1. "It’s Okay to Acknowledge Good COVID-19 News
Among progressives and journalists, there’s a widespread sense that no one should say things have gotten better ... or people are going to die."
[This is a conservative publication.]
"The coronavirus has taken a heartbreaking toll on Americans, but the course of the virus is not the same as it was a few months ago. We are on the other side of the curve. There are encouraging signs all over the country, and no early indications of a reopening debacle.
The question now is whether the media and political system can absorb good news on the virus, which is often ignored or buried under misleading storylines.
The press has a natural affinity for catastrophes, which make compelling viewing and good copy. The pandemic is indeed a once-in-a-generation story. So, the media are naturally loath to shift gears and acknowledge that the coronavirus has begun to loosen its grip.
Meanwhile, progressives and many journalists have developed a near-theological commitment to the lockdowns, such that any information that undermines them is considered unwelcome, even threatening. This accounts for the widespread sense that no one should say things have gotten better . . . or people are going to die.
Usually, when it is thought the public can’t handle the truth, it is a truth about some threat that could spark panic. In this case, the truth is information that might make people think it’s safe to go outside again.
Almost all of the discussion about reopening is framed by worries that we will reopen too soon, not that we might reopen too late. That is literally unthinkable, even as we have entered a new phase.
As data analyst Nate Silver pointed out the other day, the seven-day rolling average for deaths is 1,362, down from 1,761 the previous week and a peak of 2,070 on April 21. That’s still much too high, but the trend is favorable.
The reopenings could certainly still go awry, but so far there is no clear indication of it. Cases are still falling in Austria, Denmark, and Norway, despite those countries’ being relatively far along on reopening. Denmark has been mystified why it is almost five weeks into reopening and hasn’t yet seen increases in infections."
Read in National Review: https://apple.news/A3ZA4bDOSQ3Cv6LSQzZMTow
2. "Hawaii is enforcing 14-day self-quarantines with single-use hotel keys
Every person arriving to Hawaii must sign an order to confirm they are aware of the self-quarantine requirement."
"Up to 30 June, visitors and locals arriving in the state have to quarantine for two weeks before being granted the freedom to explore. This applies to island-hopping as well, so those who have quarantined on one island have to repeat the experience if they move to another one.
They are not permitted to leave their rooms other than for medical emergencies, and food must be delivered to them. To facilitate this, all but four Hawaiian hotels are giving guests a single-use key when they check in, that won't work if they leave the room and try to get back in. If they break the rule, hotel staff can report them to authorities. Two of the hotels who are not participating have opted out because they use physical keys rather than electronic ones.
Visitors arriving in the state must also undergo a health screening, and have to sign an order to confirm they are aware of the self-quarantine requirement and understand that violating it is a criminal offence. They have to confirm where they're staying and acknowledge that they understand that not adhering to the rules can result in a $5000 (€4577) fine and a year in prison. Law enforcement officials are taking any breaches very seriously and are publically searching for anyone breaching the conditions.
Read in Lonely Planet: https://apple.news/A4gKZ4de6S6SqA0hPDq74SQ
3. "Trump: 'We are not closing our country' if second wave of coronavirus hits
President Donald Trump on Thursday said "we are not closing our country" if the U.S. is hit by a second wave of coronavirus infections. Trump answered questions from the reporters during a visit to a Ford plant in Michigan."
Read in CNBC: https://apple.news/AONEKKhAMSbeze1FcE8hYTQ
4. "End New York City's lockdown now!
By prolonging the coronavirus shutdown long after its core mission was accomplished, Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have plunged tens of thousands of New Yorkers into poverty."
[NY Post editorial a few days ago.]
"By prolonging the coronavirus shutdown long after its core mission was accomplished, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have plunged tens of thousands of New Yorkers into poverty.
It needs to end. Now.
In mid-March, we were told we have to endure a lockdown to ensure that hospitals didn’t get overrun. We did. The hospitals were not overwhelmed. We turned the Javits Center into a hospital. We didn’t need it. We brought in a giant Navy ship to treat New Yorkers. We didn’t need it.
