#[LIVE] Coronavirus Covid-19 Real Time Live Counter Cases

[helloamhere]

consuming data science during covid-19

Hey friends!  I dunno if anyone needs to hear it, but in case it helps, I decided to share this here. I’m not an infectious disease or epidemiology expert. I am an expert in data science, large-scale statistics and over-time behavioral change modeling; and I am very experienced in telling bullshit from rigorous work, as that’s half my job description most of the time.  There’s a lot of bullshit going around about coronavirus. That’s a natural and expected consequence of having the whole world’s focus on something. As we get deeper into the response in the US, we can especially expect to see a lot of non-expert “data scientist” takes which include a lot of graphs. Some of these might be panic-inducing, and some of these might claim that all the response is overhyped. 

These can both be very misleading. Why? Because epidemiology is really fucking hard, and even people with degrees in complex public health do not know how to build these kinds of models without drawing on multiple fields’ advice. Plus it’s a rapidly changing situation, which means a lot of interventions are using decision science in a different way than we typically do: we’re not mapping some averaged ideal trajectory, we’re trying to guard against worst case scenarios, and we’re making long-term decisions where small changes now could translate to huge effects later, and we’re doing it in a context of wildly interdependent effects. These are very difficult things to understand, even for those of us who work with this kind of data all the time.   All of this is also hard for people who don’t work in emergency response and crisis management to sort through. We are living in a time (at least where I am) when everyone kind of feels pressure to be a data expert or consume a ton of graphs and data, and the rise of data journalism and viral analyses on twitter will only contribute to this. All this can be overwhelming. But I believe that we all have the capacity to be data literate. You do not have to be an expert to exercise some reasonable calm and also protect your community by thinking carefully about information right now. Why? 1) Well, we have a responsibility to try to amplify good information right now. Maybe you won’t believe this, but truly, I’ve had to watch local politicians change their minds based on things going viral on twitter and I’ve had to argue with authorities because they were fixated on some “counter-intuitive” thing they believed online. School districts, businesses....all these places are run by humans who are living in this shifting landscape of data and misinformation. Please for the love of god, be on the good side of this, not the bad side. 2) I also think you need to take care of yourself when the world is trying to give you lots of scary information. Disinformation can have a real, tangible impact on your mental health and your mental health is so freakin’ important right now. Not all data is created equal.  To finish, here is some advice that I gave my family right now about all of the data, charts, and numbers that we are seeing go by. This is just me trying my best to be a voice about being data literate in this time. I don’t have particularly amazing answers to anything, but maybe it’s helpful. 

- now is the time to lean into trusted medical authorities. I know this is difficult in a time when we do not trust our governments, but for infectious disease data, it is critically important to know that the models we’re looking at are informed by experts. This is not time for some stats bro writing medium articles, friends (and I’m kind of a stats bro, so I feel I can say that). Sources that I trust include places like the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, and public-facing epidemiologists. 

- it’s important to look at the real source behind headlines, especially for medical science right now. For instance, the now famous study that Tr*mp mentioned about antimalarial drugs (I’m not even going to link to it because I don’t want to boost it--the Chloroquine and related discussion) has a really flawed analysis that is being torn apart by epidemiologists right now. It’s led to a run on these drugs which are desperately needed by people with chronic medical conditions. Here’s just one current critique of it, there will be others. Honestly, goes without saying that anything Tr*mp claims right now is probably not just wrong, but dangerous.

- maybe a small pet peeve but something I know from my computational work, epidemiology is a young field, and large computational methods are also pretty new, so it’s not necessarily true that all experts will need to be old professors right now. Look more at people’s relevant experience than stereotypes (infectious disease epidemiology? Large scale behavioral intervention? Crisis & emergency? imho, and sorry if this is harsh, but I do not trust “I have an MD” facebook posters on topics. I trust MDs and RNs to share their lived experience from inside hospitals (and they are heroes) but for large scale data work, it’s just a different field). - A lot of different fields need to come together in these moments. Unfortunately in an emergency some things will conflict, even reasonable things. That’s because all of our decisions and evidence will have different trade-offs. Think holistically and listen to people from all these sides, and know that people can be very right about their specialties but also be misinformed outside of their specialties. We gotta work together on this one. If you want to consume more data, don’t just consume the same data over and over again. Think about getting a different kind of data that illuminates another part of the problem. 

- Friends, don’t read the same “death rate” graphs over and over again, especially if it’s panicking you. Loads of people are replicating these graphs. Just don’t keep fixating on them. It won’t tell you anything new, and with uneven testing everywhere, these numbers will change. People who know how to make these decisions are reasoning about these cases, and if that’s not you, imho now is not the time to obsess over this curve except in knowing the ways that our small behaviors can pay off in big ways and impact it.  - do believe the ‘tip of the iceberg’ model for confirmed cases, especially in the US. In other words, if you see only a few confirmed cases reported for your city, it is already spreading in your community and has been for weeks. I know this is scary. It scares me too. But understanding this will help us take care of each other. You can absolutely assume that it’s in your community at this point. All of our data authorities confirm this. My area is a minor hotspot, and we are assuming there are literally thousands about to come out this week. The “confirmed cases” dashboard is really going to underestimate everything right now. 

- if you want to be data-informed, I DO think it is genuinely useful to gently learn about all the systems that are involved here and I am grateful to the people amplifying this. For example, a lot of people did not know how few ICU beds we had and how the for-profit motives have devastated our medical systems. Or use the data to shed light on the treatment of people in jail. Again, give support to the people who really understand and have expertise in these issues. Use this time to put pressure on the right part of these systems, e.g. can your local politicians suspend evictions and utilities shutoffs? 

- This is just a trick I make sure to do myself and encourage my family to do. Pay attention to optimistic data. Every day you can spend staying at home can decrease risk. Every major event you are sad about missing will decrease risk. When you look at data as a “loss,” sometimes the “gain” can feel invisible. Wherever you can I encourage you to make the “gain” visible and notice all the ways that you are doing something to help. 

- be very suspicious of people doing “back of the napkin” “math” in order to argue against a certain policy. There are loads of assumptions baked into some of these long blogposts right now, including ones that feel deeply compelling and full of math. Some stuff I watch for: absurd references to ‘laws’ of epidemics and population statistics, a general attitude of ‘I’m the only one smart enough to figure this out’. Don’t waste your time reading somebody who usually does investment modeling on financial markets or some bullshit. These people do not know how to make predictions about this situation. FINALLY, I THINK THIS ONE IS USEFUL FOR ALL US ANXIETY PEEPS: 

- if you are already scared, you are not the audience for a piece that’s trying to tell people to take this seriously. All of these communications and dashboards and posts are trying to get people to take this seriously. Your brain thinks you need to be more informed, but you are already informed. Lean into the comforting things. Every day I ask myself, will this information change my behavior? and if the answer is no, I do not consume it.  Love you all. This is just my opinion, written half asleep in need of coffee after some really really long weeks.  Flaws, mistakes, and distortions are always part of advice. Please exercise your own critical thinking and self-care right now. 

#coronavirus #covid-19 #data science #love you guys

[phroyd]

This week’s remarkable character assault by some top White House advisers on Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, signified President Trump’s hostility toward medical expertise and has produced a chilling effect among the government scientists and public health professionals laboring to end the pandemic, according to administration officials and health experts.

As novel coronavirus cases surge out of control coast to coast, the open rancor between the scientific community and a White House determined above all to resuscitate the economy and secure a second term for Trump threatens to further undermine the U.S. response, which already lags behind those of many other developed nations.

A chorus of voices — including Fauci; Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and even Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff during the start of the pandemic — has been speaking out publicly and with increasing urgency about the crisis in ways that contradict or undermine Trump. Some of them have sharply criticized testing capacities and efficiencies, suggested that everyone wear masks and warned of the virus spread worsening.

Though Trump does not automatically distrust the expertise of public health officials, he is averse to any information or assessment that he considers “bad news,” that compromises his economic cheerleading message or that jeopardizes his reelection, according to several administration officials and other people with knowledge of the dynamic.

In addition to Fauci, the White House has repeatedly undermined and sidelined the CDC over the last several months, which prompted four former CDC directors to pen an op-ed in The Washington Post this week that argued no president had politicized the CDC to the extent that Trump has.

The result has been open warfare from some hard-line Trump loyalists seeking to discredit Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who is shown by polls to be regarded as a truth-teller by a majority of Americans.

Two of the White House officials with the closest and longest-standing ties to Trump, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino and trade adviser Peter Navarro, attacked Fauci this past week. Navarro penned an op-ed in USA Today in which he stated that Fauci was “wrong about everything,” while Scavino shared a cartoon on social media mocking Fauci as “Dr. Faucet,” drowning Uncle Sam with a deluge of “extra cold” water.

Their critiques were echoed by one of Trump’s outside economic advisers, Stephen Moore, and come after the White House anonymously shared last week with The Post a lengthy, researched list of comments Fauci has made intended to support Trump’s earlier claim that “he’s made a lot of mistakes.” The list was reminiscent of research that campaign operatives distribute to reporters about their political opponents.

Trump sought to distance himself from those efforts and insisted he has a good relationship with Fauci, despite the fact that Fauci no longer briefs the president on the pandemic and is rarely if ever in the Oval Office anymore. Trump told advisers to tamp down their criticism of Fauci because he believed it was politically harmful to him, aides said, and in a show of solidarity Vice President Pence tweeted a photograph of him meeting with Fauci in the Situation Room.

Fauci said the push to discredit him was “bizarre,” telling the Atlantic, “If you talk to reasonable people in the White House, they realize that was a major mistake on their part, because it doesn’t do anything but reflect poorly on them.”

The interpersonal strife and the deliberate push by some inside the White House to protect Trump by sowing distrust of scientists is hampering the nation’s efforts to combat the virus, according to public health experts.

“It seems that some are more intent on fighting imagined enemies than the real enemy here, which is the virus,” said Thomas R. Frieden, a former CDC director and president of Resolve to Save Lives.

“The virus doesn’t read talking points,” Frieden said. “The virus doesn’t watch news shows. The virus just waits for us to make mistakes. And when we make mistakes, as Texas and Florida and South Carolina and Arizona did, the virus wins. When we ignore science, the virus wins.”

Trump in recent weeks has been committing less of his time and energy to managing the pandemic, according to advisers, and has only occasionally spoken in detail about the topic in his public appearances. One of these advisers said the president is “not really working this anymore. He doesn’t want to be distracted by it. He’s not calling and asking about data. He’s not worried about cases.”

White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews countered in a statement: “President Trump has always acted on the recommendations of his top public health experts throughout this crisis as evidenced by the many bold, data-driven decisions he has made to save millions of lives. Any suggestion that the President is not working around the clock to protect the health and safety of all Americans, lead the whole-of-government response to this pandemic, including expediting vaccine development and rebuilding our economy is utterly false.”

At federal health agencies, the barrage against Fauci has taken a significant toll, seen by many as a broadside against their community at large. The acrimony has angered career scientists at the National Institutes of Health, where Fauci is hailed as a hero, and at the Food and Drug Administration, where officials work closely with Fauci and his team, according to current and former government officials.

Many FDA career scientists and doctors see the White House criticism of Fauci as an effort to bully him — to make it clear that no one should consider crossing the president in the months leading up to the election, according to people familiar with the scientists’ thinking.

“To see an NIH scientist and a doctor attacked like that, the feeling is, ‘Oh, my God, that could just as easily be me,’ ” said a former FDA official, who like some others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid without risking retribution.

Some agency professionals worry the episode is a sign the FDA might come under political pressure to approve a vaccine or treatment for covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, before it has been fully vetted for safety and efficacy.

Furthermore, they say the character attacks further undermine America’s historic standing as a worldwide leader in public health, which is already tarnished by the nation’s beleaguered response to the coronavirus and inability to contain it.

Another former senior administration official called the Fauci attacks a global embarrassment. “It’s one thing to question science,” this official said. “It’s another thing to attack science.”

Scott Becker, chief executive of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which represents state and local labs, said, “The whole public health community has been demoralized by this.”

Indeed, almost 90 organizations — including the American Society for Microbiology, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and several AIDS groups, as well as the public-labs association — sent a letter to Pence, who chairs the White House’s coronavirus task force, condemning the recent moves.

“We object to any attempt to cast doubt on science and sow mistrust for public health expertise, and to spread misinformation during this challenging time for all Americans,” the letter read. “Such efforts not only put the health of our population in greater peril, but also undermine the work underway to move our country beyond the pandemic and return to normalcy.”

The substance of Trump allies’ criticism of Fauci centers on his statements early in the pandemic that wearing masks would not necessarily stop the spread of the virus. But as Fauci and other scientists learned more about the virus, their assessments evolved with that knowledge.

“That’s really the nature of science,” Fauci said Thursday in a live-stream conversation with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. “You look at the data and the information you have at any given time, and you make a decision with regard to policy based on that information. As the information changes, then you have to be flexible enough and humble enough to be able to change how you think about things.”

Moore, a conservative economist who is on leave from the Heritage Foundation to run a group called Save Our Country focused on reopening the economy, said the fact that Fauci is heralded in the media and trusted by the public is a problem for efforts to convince schools and businesses to reopen.

“I’ve seldom seen someone who has been more wrong more consistently over his whole career than Dr. Fauci that continues to be listened to and held up as some kind of expert,” Moore said.

He went on to express dismay that Fauci does not act like “a team player” by parroting to the public Trump’s talking points.

Navarro has led a fierce campaign inside the White House against Fauci, telling colleagues that the infectious-disease expert “has no clue what he’s talking about,” according to a person who heard his comments.

Others in Trump’s orbit have privately shared frustrations about Fauci, including White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Pence chief of staff Marc Short. Still, Meadows reacted angrily about Navarro’s op-ed, and Short told others he thought it was a mistake, White House officials said.

