Sunday, April 26, 2020

Coronavirus News (56)



France, Italy and Spain prepare to ease coronavirus lockdowns Several other EU countries have already announced a tentative easing of restrictions
Global coronavirus death toll passes 200,000
Kashmir, Under Siege and Lockdown, Faces a Mental Health Crisis Years of strife left a generation traumatized. India’s clampdown disrupted daily life. Now the battle against the coronavirus has further isolated and scarred a people with little access to help. ........... Since her son was arrested, Ms. Begun has become gaunt and unsteady, but she and her family say her worst afflictions have been mental and emotional. She now takes sertraline and lithium, both antidepressants. She tried twice to commit suicide, once by consuming rat poison and again by jumping into a river. .......... a state of hopelessness has morphed into a severe psychological crisis. Mental health workers say Kashmir is witnessing an alarming increase in instances of depression, anxiety and psychotic events. ......... a rise in suicides and an increase in already disturbingly high rates of domestic abuse. ............ One season is marked by the corpses of teenage boys felled by Indian forces. Another brings an epidemic of dead eyes, as Kashmiris refer to protesters left blind after being struck in the eyes by pellets fired by police officers. ........... Security forces flooded the area, cut off roads, shut down landlines, cellphone lines and the internet, and arrested thousands of Kashmiris, from students to top elected officials. Some have been released, but many remain in jail. Though some phone and internet service have been restored, they remain nothing close to pre-crackdown levels. .......... Many Kashmiris, who used social media to socialize because it was dangerous to hang out in the streets, now feel completely isolated. Children have remained out of school for months. ............ He is being held in a jail hundreds of miles away on vague charges of being a “threat to peace,” family members said. They don’t have money to visit. When the cellphone network was switched back on in October, the authorities promised a video call. That has not yet happened. .............

Ms. Begum, increasingly demoralized, said her son had been “stolen” from her. Ms. Begum says she sees her son in dreams, his face covered in bandages, his hands shaking in fear. He begs for water, but she feels chained, unable to move.

........ Bilal Sultan, a politician, was placed with hardened criminals, he said. He slipped into depression. In February, he said, he was set free because his doctors were afraid he might kill himself. ..........

“I was a very strong man,” Mr. Sultan, 55, said recently at his house in Srinagar. “Now I fear my own children.”

........

Nearly 1.8 million Kashmiris, or nearly half of all adults, have some form of mental disorder

......... teenagers traumatized by violence; mothers too worried about their incarcerated children to sleep; businesspeople owing a mountain of debt that is climbing higher and higher under a lockdown that has shuttered nearly everything. ......... Last year, Ms. Rehman visited a psychiatrist, who diagnosed acute depression. She doesn’t sleep for days. She found some relief by spending hours with a caged parrot, Noor, that her family kept. ............. So is Ms. Begun, the mother of the imprisoned Mr. Mir. As days get longer and weather begins to warm, she finds herself staring at a tractor parked outside her house. Mr. Mir bought it on a loan. The bank is now threatening to seize the family’s home. ............. The desperation has incapacitated her. She can’t even cook .........



Fresh air at last! Spanish children go outdoors for first time in six weeks
Five things to know about the turmoil in the oil market

Richard Branson races to find Virgin Atlantic buyer Sir Richard Branson has set a deadline of the end of May to find a buyer to save stricken airline Virgin Atlanic from collapse



Facebook takes on Zoom with 50-way video calls in Messenger Rooms
Introducing Messenger Rooms and More Ways to Connect When You’re Apart Over the years we’ve focused on how to help people feel present with one another even when they’re not in the same place. Today, video helps most of us bridge the distance. Tomorrow, we’ll be turning to more immersive platforms like AR and VR. ........ Spending time with each other should be spontaneous, not strained. So to help people feel like they’re together, even when they are — or have to be — physically apart, we’re announcing features across our products that make video chat and live video easier and more natural. ...... Rooms will soon hold up to 50 people with no time limit. ...... You can start and share rooms on Facebook through News Feed, Groups and Events, so it’s easy for people to drop by. Soon we’ll add ways to create rooms from Instagram Direct, WhatsApp and Portal, too. ........ If you have the Messenger app, you can play with AR effects like bunny ears, and new AI-powered features like immersive 360 backgrounds and mood lighting. ......... Messenger Rooms is rolling out in some countries this week and will expand to the rest of the world in coming weeks. ........ Soon you’ll be able to have group voice and video calls with up to eight people on WhatsApp. ....... If you have limited data or a spotty connection, you now have the option to listen to the audio only. ....... most public live videos are now available on the web and some Pages can share a toll-free number that lets you listen to the audio through any telephone. ......... To help you support some of your favorite creators, we’re expanding Stars to more Pages and more countries. Once you buy Stars you can send them to creators while they’re streaming, and they’ll earn 1 cent for every Star. ........ To help people find meaningful relationships even when they can’t meet in person, we’re adding an option in Facebook Dating to invite people to a virtual date. When they accept, you’ll start a video chat in Messenger to get to know each other. This will roll out in the coming months.