We were told we were moments away from running out of ventilators. We weren’t, and now the United States has built so many, we are giving them away to other countries.
Meanwhile, the Big Apple is dying. Its streets are empty. The bars and jazz clubs, restaurants and coffeehouses sit barren. Beloved haunts, storied rooms, perfect-slice joints are shuttered, many for good. The sweat equity of countless small-business owners is evaporating. Instead of getting people back to work providing for their families, our mayor talks about a fantasyland New Deal for the post-coronavirus era.
Open the city. All of it. Right now. Broadway shows, beaches, Yankees games, the schools, the top of the freakin’ Empire State building. Everything. New Yorkers have already learned to socially distance. Businesses can adjust. The elderly and infirm can continue to be isolated.
What the hell is going on? Is anybody in charge of this situation? Or are we just left with the governor and his talking-head brother arguing on CNN about which of the two Ma loves best? (Who cares?)
If our elected leaders won’t save the world’s greatest city from a slow death by economic strangulation, then the people of New York must do it themselves. Barbers, tailors, nail salons, sporting goods stores, movie theaters and others should open their doors — while maintaining social distancing, of course — and dare the state to shut them down.
Our politicians serve by our consent; we don’t run our businesses or live our lives by their consent. The suggestion to the contrary is an affront to Americanism.
It has been a long time since this country, let alone this city, really had to deal with the prospect of mass starvation. This isn’t about the stock market — it’s about parents putting their kids to bed hungry and hoping tomorrow there will be something for them to eat if they get up at 4:30 a.m. and get in line at the food bank.
We did what we were asked. We flattened the freakin’ curve. There is no longer any reasonable justification for the government to deprive us of our livelihoods. And our rights aren’t the government’s to grant or take away. They belong to us — the free grant of nature and the God of nature. We’re Americans. More than that: New Yorkers, goddammit."
Read in New York Post: https://apple.news/AWoSPzldoT4usIq2o0IPzrw
5. "Opinion | Is the coronavirus the end for fancy restaurants — and the start of a new dining era?
Innovative chefs and their establishments shape the way we eat, drink, produce and think about food today. It's unclear what happens if that's gone."
"And some of the chef-owners who run the most exclusive, most expensive and often most innovative restaurants in the country are starting to sound like they don’t see how they will survive. In Seattle, the pre-pandemic home to one of the country’s most adventurous, high-end restaurant scenes, some of the city’s most exciting new boîtes were built around intimate dining experiences — places that were designed to be small at which guests sit at “chef’s counters” during a few seatings per night. There is no way to effectively sanitize a dining experience that is about physical intimacy and have it remain even vaguely similar.
And really, the question has to be asked: Why try?"
Read in NBC News: https://apple.news/AGvWScaGtTXalfeCFSEzxug
6. "'Hot' nurse gets support after suspension for exposing bra and panties
Russian doctors and a politician have reportedly come to the defense of a nurse who was suspended from her hospital job for wearing just skivvies underneath her personal protective equipment. “No disciplinary methods should be imposed on the [nurse],” Vitaly Milonov, a member of the United Russia party told Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, according to The Sun. “In no case should the girl be punished, I am sharply against this.” The nurse, identified only as Nadia, 23, was suspended from her hospital job for wearing just skivvies under her personal protective equipment.
[Open link and glance at photos.]
"“In no case should the girl be punished, I am sharply against this.”
The nurse, identified only as Nadia, 23, was suspended from the Tula Regional Clinical Hospital for “non-compliance with the requirements for medical clothing,” the Tula Pressa newspaper had reported.
Nadia claimed to managers that she did not realize that her underwear was showing through the PPE and that she was “too hot” to wear clothing under the head-to-toe vinyl gown.
The head of the Doctors’ Alliance, Dr. Anastasia Vasilyeva, said her group would assist Nadia in fighting the punishment, the report said.