In recent weeks, there was what one adviser described as a “widespread effort” by White House officials, lawmakers and outside advisers to convince Trump to wear a mask in public — something he did for the first time last weekend when he visited Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

In the coming weeks, health officials plan to more forcefully urge people to not only wear masks but to wear them consistently and correctly and to emphasize that masks are a supplement — not a substitute — for social distancing, one federal official said.

“You have to acknowledge the obvious, that this thing is going to be with us for a long time,” said Josh Holmes, a Republican strategist close to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “You have to be realistic. People are willing to do difficult things if you give them a pathway of how do we get to the end of it.”

This week, Redfield said that Trump ought to “set an example” by wearing a mask and that the epidemic could be brought under control in four to eight weeks if everyone wore one.

On June 30, Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner and an informal Trump adviser, had a call with House Republicans, organized by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), on which he laid out a grim prediction of rising case numbers and encouraged people to wear masks.

“At some point, we’re going to have a confluent epidemic in the U.S.,” Gottlieb said in an interview. “At some point, we’re going to have so much infection that it’s going to be hard to prevent a simultaneous national epidemic. It’s going to be very difficult for us when this starts to run into flu season.”

Phroyd

#science #covid #trump

[ill-will-editions]

POSTSCRIPT 

Neal Miller

This article is a follow-up to “Fever Dreaming in the General Antagonism”, available here. 

To the realists.- You sober people who feel well armed against passion and fantasies and would like to turn your emptiness into a matter of pride and an ornament: you call yourselves realists and hint that the world really is the way it appears to you...That mountain there! That cloud there! What is "real" in that? Subtract the phantasm and every human contribution from it, my sober friends! If you can!

–Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

The initial delirium that brought us the debates around UBI and proposals for a robust welfare state has entered a new phase as the parties of order have rediscovered their economic realism. At first glance, The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act appears to have surpassed The New Deal in not only spending, but in its power as a weapon of counter-insurgency. The Act’s new credit mechanisms linking the Federal Reserve and corporate financial institutions normalize emergency bailout spending and lay the groundwork for continued accumulation amidst large-scale demobilizations of the labor force. The confidence it looks to inspire in markets seems premised on the notion that they can now function without labor, as needed. The problem of the quarantine’s false strike for capital has been “solved.”  Should a true general strike ever materialize, its attack power has been pre-emptively weakened. Meanwhile, the acceleration effect of COVID-19 continues at local levels of government, too. In the case of Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois (the largest in the U.S.), which just released all of its non-violent offenders. Everywhere our agency seems to be outstripped and governments have the initiative. 

And yet there are reasons for laughing at the realists. On the one hand, in all likelihood, even after we find ourselves on the other side of The Curve, historians of pandemics past such as John Barry predict that this wave will not be the last. On the other, the welfare and aid provisions of the Act are temporary in comparison to the time-line of the virus and the extended fallout of the economic recession. Crisis governance may still have to face its biggest challenges yet,and that is true even without the spread of a highly motivated housing and labor movement. We must take the initiative and answer the Act now while understanding that the struggle has just begun. Many of us have activated networks and capacities that we’ve developed over the last decade – many dating as far back as Occupy Wall Street, some even farther. But how to proceed? 

Curiously, the general antagonism between life and COVID-19 has witnessed the rise of a new figure of labor: the front-liner, one who risks their life within a service or industry deemed essential to the economy. This figure cuts across the social strata of the workforce, gathering together hospital nurses and doctors, sanitation workers and grocery store clerks, formerly incarcerated transit workers and unionized transit workers, warehouse workers at Amazon and gig workers at Instacart. Rank and file workers have the cause and opportunity to take initiative and override their unions where they fail to act. More importantly, the front-liner embodies the basic contradiction of our moment: we are dependent on the economy and so it persists, despite its profound complicity with the virus. The spaces of proximity required for the accumulation of capital also feeds the accumulation of new cases and victims of COVID-19. Hence the necessity of these workers, the so-called necessity of the risks they take to survive or to care for our bodies or to drive us around plagued cities in their buses and cars is an expression of our very dependence on the economy. But for now this necessity that expresses our dependence is also the source of their power, which is proving itself in the latest wave of walk-offs and wild-cat strikes.

The general antagonism has a second front: literally, the home. This private has always been political, despite the traditional public/private schema. However, as philosopher Peter Sloterdijk might say, the home as a technical immune system that buffers our exposure to the world and its maladies has been made very present to us by the virtual threat outside. Prior to the pandemic, to immunize from the outside world was to create a shelter of relative freedom from its pressures retreating to an airspace of relief. Now that our homes have been made to feel like spaces of confinement, their effects of insulation and alleviation have been taken over by a suffocating intolerability (“‘Me time?’ I’ve had quite enough, thank you!”). Nonetheless, reinvigorated modes of resistance have seized upon their potential for antagonism: mutual aid networks reintroduce the presence of others and introduce novel forms of group belonging across households. Rent strikes and eviction resistance are spreading, contesting property relations while attesting to the fact that we dwellers have our being in our dwellings.

Currently, and most surprisingly, we are facing our own acceleration problem: the two fronts fight without grasping the singular problem they share. Hypothesis: if we are to gain the initiative, we must link these two fronts together in a common attack on not only COVID-19, but the realism of governments who turn our needs and dependency into the necessity of capitalist accumulation. We must offer not only a vision but a strategy that completes the unmasking of economic whim began by COVID-19. The emergency demands and the measures taken by governments have revealed the arbitrariness of the distribution of benefits and burdens that existed prior to the pandemic, and which for the moment continues to exist thanks to the Act. Whether it’s the “hard reality” of paying for our living spaces every month or (for some) the daily reality of risk in an “essential” job (in order to pay for living space no less!), we must complete the revelation of the economy for what it is: an unnecessary choice. 

While discontinuous with the front-liners of Hong Kong, like them the risk exposure of front-liners in the context of the coronavirus invites a supporting cast of other roles and solidarities. What other figures can be drawn up from the practices of rent strikers and mutual aid-ers to intensify their confidence to strike and walk-off? How can making these explicit help them to compose a common force and be more effective? On the homefront, we have begun to see the assembling of immunological spaces into war machines, as in the networking of homes for rent strike committees (and in the use of cars in noise demonstrations). How can these networks link back up to front-liners? And between the two fronts, what public or counter-public spaces can we re-invent when Spring intensifies our wanderlust? Would something equivalent to the Lennon Walls of Hong Kong take root in U.S. cities? Finally, overall, our strategic question seems to be, how can the front-line and the home-front combine to reduce our overall dependency on economic reality by maximizing the number of needs that are met for free, at no cost? 

In the ongoing delirium, our gestures are charged with the alarm and urgency of war, which always brings with it immense expenditures of effort and feats of stress endurance. The war zone in which an increasing number of doctors and nurses find themselves is too real, yet this war cannot be our object as we fight in the general antagonism. After all, our immune systems will suffer if we do. We must aim to overcome need  and necessity itself through a new spirit of communal luxury and joy. We have reason to be optimistic: when the Great Recession of 2008 hit, it took nearly three years for a movement to respond in the U.S. This time we’ve had a decade of preparation.

P.S. Thank you to the organizers and participants in the Undercommons and Destituent Power Conference for making a space to think together in a disaster. 

#Coronavirus #Articles

[newstfionline]

Thursday, November 19, 2020

Most expensive cities (CNBC) Zurich and Paris have displaced Singapore and Osaka in a recent report on the world’s most expensive cities. The two Asian cities previously joined Hong Kong at the top of the rankings. That’s based on The Economist Intelligence Unit’s latest Worldwide Cost of Living index which shows how the coronavirus pandemic has affected the prices of goods and services in more than 130 cities as of September 2020. According to the report, Zurich and Paris’ jump to first place was due to the strengthening of the Swiss franc and the euro. “The Covid-19 pandemic has caused the weakening of the U.S. dollar while western European and north Asian currencies have strengthened against it, which in turn has shifted prices for goods and services,” said Upasana Dutt, head of Worldwide Cost of Living at The EIU. New York City is used as the base city in the index. The top ten: Zurich, Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tel Aviv, Osaka, Geneva, New York, Copenhagen, Los Angeles.

U.S., Canada, Mexico to extend border restrictions until late December (AP) U.S. land borders with Canada and Mexico are expected to remain closed to non-essential travel until Dec. 21 at the earliest amid a rising number of U.S. coronavirus cases, officials in Washington and Ottawa told Reuters on Wednesday. Mexico’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the decision later on Wednesday in a post on Twitter. The restrictions were first put in place in March to control the spread of the virus and have been extended on a monthly basis ever since. In Ottawa, a Canadian government source said the travel restrictions in place at the Canada-U.S. land border would remain in effect for at least another month.

Recession With a Difference: Women Face Special Burden (NYT) For millions of working women, the coronavirus pandemic has delivered a rare and ruinous one-two-three punch. First, the parts of the economy that were smacked hardest and earliest by job losses were ones where women dominate—restaurants, retail businesses and health care. Then a second wave began taking out local and state government jobs, another area where women outnumber men. The third blow has, for many, been the knockout: the closing of child care centers and the shift to remote schooling. That has saddled working mothers, much more than fathers, with overwhelming household responsibilities. “We’ve never seen this before,” said Betsey Stevenson, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan and the mother of a second grader and a sixth grader. Recessions usually start by gutting the manufacturing and construction industries, where men hold most of the jobs, she said. The triple punch is not just pushing women out of jobs they held, but also preventing many from seeking new ones.

U.S. to Drop Case Against Mexican Ex-Official to Allow Inquiry in Mexico (NYT) The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to drop drug trafficking and corruption charges against a former Mexican defense minister to allow Mexican officials to investigate him, Attorney General William P. Barr announced Tuesday in an abrupt reversal a month after the official was arrested in Los Angeles. The official, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, had been Mexico’s defense minister from 2012 to 2018 and was accused of taking bribes in exchange for protecting cartel leaders. But Mr. Barr and Mexico’s attorney general, Alejandro Gertz Manero, stopped short in a statement of promising any charges in Mexico. In a court filing, prosecutors acknowledged that the Trump administration had determined that preserving its relationship with Mexico prevailed over pursuing the case. “The United States has determined that sensitive and important foreign policy considerations outweigh the government’s interest in pursuing the prosecution of the defendant, under the totality of the circumstances, and therefore require dismissal of the case,” they wrote in asking a judge to dismiss the charges.

Biden’s DIY transition proceeds without Trump assistance (AP) President Donald Trump’s refusal to cooperate with his successor is forcing President-elect Joe Biden to seek unusual workarounds to prepare for the exploding public health threat and evolving national security challenges he will inherit in just nine weeks. Blocked from the official intelligence briefing traditionally afforded to incoming presidents, Biden gathered virtually on Tuesday with a collection of intelligence, defense and diplomatic experts. And as the worst pandemic in a century bears down on the U.S. with renewed ferocity, the current administration is blocking Biden from collaborating with its response team. Biden’s representatives instead plan to meet directly with pharmaceutical companies this week to determine how best to distribute at least two promising vaccines to hundreds of millions of Americans, the biggest logistical challenge to face a new president in generations. The moves reflect how Biden is adjusting to a historically tense transition. With no sign that Trump is prepared to facilitate soon a peaceful transfer of power, Biden and his team are instead working through a series of backup options to do the best they can to prepare for the challenges he will face as soon as he takes office in January.

When Trump Goes, Can the Democrats Hold It Together? (NYT) The Democratic Party is struggling with internal contradictions, as its mixed performance on Election Day makes clear. Analysts and insiders are already talking—sometimes in apocalyptic terms—about how hard it will be for Joe Biden to hold together the coalition that elected him as the 46th president. The intraparty dispute burst out full force on Nov. 5 during a three-hour House Democratic Caucus telephone meeting. Moderates angrily lashed out at liberals, accusing them of allowing divisive rhetoric such as “defund the police” and calls for socialism to go largely unchallenged. Those on the left pushed right back, accusing centrists of seeking to downgrade the demands of minorities, including those voiced at Black Lives Matter protests. Abigail Spanberger, who represents the 7th Congressional District in Virginia—which runs from the suburbs of Richmond through the exurban and rural counties in the center of the state—voiced her instantly famous critique of the liberal wing of her party during the phone call: “We have to be pretty clear about the fact that Tuesday—Nov. 3—from a congressional standpoint, was a failure,” she told her Democratic colleagues. “The number one concern that people brought to me” during the campaign “was defunding the police.” And “We need to not ever use the words ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again because while people think it doesn’t matter, it does matter. And we lost good members because of that.” Representative Rashida Tlaib, whose Michigan district is among the poorest in the country, and who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America—directly countered Spanberger and other moderates: “To be real, it sounds like you are saying stop pushing for what Black folks want.” Other Democrats who describe themselves as democratic socialists, including the former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, have become a substantial Democratic constituency.

Pandemic media syndrome? (Scientific American) According to Claudia Wallis, of Scientific American, recent studies have shown that the pandemic’s toll on mental health has been even worse than experts expected, especially among young adults. Roxane Cohen Silver, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, found that “increased engagement with media coverage of the outbreak” is a major driver of anxiety among people of all ages. “If people are engaged with a great deal of media, they are more likely to exhibit and report distress, but that distress seems to draw them further into the media,” Silver says. “It’s a cyclical pattern from which it is difficult to extricate oneself.”

Sweden’s coronavirus strategy (Washington Post) Even Sweden appears to be abandoning the Swedish model. On Monday, the country’s authorities banned gatherings of more than eight people as they grappled with the second coronavirus wave surging through much of Europe. The new restrictions followed other protocols coming into effect this week, including protective measures around nursing homes and bans on alcohol sales at restaurants and bars after 10 p.m. The shift in tone is noteworthy given Sweden’s notorious light-touch approach to the pandemic. “It is a clear and sharp signal to every person in our country as to what applies in the future,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said during a news conference Monday. “Don’t go to the gym, don’t go the library, don’t have dinner out, don’t have parties—cancel!” Hospitalizations are rising faster in Sweden than any other European country, and Sweden’s per capita death rate is several times higher than those of its Nordic neighbors Finland, Denmark and Norway.

