous day on Friday, with total deaths climbing past 1,000. The mortality rate is probably underestimated because of insufficient testing, according to Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute.The country -- which has 84,794 infections, the third-most in Europe -- may still need additional intensive-care space, even after boosting capacity by more than 40% since the crisis began, the head of Germany's public health authority said."My personal appraisal is that it will not be enough," Wieler said at a press briefing. "I would be happy to be wrong."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| The US Army warned 2 months ago that the coronavirus could kill as many as 150,000 Americans Posted: 02 Apr 2020 11:34 AM PDT  What was a worst-case scenario is now nearly a best possible outcome as the White House warns that 100,000 to 240,000 people could die.
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