Vasilyeva also said the material of the nurse’s see-through gown was problematic.
“Firstly, a plague-proof costume is never transparent. And it must be made of a completely different fabric,” she said.
“We need to pay attention not to her [underwear], but that the [gown] does not meet the necessary standards.”
Read in New York Post: https://apple.news/AXTsh-agzQYCh5a3ZE2qxxw
7. "Big Bear Lake [CA] will not enforce governor’s order"
"The Big Bear Lake City Council unanimously approved a statement that allows businesses and residents within the city of Big Bear Lake to take their own action in regard to the governor’s stay at home order. There are effectively no rules being enforced, no plan and no enforcement in the city of Big Bear Lake effective immediately.
During a special meeting May 21, the council approved a statement that reads “City will not enforce governor’s orders, encourages all businesses and residents to maintain 6 feet of separation, wear face coverings and practice good hygiene as outlined in city plan.”
Frank Rush, city manager, said because of the low number of cases in the Valley and the tremendous economic and social harm to businesses, the legal option is to state that the city will not enforce the governor’s orders."
http://www.bigbeargrizzly.net/news/big-bear-lake-will-not-enforce-governor-s-order/article_f495897a-9bcb-11ea-be2f-2b5efd4f33c9.html
8. "U.S. to Invest $1.2 Billion to Secure Potential Coronavirus Vaccine From AstraZeneca, Oxford University
The U.S. government has agreed to hand AstraZeneca up to $1.2 billion to secure the supply of a potential coronavirus vaccine that could be ready as early as October."
"The U.S. government has agreed to hand AstraZeneca PLC up to $1.2 billion to secure the supply of a potential coronavirus vaccine that could be ready as early as October.
Under the deal, the government will bankroll a 30,000-person vaccine trial in the U.S. starting in the summer, plus the ramp-up of manufacturing capacity to make at least 300 million doses. The first doses will be ready in the fall should the vaccine prove effective, it said.
Alex Azar, the Health and Human Services secretary, called the deal a “major milestone” in the administration’s effort—code-named “Operation Warp Speed”—to make a safe, effective vaccine widely available to Americans by 2021.
The vaccine in question was developed by the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute and is one of a small group of candidates already being tested in humans. Others include vaccines from Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. AstraZeneca, under a licensing deal with Oxford, has responsibility for manufacturing the university’s vaccine, and has promised to sell the vaccine without making a profit during the pandemic.
The U.S. government has moved fast to secure supply deals with vaccine makers, although the AstraZeneca deal is its biggest by far. It has also awarded Johnson & Johnson $456 million to ramp up U.S. production of the drugmaker’s potential vaccine to 300 million doses, with the first of those available by early 2021 should the shot prove effective.
It has also awarded Moderna $483 million to ramp up production of its candidate and another $30 million to support research into a potential vaccine from France’s Sanofi SA, though those deals don’t commit either company to manufacture a set number of doses in the U.S. It is doing those deals through its Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority division, or Barda, which was set up in 2006 to prepare for biologic threats such as pandemics and bioterrorism."
Read in The Wall Street Journal: https://apple.news/AOUF8QiUYRlmsIUMkzLMNLA no paywall
9. "New York Officials Sent Over 4,300 COVID Patients to Nursing Homes, Says Report
More than 5,800 deaths have been linked to nursing and adult-care facilities in New York."
"New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called the state’s nursing homes “the optimum feeding ground for this virus,” and these shocking figures might show why that’s the case. The Associated Press reports that New York health officials sent more than 4,300 recovering coronavirus patients directly to nursing homes under a state directive that was later reversed over fears that it was acting as a catalyst for the nation’s worst outbreak. The directive, which was intended to help free up hospital beds, was made on March 25 and reversed on May 10. Cuomo said this week that he didn’t believe the directive contributed to the more than 5,800 nursing and adult-care facility deaths in New York."