Amid pandemic, Belgrade street kids find comfort at refuge (AP) In a small, brightly-colored backstreet house in Belgrade a teenage girl is drying her hair, while two others eat lunch in the kitchen. A group of boys are having their temperatures checked at the entrance as a precaution against coronavirus. It’s another busy day for Svratiste, or Roadhouse, Belgrade’s first daily drop-in center for street kids that for years has been a rare oasis of warmth and comfort for the Serbian capital’s most vulnerable inhabitants. Since opening in 2007, Svratiste has welcomed hundreds of children—some as young as five—who have come here to warm up, wash or eat. With social isolation growing and the economic situation worsening in the pandemic, the center’s role has become even more significant. Apart from providing food and clothes, the Svratiste team has also sought to help the children socialize and get to know their town by visiting playgrounds, cinemas and theaters. A key effort has been to include them in the education system and make sure they stay. During the pandemic, the center helped with online classes that most children have no means of following. One of their success stories has been Bosko Markovic, now 18, who first came to Svratiste five years ago. With the center’s help, Markovic has finished high school and now has his eyes set on becoming a policeman, he told the Associated Press. “They (Svratiste) have made me a better person,” he said proudly.

Pompeo To Visit Israeli West Bank Settlements During Farewell Tour (Foreign Policy) U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in Israel today as he continues his whistle-stop tour of U.S. allies. Before he heads to the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, he is planning on making history. Pompeo will visit two Israeli settlements both considered in violation of international law, one in the Golan Heights and one in the West Bank. By doing so, he becomes the first U.S. Secretary of State to visit either site. His de facto endorsement of the Israeli occupation stands in contrast to the outgoing Obama administration’s moves in 2016, allowing passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory illegal by abstaining from (rather than vetoing) the vote. His visit also comes as Israel plans to expand a settlement in East Jerusalem, despite outcry from the United Nations and European Union.

Reassured by Biden Win, Palestinians Will Resume Cooperation With Israel (NYT) The Palestinian Authority said Tuesday that it was resuming its cooperation with Israel, ending six months of financial hardship for tens of thousands of West Bank residents and signaling relief over the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. It was one of the first clear signs that anticipation of a new administration in Washington is having an effect on international relations. The Palestinian announcement undid a set of stringent measures imposed by Mahmoud Abbas, the authority’s president, in May in a desperate protest against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to unilaterally annex large portions of the occupied West Bank. The Trump administration had indicated it would support some form of annexation, which would have imposed Israeli sovereignty over land that the Palestinians have counted on for a future state. Mr. Abbas cut off security coordination with Israel, raising fears that attacks might go unprevented. He also severed civilian ties, including those that help Palestinians travel into Israel for work or medical treatment. Most painful of all to his own people, Mr. Abbas stopped accepting routine transfers of more than $100 million a month in taxes that Israel collects on the Palestinians’ behalf, funds that account for more than 60 percent of the authority’s budget. The lack of funds forced salary cuts for tens of thousands of public-sector employees, compounding what was already a devastating economic crisis because of the pandemic. “Praise God, I feel so relieved,” Rami Kitaneh, 35, a nurse at the Hugo Chavez Ophthalmic Hospital in the central West Bank, said Tuesday night. “I gave up so much since the start of the crisis, but now I can breathe.”

Security officials worry Israel and Saudi Arabia may see the end of Trump as their last chance to go to war with Iran (Business Insider) European intelligence officials are alarmed about the possibility of military action towards Iran in the waning days of the Trump administration. Concern that Trump—who has pushed for maximum pressure on Iran—or a combination of Israel or Saudi Arabia creating a military confrontation in the waning days of the administration has been a concern for over a week, according to three European intelligence officials who spoke with Insider. The news that last week the president requested a list of military options from his military and diplomatic advisors has sent these concerns into overdrive. One fear is of unilateral action by the US to force a military clash that might make it impossible for the incoming Biden administration to return to the 2015 joint nuclear agreement that traded sanctions relief on Iran for an end to its nuclear weapon programs, all three officials said. They declined to speak on the record in exchange for their candid views on the situation.

People go hungry in Ethiopia’s Tigray as conflict marches on (AP) People are going hungry in Ethiopia’s rebellious northern Tigray region as roads are blocked, airports are closed and the federal government marches on its capital in a final push to win a two-week war. “At this stage there is simply very little left, even if you have money,” according to an internal assessment by one humanitarian group, seen by The Associated Press. The assessment, based on a colleague who managed to get out, said people “will stay where they are, there is no place in Tigray where the situation is any different and they cannot cross over into the other regions of Ethiopia because of fear of what would be done to them.” For more than a week, the United Nations and other aid organizations have been warning of disaster. Long lines formed outside shops within days of the Nov. 4 announcement by Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed that a military offensive had begun in response to an attack by Tigray regional forces on a military base. Trucks laden with food, fuel and medical supplies have been stuck outside the region’s borders. Banks in Tigray were closed for days, cutting off humanitarian cash transfers to some 1 million people. And even before the fighting, a locust outbreak had been destroying crops. Over 27,000 Ethiopians have fled into neighboring Sudan, burdening villages that have been praised for their generosity, though they have little to give.

#headlines #news

[resonanteye]

via http://resonanteye.net/current-events-condensed/

current events; condensed

A condensed post including short writings on current events.

CONSPIRACIES ARE NOT SECRET IN THIS CENTURY

open up? conspiracies? here’s the real one.

  if They want to “cull the weak” and control us better, what better way than to present a false choice between going back to work and risking lives, or slowly going broke at home?

it’s a false choice. there are hoarders, greedy fucks holding money they’re not entitled to, billions. enough for everything to be covered. hell, the Pentagon LOST enough money to pay EVERYONE’S rent and mortgage for the best six months. LOST IT.

The conspiracy? PRETEND THAT MONEY ISN’T THERE. force people to fight over scraps, pretend there are only two options. don’t let people come together and agree that TOO MUCH MONEY IS IN TOO FEW HANDS, because that might mean we can beat this thing.

unity among the poor? PREVENT AT ALL COSTS. if you kill a few hundred thousand people in the process, fuck it. that doesn’t matter to Them. They want to keep their grip on power, forcing us to behave like serfs working at their pleasure, dying for their capital gains. Living in their damn bunkers.

There is more than these two choices, don’t let them suck you in. the current garbage video circulating is MORE OF THEIR SHIT. it’s part of this. it’s not “secret info” or “exposing an evil plan”.

to get what They want – they’ve just got to keep us arguing about whether to open up or not. that’s it. that’s all they’ve got to do. circulate some fake anti science garbage to make sure it goes over easy.

and murder a ton of people to make another dollar.

THAT’S your conspiracy. THERE’S your elite takeover.

they don’t need micro chips, 5g, or any of this other shit. vaccines aren’t “Them”, the anti vax movement is THEM trying to murder the “useless”.

” WAKE UP, SHEEPLE ” it’s obvious as fuck and you don’t need to go out on any limbs to see it. it’s plain as day. they’re saying it out loud. there’s no need for this conspiracy to be secret. half of you are HAPPY TO JOIN IN.

stop that. join together. fight for the end of greedy leeches stealing from us then pretending that money is gone and they can’t help. the big banks? THEY FUCKING OWE US ONE. it’s time we collect, TOGETHER. right/left/middle. all of us. they owe all of us.

Divine is disgusted by slumming yuppies

SEGREGATION, A REAL THING

in a post about this photo, someone from Europe, younger, asked if segregation was a real thing, a real law in the US. comments were then closed, so I’ll post my reply here instead, in case anyone was not aware.

Elvis sits to eat at a segregated lunch counter while an elderly black woman stands, waiting for food to take away. she’s not allowed to sit there.

it was law, and when it wasn’t the law it was the unspoken rule, for a very long time.

lunch counter (restaurants of all kinds), bus sections, bathrooms, water faucets and schools were separated by race. the fight to desegregate schools is most well known, as it lasted a very long time and required buses, because people of color had also been segregated by neighborhood- many towns refused to sell and owners refused to rent to anyone of color in a “white area”. (the TV show “the Jeffersons” addresses this, and it’s also known as “redlining”)

many politicians on both sides of the aisle supported it, but the Democratic party eventually worked to pass the civil rights amendment and related bills to stop it, although there were those in the party who still argued in favor of these laws.

https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-said-desegregation-would-create-a-racial-jungle-2019-7

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Maddox

(of note- this happened after desegregation, that’s how strongly politicians felt about it! ten years in and they were still arguing that it had been a good thing.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_resistance

after it legally ended, thanks to the civil rights movement, there was blowback; people trying to vote, to eat lunch, ride the bus, go to school, were viciously attacked by crowds or groups of white people.

FILE – In this May 28, 1963 file photo, a group of whites pour sugar, ketchup and mustard over the heads of Tougaloo College student demonstrators at a sit-in demonstration at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson, Miss. Seated at the counter, from left, are Tougaloo College professor John Salter,and students Joan Trumpauer and Anne Moody. John Salter, who also used the name John Hunter Gray, died Monday, Jan. 7, 2019 at his home in Pocatello, Idaho. Relatives say he was 84 when he died Monday after an illness. (Fred Blackwell/The Clarion-Ledger via AP, File) ORG XMIT: MSJAD701

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Riders https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws

during this time, due to so much police and community violence, the Black Panther formed to monitor and protect people.

https://www.wglt.org/post/director-chronicles-black-panthers-rise-new-tactics-were-needed#stream/0

members of the Black Panthers, preparing to feed the community

GENERATION X

sure, we are slackers. yeah. we’re ok with staying home. you have just told a generation of latchkey tech addicts raised during the bridge from antenna TVs to HD internet streaming to sit at home. if you’d feed us, we wouldn’t even blink at it. this quarantine stuff? that’s not the hard thing.

but we’re watching friends and family die. a lot of us have been down this road before. we’ve watched right wing pigs (yes, I’ll say it) allow our friends to die before. we’ve been down this road of denial and greed and prejudice and all of it. we’ve seen what happens when politicians value money and ego over human lives, and we know it SUCKS ASS.

hell, we watched Reagan. Bush. Bush. Clinton, too-he was only a hair better. and so-

when we need to, we pound the pavement. we toss the bricks. we get arrested. we wipe mace out of our eyes and stampede.

we always tend to be masked, regardless of standards of the moment. I don’t think, in my life, I’ve been to a protest that didn’t have a contingent of masked people wishing to avoid cameras. Now, a protest for actual assistance for people? a real protest, a fight for better conditions, the 300-some strikes that have happened that the news ISN’T covering? yeah. surgical masks. they’re brilliant photos, but not as interesting for the crap media as a few fat guys with guns.

because that’s the joke they want to show us, yeah? not people actually fighting in solidarity, to protect each other, get better work conditions, protect the disabled, get better healthcare for all, support people financially… the shit the majority of people really want. no. they’re not covering that real shit.

the news, they like a spectacle.

we need to find ways to make the facts spectacular.

I have rarely seen my generation protest FOR corporate interests and find any such thing suspicious as all fuck. I don’t believe a bit of that shit. That’s paid for, that’s arranged, that’s a pony show. That’s the same tiny batch of zonked out cultists that don’t have a trump rally to travel to right now. it’s like a damn road show, the same hundred people, like some Boomer deadhead traveling bus shit. I don’t trust it and I don’t believe it. the older folks at them, yeah. they’re that little band of travelers. sure. but us?

Seattle police use gas to push back World Trade Organization protesters in downtown Seattle Tuesday, Nov. 30, 1999. The protests delayed the opening of the WTO third ministerial conference. (AP Photo/Eric Draper)

because even though we will go do Things, we are, in fact, ok with staying home.

and we don’t like your fucking company. and corporations bought our music and art and killed it in front of our eyes, and there’s no getting our trust back. and we will wear a goddamn busted ass thrift store sack before we spend money on slave-sewn clothes. and we would rather read and write and play music and watch movies all damn day, than go to jobs in cubicles.

War protesters and march to Gas Works Park protesting the US involvement in the Persian Gulf and the buid up to war against Irag January 15 deadline 1991 Seattle Washington State USA

I mean, we’ll usually go, because we gotta eat. so feed us. give us bread. you already poisoned the roses.

  THE ASSHOLE FACTORY

this is where your conspiracy videos are made. in the asshole factory.

what do you notice about these photos? do you see the threats? what kind of people are there?

it is almost like there’s a monthly event they’ve been going to, that’s been cancelled, where they could hold up trump signs and boo anything reasonable… wonder what that event is. where have you seen some of these faces before? I’ve seen a few in the rally photos and videos.

check out “small business” guy. who is he? does he own a “small business”, you think? (photos by Orin Louis)

  ON THE PANDEMIC

a lot of people talking about immunity/reinfection and that study.

that study is just saying we don’t know yet. we just don’t know yet.

it’s early days.

Coronavirus is not influenza, they’re two different families of virus. VERY different.

this is more related to the common cold (in its behavior)than to the flu. (the cold is a rhinovirus. SARS & MERS, and Covid-19, if you want to find out more about these viruses, don’t look up the flu-they are Coronaviruses.)

it is contagious the way a cold is, but it has serious effects on any part of the body with ace2 receptors. (simply put- blood, lungs, heart, kidneys, brain)

they have been working on a cold vaccine for decades. no success. BUT. again, it’s early days. there’s never been this kind of pressure for a vaccine for it. so, to be direct: we don’t know yet. they’ve never been this desperate, this well funded, to find a cold vaccine.

this could be a seasonal thing, eventually- it could mutate to be less lethal and become just another cold we can get every year. it could mutate to be even more vicious and we all are in serious danger all the time. it could create immunity, and some will be ok for a year or a month or a decade… it might not, and people can catch it again and worse.

we just don’t know yet. the whole reason we are isolating the way we are is to buy time for science to find these answers. we’re not in quarantine to “kill it off” or stop it. we are slowing it down so science can have time to find answers, so less of us die while that happens.

  every day we don’t infect other people, is a day in which researchers can work. we need them to work. they are doing that. every day we don’t infect other people, is a day this virus doesn’t get a chance to mutate and change. this helps a lot.

science needs time. all this economic mayhem- it’s to buy them time to help us, to figure it out. the answers won’t come right away and during this time we may hear things that are being tried and tested, some may not work at all, some may be worse than nothing, so information won’t be steady or always correct. when you read a thing, wait a day. read more about it. read the actual study- and if you can’t, wait a few days and read what scientific sources say about it (the lancet, NEJM, etc). don’t rely on NBC, fox, etc to do a great job reporting on science. you’ll have to have patience, even science is having to watch and wait while things are researched, right now.

nobody has the answers; it’s NOVEL. brand new.

they’re testing, they’re researching, they’re learning this thing’s secrets as fast as they can, while we wait that process out.

be as safe as you can be while we buy them the time.

image: pink pangolin drawing in frame

  COMMON SENSE KNOWLEDGE

FOR ACCURACY

You shouldn’t leave the house unless you absolutely have to: food, medicine, or other necessity of life. This includes going to other people’s houses.

