Tuesday, June 02, 2020

Coronavirus News (128)

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George W. Bush Virtually Endorses Joe Biden In Powerful Statement   America’s greatest challenge has long been to unite people of very different backgrounds into a single nation of justice and opportunity. The doctrine and habits of racial superiority, which once nearly split our country, still threaten our Union. The answers to American problems are found by living up to American ideals — to the fundamental truth that all human beings are created equal and endowed by God with certain rights. We have often underestimated how radical that quest really is, and how our cherished principles challenge systems of intended or assumed injustice. The heroes of America — from Frederick Douglass, to Harriet Tubman, to Abraham Lincoln, to Martin Luther King, Jr. — are heroes of unity. Their calling has never been for the fainthearted. They often revealed the nation’s disturbing bigotry and exploitation — stains on our character sometimes difficult for the American majority to examine. We can only see the reality of America’s need by seeing it through the eyes of the threatened, oppressed, and disenfranchised..........  Black people see the repeated violation of their rights without an urgent and adequate response from American institutions. We know that lasting justice will only come by peaceful means. Looting is not liberation, and destruction is not progress. But we also know that lasting peace in our communities requires truly equal justice. The rule of law ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system. And achieving justice for all is the duty of all. .......... The statement by the Bushs was a firm rejection of Donald Trump’s declaration of war on the people of his own country. When George W. Bush urged people to choose the better way, he was not only talking about the current crisis, he was also referring to your vote in November. 

Biden Dominates Trump With Real Presidential Speech In Philly  “The President Of The United States must be part of the solution, not the problem. But this president today is part of the problem and accelerates it. When he tweeted the words, when the looting starts, the shooting starts, those weren’t the words of a president. Those were the racist words of a Miami police chief in the 1960s. When he tweeted that protestors, quote, would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, when people would have been really hurt, end of quote. Those weren’t the words of a president. They were the kinds of word Bull Connor would have used unleashing his dogs on women and children.”  ........ Trump demanded that governors dominate the protesters, but 24 hours later, it was Joe Biden dominating Donald Trump.

One of America's most prominent conservative columnists wants Republicans to lose in 2020 For the better part of the last four decades, George F. Will has been at the intellectual center of American conservatism. Now he is calling for a full-blown rout of the Republican Party at the ballot box in November. .......... While Will has harsh words for Trump -- "this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron" -- he saves his true condemnation for the members of Congress who have enabled the President. ........  "In life's unforgiving arithmetic, we are the sum of our choices. Congressional Republicans have made theirs for more than 1,200 days. We cannot know all the measures necessary to restore the nation's domestic health and international standing, but we know the first step: Senate Republicans must be routed, as condign punishment for their Vichyite collaboration, leaving the Republican remnant to wonder: Was it sensible to sacrifice dignity, such as it ever was, and to shed principles, if convictions so easily jettisoned could be dignified as principles, for ... what? Praying people should pray, and all others should hope: May I never crave anything as much as these people crave membership in the world's most risible deliberative body." ...........  (Will left the Republican Party officially in the summer of 2016, after it became clear Trump would be the nominee.) ..........  What Will is advocating is nothing short of an electoral destruction of the party that he called home for decades. ......... Will's view is, effectively, that the Trump version of the GOP is so corrupted, so broken, so beyond repair that the only solution is to raze it -- and start from the ground up again.  

Republicans chastise Trump for ousting protesters, church photo-op The gentle criticism highlights growing concern in the GOP about the president's inflammatory response to the unrest across the country............ “Every public servant in America should be lowering the temperature.” ......... The gentle criticism highlights growing concern among Republicans about the president’s inflammatory response to the nationwide protests over George Floyd’s killing by a Minnesota police officer — all with the backdrop of a global pandemic and the worst economy since the Great Depression. ........... GOP senators also largely stood by the president’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 in order to deploy U.S. troops into American towns and cities 