Read in The Daily Beast: https://apple.news/A-xWOWWlzRtySepOmtbO8Aw
10. "Singapore’s Covid-19 case fatality rate is remarkably low. Why?
Death rates can be the byproduct of lots of testing — and a little randomness."
[A lot of Singapore's positives were young people. They must have kept the virus away from older people, or been lucky, or both.]
"Based on those numbers, just 0.07 percent of people in Singapore who contracted the coronavirus have died from it.
Singapore’s case fatality rate may be so low because it is testing a lot of people with mild or no symptoms.
The country has escalated its testing because of Covid-19 outbreaks in the dormitories that house many of Singapore’s low-wage migrant workers. You may recall that, by late March, the island seemed to have Covid-19 under control. Leaning on the lessons from the SARS outbreak in 2003, the country implemented a rapid testing-and-tracing program, as well as restricting travel into Singapore and requiring self-quarantines.
But then cases started to rise again — almost entirely because of infections among migrant workers, who live together in tightly packed dormitories on the edge of the city. As the second wave began to crest in Singapore in mid-April, about 90 percent of the new cases turned out to be foreign workers who were living in the dorms.
So Singapore implemented a new screening program with the goal of testing effectively every single worker living in those facilities. It is testing thousands of workers every day, whether or not they show any Covid-19 symptoms.
These people are generally young; they’ve come to Singapore to work on construction projects or in manufacturing or in the health care sector. And we know the Covid-19 fatality rates among younger people are much, much lower in general than among seniors.
So if you want to understand why the case fatality rate is so stubbornly low in Singapore, part of it is a matter of chance: The groups of people who got sick were at a lower risk of dying. But equally — if not more — important is the prevalence of testing and the country’s focus on testing these younger and sometimes asymptomatic people."
Read in Vox: https://apple.news/AthpolhBrT7a0j5q9Yyl-Sg
11. "The End of Meat Is Here
If you care about the working poor, about racial justice, and about climate change, you have to stop eating animals."
[Don't think I agree with this op-ed.]
"Is it more essential than the lives of the working poor who labor to produce it? It seems so. An astonishing six out of 10 counties that the White House itself identified as coronavirus hot spots are home to the very slaughterhouses the president ordered open.
In Sioux Falls, S.D., the Smithfield pork plant, which produces some 5 percent of the country’s pork, is one of the largest hot spots in the nation. A Tyson plant in Perry, Iowa, had 730 cases of the coronavirus — nearly 60 percent of its employees. At another Tyson plant, in Waterloo, Iowa, there were 1,031 reported cases among about 2,800 workers."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/opinion/coronavirus-meat-vegetarianism.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
12. "These 6 countries are cautiously reopening for summer travel
Travel destinations will require tourists to pre-book beach time slots, download contact-tracing apps and more."
[But not necessarily opening for travel from US to the European countries, at least initially.]
Read in The Washington Post: https://apple.news/A-3k_YxPGQoG9EADzaD59RQ no paywall
13. [Note that these CDC numbers are for planning purposes, not actual stats, and the CDC is getting some flack.]
"CDC estimates that 35% of coronavirus patients don't have symptoms
A third of Covid-19 patients are asymptomatic and 0.4% of those who get sick will die, CDC says."
"The CDC also says its "best estimate" is that 0.4% of people who show symptoms and have Covid-19 will die, and the agency estimates that 40% of coronavirus transmission is occurring before people feel sick.
Under the best estimate scenario, the guidance says 3.4% of symptomatic people with Covid-19 will require hospitalization, with that number rising to 7.4% in people 65 and older. The CDC also says it assumes that people without symptoms are just as infectious as those with symptoms.
The agency cautions that those numbers are subject to change as more is learned about Covid-19, and it warns that the information is intended for planning purposes. Still, the agency says its estimates are based on real data collected by the agency before April 29.
The numbers are part of five planning scenarios that "are being used by mathematical modelers throughout the federal government," according to the CDC. Four of those scenarios represent "the lower and upper bounds of disease severity and viral transmissibility."
