| Birx warns of coming coronavirus hot spots across the U.S. Posted: 02 Apr 2020 05:28 PM PDT  Louisiana is poised to become the next epicenter of the coronavirus crisis, White House officials said Thursday, citing new data that shows that 26 percent of the tests for COVID-19 in that state in recent days have come back positive.
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| Two years before coronavirus, CDC warned of a coming pandemic Posted: 02 Apr 2020 02:01 AM PDT  Long before the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China, and then soon spread to nearly every country on Earth, a conference in 2018 offered proof that epidemiologists at the CDC and other institutions were aware that a new pandemic was poised to strike.
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| The US Army warned 2 months ago that the coronavirus could kill as many as 150,000 Americans Posted: 02 Apr 2020 11:34 AM PDT  What was a worst-case scenario is now nearly a best possible outcome as the White House warns that 100,000 to 240,000 people could die.
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| Exclusive: How elite U.S. college students brought COVID-19 home from campus Posted: 02 Apr 2020 02:35 PM PDT  The message was lost on many students. Before leaving campus and returning to their homes and families throughout the United States and abroad, more than 100 Vanderbilt students attended parties, ignoring the school's explicit instructions not to do so. One photo of a March 11 party, posted on Instagram and seen by Reuters, shows a student in a makeshift hazmat suit, a black mask and green bowler hat with shamrocks, as a large group of students party in the background.
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| The Trail Leading Back to the Wuhan Labs Posted: 03 Apr 2020 10:20 AM PDT  It is understandable that many would be wary of the notion that the origin of the coronavirus could be discovered by some documentary filmmaker who used to live in China. Matthew Tye, who creates YouTube videos, contends he has identified the source of the coronavirus — and a great deal of the information that he presents, obtained from public records posted on the Internet, checks out.The Wuhan Institute of Virology in China indeed posted a job opening on November 18, 2019, "asking for scientists to come research the relationship between the coronavirus and bats."The Google translation of the job posting is: "Taking bats as the research object, I will answer the molecular mechanism that can coexist with Ebola and SARS- associated coronavirus for a long time without disease, and its relationship with flight and longevity. Virology, immunology, cell biology, and multiple omics are used to compare the differences between humans and other mammals." ("Omics" is a term for a subfield within biology, such as genomics or glycomics.)On December 24, 2019, the Wuhan Institute of Virology posted a second job posting. The translation of that posting includes the declaration, "long-term research on the pathogenic biology of bats carrying important viruses has confirmed the origin of bats of major new human and livestock infectious diseases such as SARS and SADS, and a large number of new bat and rodent new viruses have been discovered and identified."Tye contends that that posting meant, "we've discovered a new and terrible virus, and would like to recruit people to come deal with it." He also contends that "news didn't come out about coronavirus until ages after that." Doctors in Wuhan knew that they were dealing with a cluster of pneumonia cases as December progressed, but it is accurate to say that a very limited number of people knew about this particular strain of coronavirus and its severity at the time of that job posting. By December 31, about three weeks after doctors first noticed the cases, the Chinese government notified the World Health Organization and the first media reports about a "mystery pneumonia" appeared outside China.Scientific American verifies much of the information Tye mentions about Shi Zhengli, the Chinese virologist nicknamed "Bat Woman" for her work with that species.> Shi — a virologist who is often called China's "bat woman" by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years — walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. "I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong," she says. "I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China." Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical areas of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals — particularly bats, a known reservoir for many viruses. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, "could they have come from our lab?"> > . . . By January 7 the Wuhan team determined that the new virus had indeed caused the disease those patients suffered — a conclusion based on results from polymerase chain reaction analysis, full genome sequencing, antibody tests of blood samples and the virus's ability to infect human lung cells in a petri dish. The genomic sequence of the virus — now officially called SARS-CoV-2 because it is related to the SARS pathogen — was 96 percent identical to that of a coronavirus the researchers had identified in horseshoe bats in Yunnan, they reported in a paper published last month in Nature. "It's crystal clear that bats, once again, are the natural reservoir," says Daszak, who was not involved in the study. > Some scientists aren't convinced that the virus jumped straight from bats to human beings, but there are a few problems with the theory that some other animal was an intermediate transmitter of COVID-19 from bats to humans:> Analyses of the SARS-CoV-2 genome indicate a single spillover event, meaning the virus jumped only once from an animal to a person, which makes it likely that the virus was circulating among people before December. Unless more information about the animals at the Wuhan market is released, the transmission chain may never be clear. There are, however, numerous possibilities. A bat hunter or a wildlife trafficker might have brought the virus to the market. Pangolins happen to carry a coronavirus, which they might have picked up from bats years ago, and which is, in one crucial part of its genome, virtually identical to SARS-CoV-2. But no one has yet found evidence that pangolins were at the Wuhan market, or even that venders there trafficked pangolins.On February 4 — one week before the World Health Organization decided to officially