'It just doesn't seem right': Pentagon officials on edge over military leaders' dealings with Trump For years, top military leadership has tried to minimize the perception that the armed forces are being used by the president for political purposes. .......... The optics of the past 72 hours are putting people inside the halls of the Pentagon on edge as images of U.S. troops on the streets of the nation’s capital dominate airwaves across the globe, and as the top brass is increasingly viewed as mixing politics and the military. ..........  “The decision to use active military forces in crowd control in the United States should only be made as a last resort” ..........   Defense Secretary Mark Esper referred to cities undergoing protests as a "battlespace" ........... Today, the nation is confronting the prospect of civil strife that rivals the racial unrest of the late 1960s in scale, even as civil-military tensions reach levels not seen since the use of National Guard units to respond to anti-Vietnam protests at Kent State university. .................  The Pentagon was “taken aback” by the president’s comments putting Milley in charge ............... “Now you’ve injected the military into a moment in a political way. It just doesn’t seem right.” ........... "I thought I was going to do two things: to see some damage and to talk to the troops," Esper said. "I didn't know where I was going." .......... “It serves no useful purpose, and perpetuates the message that the military is being put in charge of the overall response; that this is a military, rather than a social or political problem to solve” ..........  “The optics of him being in uniform out there might not have been so bad if we didn't have the president out there talking about going to war with the country and using the military and using overwhelming force and Secretary Esper talking about the need to occupy the battlespace” ..........  Officials and experts acknowledge that the president put Milley in a tough position with his remarks on Monday when he said the general was “in charge” of the protest response — despite the fact that the nation’s top military officer is not in the chain of command. But they criticized Milley for embracing his new role all too willingly. ........ One former defense official said former colleagues are concerned that Milley is “a perpetual hype man." ......... “Give him an idea and he will be the loudest, strongest, most extreme advocate of it with bells on,” the former official said. “This has advantages and disadvantages. You’re seeing the disadvantages today.” ............ Esper and Milley “have squandered the moral legitimacy of a nearly 245-year-old institution in a single farcical late spring promenade,” the staffer said. “They have no honor and to hell with them both."

Exclusive: Most Americans sympathize with protests, disapprove of Trump's response - Reuters/Ipsos  More than 55% of Americans said they disapproved of Trump’s handling of the protests, including 40% who “strongly” disapproved, while just one-third said they approved - lower than his overall job approval of 39%  ........ Even among Republicans, only 67% said they approved of the way he had responded, significantly lower than the 82% who liked his overall job performance. ........ Even in rural and suburban areas largely unaffected by the demonstrations, most people expressed support. A little more than half of rural residents said they were sympathetic to the protesters, while seven out of 10 suburbanites agreed. .......... Trump has derided governors who have not asked for military assistance. 

The Myth of Systemic Police Racism Hold officers accountable who use excessive force. But there’s no evidence of widespread racial bias.  .........    George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has revived the Obama-era narrative that law enforcement is endemically racist. On Friday, Barack Obama tweeted that for millions of black Americans, being treated differently by the criminal justice system on account of race is “tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal.’ ” Mr. Obama called on the police and the public to create a “new normal,” in which bigotry no longer “infects our institutions and our hearts.” .......... black children must be instructed to tolerate police abuse just so they can “make it home.” ........ the “stain . . . of fundamental, institutional racism” on law enforcement ......... However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that police officers have with civilians. ............   A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behavior, not race, determine most police actions. .........  In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population. ............ The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, N.J., who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer. ....................  This past weekend, 80 Chicagoans were shot in drive-by shootings, 21 fatally, the victims overwhelmingly black. Police shootings are not the reason that blacks die of homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined; criminal violence is. ..........  A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behavior before and during interactions with police. ..........  Officers are being assaulted and shot at while they try to arrest gun suspects or respond to the growing riots. Police precincts and courthouses have been destroyed with impunity, which will encourage more civilization-destroying violence. ..........  If the Ferguson effect of officers backing off law enforcement in minority neighborhoods is reborn as the Minneapolis effect, the thousands of law-abiding African-Americans who depend on the police for basic safety will once again be the victims. .........  The Minneapolis officers who arrested George Floyd must be held accountable for their excessive use of force and callous indifference to his distress. Police training needs to double down on de-escalation tactics. But Floyd’s death should not undermine the legitimacy of American law enforcement, without which we will continue on a path toward chaos.

George W. Bush laments 'shocking failure' in treatment of black Americans The 43rd president expressed support for protests that have taken place around the world, while denouncing looting and violence. ............  “it remains a shocking failure that many African Americans, especially young African American men, are harassed and threatened in their own country,” Bush said, as he argued that “the doctrine and habits of racial superiority, which once nearly split our country, still threaten our Union” today. .........  His comments stand in stark contrast to those of the current occupant of the White House. .........  the root cause of the protests — disparities in law enforcement and inequities in the criminal justice system. ........  Unlike the current president, who has derided and dismissed protesters as “lowlifes,” “thugs” or anti-fascist operatives, Bush acknowledged the deeply rooted nature of protesters' concerns, an injustice that he said would require “a consistent, courageous and creative effort” to rectify. .........   “Black people see the repeated violation of their rights without an urgent and adequate response from American institutions.” ...........  While Trump on Monday heralded the rule of law during a Rose Garden address announcing his threat to unleash the military on protesters, and dubbed himself “your president of law and order,” Bush on Tuesday noted that such a concept “ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system.” ...........  “There is a better way — the way of empathy, and shared commitment, and bold action, and a peace rooted in justice,” he said. “I am confident that together, Americans will choose the better way.”