The fifth scenario is the CDC's "current best estimate about viral transmission and disease severity in the United States." In that scenario, the agency described its estimate that 0.4% of people who feel sick with Covid-19 will die.
For people age 65 and older, the CDC puts that number at 1.3%. For people 49 and under, the agency estimated that 0.05% of symptomatic people will die.
Expert pushes back
Under the most severe of the five scenarios outlined -- not the agency's "best estimate" -- the CDC lists a symptomatic case fatality ratio of 0.01, meaning that 1% of people overall with Covid-19 and symptoms would die.
In the least severe scenario, the CDC puts that number at 0.2%.
One expert quickly pushed back on the CDC's estimates.
"While most of these numbers are reasonable, the mortality rates shade far too low," biologist Carl Bergstrom of the University of Washington told CNN.
Bergstrom, an expert in modeling and computer simulations, said the numbers seemed inconsistent with real-world findings.
"Estimates of the numbers infected in places like NYC are way out of line with these estimates. Let us remember that the number of deaths in NYC right now are far more than we would expect if every adult and child in the city had been infected with a flu-like virus. This is not the flu. It is COVID," Bergstrom said.
"As I see it, the 'best estimate' is extremely optimistic, and the 'worst case' scenario is fairly optimistic even as a best estimate. One certainly wants to consider worse scenarios," Bergstrom said of CDC's numbers.
"By introducing these as the official parameter sets for modeling efforts, CDC is influencing the models produced by federal agencies, but also the broader scientific discourse because there will be some pressure to use the CDC standard parameter sets in modeling papers going forward," he said.
"Given that these parameter sets underestimate fatality by a substantial margin compared to current scientific consensus, this is deeply problematic."
Read in CNN: https://apple.news/A1V8yl8roRCaNHKF3gy4mbw
14. "Sunlight Seems to Inactivate the Coronavirus: Study"
"Scientists found imitation sunlight "rapidly inactivated" SARS-CoV-2 on stainless steel coupons in a lab. The findings were published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Past studies have shown that SARS-CoV-2 can linger in the right conditions on non-porous indoor surfaces for days, the authors explained in their paper. One widely-referenced study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed the germ can live for up to three days on plastic and steel, compared with 24 hours on cardboard, four hours on copper, and up to three hours as an aerosol.
To explore whether SARS-CoV-2 can survive in outdoor-like conditions, the team used a device which simulates natural sunlight, including ultraviolet rays. They also controlled the temperature and humidity in a lab chamber. The virus was grown both in lab culture and in a liquid resembling human saliva. The samples were then dried on stainless steel coupons.
The contaminated coupons were stuck to a mounting strip and attached to the wall of the chamber, and exposed to light for different lengths of time, ranging from 2 - 18 minutes. Another set of virus-laden coupons were put in the chamber for up to 60 minutes in darkness as the control.
Ultraviolet B (UVB) rays were found to quickly inactivate SARS-CoV-2, according to the team. In conditions resembling midday sunlight on the longest day of the year at 40 degrees north latitude, 90 percent of the virus was inactivated every 6.8 minutes in the saliva.
Sunlight representing winter solstice in the same latitude inactivated the virus every 14.3 minutes in saliva. SARS-CoV-2 was inactivated at rates twofold greater in saliva than in the culture media for reasons that weren't immediately clear. The virus on the coupons kept in the dark, meanwhile, barely changed.
The findings indicate that the virus' ability to spread may be "significantly reduced" in outdoor conditions when exposed to direct sunlight, compared to indoor conditions, the authors wrote. "Additionally, these data provide evidence that natural sunlight may be effective as a disinfectant for contaminated non-porous materials," they said."