Masks are good at protecting others if you are infected, and help protect you too, just not as much as others. Wear one.

Stores are closed, unless they provide food or medicine. Alcohol is a necessity for alcoholics who will have actual seizures and could die from withdrawal, so some of those are open. (Some states have been pressured into letting other things stay open, and people insist on going to church and being able to buy guns in public stores, but that’s political shit and you shouldn’t go places unless you have to.)

This virus is deadly to many people, even healthy ones, is as contagious as a common cold, and has killed more people in a month than the flu does in a year. You don’t want to catch it, and if you do, you want to catch it when doctors and nurses aren’t overworked from other people catching it too. There are 8 strains identified right now. This will change over time, because it’ll mutate- like every virus. EVERY virus.

Glovesw help, unless you change them after touching a contaminated surface. They’re good if used properly and if you’re not sure how to do that, don’t bother. Just wash your hands often.

Everyonen to stay home, but you can go outside- away from people. Staying a good distance from people is really the whole point of staying home.

There will be shortages of some things at the grocery store as supplies run out, and as things are shipped to replace them. Chill out.

The virus does spread through and sometimes kill children, but we weren’t aware of this until we had better information.

You will have many symptoms when you are sick, but you will be contagious for up to two weeks before you get sick. YOU WILL BE CONTAGIOUS WITH NO TEMPERATURE OR SYMPTOMS.

You really shouldn’t be eating restaurant food, unless you can reheat it. Wipe down or wash off your groceries.

You are safe if you maintain six feet distance from others, if everyone is masked and nobody is coughing or sneezing. If they are, you need about 27 feet of distance. Keep space from people.

The virus remains active on different surfaces for a time. The surface being porous may or may not matter; like many things, research by science will give better answers as they have time to figure it out.

We count the number of deaths but we don’t know how many people are infected because most places have not got enough tests to see who is infected. Until we can test everyone, stay home, stay away from people.

We have no treatment. There are clinical trials of many different drugs and at least one vaccine, right now, but it will take time to find out what works.

We should stay away from people to avoid spreading this virus until scientists can offer a treatment or preventative measure like a vaccine. There is no reason to infect people, help the virus mutate, or fuck around with this.

If you are an essential worker of ANY kind, you deserve a living wage, hazard pay, full PPE and kindness from everyone who needs you right now. we should be fighting for your safety, not to make things more dangerous for you.

Stop spreading misinformation. Science doesn’t know everything about this yet, information can and will change or become more specific as time goes by. Yes, business interests and governments have handled the entire thing like a clown show, but you don’t have to be part of making it worse.

  THE VALIDITY OF PROTESTING IN THIS TIME

protest for:

stronger unions

better pay

stronger social safety nets during a pandemic

your right to own and bear arms

your freedom of speech/freedom from unwarranted surveillance

safer working conditions

medical care for all

free education

fair elections

physical safety from police violence

safety from racist/hate crimes

NOT FOR:

fuck, BUYING things. don’t protest to be able to go buy shit? what the hell is wrong with you?!? you can buy a gun next month, dipshit. you can buy through private sale. fuck all the way off with that.

SOMEONE ELSE TO WAIT ON YOU (haircuts, restaurants, nails, tattoos, etc)

the right to block hospital entrances (we all saw the footage, shut the fuck up)

the right to gigantic church services during a pandemic. YOU CAN DO LIKE GRANDPA DID AND WATCH YOUR PREACHER ON THE TEE VEE.

going to a shit job that you’ve never liked instead of all the things above that would have allowed you to get through this shit without starving to begin with

by the way, local seed and feed stores are open nation wide; agriculture is considered an essential business. you can’t buy whatever the fuck at wallymart right now though, SO SORRY. maybe don’t even fucking shop there?

edit to add; if they were only endangering themselves I wouldn’t give a shit – but you know these fuckers are getting too close to store cashiers, walking the wrong way down narrow aisles, and touching every-fuckin-thing.

  also: 81% of people polled, from EVERY political group, think they should be staying home. and agree with that. THIS IS A CRAP PROTEST BY A TINY, UNIMPORTANT GROUP and should not be getting the coverage it is. they aren’t enough to restore an economy, let alone fill a small concert hall.

    I may split these into separate posts, if you’d like that, comment so I know people need/want that.

#advice #current events #pandemic #911 #complaints #deep thoughts #dos and donts #ethics #health and safety #politics #posts with lists in them #questions #true stories #Uncategorized #wtc 9/11 einstruzende neubauten artistic poetic terrori #you

[printedword]

Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission issued a notice about coronavirus scams that referenced new robocalls and online offers advertising coronavirus treatments and at-home test kits. Noting that “there currently are no vaccines, pills, potions, lotions, lozenges or other prescription or over-the-counter products available to treat or cure coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19)—online or in stores,” the FTC warned consumers to be on high alert for con artists. Over the last couple of months, digital marketplaces like Amazon have struggled to remove bogus listings for miracle nasal sprays and canine testing kits.

So far, the FTC has issued stern letters to at least seven sellers of products claiming to treat or prevent Covid-19, including N-ergetics, GuruNanda LLC, and Herbal Amy LLC. New York’s attorney general sent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones a cease-and-desist order after he said his toothpaste could be a coronavirus “stopgate.” Bonnie Patten, the executive director of nonprofit watchdog Truth In Advertising, says a huge number of scams have cropped up around Covid-19, particularly in the massive supplement industry. “The FDA has made it fairly clear that, with its limited resources, it’s going to go after companies that are deceptively marketing supplements using disease treatment or specific health claims,” says Patten. To avoid web crawlers looking for keywords, snake oil companies are implying they can help combat this virus without coming right out and saying so.

A couple of days ago, Kitboga, who keeps his real-life identity and location a secret, trawled Google for coronavirus-related scams. The search turned up an article under the Fox News header—though not on any Fox News site—that read, “While the world is waiting for a vaccine, one mom has found a solution to fight back against the coronavirus outbreak.” While the byline named an actual Fox News editor, the article was fake. It advertised a product called Immunity Blend, which promised to “distribute benefits” to entire households and “protect against environmental threats.” The fake article claimed that “even if you do catch a virus, the symptoms and time it affects you [sic] experience, are greatly reduced.”

Said the mom in the ad, “I am not worried about the Coronavirus hitting our family because I have 3 ways to fight back in just 1 bottle of botanical oils.”

The concoction contains eucalyptus oil, which the ad claims has been “proven effective” against the swine flu and Herpes type 1. “Could it also kill the 2020 Coronavirus,” it asks. The website links to an order form, underneath which a warning in red booms: “Due to global outbreaks and pandemic, demand is HIGH and supply is limited for our Powerful Immunity Blend.” The website and Facebook page, which was created March 16, are still up.

To investigate, Kitboga called a phone number listed on the ad. “I said my boyfriend was coughing up blood and I don’t have the money to go to a doctor,” Kitboga tells WIRED. He had put on his valley girl persona. The woman on the line told him that the Immunity Blend would save the boyfriend, Kitboga says. He hung up, shocked. “I didn’t expect them to be so blatant about it.” The company behind Immunity Blend did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

On-stream the next day, Kitboga called the number again. “I saw the article on Fox about how there was a mom who found a solution for the coronavirus,” said Kitboga in the voice of an elderly man. “Yes,” acknowledged the customer service agent.

“You’ve got to hand it to her. She’s probably very smart. There’s scientists all over the world trying to figure it out. Thankfully she did,” Kitboga said on the stream, raising an eyebrow to his viewers. “I just hope that eventually, she’ll let the government know. Do you have any of that available, the cure?”

“Yes sir, we have it. We have a limited stock, however,” said the customer service agent. The price was $40 per bottle; they only sold packs of five.

On a third call, this time with a different representative, Kitboga asked whether the oil was a vaccine, and finally, the agent corrected him: “It’s an essential oil that’s there to protect you and your immune system.” Still, the rep said, he and his father had been using it with good results.

On his livestreamed calls to scammers, Kitboga tries to remain calm and collected, persisting in his line of questioning to glean as much information as possible. Over the last three years, he’s dealt with scammers who try to squeeze thousands of dollars from old ladies under the false threat of arrest or imprisonment. (In fact, he got into this line of work after a scammer took advantage of his real-life grandmother, who had dementia.) This wave of Covid-19 snake oil, he says, feels different.

“I think a lot of the scams so far are based around the fear and uncertainty of it,” says Kitboga. “I’m not a psychologist, but I imagine you are less likely to make rational decisions when you’re afraid. Obviously there’s lots of fear right now. When the scammers I talk to say things like, ‘Ma’am, if you don’t give me my money back you’ll go to jail’ or ‘I’m calling the police right now,’ they’re trying to put you in that fearful, uncertain situation. In this case, we already are in that situation. So the scammers are one step ahead.”

#kitboga #scambaiting #scammers #coronavirus #covid 19 #words

[xtruss]

Decadent like the late Roman Empire, the West is committing suicide through its irrational response to Covid-19

For years, I was puzzled why the Roman Empire ceased to exist and was replaced by barbarians. Looking at the West's response to COVID-19, I know now.

Decadent like the late Roman Empire, the West is committing suicide through its irrational response to Covid-19

— 25 March, 2020 | RT

Colosseum and Arch of Constantine during the Coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19). Rome (Italy), March 19th, 2020

By Dr. Luboš Motl, Czech theoretical physicist, who was an assistant professor at Harvard University from 2004 to 2007. He writes a science and politics blog called The Reference Frame

Many think Covid-19 is some kind of alien invasion that spells the end of the world. But the real threat to us is a much deadlier virus: a hatred of all the values that have underpinned our civilisation for centuries.

For years, I was puzzled as to why the Roman Empire ceased to exist and was replaced by communities that were uncivilized by comparison. How and why could mankind’s progress reverse in this way? Recent experience has eliminated the mystery. No special devastating event was needed; the cause of Rome's demise was simply the loss of its people's desire to support their ‘empire’ and its underlying values. And as it was 1,500 years or so ago, so I fear it is now.

The Covid-19 crisis – specifically, the reaction to it – demonstrates that people have grown bored, detached, and easily impressionable by things that have nothing to do with the roots of their society. We are all – or too many of us – fin de siècle Romans now.

A large number of Westerners are happy to accept the suicidal shutting down of their economies to try to halt a virus that predominantly causes old and sick people to die just a few weeks or months before they would have anyway. Just as they enthusiastically endorse proclamations such as that there are 46 sexes, not two; that the flatulence of a cow must be reduced to save a polar bear; that millions of migrants from the Third World must be invited to Europe and assumed to be neurosurgeons; and so on.

The widespread opinion that everything, including economies, must be sacrificed to beat coronavirus is a revival of medieval witch hunts; the sacrifice seems more important than finding an effective method to deal with the problem.

Our increasingly decadent mass culture has gradually become more ideological and openly opposed to the values Western civilization is based upon. And while it boasts of being ‘counter-culture’ and independent, it’s acquired a monopoly over almost all the information channels that determine opinions, including mainstream media and political parties.

Our leaders have become sucked into this group-thinking and happily institute policies that unleash shutdowns that may cause the worst recession in history. Thousands of businesses are closing and long-term prospects are bleak.

Governments are stepping in to pay wages and fund other services. As tax revenue will be virtually non-existent, public debt will soar. Some governments may default on their debts or resort to printing money, causing soaring inflation. These countries may be unable to fund healthcare, their police or their military, and be so weakened they will be invaded by others and be erased from the world map.

That may be a worst-case scenario, but it’s almost certain that the impact of the shutdowns will be a recession comparable to the Great Depression. Yet what do most Western citizens make of it? Well, they are either unaware, uncaring, or they’re happy about it. They don’t seem to appreciate the consequent dangers. Instead, they are more obsessed with the latest celebrity who’s caught the virus.

The consumers of this mass culture haven't built anything like what our ancestors did – enlightenment, the theory of relativity, parliamentary democracy, industrialisation, major advances in philosophy, science, literature and engineering. They don't have to defend any real values against a tangible enemy, because hiding in a herd with uniform group-think is good enough for them.

Our ancestors had difficult, short lives; they had to work hard, produce enough to survive, fight enemies, and defend what they’d inherited. Numerous lasting values emerged from those efforts. The current generations of Westerners are good only at producing and escalating irrationality and panic.

If a two-month lockdown isn’t deemed enough to contain the virus, they’re happy to extend it to six months, if not years. China decided to impose strict policies, but they were assertive enough to be relatively short-lived; many Westerners want less perfect policies to last for a much longer time. That’s clearly an irrational approach; instead of ‘flattening a curve’, rational leaders (like Beijing’s) try to turn the curve into a cliff. The faster you eliminate the virus, the cheaper it is.

Immortality As An Entitlement

This support for economically suicidal policies didn't start with Covid-19. Westerners have spent recent decades amid a prosperity in which they took material wealth and good healthcare for granted. They forgot what hunger (and, in most cases, unemployment) meant. They got used to demanding ever deeper ‘entitlements’, such as the ‘right not to be offended’.