Bush administration alums form pro-Biden super PAC   The super PAC, dubbed 43 Alumni For Biden ..........  Trump heads into the race with a massive cash advantage and has held the bully pulpit of the presidency for months while Biden is just starting to venture outside of Delaware following a quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic. However, Trump is facing widespread criticism over his handling of the coronavirus and his rhetoric surrounding protests over the killing of George Floyd, including his threats to activate the military to quell riots.

For Hongkongers fearing for their way of life, Britain will provide an alternative UK is prepared to change its immigration rules if Beijing imposes its national security law on Hong Kong ‘It is precisely because we welcome China as a leading member of the world community that we expect it to abide by international agreements’ ..........  Hong Kong succeeds because its people are free. They can pursue their dreams and scale as many heights as their talents allow. They can debate and share new ideas, expressing themselves as they wish. And they live under the rule of law, administered by independent courts. ..........  China has a greater interest than anyone else in preserving Hong Kong’s success. .........  If China proceeds, this would be in direct conflict with its obligations under the Joint Declaration, a legally binding treaty registered with the United Nations. ........ Today, about 350,000 of the territory’s people hold British National Overseas passports and another 2.5 million would be eligible to apply for them. .......... And it is precisely because we welcome China as a leading member of the world community that we expect it to abide by international agreements. ........ Britain wants nothing more than for Hong Kong to succeed under “one country, two systems”. I hope that China wants the same.



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Monday, June 01, 2020

Coronavirus News (127)

Social distancing strictures fall away as crowds gather to party and protest  Local health officials reported that at least one person tested positive for the coronavirus after being in the lake area last weekend. ....... Similar scenes played out around the country as many Americans, eager to recapture a sense of normalcy and seemingly confident that the risk was low, enjoyed public recreation and seemed unbothered by the crowds. .........  Warning that hospitals were “on the verge of being overrun,” Walz said “demonstrators should wear masks and try to practice social distancing.” ........  President Trump, Vice President Pence and their official parties who gathered with other VIPs to watch the launch at the Kennedy Space Center were not seen wearing face masks. .........  “It’s not a crisis. The actual virus is real, but the pandemic is made up,” said Joe Florio, standing in line with his daughter and grandson. ........... others said they were disbelieving or simply mad at what they considered an exaggerated threat. ..........  “All of us old, belligerent people refuse to wear those d----- things,” Lenny Kempf, an 82-year-old retired home builder, said of face masks as he watched the boats easing into slips at the yacht club in Osage Beach, Mo. “I wish I could wring [Anthony S.] Fauci’s neck” ...........   Two to four weeks after many states began lifting restrictions on restaurants, bars and larger gatherings, cases are rising in areas that had previously dodged the worst of the virus’s impact. Arizona, Mississippi, South Carolina, Utah and Wisconsin all set record highs for new cases reported Friday. Restaurants, gyms, and other businesses have been allowed open for at least two weeks in all of the states. ..............  In many areas, large gatherings are cited as the center of major outbreaks. ........  Rex Archer, director of health for nearby Kansas City, Mo., bemoaned not only the behavior of those in attendance, but also the lack of consistent messaging from the federal government that he said facilitated it. ......... “If we had stronger messages, if the CDC had been allowed to give daily briefs, if the public were hearing the concerns and the risks, we might have been able to do differently” 