An aggrieved Trump blames press for furor over disinfectant comments
Trump says briefings 'not worth the effort' amid fallout from disinfectant comments The president remained behind closed doors after advisers reportedly warned him that the briefings were hurting his campaign
Debacle of Trump's coronavirus disinfectant comments could be tipping point The US president plans to ‘pare back’ his daily coronavirus briefings after falsely claiming his suggestion to inject cleaning products had been ‘sarcastic’
Coronavirus live updates: US cases top 900,000, Birx says social distancing will last through summer
Biden should let Trump self-destruct
Publicly traded firms get $365M in small-business loans
Thousands gather without social distancing to protest Wisconsin's stay-at-home order

Oil markets hit a historic first this week when prices dropped so low they went negative, falling to as little as negative $40 a barrel.

........ oil companies are running out of space for their product. ...... traders rushed to free themselves of contracts for oil they weren’t physically able to take possession of. ....... The negative price reflected traders’ willingness to pay others to take their oil contracts and figure out what to do with the product. ........ there may be only 21 million barrels’ worth of free storage left in a country still producing 12 million barrels of oil a day ......... Nearly all oil in the U.S. is produced using the controversial method of pushing water and chemicals deep into rock crevices to push out oil. ....... The process itself is more expensive — it might cost as much as $10 million to drill a fracked well versus $2 million for one with a conventional bobbing derrick. ........ Gas was selling at an average price of about $1.80 a gallon this week and fell as low as $0.78 at a gas station in rural Minnesota earlier this month. ....... the economic impacts of job loss within the 10 million-employee industry.



USDA let millions of pounds of food rot while food-bank demand soared State officials and growers say Trump’s Agriculture Department has been woefully slow to respond to farm crisis caused by coronavirus. ........ Tens of millions of pounds of American-grown produce is rotting in fields as food banks across the country scramble to meet a massive surge in demand, a two-pronged disaster that has deprived farmers of billions of dollars in revenue while millions of newly jobless Americans struggle to feed their families. ....... “It’s not a lack of food, it’s that the food is in one place and the demand is somewhere else and they haven’t been able to connect the dots. ......... Images of farmers destroying tomatoes, piling up squash, burying onions and dumping milk shocked many Americans who remain fearful of supply shortages. ....... Blueberry prices are about half of what they were this time last year ........

the coronavirus catastrophe has laid bare just how tied up in red tape the USDA’s commodity buying system can be

. The process typically takes months from start to finish. And the department has historically focused on buying foods that can be stored for long periods — like canned fruit and meats and cheeses — and so is not accustomed to handling an influx of fresh food. ........ “There is no reason these high-quality, nutritious, farmer-grown products should be left in facilities to rot when there are so many American families who are suddenly faced with food insecurity” ........ The precipitous drop in demand left many growers with no choice but to trash excess food or leave it in the fields because the cost of picking, packing and storing the crops would only put them further in the hole. Some with more resources in hand took on the cost of harvesting and donating the food themselves, but the gut-wrenching reality is that crops are being abandoned on an unprecedented scale. .......... A handful of states, including Florida and California, set up online clearinghouses to try to match up excess food with need in their area, but the high volumes of surplus produce often can’t be absorbed by local food banks alone, making national distribution important for making even a dent in the waste. ........ Paul Allen, co-owner of RC Hatton Farms, is currently disking hundreds of acres of cabbage — a process that grinds crops into the soil — because there’s simply no market for it. It's heartbreaking to watch, but the cabbage he grows is typically used for coleslaw at restaurant chains like KFC. Allen estimates he’s left about 8 million pounds of cabbage and 4.5 million pounds of green beans in the fields. ....... “We’ve been devastated,” Allen said. His company has already donated hundreds of thousands of pounds of vegetables to food banks. .......... Farmers in Florida, which provides much of the fresh produce to the eastern half of the U.S. during the winter and spring, left about 75 percent of the lettuce crop unharvested, along with significant portions of the state’s sweet corn, cabbage and squash. Up to 250 million pounds of tomatoes could end up left in the fields ........

"We are attempting to move at lightning speed," David Tuckwiller, director of commodity and procurement at the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, said last week.

The department is greatly compressing its typical procurement timeline with the goal of shipping the first food boxes by May 15, officials said. .........

At that point, it will have been two months since the food service supply chain blew up.

......... DiMare’s company, DiMare Fresh, has donated over a million pounds of tomatoes to food banks in his area, but he still had to leave some 10 million pounds in the field ....... Some growers have gotten creative. When Idaho farmer Ryan Cranney suddenly found himself with millions of potatoes he couldn’t sell, he decided to pile them up outside and invite the public to come take what they’d like for free.