Activists sensationalised smaller and more implausible threats and demanded that governments mitigated them. In particular, the climate change movement advocated that the 1-2 °C of warming caused by CO2 emissions in a century was equivalent to an armageddon that had to be avoided, whatever the cost.

In this context, it could be expected that the first ‘real challenge’ – and a new flu-like disease is certainly one – would make people fearful. Because if people were led to believe that 1-2 °C of warming was basically the end of the world, is it surprising that they're absolutely terrified of a new disease that has the potential to kill a few million old and sick people?

The existential threat posed by coronavirus – or at least, our irrationality towards it – is greater than the climate threat (though still very small). Westerners who haven't seen any real threats for a long time have developed a condition – termed "affluenflammation" by the American musician Remy – which is a pathological habit of inflating negligible threats. When this inflation of feelings is applied to a real threat, namely a pandemic, they lose their composure.

The context of Covid-19, where every death is presented with horror, makes it clear that ‘immortality’ is just another ‘human right’. This wisdom says that our leaders are failing because they cannot defend this so-called right. But this excessive sensitivity is just one part of the problem.

Many Westerners actively want to harm their economies, corporations, rich people, and governments, because they don't feel any attachment to or responsibility for them. They take security and prosperity for granted. Their money and food arrive from ‘somewhere’, and they don’t care about the source.

And they believe that the structures which allow them to survive – the governments, banks, and so on – are ‘evil’. Some are just financially illiterate. But others know what they are saying, and rejoice in demanding that trillions be sacrificed in order to infinitesimally increase the probability that a 90-year-old will avoid infection and live a little bit longer. They don't accept their dependence on society and the system at all. They don't realise that their moral values, their ‘human rights’, are only available if paid for by prosperous societies.

I have used some dramatic prose, so let me be clear: the scenario I’ve outlined – ending in the suicide of the West – is avoidable, and I hope and believe it will be. I know some who are willing to fight for its survival.

But even if this acceleration towards shutdowns is reversed and countries restore their pre-virus businesses, our world won't be the same. Many people will conclude that the crisis was exciting, and try to kickstart a repetition. The curfew is likely to reduce CO2 emissions this year, so climate activists may try for similar results in the future. Terrorists may deploy some new disease – which, after all, is likely to be more effective than any stabbing or bombing.

It's conceivable that the West’s brush with mortality will lead people to regain some common sense and survival instincts. Perhaps several nations going bankrupt will be a wake-up call. Maybe people will realise that the reaction to the coronavirus was disproportionate. But even if that is so, I’m afraid it won’t be enough.

We need to accept that the positive relationship of Westerners to the roots of their civilization will be still missing – and that this is a virus that poses a much more fundamental existential threat than Covid-19.

[mdadigitalcommunities]

Influence of Social Media in the Spread of the Awareness of Covid-19

Coronavirus has been the talk of the town ever since it “graced the world with its presence” at the end of 2019. Since its spread from a small city called Wuhan, the world has been affected massively in a negative fashion (Zhu, Wei & Niu 2020). Businesses, workplaces, social gatherings, the entertainment industry, the sports world, and people’s social lives, in general, have all been forced to make changes to adapt to the current circumstances. However, the primary issue is the “very real” threat of the virus and how society deals with this abomination is widely discussed or argued between the different factions of society. To counter the pandemic, Twitter, Facebook, and even Instagram are often used as tools to spread knowledge and raise awareness of Covid-19.

Image Taken From Wikimedia Commons

So what has social media done so far to ease tensions and spread awareness of the current situation of Covid-19 so far?

Utilizing social media platforms in times of crisis is a regular occurrence, either it is in the face of natural disasters to send aid and inform the locals to avoid potential threatening locations or to educate the public on the spread of an epidemic. The process of integrating online media platforms with crisis management has been a known practice (Padeiro, Bueno-Larraz & Freitas 2021).   

Image Taken From Tech Crunch

The influence of the current climate has people relying on social media, even more, to receive updates on the health benefits, prevention procedures, and overall methods to counter the unpredictable nature of this global pandemic and avoid contracting the virus. The middle eastern country of Saudi Arabia is a prime example of this, demonstrating an increase of social media users by two million from April 2019 to January 2020, at a time when the virus started receiving massive international attention (Almotawa & Aljabri 2020). The city of Riyadh, through a survey, reported a 58 percent level of awareness amongst the citizens through the use of Twitter and Facebook. 

According to an article by Piper Liping Liu, the importance of personal responsibility is emphasized in various forms of social media. This includes an array of practices including social distancing, working remotely, avoiding participation in large social gatherings, and the vital use of masks (Liu 2021) . This is a clear indication of the fact that the general consensus in social media is the tendency of the virus to spread and being individually responsible is a gateway to containing Covid-19.

Image Taken From PAHO

A Video by the University of Pretoria Urging People to Act Responsibly during the pandemic

On the other hand, these platforms have also connected millions of people around the globe to deal with the large-scale psychological consequences of social distancing (Fullerton 2021).

References List

Almotawa, T & Aljabri, D 2020, Role of social media in creating awareness during COVID19 pandemic.

Fullerton, N 2021, “Instagram vs. Reality: The Pandemic’s Impact on Social Media and Mental Health - Penn Medicine,” www.pennmedicine.org, viewed <https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-blog/2021/april/instagram-vs-reality-the-pandemics-impact-on-social-media-and-mental-health>.

Liu, PL 2021, “COVID-19 information on social media and preventive behaviors: Managing the pandemic through personal responsibility,” Social Science & Medicine, vol. 277, p. 113928, viewed 26 April, 2021, <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953621002604>.

Padeiro, M, Bueno-Larraz, B & Freitas, Â 2021, “Local governments’ use of social media during the COVID-19 pandemic: The case of Portugal,” Government Information Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 4, p. 101620.

Zhu, H, Wei, L & Niu, P 2020, “The novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China,” Global Health Research and Policy, vol. 5, no. 1.

[orbemnews]

Covid-19 vaccine skepticism: Why vulnerable people are rejecting the vaccine in Colombia “You have to be brave to take the vaccine right now, how do you know what happens with the secondary effects? There’s a lot of misinformation going on, we know nothing, and I trust nobody,” he told CNN. Valera himself developed Covid-19 symptoms last year and said he missed three days of work while recovering from it. He later tested positive for the virus in a rapid antigen test, but his fear of getting vaccinated is independent of his own encounter with the virus, he said. His son Christian, 17, is similarly vaccine averse. “I don’t want to have anything to do with it, the vaccine, the virus, nothing at all,” said Christian, who works in construction. Next door is a hair salon where Liliana Reyes, 28, works. Also a migrant from Maracaibo, Venezuela, Reyes equally does not want to take the vaccine — “Me? You must be crazy, I’ll never take it!” The opinion of these vaccine-skeptical Venezuelan migrants might be a stark contrast with the current worldwide run on vaccines — but such marginalized communities could be key to Colombia’s national vaccine rollouts. Inoculation campaigns are effective only if the majority of the population embraces them, and any small community’s refusal to get on board could undermine the broader effort. Latin America has been one of the regions most affected by coronavirus across the world, and new variants are emerging which could accelerate the spread of the virus. But the region presents two significant obstacles to widespread vaccination campaigns: Challenging logistics required to reach many communities in rural and mountainous areas, and highly marginalized populations like ethnic minorities, migrants and informal workers who may struggle to access social services. Colombia commenced vaccinations on February 17, and while the arrival of the vaccine was celebrated, the real work starts now to inoculate en masse. As a resurgence of the coronavirus spreads across the continent, just about 2% of Colombia’s population has been fully vaccinated. Venezuelan migrants are as eligible as Colombian citizens for the vaccine due to their Temporary Protected Status, announced this February by President Ivan Duque. Hugh Aprile, the country director for Colombia at international NGO Mercy Corps, which manages three field operations providing legal and medical assistance to Venezuelan migrants, told CNN in March that convincing migrants was proving a challenge — and could become a defining challenge for Colombia’s vaccination efforts. “Many Venezuelans don’t trust the vaccine. They worry that it will harm and maybe even kill them. So one of our priorities now is to educate Venezuelans about the safety of the vaccine alongside providing continued humanitarian assistance,” Aprile told CNN. While vaccine hesitancy among certain communities in the United States is well-documented, there are few surveys specifically addressing marginalized communities in Latin America, such as Venezuelan migrants. According to government estimates, there are almost 2 million Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, a country of 50 million. Most Venezuelans arrived in recent years after fleeing the economic crisis in their home country, and are not fully integrated within Colombian society, which can make keeping track and getting in touch with them for programs like the vaccine rollout difficult. Many don’t have ID cards or health insurance; others live in Colombia without the proper documentation or work informally. Several Venezuelan migrants who spoke with CNN for this piece cited the precariousness of their existence as a factor in concern about the Covid-19 vaccine. “I have a son who’s two years old. I’m worried for him: if I take the vaccine, and some side effect appears and I cannot work, who looks after him?” said Valera. His family has little in the way of savings to get through sick days. Others fear the vaccines could provoke side effects that prevent them from working or might require further health assistance which they are not entitled to receive because they don’t have proper documentation. They are not the only marginalized people in Colombia skeptical of its vaccination campaign. After decades of guerrilla war, Colombia is home to a vast number of internally displaced people who also live in the margins of society and view the government of President Iván Duque Márquez with general wariness. Some of Valera’s Colombian neighbors in the working class neighborhood of Usme, for example, said they did not trust the government’s pledge to inoculate in an equal way. “This is a very poor neighborhood and the government has forgotten about us: I stopped believing them a long time ago,” said Lilian Escobar, a 50-year old Colombian woman who added that she’d refuse to take the vaccine if she had the opportunity. Her husband Ricardo Rivaldo says he doubted the pandemic was real for months, but that spiking case numbers in Brazil have now convinced him of the urgent need for vaccination. While his wife pours coffee and criticizes Colombia’s health bureaucracy, Rivaldo slams a cup on the kitchen counter and declares, “They are useless for sure, but if you gave me a jab today, I’d take it straightaway!” People who cannot work from home, like many of the low-income residents of Usme, may ultimately be most in need of the vaccine, Dr. Maribel Arrieta, an epidemiologist and member of the directors’ board at Bogota’s College of Doctors told CNN. “If there are populations that don’t vaccinate because of fear or hesitancy, that’s a big problem. More than anything, because these marginalized populations are those most at risk to catch the virus, and spread it,” she said. Valera, for example, is in close contact with hundreds of people every day as he sells snacks on the street. Colombia is entering the second phase of its vaccination campaign, which prioritizes health personnel and citizens older than 60. Colombian health minister Fernando Ruiz has told CNN the vaccination plan will include vulnerable and marginalized populations in the fourth phase of the campaign. But at current vaccination rates Colombia is not expected to reach that phase for at least two more months. “These are people with access to information barriers and that present serious and chronic illnesses in higher degree than the rest of the population,” said Ruiz, pledging to reach them no matter where they are in the country. “If we have to, we’ll go by boat, on the back of a mule or hiking rural trails.” Source link Orbem News #Colombia #Covid19 #People #rejecting #Skepticism #Vaccine #vulnerable

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AstraZeneca: Is there a blood clot risk?

AstraZeneca: Is there a blood clot risk?

Unusual blood clots in the brain have been detected in a handful of people after they were injected with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

These "cerebral venous sinus thromboses" or CVSTs have led some countries - including Germany, France and Canada - to restrict who can be given the jab. The World Health Organization and the European Medicines Agency say the benefits of the vaccine outweigh any risks.

Scientists and medicines safety regulators around the world are trying to figure out if the vaccine is genuinely causing these strokes, how big any risk might be and what that might mean for vaccination programmes.

Is the vaccine causing clots?

At the moment, we do not know.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA), which has been reviewing the safety data, says it is "not proven, but is possible".

The organisation has to figure out whether the reported clots are a side-effect or a coincidence that would have happened naturally. This is incredibly hard when dealing with rare events. If, on the other hand, one in every 10,000 people was having serious blood clots then the answer would be obvious.

I have spoken to respected scientists some of whom are sceptical, others increasingly convinced.

Some point to the highly unusual nature of the clots as a sign something could be going on. They are often appearing at the same time as low levels of blood platelets, which are one of the main components of a clot, and antibodies linked to other clotting disorders appearing in the blood.

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Others say there is not enough proof and the reported cases could plausibly be down to Covid, which itself is linked to abnormal clotting.

How big might the risk be?

It remains entirely possible the risk is zero as vaccines are not proven to cause the brain clots.

Germany's Paul Ehrlich Institute has reported 31 cerebral venous sinus thromboses and nine deaths out of 2.7 million people vaccinated there.

The most recent UK data reported 30 clots linked with low platelet counts and seven deaths out of 18 million people vaccinated.

The European Medicines Agency, which has assessed data from around the world, estimates there is around a one in 100,000 risk of a CVST in people under the age of 60 who have been given the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The organisation's head of safety monitoring, Dr Peter Arlett, said that was "more than we would expect to see".

However, it is uncertain what the background rate of these blood clots in the brain truly is. Estimates vary from around two cases per million people every year to nearly 16 in every million in normal times and coronavirus itself may be causing them too.

Why is there a difference between the UK and Germany?

You might expect to see the same numbers of CVSTs in different countries if they were genuinely being caused by the vaccine. Yet the UK has reported roughly the same number of cases despite giving the vaccine to nearly seven times as many people as Germany.

One argument is the type of people being vaccinated is different.

The UK has, largely, been working from the oldest age groups down, while Germany was one of the countries that initially refused to use the vaccine in the over 65s because of a lack of trial data. Instead nearly 90% of Germans given AstraZeneca are thought to be under 60.

Side-effects in general tend to be more severe in younger people as they have a stronger immune response, which has been one speculated reason why the UK has had fewer cases.