name this virus "COVID-19" — the journal Cell Research posted a notice written by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology about the virus, concluding, "our findings reveal that remdesivir and chloroquine are highly effective in the control of 2019-nCoV infection in vitro. Since these compounds have been used in human patients with a safety track record and shown to be effective against various ailments, we suggest that they should be assessed in human patients suffering from the novel coronavirus disease." One of the authors of that notice was the "bat woman," Shi Zhengli.In his YouTube video, Tye focuses his attention on a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology named Huang Yanling: "Most people believe her to be patient zero, and most people believe she is dead."There was enough discussion of rumors about Huang Yanling online in China to spur an official denial. On February 16, the Wuhan Institute of Virology denied that patient zero was one of their employees, and interestingly named her specifically: "Recently there has been fake information about Huang Yanling, a graduate from our institute, claiming that she was patient zero in the novel coronavirus." Press accounts quote the institute as saying, "Huang was a graduate student at the institute until 2015, when she left the province and had not returned since. Huang was in good health and had not been diagnosed with disease, it added." None of her publicly available research papers are dated after 2015.The web page for the Wuhan Institute of Virology's Lab of Diagnostic Microbiology does indeed still have "Huang Yanling" listed as a 2012 graduate student, and her picture and biography appear to have been recently removed — as have those of two other graduate students from 2013, Wang Mengyue and Wei Cuihua.Her name still has a hyperlink, but the linked page is blank. The pages for Wang Mengyue and Wei Cuihua are blank as well.(For what it is worth, the South China Morning Post — a newspaper seen as being generally pro-Beijing — reported on March 13 that "according to the government data seen by the Post, a 55 year-old from Hubei province could have been the first person to have contracted Covid-19 on November 17.")On February 17, Zhen Shuji, a Hong Kong correspondent from the French public-radio service Radio France Internationale, reported: "when a reporter from the Beijing News of the Mainland asked the institute for rumors about patient zero, the institute first denied that there was a researcher Huang Yanling, but after learning that the name of the person on the Internet did exist, acknowledged that the person had worked at the firm but has now left the office and is unaccounted for."Tye says, "everyone on the Chinese internet is searching for [Huang Yanling] but most believe that her body was quickly cremated and the people working at the crematorium were perhaps infected as they were not given any information about the virus." (The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that handling the body of someone who has died of coronavirus is safe — including embalming and cremation — as long as the standard safety protocols for handing a decedent are used. It's anyone's guess as to whether those safety protocols were sufficiently used in China before the outbreak's scope was known.)As Tye observes, a public appearance by Huang Yanling would dispel a lot of the public rumors, and is the sort of thing the Chinese government would quickly arrange in normal circumstances — presuming that Huang Yanling was still alive. Several officials at the Wuhan Institute of Virology issued public statements that Huang was in good health and that no one at the institute has been infected with COVID-19. In any case, the mystery around Huang Yanling may be moot, but it does point to the lab covering up something about her.China Global Television Network, a state-owned television broadcaster, illuminated another rumor while attempting to dispel it in a February 23 report entitled "Rumors Stop With the Wise":> On February 17, a Weibo user who claimed herself to be Chen Quanjiao, a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, reported to the public that the Director of the Institute was responsible for leaking the novel coronavirus. The Weibo post threw a bomb in the cyberspace and the public was shocked. Soon Chen herself stepped out and declared that she had never released any report information and expressed great indignation at such identity fraud on Weibo. It has been confirmed that that particular Weibo account had been shut down several times due to the spread of misinformation about COVID-19.That Radio France Internationale report on February 17 also mentioned the next key part of the Tye's YouTube video. "Xiaobo Tao, a scholar from South China University of Technology, recently published a report that researchers at Wuhan Virus Laboratory were splashed with bat blood and urine, and then quarantined for 14 days." HK01, another Hong Kong-based news site, reported the same claim.This doctor's name is spelled in English as both "Xiaobo Tao" and "Botao Xiao." From 2011 to 2013, Botao Xiao was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital, and his biography is still on the web site of the South China University of Technology.At some point in February, Botao Xiao posted a research paper onto ResearchGate.net, "The Possible Origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus." He is listed as one author, along with Lei Xiao from Tian You Hospital, which is affiliated with the Wuhan University of Science and Technology. The paper was removed a short time after it was posted, but archived images of its pages can be found here and here.The first conclusion of Botao Xiao's paper is that the bats suspected of carrying the virus are extremely unlikely to be found naturally in the city, and despite the stories of "bat soup," they conclude that bats were not sold at the market and were unlikely to be deliberately ingested.> The bats carrying CoV ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometers away from the seafood market. Bats were normally found to live in caves and trees. But the seafood market is in a densely-populated district of Wuhan, a metropolitan [area] of ~15 million people. The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market. According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization could not confirm if bats were present at the market. Botao Xiao's paper theorizes that the coronavirus originated from bats being used for research at either one of two research laboratories in Wuhan.