Buildings burn, and Trump talks tough. Where are the healers? As protests quickly flipped from peaceful to fiery in more than two dozen U.S. cities, President Trump said little Saturday about the frustrations that drove thousands of people to crowd into downtown streets in the middle of a pandemic. Instead, the president defaulted to his usual style of leadership: tearing people down and talking tough. .......... Trump maintained the strategy he has used throughout his tenure, emphasizing the nation’s divisions and seeking to capitalize on them. .......... There is no magic formula for averting a long, hot summer of street violence and social discord, of raging flames and physical confrontations. ......... the people Americans have chosen to take charge in times of crisis have more often left a leadership vacuum — such as the remarkable absence of police and public officials on the streets of Minneapolis in recent days. ..........  A rare exception came on Friday night in Atlanta. As fires burned and angry crowds banged up against lines of police officers, the city’s police chief, Erika Shields, waded into a clot of protesters and listened to their grievances. ...........  Rep. Ilhan Omar (D), who represents Minneapolis, posted a video saying that “we can’t ask our community to be peaceful if we continue to not deliver justice for them.” .........  City leaders “just said okay, if we just give them the precinct, we’ll feed the beast and they’ll be satisfied,” said Gerold, who left the department in 2014. “That’s just feeding the fire. . . . I think that opened the door for the rest of it.” ..........  Probably no political gesture, speech or legislative action could have prevented this week’s explosion of frustrations. But in the long, ugly history of American political street violence, the enduring images of healing often involve dramatic scenes of politicians and police who, rather than facing off against protesters, waded in for tough, painful confrontations that pointed a path toward reforms. ................ On the night the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated in 1968, as 34 U.S. cities burned in riots of grief and anger, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy stepped before a crowd in an Indianapolis neighborhood already engulfed in protest. Police had declined to accompany Kennedy because the crowd was too hot. Standing on a flatbed truck, Kennedy said to a virtually all-black crowd: “You can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization — black people among black, white people among white, filled with hatred toward one another. “Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.” ...............  The president at that moment, Lyndon Johnson, made no such gesture as U.S. cities burned. He felt betrayed, believing that by winning historic civil rights laws, he had done more for the country’s black population than any president in decades. .............  On Saturday afternoon, Trump urged the nation’s mayors to “get tougher,” and he dismissed protesters as “a lot of radical left bad people.” ........... D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), whom the president had accused of failing to provide police support for Secret Service officers guarding the White House, blasted Trump on Saturday for his brand of leadership. ......... “We need leaders who . . . in times of great turmoil and despair can provide us a sense of calm and a sense of hope. Instead, what we’ve got in the last two days from the White House is the glorification of violence against American citizens,” Bowser said. ..........  Turkey’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that a “racist and fascist approach” led to Floyd’s death and was a symbol of an “unjust order” in the United States. In Iran, people held a candlelight vigil in memory of Floyd. In China, state television broadcast a commentary contending that excessive police force “shows the deep social contradictions” in the United States. .......... Trump continued to talk tough; on Saturday, he reiterated an offer to make the Army available to suppress riots, saying, “We have our military ready, willing and able.” ...........  “This is not a protest,” said Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D). “This is not in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. This is chaos. A protest has purpose. . . . You’re not protesting anything running out with brown liquor in your hands and breaking windows in this city. . . . Go home!” .........   “That’s not going to come from this president, but policing is still mostly a local and state issue,” Zelizer said. “Just as we’ve seen with the pandemic, governors can and will step up.” ........... police brutality and racial bias continue to hold explosive power as political issues, and few elected officials spend much energy confronting the problem. It’s easier for some leaders to traffic in pat slogans, bashing either the police or the protesters. .......... Late Saturday, as the nation braced for another scary night, Trump continued his campaign, tweeting, as ever: “Fake News is the Enemy of the People!”



The case for reopening schools this fall “Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It.” .............  While most countries have shuttered schools, others such as Taiwan have achieved effective responses without closures. In Denmark and Norway, where schools began reopening in mid-April, covid-19 cases and deaths have decreased. Normally, gregarious youngsters are efficient spreaders of respiratory pathogens. But this appears not to be the case with covid-19. .........  much like with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003, children are less likely to become infected with this coronavirus ............  A German study that warns against reopening schools found viral loads in infected children at levels comparable to adults. ........  Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently warned against reopening schools too early, and noted complications in some children that resemble Kawasaki disease. ......... The low numbers of children affected by covid-19 and the new syndrome should be considered in additional context: More than 200 U.S. children were killed last year by flu; some 10,000 others died from various childhood diseases. A rare condition that is not commonly fatal does not justify keeping 55 million American students home into the next academic year. ...........  2 to 4 percent of covid-19 deaths in Britain might be prevented by closing schools and colleges, compared with a potential 17 percent to 21 percent prevented from self-isolating. ...... Other consequences of school closures include recent surges in child abuse; hunger from missed subsidized meals; greater anxiety, depression and isolation. Students with autism, Down syndrome, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and other special needs are at particular risk. But months away from friends and school structure takes a toll on all students, as beleaguered parents everywhere can attest. ........ Although some covid-19 cases regrettably may result from reopening schools, the existing evidence does not warrant inflicting potentially long-term academic, social and vocational disadvantages on millions of children.

Biden leads Trump in Post-ABC poll as president’s coronavirus rating slips  Biden leads Trump 53 percent to 43 percent among registered voters nationally. That 10 percentage-point margin compares with what was a virtual dead heat between the two candidates two months ago, when Biden was at 49 percent and Trump 47 percent. Among all adults, Biden’s margin widens to 13 points (53 percent to 40 percent).......  When a Biden-Trump contest is filtered only through those who currently say they are certain to vote, the former vice president’s margin is cut in half (51-46 percent).  ........ On the question of making voting by mail easier, 87 percent of Democrats and 67 percent of independents favor such moves by the states, while 61 percent of Republicans oppose such changes, including 53 percent who say they are strongly opposed. Overall, 65 percent of adults express support. .......... 40 million people have applied for unemployment insurance    