Read in Newsweek: https://apple.news/AfG3plsLEQAu4kIF3WMcN6w
15. "Animal Which Passed the Coronavirus from Bats to Humans Probably Wasn't a Pangolin, Study Suggests"
"The coronavirus which has infected more than 5 million people likely didn't jump from bats to pangolins to humans, according to a study. The authors of the paper published in the journal PLOS Pathogens explained that evidence does suggest that SARS-CoV-2, the name of the coronavirus which causes COVID-19, came from bats.
As direct interactions between humans and bats are relatively rare, scientists around the world are trying to find a potential intermediary host for SARS-CoV-2. This is an animal which has been infected with different viruses which merge to create a virus better at infecting humans.
In what are known as recombination events, viruses of two different strains co-infect the same cell of a host to create a germ with some genes from both parents. In the five months since the COVID-19 pandemic started, pangolins—scaly mammals who look like anteaters—have emerged as a potential source.
SARS-CoV—the virus behind the SARS outbreak of 2002 to 2004—is thought to have jumped from bats to civets to people, and MERS—which emerged in 2012—from bats to dromedary camels to humans.
https://www.newsweek.com/animal-which-passed-coronavirus-bats-humans-probably-wasnt-pangolin-study-suggests-1505005
15. "Survey Says Two In Three Locked-Down Americans Can't Remember The Last Time They Wore Real Pants"
[Read this summary. It's interesting, and funny.]
"With millions of people working from home due to COVID-19, “workplace casual” has taken on a whole new meaning: A new survey says two in three Americans can’t remember the last time they actually wore real pants.
Four in five respondents said their nine-to-five uniform is now either PJs or other comfy clothes.
The non-scientific survey of 2,000 Americans commissioned by MattressFirm also offered peeks into that working-from-home life. For example, 44% said despite their lack of a commute, they’ve still clocked in late to work.
Six in 10 say they’ve taken a nap during the day; nearly six in 10 say they work from their beds all day.
That being said, 70% said they’ve been more productive working from home than they were when they were at the office.
Between the comfy clothes, no traffic and naps, perhaps it’s no surprise that 70% of the Americans polled say they preferred working from home."
https://www.ksro.com/2020/05/21/survey-says-two-in-three-locked-down-americans-cant-remember-the-last-time-they-wore-real-pants/
16. "At least a quarter of the workforce is out of a job. How much worse will it get?
A Q&A with our reporters and economist Austan Goolsbee, the former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers."
"The economic impact of the pandemic is staggering. The latest numbers on unemployment claims came out this morning: 2.4 million workers filed for unemployment last week, which means at least 38.6 million Americans — about 23.4 percent of the workforce — have lost their jobs over the past nine weeks as the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the economy.
[A variety of opinions. Some say things will be as bad as the Depression, but they hope that things will recover faster.]
Read in POLITICO: https://apple.news/AWIZC_mFRQVyJC6j_27hagw
Edit: 17. "U.K. to Require 14-Day Quarantine of Arrivals to Contain Coronavirus
British government shifts from largely open borders to limit Covid-19 transmission"
"The U.K. government said it would impose next month a 14-day self-quarantine requirement for nearly all travelers arriving into the country, a tightening that comes as the rest of Europe slowly begins to ease border restrictions.
Britain has been among a small number of countries to leave their borders largely open during the Covid-19 crisis. With infection rates falling, the U.K. government argued that a quarantine would make it easier to halt a new wave of Covid-19 infections.
“We are introducing these new measures now to keep the transmission rate down and prevent a devastating second wave,” U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel said on Friday.
The quarantine will come into force on June 8 and be reviewed every three weeks. Except for workers in a handful of industries including trucking and medicine, people arriving in the country will have to hole up at a given address for two weeks or face a £1,000 fine ($1,218).
Italy has said it would reopen to travelers from all Schengen countries on June 3. France is taking a reciprocal approach, planning to open its borders with countries including Germany that have agreed to let French residents in. Paris has threatened to quarantine people from countries that impose such measures on people from France."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-to-require-14-day-quarantine-of-arrivals-to-contain-coronavirus-11590163200?mod=hp_listb_pos1