Antibody surveys suggesting vast undercount of coronavirus infections may be unreliable confirmed COVID-19 cases are an even smaller fraction of the true number of people infected than many had estimated and that the vast majority of infections are mild ...... some of the researchers are on record advocating for an early end to lockdowns and other control measures, and claim the new prevalence figures support that call. ....... Some observers warn the coronavirus’ march through the population has only just begun, and that even if the antibody results can be believed, they don’t justify easing controls. “You would have hoped for 45% or even 60% positive” ........ “That would mean that there is lots of silent transmission, and a lot of immunity in the population. It now looks like, sadly, that’s not true. Even the high numbers are relatively small.” ....... the study suggested the virus kills only 0.37% of the people infected. (The rate for seasonal influenza is about 0.1%.) The team concluded in a two-page summary that “15% of the population can no longer be infected with SARS-CoV-2, and the process of reaching herd immunity is already underway.” They recommended that politicians start to lift some of the regions’ restrictions. ......... the virus is less serious than feared and that the effects of long shutdowns may be just as bad if not worse than the damage the virus could do. ......... no meaningful conclusions could be drawn from the antibody study based on the limited information Streeck presented. Drosten cited uncertainty about what level of antibodies provides protection and noted that the study sampled entire households. That can lead to overestimating infections, because people living together often infect each other. ........ “If policy makers were aware from the outset that the Covid-19 death toll would be closer to that of seasonal flu … would they have risked tens of millions of jobs and livelihoods?” ........ they collected blood samples from 200 passersby on a street corner. That evening, they processed the samples—and shared the results with a reporter from The Boston Globe. Sixty-three were positive—31.5%. ..... Even if the antibody surveys show a COVID-19 death rate well below 1%, says Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, control measures will be needed for a long time to avoid overwhelmed hospitals. “The seroprevalence data only confirm the challenge we face. The data [these studies] are generating … is just showing how hard this is.”



For survivors of severe COVID-19, beating the virus is just the beginning COVID-19’s immediate assault on the body is extensive. It targets the lungs, but a lack of oxygen and widespread inflammation can also damage the kidneys, liver, heart, brain, and other organs. .......... Although it’s too early to say what lasting disabilities COVID-19 survivors will face, clues come from studies of severe pneumonia—an infection that inflames the air sacs in the lungs, as COVID-19 does. Some of these infections progress to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), in which those sacs fill with fluid. That condition sometimes leads to scarring that can cause long-term breathing problems, Ferrante says, but studies show that most ARDS patients eventually recover their lung function. ........ After any severe case of pneumonia, a combination of underlying chronic diseases and prolonged inflammation seems to increase the risk of future illnesses, including heart attack, stroke, and kidney disease ........... people hospitalized for pneumonia have a risk of heart disease about four times as high as that of age-matched controls in the year after their release, and about 1.5 times as high in each of the next 9 years. COVID-19 might prompt “a big increase in these sorts of events” .......... 67% of reported COVID-19 patients from England, Wales, and Northern Ireland receiving “advanced respiratory support” died. A study in a smaller patient group in China found that only 14% survived after going on a ventilator. ........ even when people are well enough to leave the ICU or the hospital, many still have the virus ......... Another risk for hospitalized patients is delirium—a state of confused thinking that can lead to long-term cognitive impairments such as memory deficits. “What we’re finding in COVID is that there’s a ton of delirium” ........... this coronavirus, like the ones that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome, can directly infiltrate and damage the brain. And bodywide inflammation caused by the virus can also limit blood flow to the brain and kill brain cells. ............ people who have cognitive impairment after being hospitalized for a critical illness, which he describes as “Sudoku and Scrabble on steroids.” ........

Others are preparing for a surge in mental health problems, among them anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder following the psychological stress of severe disease.

A study of people hospitalized for SARS found that more than one-third had moderate to severe symptoms of depression and anxiety 1 year later. ....... “This we’re-all-in-this-together attitude around coronavirus may actually provide hope that wasn’t there before.”