However, CVSTs are inherently more common in younger women and taking the pill increases the risk. So the natural risk levels - whether people are vaccinated or not - could have a role too.

Teasing all this apart is challenging, but the EMA said it had found no specific risk factors such as age, gender or medical history.

Is the AstraZeneca vaccine safe?

Nothing in medicine in completely safe and even therapies that are highly toxic are used in the right circumstance.

Chemotherapy drugs have brutal side effects, but are hugely valuable; and even over-the-counter painkillers like paracetamol and ibuprofen have severe side-effects, they are just incredibly rare.

What you need to know about vaccine safety

The real decision is always whether the benefits outweigh the risks.

This is particularly challenging in a pandemic. Normally medicine would rely on the "precautionary principle" to prove adequate safety before giving a new medicine to large numbers of people. But in a pandemic, any delays in vaccinating people will also cost lives.

Based on the Germany data alone, if you vaccinate a million people then you would expect 12 to have a blood clot and four of them to die.

But if a million 60-year-olds catch coronavirus then around 20,000 would die of Covid-19. If a million 40-year-olds catch coronavirus then around 1,000 die. It would be a few hundred people in their 30s.

The benefits of vaccination clearly increase with age and countries like Germany and Canada have allowed the AstraZeneca vaccine to be used in older age-groups. These decisions will also be driven by which alternative vaccines they have available and who still needs to be immunised.

The world is scrutinising the data intensely, but clarity will still take time.

#news

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Backed by Millions in Public and Private Cash, Rapid Covid Tests Are Coming to Stores Near You

Scientists and lawmakers agree that over-the-counter covid tests could allow desk workers to settle back into their cubicles and make it easier to reopen schools and travel.

This story also ran on Fortune. It can be republished for free.

But even as entrepreneurs race their products to market, armed with millions of dollars in venture capital and government investment, the demand for covid testing has waned. Manufacturing and bureaucratic delays have also kept rapid tests from hitting store shelves in large numbers, though the industry was energized by the Food and Drug Administration’s greenlighting of two more over-the-counter tests Wednesday.

Corporate giants and startups alike plan to offer a dizzying array of test options, most costing between $10 and $110. Their screening accuracy varies, as does the way consumers get results: collection kits mailed back to a lab, devices synced with artificial intelligence-enabled apps on a smartphone that spit out results within 15 minutes, and credit card-sized tests with strips of paper that must be dipped into a chemical substance.

“At-home tests are one of the key steps to getting back to normal life,” said Andy Slavitt, a member of the White House COVID-19 Response Team, during a February briefing.

The Biden administration announced in March it will allocate $10 billion from the recently passed stimulus package for covid testing to expedite school reopenings, and earlier said it would invoke the Defense Production Act to manufacture more at-home tests. Separately, the federal government has already sent millions of Abbott Laboratories’ BinaxNOW rapid tests to states, and California, for instance, is giving 3 million of them to its most disadvantaged school districts for free.

Large employers, like Google, sports leagues and the federal government, have already shelled out millions to regularly test their workers. Amazon just received emergency use authorization from the FDA for its own covid test and home collection kit, which it intends to use for its employee screening program.

Individuals who want to buy over-the-counter tests can bill their health insurance plans, which are required by the federal government in most cases to fully cover covid tests that have been authorized by the FDA.

Everlywell, based in Austin, Texas, is an at-home diagnostic company that already sells its collection kit to consumers through its website and Walgreens, and will soon offer same-day delivery via DoorDash in a dozen cities. Dr. Marisa Cruz, Everlywell’s executive vice president of regulatory and clinical affairs, said buyers can seek reimbursement from their insurance plans for the kit’s $109 cost. The tests are also eligible for purchase with pretax dollars from health savings or flexible spending accounts, she said.

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Even with vaccines, epidemiologists say, rapid tests are desperately needed because more testing, along with mask-wearing and physical distancing, will get people back in offices and classrooms and help catch cases that go undetected. A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that, of people with active infections, 44% reported no symptoms.

But the market for over-the-counter tests is risky. Demand for testing has plunged dramatically since the height of the winter surge and may not rebound as more people are vaccinated.

“You clearly are at risk of missing the market,” said Michael Greeley, co-founder and general partner at Flare Capital Partners, a venture capital firm focused on health care technology.

But Douglas Bryant, president and CEO of Quidel Corp., remains unfazed, even after the diagnostics manufacturer’s testing demand dropped by about one-third in the past two months.

“The level of testing for people with symptoms and the ‘worried well,’ who see others getting tested and think they should, too, is subsiding,” Bryant said. “But once we start to get more people vaccinated, the government will move from campaigning to get people vaccinated to saying, ‘Please test yourself regularly so we can get back to work.’”

Quidel, headquartered in San Diego, recently unveiled its latest test, the QuickVue At-Home COVID-19 Test, which takes 10 minutes to detect the coronavirus by homing in on specific proteins, called antigens. The FDA authorized the test for over-the-counter use Wednesday, and Quidel plans to announce retail partners in the coming weeks.

The FDA said in mid-March it would speed the pipeline for “screening testing,” including at-home covid tests that don’t require consumers to have symptoms or a prescription.

In February, the Biden administration cut a $232 million deal with Ellume, whose rapid antigen test was authorized by the FDA in December. Paired with an app, the test takes 15 minutes to analyze after a nose swab.

The Australian company currently ships hundreds of thousands of test kits a week to the U.S. from its factory in Brisbane to large companies and the Department of Defense. It plans to be on the shelves of multiple pharmacies by the second half of the year and in one major retailer in April, said Dr. Sean Parsons, the company’s founder and CEO.

“We are going as fast as we can possibly go,” he said.

The main holdup for Ellume has been getting enough swabs for its production line. The company is building a factory in the U.S. to reduce international shipping costs and increase production.

Abbott, which dominates the rapid-test market, said in January it expects to sell 120 million BinaxNOW antigen tests to consumers in the first half of the year. People who take the test now must do so under observation by telemedicine platform eMed. But Abbott received authorization from the FDA this week for an over-the-counter version that won’t require remote observation or a prescription. The test will be available in U.S. stores in the coming weeks, the company said.

Throughout the pandemic, the government has depended heavily on medical device behemoth Abbott’s testing options. The company’s rapid-diagnostics arm alone has snared $673 million in federal contracts to combat the coronavirus, according to a ProPublica database. This includes bulk purchases made by the Defense Department, the national prison system, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the State Department and former President Donald Trump's office.

But antigen tests sometimes report false negatives, particularly among people without symptoms, noted Dr. Jac Dinnes, who co-authored a review of 64 covid test studies. By comparison, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests — generally employed by commercial labs — are more sensitive. PCR tests search for the virus’s genetic material over multiple testing cycles, which magnifies what’s in the swab sample, requiring a much smaller viral load for detection.

Antigen tests are the basis for most at-home screening, but the FDA has also authorized two at-home options — made by Lucira Health and Cue Health — that use molecular processes similar to a PCR test.

Still, many experts support the widespread distribution of cheap, rapid tests, even if they aren’t as sensitive as lab-run alternatives, and see a demand. In Germany, the supermarket chain Aldi began selling rapid tests in early March, roughly $30 for a five-pack, and sold out within hours. One recent study found that if a pack of tests was mailed to every household in the U.S. — even assuming that up to 75% would go into the garbage — they would save thousands of lives and avert millions of infections.

“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good,” said study co-author and Yale University professor A. David Paltiel. “This doesn’t have to work perfectly to make a huge difference.”

Some companies are working on rapid-testing options that more precisely read samples, such as Gauss.

The Menlo Park, California, health tech company, which before the pandemic created an artificial intelligence-based app to measure surgical blood loss in real time, aims to harness its expertise to improve on the basic antigen test. It took about a week for CEO Siddarth Satish to raise $30 million of venture capital last October.

Its covid-testing app uses facial recognition software to confirm that test-takers correctly swab their noses. The app provides step-by-step instructions and timers. After 15 minutes, an algorithm based on thousands of sample tests interprets the result — which displays as a colored line, as with a pregnancy test — using the phone’s camera.

Gauss and Cellex, which manufactures the Gauss tests, await FDA authorization. In the meantime, they have produced more than 1.5 million kits and struck deals with supermarket chain Kroger and e-pharmacy site Truepill to sell them for about $30.

“A huge part of the accuracy issue with rapid tests is that you have to visually interpret them,” Satish said. “Sometimes you get really faint lines, just like with a pregnancy strip, and there’s some guesswork.”

Lucira Health, based in Emeryville, California, uses something called loop-mediated isothermal amplification technology, which is similar to PCR tests in precision. In February, the company went public, raising $153 million largely to fund the manufacturing of its all-in-one testing kit, currently prescribed by doctors across the country. The kit comes with a nose swab and a vial of chemicals analyzed by a hand-held device — taking up to 30 minutes for results.

Kelly Lewis Brezoczky, Lucira’s executive vice president, envisions the test kit on the shelf in local pharmacies, perched next to the NyQuil. “I always like to tell people that it is as easy to use as toothpaste,” she said.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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[newstfionline]

Monday, March 29, 2021

Are we heading for a post-pandemic ‘Roaring 2020s,’ with parties and excess? (Washington Post) This has been a year of extreme social deprivation. But the pandemic—like all pandemics before it—eventually will end. Then what? Will we easily transition from isolation back into the real world? For most of us, the answer probably is yes, although it may take time to adapt, according to social scientists who study human behavior. “Social skills are like a muscle,” says Richard Slatcher, a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia who studies the effects of relationships on health and well-being. “If we are out of practice, it will take a while to get back on the social bike, if you will, and ride it again. It has now become second nature to keep your guard up. We’re habituated to this new normal, so it will take a while to return to the old normal.” Nevertheless, scientists predict that after many more Americans are vaccinated, society might resemble what followed in the aftermath of the 1918 influenza pandemic, a decade known as the Roaring Twenties, an age striking in its excesses. “It was the biggest street party of all time,” says Robin Dunbar, emeritus fellow, Magdalen College, and professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford. “People have been cooped up for a long period of time,” Slatcher says. “We could be living through the Roaring Twenties again—this time, the Roaring 2020s.”

Expelled from US at night, migrant families weigh next steps (AP) In one of Mexico’s most notorious cities for organized crime, migrants are expelled from the United States throughout the night, exhausted from the journey, disillusioned about not getting a chance to seek asylum and at a crossroads about where to go next. Marisela Ramirez, who was returned to Reynosa about 4 a.m. Thursday, brought her 14-year-old son and left five other children—one only 8 months old—in Guatemala because she couldn’t afford to pay smugglers more money. Now, facing another agonizing choice, she leaned toward sending her son across the border alone to settle with a sister in Missouri, aware that the United States is allowing unaccompanied children to pursue asylum. “We’re in God’s hands,” Ramirez, 30, said in a barren park with dying grass and a large gazebo in the center that serves as shelter for migrants. The decisions unfold amid what Border Patrol officials say is an extraordinarily high 30-day average of 5,000 daily encounters with migrants. Children traveling alone are allowed to remain in the U.S. to pursue asylum while nearly all single adults are expelled to Mexico under pandemic-era rules that deny them a chance to seek humanitarian protection. Reynosa, a city of 700,000 people, is where many migrants are returned after being expelled from Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. The Border Patrol has said the vast majority of migrants are expelled to Mexico after less than two hours in the United States to limit the spread of COVID-19, which means many arrive when it’s dark.

Cubans stage caravan to protest U.S. trade embargo, sanctions (Reuters) Hundreds of Cubans took to Havana’s famous seaside drive on Sunday in a colorful caravan of cars, motorcycles and bicycles to demand the United States lift its 60-year-old embargo on the Caribbean island nation. The caravan was part of a weekend of small protests and caravans in more than 50 cities around the world, including in the United States, supported by local authorities in hopes of influencing the Biden administration to change U.S. policy and to counter a campaign by Cuban exiles to keep the embargo in place. Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration took more than 200 initiatives to tighten the decades-old trade embargo on Cuba over four years, citing concerns about a lack of democracy and Havana’s support for Venezuela’s socialist government. The tightening of the trade embargo under Trump, a Republican, has inflicted further pain on the communist-run island’s ailing state-controlled economy, contributing to worsening food and medicine shortages.

Paris doctors warn of catastrophic overload of virus cases (AP) Critical care doctors in Paris say surging coronavirus infections could soon overwhelm their ability to care for the sick in the French capital’s hospitals, possibly forcing them to choose which patients they have the resources to treat. The sobering warning was delivered Sunday in a newspaper opinion signed by 41 Paris-region doctors. Published by Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper, it comes as French President Emmanuel Macron has been vigorously defending his decision not to completely lockdown France again as he did last year. Since January, Macron’s government has instead imposed a nationwide overnight curfew and followed that with a grab-bag of other restrictions. But with infections soaring and hospitals increasingly running short of intensive care beds, doctors have been stepping up the pressure for a full French lockdown.

Pope, on Palm Sunday, says devil taking advantage of pandemic (Reuters) Pope Francis led Palm Sunday services in an almost empty St. Peter's Basilica because of coronavirus restrictions for the second consecutive year and said the devil is taking advantage of the pandemic. Italy is in the midst of another national lockdown, which is due to end after Easter. On Wednesday, the pope ordered cardinals and other clerics to take pay cuts to save the jobs of other employees. "The Devil is taking advantage of the crisis to sow distrust, desperation and discord," he said, adding that the pandemic had brought physical, psychological and spiritual suffering. Since he was elected in 2013, Francis has made clear that he believes the devil to be real, saying in a 2018 document that it was mistaken to consider him a myth. In both his homily during the Mass and his comments afterward, Francis aid the pandemic made it more important than ever to look after those in difficulty, the poor and the suffering.