How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change   Ultimately, it’s going to be up to a new generation of activists to shape strategies that best fit the times. But I believe there are some basic lessons to draw from past efforts that are worth remembering. ......... The overwhelming majority of participants have been peaceful, courageous, responsible, and inspiring. .........   throughout American history, it’s often only been in response to protests and civil disobedience that the political system has even paid attention to marginalized communities. But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices — and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands. ....... the bottom line is this: if we want to bring about real change, then the choice isn’t between protest and politics. We have to do both. We have to mobilize to raise awareness, and we have to organize and cast our ballots to make sure that we elect candidates who will act on reform. ........ the more specific we can make demands for criminal justice and police reform, the harder it will be for elected officials to just offer lip service to the cause and then fall back into business as usual once protests have gone away 



Coronavirus May Be a Blood Vessel Disease, Which Explains Everything Many of the infection’s bizarre symptoms have one thing in common ........  In April, blood clots emerged as one of the many mysterious symptoms attributed to Covid-19, a disease that had initially been thought to largely affect the lungs in the form of pneumonia. Quickly after came reports of young people dying due to coronavirus-related strokes. Next it was Covid toes — painful red or purple digits. .........  40% of deaths from Covid-19 are related to cardiovascular complications, and the disease starts to look like a vascular infection instead of a purely respiratory one. .......... “All these Covid-associated complications were a mystery. We see blood clotting, we see kidney damage, we see inflammation of the heart, we see stroke, we see encephalitis [swelling of the brain],” says William Li, MD, president of the Angiogenesis Foundation. “A whole myriad of seemingly unconnected phenomena that you do not normally see with SARS or H1N1 or, frankly, most infectious diseases.” ......... “If you start to put all of the data together that’s emerging, it turns out that this virus is probably a vasculotropic virus, meaning that it affects the [blood vessels]” ............ the SARS-CoV-2 virus can infect the endothelial cells that line the inside of blood vessels. ....... damage to endothelial cells in the lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, and intestines in people with Covid-19. .........  A respiratory virus infecting blood cells and circulating through the body is virtually unheard of. ............ infection of the blood vessels may be how the virus travels through the body and infects other organs — something that’s atypical of respiratory infections. ....... The good news is that if Covid-19 is a vascular disease, there are existing drugs that can help protect against endothelial cell damage. ........ “It turns out that both statins and ACE inhibitors are extremely protective on vascular dysfunction,” Mehra says. “Most of their benefit in the continuum of cardiovascular illness — be it high blood pressure, be it stroke, be it heart attack, be it arrhythmia, be it heart failure — in any situation the mechanism by which they protect the cardiovascular system starts with their ability to stabilize the endothelial cells.” ....... “What we’re saying is that maybe the best antiviral therapy is not actually an antiviral therapy. The best therapy might actually be a drug that stabilizes the vascular endothelial. We’re building a drastically different concept.” 


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Saturday, May 30, 2020

Coronavirus News (126)

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Gripped by disease, unemployment and outrage at the police, America plunges into crisis  A global pandemic has now killed more than 100,000 Americans and left 40 million unemployed in its wake. Protests — some of them violent — have once again erupted in spots across the country over police killings of black Americans. .........  “The threads of our civic life could start unraveling, because everybody’s living in a tinderbox” ...........  “People are seething about all kinds of things” ........ “There are major turning points and ruptures in history. . . . This is one of these moments, but we’ve not seen how it will fully play out.” ..........  some said the tumult, set in the broader context of the twin health and economic emergencies, could mark a rupture as dramatic as signature turning points in the country’s history, from the economic dislocation of the Great Depression to the social convulsions of 1968. ........ the past is filled with events whose outcomes have not been as sweeping as they seemed to portend ........ the European revolutions of 1848 — famously said to be the “turning point at which modern history failed to turn” — and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which exposed lethal failures but did not cause political transformation. ...........  Floyd’s death followed the slaying of a black man, Ahmaud Arbery, who was jogging in Georgia, and a viral dust-up in New York’s Central Park when a white woman called the police on a black man there to bird-watch. ...........  A president’s impeachment, demonstrations over police killings and even global pandemics all have precedents. But their confluence in such a short span of time — under this president, who consistently pushes the boundaries of historic norms associated with his office — has exacerbated the nation’s sense of unease. .........  for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’ — whether it’s while dealing with the health care system, or interacting with the criminal justice system, or jogging down the street, or just watching birds in a park. ........... Trump responded to the latest crisis Friday as he often does: by lashing out. .......   the unrest was a result of “generations of pain, of anguish” over racism in policing. ............  Trump, he said, seems to see the unrest as a potentially helpful “political issue,” if he can position himself as a law-and-order candidate cracking down on anarchy and possibly distract from the pandemic. ......... “Is this going to be the summer of covid-19? Or is this going to be the summer of urban unrest?” Brinkley said. “And Trump does not want it to be the summer of covid-19.” ..........  at a time when what is most needed is thoughtful, calm, deliberate leadership, we have the opposite 