> We screened the area around the seafood market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus. Within ~ 280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention. WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research purpose, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification. In one of their studies, 155 bats including Rhinolophus affinis were captured in Hubei province, and other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province. The expert in Collection was noted in the Author Contributions (JHT). Moreover, he was broadcasted for collecting viruses on nation-wide newspapers and websites in 2017 and 2019. He described that he was once by attacked by bats and the blood of a bat shot on his skin. He knew the extreme danger of the infection so he quarantined himself for 14 days. In another accident, he quarantined himself again because bats peed on him.> > Surgery was performed on the caged animals and the tissue samples were collected for DNA and RNA extraction and sequencing. The tissue samples and contaminated trashes were source of pathogens. They were only ~280 meters from the seafood market. The WHCDC was also adjacent to the Union Hospital (Figure 1, bottom) where the first group of doctors were infected during this epidemic. It is plausible that the virus leaked around and some of them contaminated the initial patients in this epidemic, though solid proofs are needed in future study.> > The second laboratory was ~12 kilometers from the seafood market and belonged to Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences . . .> > In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories. Regulations may be taken to relocate these laboratories far away from city center and other densely populated places.However, Xiao has told the Wall Street Journal that he has withdrawn his paper. "The speculation about the possible origins in the post was based on published papers and media, and was not supported by direct proofs," he said in a brief email on February 26.The bat researcher that Xiao's report refers to is virologist Tian Junhua, who works at the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control. In 2004, the World Health Organization determined that an outbreak of the SARS virus had been caused by two separate leaks at the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing. The Chinese government said that the leaks were a result of "negligence" and the responsible officials had been punished.In 2017, the Chinese state-owned Shanghai Media Group made a seven-minute documentary about Tian Junhua, entitled "Youth in the Wild: Invisible Defender." Videographers followed Tian Junhua as he traveled deep into caves to collect bats. "Among all known creatures, the bats are rich with various viruses inside," he says in Chinese. "You can find most viruses responsible for human diseases, like rabies virus, SARS, and Ebola. Accordingly, the caves frequented by bats became our main battlefields." He emphasizes, "bats usually live in caves humans can hardly reach. Only in these places can we find the most ideal virus vector samples."One of his last statements on the video is: "In the past ten-plus years, we have visited every corner of Hubei Province. We explored dozens of undeveloped caves and studied more than 300 types of virus vectors. But I do hope these virus samples will only be preserved for scientific research and will never be used in real life. Because humans need not only the vaccines, but also the protection from the nature."The description of Tian Junhua's self-isolation came from a May 2017 report by Xinhua News Agency, repeated by the Chinese news site JQKNews.com:> The environment for collecting bat samples is extremely bad. There is a stench in the bat cave. Bats carry a large number of viruses in their bodies. If they are not careful, they are at risk of infection. But Tian Junhua is not afraid to go to the mountain with his wife to catch Batman.> > Tian Junhua summed up the experience that the most bats can be caught by using the sky cannon and pulling the net. But in the process of operation, Tian Junhua forgot to take protective measures. Bat urine dripped on him like raindrops from the top. If he was infected, he could not find any medicine. It was written in the report.> > The wings of bats carry sharp claws. When the big bats are caught by bat tools, they can easily spray blood. Several times bat blood was sprayed directly on Tians skin, but he didn't flinch at all. After returning home, Tian Junhua took the initiative to isolate for half a month. As long as the incubation period of 14 days does not occur, he will be lucky to escape, the report said.Bat urine and blood can carry viruses. How likely is it that bat urine or blood got onto a researcher at either Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention or the Wuhan Institute of Virology? Alternatively, what are the odds that some sort of medical waste or other material from the bats was not properly disposed of, and that was the initial transmission vector to a human being?Virologists have been vehemently skeptical of the theory that COVID-19 was engineered or deliberately constructed in a laboratory; the director of the National Institutes of Health has written that recent genomic research "debunks such claims by providing scientific evidence that this novel coronavirus arose naturally." And none of the above is definitive proof that COVID-19 originated from a bat at either the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention or the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Definitive proof would require much broader access to information about what happened in those facilities in the time period before the epidemic in the city.But it is a remarkable coincidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was researching Ebola and SARS-associated coronaviruses in bats before the pandemic outbreak, and that in the month when Wuhan doctors were treating the first patients of COVID-19, the institute announced in a hiring notice that "a large number of new bat and rodent new viruses have been discovered and identified." And the fact that the Chinese government spent six weeks insisting that COVID-19 could not be spread from person to person means that its denials about Wuhan laboratories cannot be accepted without independent verification.