Myanmar army launches air strikes in Karen state, group says (Reuters) Myanmar army fighter jets launched air strikes on Saturday on a village near the Thai border in territory controlled by an armed ethnic group, the group said, as fears grow of civil war following last month’s military coup. The Karen National Union (KNU), the armed ethnic group that controls the southeastern region, said fighter jets attacked Day Pu No in Papun district, an area held by its Brigade 5 forces, at around 8 p.m., forcing villagers to flee. “They bombed the area... The villagers from that area said two dead and two injured,” a spokesperson for civil society group Karen Peace Support Network said, adding that communication was difficult in the remote region and there could be more casualties. The reported air assault is the most significant attack for years in the region. The KNU had signed a ceasefire agreement in 2015 but tensions surged after the military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government on Feb.1. The KNU says it has been sheltering hundreds of people who have fled central Myanmar amid mounting violence in recent weeks.

Beijing enveloped in hazardous sandstorm, second time in two weeks (Reuters) The Chinese capital Beijing woke on Sunday morning shrouded in thick dust carrying extremely high levels of hazardous particles, as a second sandstorm in two weeks hit the city due to winds from drought-hit Mongolia and northwestern China. Visibility in the city was reduced, with the tops of some skyscrapers obscured by the sandstorm, and pedestrians were forced to cover their eyes as gusts of dust swept through the streets. Beijing might face more sandstorms in April due to the unfavorable weather this year, the meteorological office said.

Philippines sends fighter aircraft over Chinese vessels in South China Sea (Reuters) The Philippine military is sending light fighter aircraft to fly over hundreds of Chinese vessels in disputed waters in the South China Sea, its defence minister said, as he repeated his demand the flotilla be withdrawn immediately. International concern is growing over what the Philippines has described as a “swarming and threatening presence” of more than 200 Chinese vessels that Manila believes were manned by maritime militia. The boats were moored at the Whitsun Reef within Manila’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone. The Philippine military aircraft were sent daily to monitor the situation, Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said in a statement late on Saturday. Lorenzana said the military will also beef up its naval presence in the South China Sea to conduct “sovereignty patrols” and protect Filipino fishermen. The Chinese Embassy in Manila said the vessels at Whitsun Reef were fishing boats taking refuge from rough seas and that there were no militia aboard.

Church Suicide Bomber Targets Palm Sunday Service in Indonesia (AP) A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a packed Roman Catholic cathedral on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island during a Palm Sunday Mass, wounding at least twenty people, police said. A cellular video obtained by The Associated Press showed body parts scattered near a burning motorbike at the gates of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province. Wilhelmus Tulak, a Catholic priest who led the Mass when the bomb exploded at about 10:30 a.m., told reporters that a loud bang shocked his congregation who had just finished the service. Tulak said the church’s security guards suspected two motorists who wanted to enter the church. One of them detonated his explosives and died near the gate after being confronted by guards. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, has been battling militants since bombings on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

Cargo ship remains stuck in Egypt’s Suez Canal for fifth day after effort to free it failed (CBS News) A giant container ship remained stuck sideways in Egypt’s Suez Canal for a fifth day Saturday, as authorities prepared to make new attempts to free the vessel and reopen a crucial east-west waterway for global shipping. The Ever Given’s owners say a gust of wind pushed it and its huge cargo of more than 20,000 shipping containers sideways in the canal on Tuesday, wedging it between the canal’s sandy banks. Plans were in the works to pump water from interior spaces of the vessel, and two more tugs should arrive by Sunday to join others already trying to move the massive ship. A maritime traffic jam grew to around 280 vessels Saturday outside the Suez Canal, according to canal service provider Leth Agencies. Some vessels began changing course and dozens of ships were still en route to the waterway, according to the data firm Refinitiv. Some 19,000 vessels passed through the canal last year, according to official figures. About 10% of world trade flows through the canal, which is particularly crucial for transporting oil.

Insurgents Seize Mozambique Town (NYT) Insurgents seized control of much of a town in Mozambique on Saturday, after a three-day siege that has left at least several people dead and hundreds of other civilians unaccounted for as government forces try to regain control, according to private security contractors in East Africa and news reports. Nearly 200 people, including dozens of foreign workers, sought shelter inside a hotel in the town, Palma, after nearly 300 militants flooded into the area on Wednesday, destroying much of the town and sending hundreds of other residents fleeing into nearby areas. On Friday afternoon, insurgents attacked a convoy of civilians as they attempted to flee the hotel, killing several people and injuring dozens of others. Most telephone lines and communications in Palma were cut off as the siege unfolded, but the contractors feared scores of people could have been killed. The attack is the latest in a brutal war unfolding in the country’s north involving insurgent groups believed to be linked to the Islamic State. The conflict has left at least 2,000 civilians dead and displaced 670,000 more in recent years, according to humanitarian groups.

#headlines #news

[khalilhumam]

Why the risk of election violence is high

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/why-the-risk-of-election-violence-is-high/

Why the risk of election violence is high

By Daniel L. Byman, Colin P. Clarke As the presidential election nears, the risk of violence appears to be growing. Increasingly heated presidential rhetoric, political polarization, COVID-19-related anxiety, mobilization and counter-mobilization related to Black Lives Matter protests, and other concerns all pose risks for election security and public safety. Law enforcement agencies, social media companies, and others anxious to preserve the peace are scrambling to identify, and disrupt, possible threats, but their efforts may not be enough. Much depends on a wild card—the actions of the president of the United States—and the prognosis there looks quite grim. If violence does occur, which seems likely, a key challenge could be to stop it from cascading, leading to more lives lost and a greater disruption of traditional peaceful politics. The stakes are high for this election and the national mood appears dark. For the past several months, President Trump has been fanning the flames of domestic discontent by repeatedly making baseless claims about voter fraud, proclaiming at a September campaign rally in Nevada that, “The Democrats are trying to rig this election because that’s the only way they’re going to win.” Related to these claims, the president has urged his supporters to “Be poll watchers when you go there. Watch all the thieving and stealing and robbing they do.” And it is not just President Trump. His family members, close advisers, far-right media figures, and “an online army of disciples” have been relentlessly pushing the narrative of a “rigged” election, apparently with little understanding, or perhaps little concern, about the ways in which these exhortations could translate into real world-violence. At the first presidential debate, Trump told the white nationalist group the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” a message that many counterterrorism analysts perceived as a dog whistle, or maybe just a regular whistle, to the far-right. The conspiracy movement QAnon, which Trump refused to condemn in his most recent town hall, and the far-right extremist group The Oath Keepers, have both suggested that they might resort to violence if Trump loses the election. Fear that armed vigilantes could be stalking polling stations could very well deter voting. At the same time, there is a greater level of polarization in American society, breeding the idea that those who vote for the other party are at best misguided fools and at worst, enemies and traitors. One academic study found, “Hostility to the opposition party and its candidates has now reached a level where loathing motivates voters more than loyalty.” Misguided activists like Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who killed two protesters demonstrating for racial justice on the streets of Kenosha, are lauded as heroes by many on the right as someone who is “bravely defending” his Christian community, according to one fundraising website that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for his defense. The vast majority of those polarized do not support, let alone would conduct, violence, but terrorism is a small-numbers game. The shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 and the El Paso Walmart in 2019 were done by individuals who, from their perspectives, “had enough” and sought to act in the name of a broader cause: “protecting” whites from their supposed racial enemies. Yet the broader pool of potential extremists has grown during COVID, with Americans at home and online, consuming vast quantities of propaganda and disinformation. So even if a relatively small percentage of people might actually mobilize to violence, the milieu from which they will emerge has metastasized significantly. The November election is increasingly perceived as a “winner-take-all” contest, with no room for those who don’t identify with a specific side. As terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman has detailed, there was a 60% growth in Facebook pages advocating sedition between February and April of this year. So-called accelerationists, or those individuals and groups advocating for civil war and anarchy, have grown more prominent over the course of the pandemic to date, which may play into their narrative of societal collapse. Unclear or contested election results could fuel a range of agitators, on both the left and the right, and perpetuate the cycle of reciprocal radicalization where each side sees the other as an existential threat, and mobilizes accordingly. Worryingly, gun and ammunition sales hit record highs this year. According to the FBI, background checks for handgun purchases are up an astonishing 80 percent from last year. Between the coronavirus pandemic and nationwide protests against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd, one might have to go back to the late 1960s to find a time when U.S. domestic politics resembled such a powder keg. The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and others concerned with domestic security and safeguarding elections have  spelled out the danger and are trying to redouble their efforts against violent extremists. Yet it is difficult for them to act without top-level direction, or at least approval. The president and his partisans have insisted on highlighting the supposed dangers of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, rather than giving security agencies top-cover for going after the more violent anti-government and white supremacist movements. Indeed, if they act too openly they risk countering the very people the president is trying to mobilize to “protect” the elections from the left. A DHS whistleblower even claimed recently that top officials at the agency deliberately downplayed the threat from white supremacists so as to avoid angering President Trump. Violence could manifest in ways big and small. Local extremists might seek to “defend” a polling place and, in so doing, intimidate voters form another party. One can imagine a shooting in a Latino community in order to stop supposed fraud by illegal immigrants, whom the extremist right claims will vote in large numbers. Democratic politicians might be at personal risk as well, as was seen recently with kidnapping plots against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. Because the scenarios are many and the actors diffuse, it is hard to guard against all the possibilities and resources will be stretched thin. The news is not all grim. The FBI, DHS, and social media companies are all on alert, trying to identify potentially violent individuals and, in the case of social media companies, deplatform QAnon and other groups that call for violence, take down false information related to elections, and otherwise recognize that the laissez faire approach they followed in 2016 failed. If violence is limited, alert law enforcement can stop it from snowballing and having a broader political impact. The biggest wildcard, unfortunately, is the President of the United States himself. He has the power to ease the threat or to exacerbate polarization. Equally important, if violence breaks out, the president must strongly condemn it, even if he is on the losing end of the election. Win or lose, President Trump must work with state and local officials to ensure that the full power of the law is used to nip violence in the bud and prevent it from escalating. Unfortunately, his track record so far suggests he might make things worse, not better.

[orbemnews]

Brazil's Covid-19 crisis needs strict lockdown measures, say experts. Why are some officials easing restrictive measures? Sao Paulo will reopen state schools, sports events, and construction stores. Rio de Janeiro will allow bars and restaurants to operate again, overturning restrictions that have been in place since March. Sao Paulo authorities justify the reopening by pointing out that occupancy rates in intensive care units in the state have fallen from crisis-level 90.5% to 88.6%. “This measure clearly shows that the effort made in recent weeks is beginning to give results,” said Vice-Governor Rodrigo Garcia on a press conference on April 9. But daily numbers are still very grim: On Friday alone, the state registered over 20,000 new cases. Meanwhile, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, ICU occupancy rates are higher at 92%, but Mayor Eduardo Paes nevertheless has decided to ease restrictions. “This is an answer for anyone who thinks that restrictions are of no use by preventing parties and crowds. Our reality does not allow lockdown”, Paes said in a press conference held on Friday, adding that shop owners and the general population suffer economically from such measures. Still, he said, “This is no time to relax.” Easing restrictions is the opposite of what many institutions and medical specialists say Brazil needs: a national and coordinated lockdown. At the moment Brazil has only fully vaccinated 2.8% of its population — just over 6 million people, in a country of 210 million. Currently, Brazil’s public and private health systems are under immense pressure, with ICUs in at least 17 states overwhelmed with over 90% occupancy. Intubation medication and oxygen have repeatedly run low at points during the pandemic. On Thursday the National Council of Municipal Health Secretariats declared that about a fifth of all the country´s cities were at risk of running out of medical oxygen over the next ten days. Only a lockdown can prevent April from becoming “even worse” than March — the country’s most fatal month of the pandemic so far, with 66,573 deaths recorded — according to the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), a public biomedical research center that is currently working with vaccine-maker AstraZeneca. “Lockdowns are a bitter remedy, but they are absolutely necessary in times of crisis and collapse of the health system like the one the country is experiencing now. Just this will prevent more deaths and effectively save lives,” wrote Fiocruz scientists in a recent report. The United Nations office in Brazil has also asked for the country to impose movement restrictions, warning that an accelerating death rate and absence of a national coordinated plan are “leading the country to a catastrophe.” Brazil has never had a real lockdown Since the pandemic began, Brazil has seen a patchwork of local restrictions on movement or activity, but they never really amounted to an effective broad lockdown, neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis told CNN. Nicolelis, a prominent Brazilian scientist, created one of the nation’s first scientific committees to study the coronavirus and develop tactics to counter the disease, and has advised on regional Covid-19 strategies. He and other medical experts and civil society groups are part of Brazil’s “April for Life” campaign, which is calling for the federal government to impose an immediate nationwide lockdown. “Lockdown is when you restrict the flow of people — streets, roads, flights, in addition to achieving strict social isolation. That has never been achieved widely in Brazil, we had only a few exceptions,” said Nicolelis. “In general, we had the application of a few restrictive measures with low levels of adherence from people.” April for Life estimates that a strict national lockdown for 30 days, with strict rules on the movement of people, could save 22,000 lives. “If you look at the Brazilian curves in Rio de Janeiro and even in São Paulo, you see peaks and valleys. Death spikes, then they temporarily close a few things and you see a small fall, but the fall is not sustainable. In the end, you do not curb the transmission of the virus efficiently, but instead, you make an environment for new variants to arise,” said Nicolelis. He says that Brazil needs greater federal leadership; an accelerated vaccine rollout; and a federally enforced national lockdown in which only essential services are allowed and most movement is banned. “The virus is a collective organism, and it is only possible to fight it collectively. It is of no use to close one city if we are to leave the rest open, you need coordinated action, otherwise, the virus will keep growing back,” he says. Yet Brazilian authorities have resisted adopting such measures to contain the spread of the virus. The country’s federal government, led by President Jair Bolsonaro, has in fact shown a fierce opposition to imposing any restrictions, out of concern for the economy. “Whoever closed the markets and shops and obliged the people to stay at home, it wasn’t me,” Bolsonaro said on Saturday, during a visit to the periphery of Brasilia, dismissively referring to mayors and governors who have adopted local restrictive measures. “I have the power of by signing a document to decree a lockdown in the whole country, but this will not be made, and our army will not go to the streets to impose people to stay at home,” the maskless President declared. His newly appointed Health Ministry, Marcelo Queiroga, has also rejected the idea. “The (president’s) order is to avoid the lockdown,” Queiroga said on April 3. Local lockdowns have worked Three hours drive from Sao Paulo, Edinho Silva is one of few mayors in Brazil who have gone against the tide. He imposed a full lockdown in the city of Araquara, closing commerce including supermarkets and public transport, and forbidding the circulation of people for 10 days in February — a decision that prompted death threats against him. He took the dramatic step after seeing hospitals in the agribusiness-oriented town start to fill up. The city of 250,000 people, was the first in the state of Sao Paulo to see its health system collapse under the weight of new Covid-19 cases, forcing it to transfer severe cases out of packed ICUs and into other cities. “(Locking down) was a tough decision that required sacrifices, especially from small and medium businessmen, because there is no financial aid for them in Brazil. But with the contamination curve we had, I had nothing else to do,” said Silva. Shortly after, he started to receive death threats from Bolsaro supporters, Silva told CNN. “Does anyone know where Mayor Edinho lives? I just want a (fight) round with him. Then I am going to stab him from the bottom to top,” one man said on social media, according to Silva. Police are now investigating the threats. Despite the personal risks, Silva’s strict approach seems to have worked. Since the end of the 10 day lockdown, some restrictions have remained on the city, including a night curfew from 9pm to 5am and limited hours for bars and restaurants — and Ararquara’s Covid-19 case numbers and deaths have steadily dropped. For three consecutive days last week, Ararquara registered no deaths due to Covid-19. It’s a small sign of hope, but one that stands out amid Brazil’s accelerating coronavirus crisis. “Lockdown is not a choice, it is imposed by reality,” says Silva. “If you don’t adopt it, you’ll pile up coffins, there’s no other way.” Source link Orbem News #Brazils #Covid19 #crisis #Easing #experts #lockdown #measures #Officials #restrictive #strict