Pandemic’s overall death toll in U.S. likely surpassed 100,000 weeks ago A state-by-state analysis shows that deaths officially attributed to covid- 19 only partially account for unusually high mortality during the pandemic ........ Between March 1 and May 9, the nation recorded an estimated 101,600 excess deaths, or deaths beyond the number that would normally be expected for that time of year .........   Allies of President Trump have claimed that the government tally is inflated, contending that it includes people with other medical conditions who would have died with or without an infection. ........  an examination of excess deaths by state paints a portrait of two Americas, one pummeled by the pandemic and the other only lightly scathed. ..........  the gap between excess deaths and official covid-19 tallies has been particularly pronounced in several states that currently have the least restrictive social distancing rules in place.  

South Korea closes schools again amid coronavirus spike, days after reopening School districts in the United States that have been closed for months are now trying to figure out when and how they can reopen safely. Some are watching how other countries are handling the reopening of schools, including South Korea, which has been successful in containing the spread of the virus. ............  After putting plastic barriers in many schools to separate students while they eat and learn, disinfecting, and other preventive steps, some schools began to open last week for the first time in several months ..........  But new clusters of the coronavirus have been identified in recent days, leading the government to close not only schools but also parks and museums — and people are being urged again not to gather in big numbers.   





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Friday, May 29, 2020

Coronavirus News (125)

Pakistan locusts




राष्ट्रवादको ‘महामारी’ अघि राष्ट्रवाद कोरोना भाइरसभन्दा चर्को र खुङ्खार अवतारमा ताण्डवरत छ ।Trump announces unprecedented action against China announced a slew of retaliatory measures that will plunge US-China relations deeper into crisis. ........... decried the way Beijing has "raided our factories" and "gutted" American industry, casting Beijing as a central foil he will run against in the remaining months of his re-election campaign .........  the US will strip Hong Kong of the special policy measures on extradition, trade, travel and customs Washington had previously granted it. ............ the US would also take action on a number of other fronts, including barring "certain foreign nationals from China" from entering the US and sanctioning officials in China and Hong Kong for their direct or indirect role in "smothering" Hong Kong's freedoms. ........... "US-China relations are in full crisis," said Richard Fontaine, the CEO of the Center for a New American Security. "We've hit the floor and keep falling through it. Beijing will retaliate in response to the Hong Kong steps the administration takes, and then the ball will be back in the President's court. Things will get worse -- potentially much worse -- before they get any better." ..........  revoking Hong Kong's special status and extending Trump's tariffs to the enclave "would have very little immediate impact," given that in 2019, the US imported less than $5 billion of goods from Hong Kong that Trump could hit with new tariffs. ......  Beijing could strike back in ways that would hurt American businesses. .............  the State Department's travel advisory for Hong Kong will be revised "to reflect the increased danger of surveillance and punishment by the Chinese state security apparatus." ..........  "Beijing moving to end Hong Kong's separate political system should trigger an American response, including by terminating Hong Kong's special economic status. The administration has zigged and zagged on questions of democracy and human rights abroad and I'm glad it is standing up."  ..........  visa restrictions on Chinese graduate students and researchers could be among them. .................  Shortly after Trump's remarks, the White House issued a presidential proclamation suspending US entry for graduate and postgraduate students and researchers from China that takes effect at noon on Monday and remains in effect until it is terminated by the President. ............  In October 2019, the State Department began requiring Chinese diplomats posted in the US to report all their meetings with state and local officials, as well as visits to educational and research institutions. And in March, the State Department imposed caps on the number of Chinese nationals who may be employed at five Chinese media entities after designating them as foreign diplomatic missions as opposed to journalistic outlets.