How Is the Coronavirus Pandemic Affecting Climate Change? Sure, emissions have fallen. But a closer look at how the global crisis is influencing the environment reveals some surprising dynamics. ........ It tricked nations into blaming one another—the US being the primary antagonist—instead of working together to stop it. ........ It is the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, and it is climate change. The two are intimately linked: As you’d expect, emissions have fallen as people drive less and industries grind to a halt. But dig deeper into how the pandemic is influencing the climate, and surprising and often counterintuitive dynamics begin to emerge. ....... we can expect economies to roar back with fervor to make up for lost income ......... This Is Our Chance to Reinvent Cities ....... Cars killed over 6,000 pedestrians in 2018 in the US, and air pollution kills perhaps 200,000 more here each year. ........ But maybe our suddenly clearer skies don’t have to be temporary. We’re getting a taste of how much more livable our cities would be if we designed them for people, not cars. Closing roads to cars altogether—as cities like Boston and Oakland, California, have done during the crisis—means people can walk and bike in safety, itself a boost to public health. ......... a clearer picture of what we’ve slowly kind of numbed ourselves to. Cities are profoundly dominated by vehicles ........ Every Nation Needs a Big, Bold, New Green Deal

Global coronavirus death toll hits 200,000
TRUMP HINTS AT CANCELLING CORONAVIRUS PRESS BRIEFINGS: 'WHAT IS THE PURPOSE?'
Trump goes into hiding
California heat wave draws large crowds to beaches despite stay-at-home order "We've had very good compliance," a lifeguard said. "People are spreading out."

Distance Learning Isn’t Working Instead of trying to move classes online, schools should support parents in educating their children. ........ It’s exhausting for parents with one kid, but with three or four, it’s practically impossible. Many of these parents have told me they’ve ended the day in tears—or spent the entire day in tears. .......... She told the camera, “Listen. It’s not working … this distance-learning thing. It’s impossible!” She was “falling to pieces,” she said.

“If we don’t die of corona, we’ll die of distance learning …

Please. Turn it down. Foot off the gas. Leave them be.” .............. That’s why many homeschoolers call what they do “home education,” not homeschooling. Home education involves an understanding that children can learn while doing everyday tasks; baking can teach math, science, and home economics. Sitting on the couch reading Charlotte’s Web to kids in grades five and three and kindergarten counts as “school.” So does taking a nature walk and creating a nature journal. ............

One-size-fits-all education barely works in a classroom, but it is completely unmanageable with kids spread out across their various households working independently.

......... Most kids aren’t going back to school this calendar year; school districts have already conceded as much, as have many universities. Parents are in this not just for a few weeks, but for a few months. .......... “This is a major conflict in our family because we do not believe in this amount of screen time, and the kids thrive without it. Yet it is expected in order for online learning to occur.” ....... When I chose home education for my children, I had the benefit of years of reading about educational theory and philosophy and best practices, in anticipation of teaching my children when they became school-age. Parents across the country have been thrown into the deep end of the pool, and they could use much more support. ......... Parents, teachers, and administrators need to understand the unique nature of education at home. Every family looks different and has different needs. .... Parents, not teachers or administrators, are the ones in the trenches—and so parents, not teachers or administrators, need to set the schedule and priorities.

What matters most is health of real economy, not fiscal deficit: Rajan The government has to think about a staggered restart to the economy, former RBI Guv said.
प्रहरीले जाहेरी दर्ता गर्न मानेको छैन : राजेन्द्र महतो नागरिकको जीवनरक्षा हुन्छ भनेर कसरी पत्याउने ? : बाबुराम भट्टराईको प्रश्न
Face Masks Can Prove Tricky for Those With Eyeglasses Science offers solutions for when your specs fog up

GOP Gov. Hogan to Trump: Stop coronavirus 'misinformation,' saying 'whatever pops in your head'
Coronavirus updates: CDC adds 6 new possible symptoms of COVID-19 Previously only fever, cough and shortness of breath were possible symptoms.

'No evidence' recovered virus patients are immune: Live updates WHO warning over 'immunity passports' comes as death toll from coronavirus pandemic reaches 200,000. ....... The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations' outbreaks. ......... Digital contract tracing has been used in China, Singapore and South Korea. ...... Apple and Google plan to release their contact-tracing apps in May.......... "Anybody, any state, any city that doesn't pay attention to those factual health care indicators that evidence is endangering themselves and their people and the whole idea of having a restart to have an economy again, recover, it could all backfire because the disease reasserts." ........... De Blasio said the recovery must address the "structural racism" and disparities that have been exposed during the pandemic, announcing the city would create a "Fair Recovery Task Force" to help New Yorkers recover from the crisis. ........ "Around 2008, we lost 8.7 million jobs and the whole thing. Right now, we're losing that many jobs about every 10 days," he said. "And so … the economic lift for policymakers is an extraordinary one." ......... there were 75-100 people at the "The Surf's Up Shred the Tidal Wave of Tyranny" protest Saturday morning ....... Dubbed "A Day of Liberty San Diego Freedom Rally" ........ These symptoms may appear 2-14 days after exposure to the virus:

• Fever
• Cough
• Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
• Chills
• Repeated shaking with chills
• Muscle pain
• Headache
• Sore throat
• New loss of taste or smell

'No evidence' recovered virus patients are immune: Live updates WHO warning over 'immunity passports' comes as death toll from coronavirus pandemic reaches 200,000.

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