[lodelss]

After a Lifetime Apart, COVID-19 Prison Release Reunites Mother and Daughter

“You’re on the list.” It took a few seconds for Chalana McFarland to grasp what was happening. Her name was one of just a few on the list of people who would be released from prison early due to COVID-19. Behind her stood a line of dozens of other women waiting to see if they made it. Only some of them had. But as Chalana received the news, they started cheering, and caused such an uproar that the correctional staff had to reprimand them. That’s when it finally clicked for Chalana — after 15 years in prison, she was finally going home.  Chalana immediately contacted her daughter. “I was watching a movie with my roommate when I got the news,” says Nia, who is 19 and lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where she attends university. “At first I was like, ‘What?’ I didn’t think it was real. Then I just fell over crying. I couldn’t even talk. Later, when we talked on the phone, I could hear the happiness in my mom’s voice that this was all finally going to be over.”

A number of prisons and jails across the country have begun to release people who are vulnerable to COVID-19 due to age or underlying health conditions, or people who are incarcerated while awaiting trial. This is the result of pressure from public health officials, advocates, and corrections officials. But the coronavirus poses a threat to all incarcerated people. It can spread rapidly in jails and prisons, where social distancing is impossible, access to hygiene is lacking, and medical care is inadequate. If even one person becomes infected, the potential outbreak could be devastating. There are already more than 10,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in state and federal prisons and jails combined, and this is despite the fact that testing is impossible in most facilities. Facilities including Rikers Island jail in New York, Oakdale federal prison in Louisiana, and many others have already seen deadly outbreaks.

Chalana knew that as a Black woman with asthma, high blood pressure, and sickle cell trait, she was at a higher risk. She feared that her 30-year sentence in federal prison for mortgage fraud would become a death sentence if she remained in prison.

“My greatest fear is to die in here,” she told the ACLU by phone from the prison. “We try to stay away from each other so as to not pass it,” but there is only so much they can do.

The FCI Coleman facility in Florida houses roughly 400 women. Chalana describes their quarters as tightly-packed cubicles with three walls and no ceiling — about the size of a walk-in closet. Each cubicle contains a bunk bed, but because many of the women are elderly or have medical conditions that impede mobility, the bunks are often cut in half and laid side-to-side, taking up almost all of the floorspace.

“Only one person can move around at a time,” says Chalana. “You can look over the wall and see the person next to you. So if someone gets COVID-19, they’re going to give it to the next person and probably the person on the other side of the wall as well.”

The women at Coleman have already suffered other infectious outbreaks this year. In the winter, flu and Legionnaires spread throughout the facility, hospitalizing several women and overwhelming the prison’s already-overstretched medical staff.

“Sometimes you had to wait if you had to vomit or had diarrhea, because all the toilets were full,” remembers Chalana. “All night long it sounded like a TV war because people were just coughing, coughing, coughing. It was horrible.”

Approximately 40 percent of people in jails and prisons suffer from at least one chronic health condition, and jails and prisons tend to have substandard health care, even on a good day. Often, there are simply not enough medical staff to treat the hundreds or thousands of people living in the facilities.

“It’s not humanly possible to treat the number of people they have,” says Chalana. She says that if someone feels they are sick, they need to fill out a slip and give it to the prison’s medical staff, who then determine whether they need to see a doctor — without examination. Those who are selected can wait up to two weeks to actually see the doctor. The procedure is no different for people with COVID-19 symptoms, who are sent back to the dorms while they await care. “It’s like Russian roulette,” says Chalana. (The Bureau of Prisons did not respond to a request for comment on the care provided at Coleman.)

“The longer you’re here, the more you realize that you have to take care of yourself and the others around you as much as possible, which means that when someone’s sick, we all pull together to see what kind of over-the-counter medicines we have to help the person,” she says. “We make tea. We make chicken soup. We do what we can to try to help each other, but when it’s something that’s viral like the coronavirus, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

The threat of COVID-19 came to light gradually at Coleman. Most of the women learned about the virus from friends and family members on visits or phone calls. “Once we saw the news about the county jails, and what was happening at Oakdale, that’s when the alarm went off that we were really in danger,” says Chalana, referring to the federal prison in Louisiana where the COVID-19-related death toll is rising.

“You feel helpless,” Nia tells the ACLU. “There’s someone that you love and care about so much, and it seems like no one else really cares about them. So I was just praying, hoping, and waiting because there was nothing I could do.” Inside Coleman, Chalana was concerned about her family’s safety, too. “We worry about them just as much as they worry about us,” she says. “My parents are both 76 years old, and I worry every day that they’re going to go to the market and contract COVID, and I won’t get to see them while they’re still alive.”

Nia was only four years old when her mother, then an attorney, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for mortgage fraud, a first-time offense. The average sentence for mortgage fraud is 22 months.

“I came to understand that justice and fairness can be incongruent,” she says. “As an attorney, wife, and mother of a 4-year-old, my life as I knew it came to an end.”

Nia was too young to remember. “I don’t have a lot of memory of my mom not being behind bars,” she says. “My whole life I’ve always imagined what it would be like to have my mom actively present in my life. I didn’t expect that to happen until I was in my 30s.”

For the last 15 years, they have stayed connected as much as they could through letters, video calls, and regular visits. Chalana would mail Nia items she made in prison, like bags she knitted for her to take to dance class and folders she decorated for school.

“It was like cool, customized stuff that nobody else had,” says Nia. “And it made me feel like she was there, even though she couldn’t physically be there.”

Still, there were always significant barriers between them. They have never been able to spend more than a few hours together at a time, and that time is always shared with others. Chalana has never seen Nia dance or play basketball, and she missed her baptism. She’s missed every graduation since kindergarten, including Nia’s high school graduation, where she delivered a speech as senior class president.

Nia’s speech was about her mother.  “It was about not letting your circumstances define your destiny,” she tells the ACLU. “Just because you’ve been dealt certain cards in life doesn’t mean you can’t change and be a successful person on your own.” She wrote the speech with Chalana’s help and read it to her over the phone for practice. 

Now Chalana hopes to see Nia’s college graduation. But most of all, she looks forward to spending time with her daughter without any barriers between them.

“I’ll finally get a chance to know who my daughter is,” says Chalana. “To just snuggle on the couch with her and find out whether she’s as much of a Star Trek fan as I am, or if she doesn’t like asparagus or something like that.”

The upcoming release — any day now — is hard for Chalana to talk about without getting emotional. Her reunion with her family was always going to be momentous, but amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an added element that perhaps wouldn’t have been top of mind under different circumstances: their health. Chalana knows she is also lucky to be able to reunite with her family while they are all still healthy.

Though Chalana made the list of releases, her fight to get out of prison isn’t over. Today, she’s sifting through a mountain of paperwork to leave Coleman — which is much harder than getting in, she’s realized. She still doesn’t have a release date and the thought of it is still surreal: “It’s sort of like, ‘Okay, God, please let this all be real.’”

The world Chalana returns to will also be far different from the one she left behind 15 years ago. She’s returning to a pandemic-stricken world where people are staying six feet apart and wearing masks in the street, where stores and restaurants are shuttered and whole cities and states are required to shelter in place. But she’s not worried about what life will be like under quarantine.

“Every day people are saying how frustrated they are being quarantined and how they’re going stir crazy inside,” says Chalana. “Well, that’s our lives every day. Just imagine what you’re going through now on quarantine, but you can’t control what time you go to bed, eat, or shower. You can’t watch TV, you have no internet, you have no computers. That’s a small taste of what our life is like in prison.”

And to those who might say, “You did the crime so do the time”?  “We get that,” says Chalana. “But at the same time, we’re people too. We’re your mothers, your daughters, your neighbors, your friends. We’re just people that are in a situation where we can’t be protected.”

Published April 23, 2020 at 08:40PM via ACLU https://ift.tt/2VRL4Hb

#IFTTT #Blogger

[rightsinexile]

Table of Contents

Issue 115, September 2020

ISSN 2049-2650

Editorial Team: Nejla Sammakia, Christian Jorgensen, Cristina de Nicolás Izquierdo, Taylor Brooks, Lucia Slot, Adam Severson, Nastassja White, Lena Ellen Becker, Muchengeti Hwacha, Saskia Llewellyn and Rosa da Costa.

Chief Editor: Fiona McKinnon

Web links are in blue.

In this issue:

Articles & Short Pieces

Wishful waiting: Four reasons to curb our impatience for the European Pact on Asylum and Migration

Follow the bouncing ball: Persecution and the shifting burden of proof in the US

Refugee eligibility: Challenging stereotypes and reviving the “benefit of the doubt”

How Europe outsourced the Syrian refugee crisis to Lebanon

Registration and Refugee Status Determination: A missing link

The US Supreme Court’s attack on habeas corpus in DHS v. Thuraissigiam

Diversity and inclusion: Blockchain technology and digital identity for stateless Rohingya refugees

Fourteen principles of protection for migrants and displaced people during COVID-19

Refugee-led organizations: The time is now

Five “safe and legal” asylum alternatives to cut Channel crossings to the UK

Age assessment and the protection of minor asylum seekers: Time for a harmonised approach in the EU

What is the UK’s Adults at Risk policy?

Complementary refugee pathways: Labour mobility schemes

Crossfire and criminal cases: How Bangladesh’s counter-trafficking actions changed the game for migrants and refugees in Southeast Asia

News on Countries of Origin

News on Countries of Asylum

Detention and Deportation News

Statelessness

Case Notes

Protecting the formal rule of law in the EU’s asylum policy: The CJEU’s judgment on the asylum relocation mechanism

Federal Court confirms that sending refugee claimants back to the US breaks Canadian law

US Court of Appeals remands CAT case for LGBTIQ individual 

US Court of Appeals upholds injunction seeking to bar asylum-seekers at US-Mexico border

US Court of Appeals on adverse credibility finding

US Court of Appeals grants petition for review of BIA decision to remove CAT protection

French Council of State finds the Ministry of the Interior responsible for violation of the right to seek asylum at the border

Inhuman and degrading living conditions of homeless asylum-seekers in France violates ECHR Article 3

UK’s Upper Tribunal ruling on discretion to reunite refugee families under Dublin III

Landmark decision on “particular social group” in the UK

Finland: Kurdish appellant would face real risk of suffering serious harm if returned to Turkey

Switzerland: Procedural failings when processing an asylum request of an alleged unaccompanied minor

UK Court of Appeal backs order to disclose refugee asylum records

CJEU judgment on the consequences of a failure to conduct a personal interview prior to an inadmissibility decision

Working Group on Arbitrary Detention: Holding asylum applicants in Hungarian transit zones amounts to arbitrary detention

Italy’s Constitutional Court rules on the refusal to allow applicants of international protection to register their residence in local municipalities

Italian residence permit provided on humanitarian grounds due to COVID-19 situation in country of origin

ECHR communicated cases against Italy

Poland improperly rejected Chechen asylum claims, European court rules

Arrest and detention of asylum applicants by Ukrainian authorities amounted to violation of Article 5 ECHR

Opinion/Editorial

Are most asylum seekers really not credible?

Egyptian state security threats security-dominated judiciary will not discourage human rights defenders from protecting the rights of Egyptians

The US hired me to protect refugees. Now it tells me to abandon them.

There is a politics of death in asylum

Greece has a deadly new migration policy — and all of Europe is to blame

Hong Kong activists now face a choice: Stay silent, or flee the city. The world must give them a path to safety.

Trump's new asylum rules extinguish hope for LGBTQ asylum seekers in the US

Inventing a “migrant invasion” is part of a toxic rhetorical ploy

COVID-19 and the chance to reform US refugee policy

How to elevate Rohingya women’s voices amid a crackdown on the Coronavirus

The Rohingya genocide and the ICJ: The role of the international community

Faith groups, businesses and activists in the UK unite to demand asylum rights

Refugee resettlement is close to collapse in the US. That was Trump’s plan.

Announcements

Launch of Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies

Conferences, courses and workshops

Calls for papers

Vacancies

Requests

Resources

Publications

Newsletters

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