Our Economy Was Just Blasted Years Into the Future The crisis is compressing and accelerating trends that would have taken decades to play out .......... Last week, Seidman Becker launched Clear into a brand new digital space — “touchless technology,” a play built around the fear that the coronavirus may lurk on any surface, anywhere. Against this threat, airports are deploying a new level of security including thermal cameras, all but assuring exceptionally long lines once people resume flying. ...........  hands-free navigation: Clear will upload its clients’ Covid-19 test results, ID, air tickets, credit card, and health quiz. This, along with iris and face scans, will allow them to pass through the new phalanx faster. .........  The concept is now spreading well beyond the airport. Clear, along with Swiftlane and Envoy, are among the companies that have begun to offer similar services to office buildings. They say the technology is deployable anywhere someone needs to prove identity or take out their wallet to pay, raising the specter of biometric entrance to many or most of the places people frequent. The possibilities are limitless. ...................... Big Tech companies were vacuuming up data from laptops, front doors, appliances, kitchens, living rooms, and smartphones and selling the resulting market intelligence for hundreds of billions of dollars a year. ...............  In this makeover, “touchless” becomes more like “wireless,” a benign appellation meant to milk the zeitgeist. ............. Covid-19 had enabled technology to leapfrog into an immediate future of touchless elevators, doors, and trash cans. ..........   In the 16th and 17th centuries, smallpox, measles, and other diseases brought by the Spanish wiped out up to 90% of the South and Central American population, utterly transforming the historic order. Conversely, the global flu pandemic of 1918 to 1919 appeared to establish no new norms .............  Rather, the approximately 50 million flu deaths seemed to blend into the general slaughter of World War I and go on to be all but forgotten until modern historians began to write about the calamity in the 1970s. .............  acceleration is a natural byproduct of crises like pandemics, which “tend to jolt the current system.” ........... Against the backdrop of a two-century period of faster and faster transformation, the coronavirus is compressing and further accelerating the arc of events. .............  look for one after the other to embrace lesser, limited autonomy such as lane changing, highway driving, and automatic parking. ............  A primary economic bright spot in 2019 was the lowest-paid tier of workers, whose wages rose by a dramatic 4.5% after decades of a shrinking share of the economic pie. Companies were snapping up some of the hardest-core unemployed — among them the long-time jobless, felons, and drug users, necessary because, with the unemployment rate at 3.6%, there was no one else to fill the jobs. ..................   42% of those laid off won’t get their jobs back. .........  The virus clearly changed consumer behavior; in just a few weeks, e-commerce achieved years of growth. .......... the opportunity for vulture investment firms .........   For years, trends have favored so-called “superstar companies” — Big Tech and other mega-businesses that typically attract the best research talent, buy up the most valuable new patents, and cut the most advantageous deals. The Covid-19 age is entrenching their dominance ...........  during the Great Depression, the most important inventions, regardless of the creator, ended up in the hands of the largest companies 

Katrina was disastrous for restaurants. The pandemic will be apocalyptic. I lived through one catastrophe for my industry. This one is worse. ............    Hurricane Katrina took everything away from me in one day almost 15 years ago .......  Opening day was a madhouse. Everyone was so happy to be back in a restaurant with full service, complete with wine and real glasses. I’ve never seen such joy and emotion in a restaurant dining room. People were crying. I’m choking up just writing this 15 years later. From that moment on, we were busier than we were before the storm. Six months later, I opened my second restaurant, and the business grew from there. ................   We started offering takeout and delivery but stopped after a week: Our guests weren’t observing social distancing, and no one was wearing a mask. We were also at what turned out to be the height of cases and deaths in the city then. We waited almost two weeks, and when we felt we had safe systems in place, we started up again. But takeout paid only 6 percent of our pre-pandemic business. ..........   the name of the game is survival. We are opening with skeleton crews. We are not going to make money, and we’ve spent all of our reserves. ...........  I find it appalling that the business interruption insurance I have being paying for the past 20 years is absolutely useless. We pay $40,000 to $50,000 a year for coverage to protect us if we’re forced to close. Like many restaurants, we have not received a dime, and it seems unlikely we will, because many insurance policies included loosely worded exemptions for viruses. ..............  My partner said at the start of this crisis: “Donald, you need to be more pessimistic.” 

Former CDC director says U.S. led the world before becoming a global health ‘laggard’    When Tom Frieden looks at the agency he once managed, he’s like a former coach of a championship team watching it suffer under a domineering, impetuous team owner. ..........   “Look at the U.S. role in HIV and malaria under George W. Bush. . . . Look at Ebola under President Obama. The U.S. was clearly the global leader,” he said during an interview. “Now, with covid-19, we’re a global laggard.” ...........  He’s particularly critical of a Trump administration strategy that sidelines the nation’s top public health agency by preventing it from communicating more directly and frequently with the public. ............   The federal response to the pandemic has been exceptionally poor for a country exceptionally rich in knowledge, innovation and resources. .........  In contrast, Frieden has high praise for Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who drew Trump’s ire and right-wing fire for telling the truth. Her early and repeated warnings about the potential devastation of the coronavirus were bad news the president didn’t want. “She got it right,” Frieden said. “I mean, exactly right. At exactly the right time. In exactly the right words.”   

In Puerto Rico, an economic disaster looms amid fears of coronavirus  The bandaged safety net that has buoyed Puerto Ricans imperfectly in times of crisis has weakened for many during the pandemic. It has given way to new levels of scarcity on an island archipelago pummeled in recent years by hurricanes, earthquakes, political upheaval and bankruptcy. ............   Vázquez Garced’s stay-at-home policies curbed new infections without overwhelming Puerto Rico’s compromised health system. But an economic disaster is looming. ............   So many U.S. citizens in the territory applied for unemployment insurance in the past several weeks that the system collapsed, and applications had to be processed by hand. The government received more than 120,000 new applications for food stamps; 30 percent of applicants are still waiting to receive benefits, according to government data. About 1 in 5 residents have received stimulus checks, the government said, and the rest will not receive them until at least June. Meanwhile, food and utility costs are rising, and what was left of the middle class has been decimated. ............  They used a cannon to kill mosquitoes, taking a blanket approach, and shutting off the motors of the economy given their lack of capacity to carry out a more precise public health strategy ...........  “I never imagined having to do this at my age. I am a 45-year-old professional with a master’s degree and I should not have to ask for money from anyone,” Nolla said. “The last thing I want to do is depend on my family. I am blessed, but it’s humiliating.” ..........  “This is much worse than Maria.”  

'Many will starve': locusts devour crops and livelihoods in Pakistan Farmers faced with worst plague in recent history say they have been left to fend for themselves 



Coronavirus started spreading in the U.S. in January, CDC says By early February, there was "cryptic circulation" of the virus.

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Thursday, May 28, 2020

Coronavirus News (124)

GOP's no-mask caucus: 'Can you smell through that mask?' - CNNPolitics

GOP operatives worry Trump will lose both the presidency and Senate majority   "Put it this way, I am very glad my boss isn't on the ballot this cycle," said one high-ranking GOP Senate aide. ........ Trump's response to the pandemic and the subsequent economic fallout have significantly damaged his bid for a second term — and that the effects are starting to hurt Republicans more broadly. .......... the trend is bleeding into key Senate races. The GOP already had a difficult task of defending 23 Senate seats in 2020. The job of protecting its slim 3-seat majority has only gotten harder as the pandemic has unfolded. States like Arizona and North Carolina, once thought to be home to winnable Senate races now appear in jeopardy. .......... could be a wipeout for the GOP. ........ The broader fear among Republicans is that the election becomes a referendum on Trump's performance during the pandemic. Coupled with a cratered economy, the effect could be devastating by both depressing the Republican faithful and turning off swing voters. .......... "This is the one thing he (Trump) cannot change the subject on," said a Republican strategist. "This is not a political opponent, this is not going way and he has never had to deal with something like this." ...............  there is a serious worry about bleeding support from both seniors and self-described independent men. ......... GOP-held Senate seats in Georgia and Montana could be in trouble   

GOP's no-mask caucus: 'Can you smell through that mask?'   A contingent of House Republicans continues to defy the recommendations of public health experts and Congress' top physician to wear face coverings to limit the spread of Covid-19, refusing to wear them on the floor of the chamber, in the hallways of the Capitol or when chatting with aides and colleagues -- even when they're unable to maintain a social distance. ..........  "Can you smell through that mask?" Rep. Clay Higgins, a Republican of Louisiana, told CNN on Thursday. "Then you're not stopping any sort of a virus. It's part of the dehumanization of the children of God. You're participating in it by wearing a mask." ..............  "What you're wearing is a bacteria trap; it's not helping your health or anybody else's," said Higgins, who had just gotten off a cramped elevator with two other GOP members, none of whom were wearing masks. .................. Higgins' statement is not supported by the science. Smells do not carry viral particles. ....... Asked about Fauci's and Adams' recommendations to wear masks, Biggs said sarcastically: "Yeah, of course, see they've been right on everything, haven't they?" .........  People can catch coronavirus at any time, even immediately after testing negative. And people can spread the virus before they develop any symptoms. ............ "I wear it for the reason that I believe it is effective," Fauci said on CNN. "It is not 100% effective -- I mean, it's sort of respect for the other person and have that other person respect you. You wear a mask. They wear a mask. You protect each other." ............ And even though the government's top scientists have repeatedly briefed members of Congress, some Republicans seem to have misinterpreted what the science says. ............ Some Republicans seem to misunderstand the science. Rep. Ted Yoho, a Florida Republican, told CNN earlier this month that "there's just no need" to wear a mask, citing "herd immunity." The Florida Republican added: "Viruses do what viruses do," contending that the "only way you're going to get" immunity "is to get exposed." ............  "I have a different medical opinion," he said of wearing masks. ........... When Republican Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, who was wearing a face covering, approached a maskless Scalise late last month, Walden said to him: "Nice mask." Scalise responded by pointing to his face: "I wear this for Halloween," prompting laughter from a handful of members surrounding them. ............. "It's harder to do with a mask," Scalise said of talking with his colleagues. "Also, it's better to talk in person than do it over the phone." ....... He added that sometimes he stays in the chamber rather than return to his office quickly, because he sees "someone on the floor and you have something to talk" about. "That's the best way to work through these issues."  



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