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| Israel sends army to ultra-Orthodox city over coronavirus Posted: 03 Apr 2020 10:23 AM PDT  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday gave the green light for soldiers to be deployed in a mostly ultra-Orthodox Jewish city considered the centre of Israel's novel coronavirus outbreak. "In light of the special situation in Bnei Brak following the restrictions due to the coronavirus, the IDF (army) will immediately present the necessary civil assistance to Bnei Brak municipality in fulfilling its responsibilities," Netanyahu's office said after talks with security and health officials. Authorities have enforced restrictions on access to Bnei Brak, a majority ultra-Orthodox city near Tel Aviv that is home to around 200,000 people.
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| Mayor taps ex-Dallas chief to head Chicago police force Posted: 02 Apr 2020 02:00 PM PDT  Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday named former Dallas police Chief David Brown to head the police force in the nation's third largest city, touting his humility and calling him "a leader who commands respect." Lightfoot introduced Brown as the next superintendent of the Chicago Police Department during a news conference, saying he's the right man for the job.
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| Birx: Face masks not a substitute for handwashing, distancing to help prevent coronavirus spread Posted: 02 Apr 2020 04:45 PM PDT  At a press briefing, Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said the use of face masks should not be a substitute for social distancing and washing hands to prevent contracting the coronavirus.
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| Coronavirus poses special risk to millions of Americans with diabetes Posted: 02 Apr 2020 12:39 PM PDT  As the worsening coronavirus pandemic continues to spread across the country, millions of Americans living with diabetes face heightened risks from COVID-19.
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| France Has Deadliest Virus Day as Infection Rate Slows in Spain Posted: 03 Apr 2020 11:41 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- France reported its deadliest day from the coronavirus amid tentative signs that the pandemic may be easing in Spain and Italy.The health ministry in Paris reported 588 hospital deaths, the most yet, bringing the figure to 5,091 since the beginning of the outbreak. In contrast, new infections slowed and fatalities declined in Spain for the first time in four days, as infections stabilized in Italy. Together, the three countries account for more than half the deaths worldwide in the pandemic.Austria could become one of the first in the region to loosen restrictions that have shut down much of public life. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's government will review data and consider a plan in coming days to gradually restart the economy, the Austrian leader told parliament in Vienna on Friday."Let's not jump to conclusions because there are some positive signals," Kurz said. "I can promise you, if the numbers support it, we'll do what we can to return to normality step by step."Despite the pockets of improvement, governments have little leeway to unwind lockdowns that have devasted the region's economy. IHS Markit said its monthly measure of services and manufacturing in the euro area points to an annualized contraction of about 10%. With new business, confidence and employment all down, there is "worse inevitably to come in the near future," it said.Signs emerged that squabbling national leaders are coalescing around an aid package. Euro-area finance ministers are set to agree on a coronavirus aid package of 500 billion euros ($540 billion) next week, the group's leader, Portugal's Mario Centeno told Sueddeutsche Zeitung.Germany is planning to set up an extra 300 billion-euro aid program to help small- and medium-sized companies, and Switzerland doubled the amount of state credit guarantees for businesses to 40 billion francs ($41 billion).In another positive development, German Chancellor Angela Merkel left her precautionary quarantine. After ending 12 days in voluntary self-isolation in Berlin, Merkel will continue to observe social-distancing standards, government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters.The chancellor, who this week prolonged a nationwide lockdown until April 19, addressed the public Friday from the chancellery for the first time since the quarantine, making a plea to stay home and avoid social contact through the Easter holiday.Even though a slight slowing of the spread of the disease offers "some hope," she said it was far too early to set a target date for easing restrictions.Europe's longest-serving leader took center stage in Germany's fight against the virus with a rare televised address to the nation on March 18, in which she called the pandemic the country's gravest challenge since World War II.Lockdown ReviewKurz, who wore a face mask before and after his speech, urged Austrians to persevere with measures to limit contact between people and asked them to refrain from celebrating the Easter holiday with large gatherings of families and friends. His government will review virus statistics with epidemiology experts on Sunday and present its plans on Monday.Growth in new infections in Austria has decreased to less than 5% per day. The number of daily fatalities has fallen for four straight days this week.Spain's Health Ministry on Friday reported 932 new deaths and 7,472 cases over the latest 24-hour period, both smaller gains than the previous day. The dip in the daily figures could lead to less pressure on overwhelmed hospitals. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's government is looking to extend the current lockdown for another two weeks beyond April 11, Spanish media reported.Italy reported 4,585 new infections, while there were 766 fatalities compared with 760 in the previous 24-hour period, civil protection authorities said at their daily news conference in Rome.The pace of both new deaths and new infections has flattened out over past days, even as the containment measures shuttering all non-essential activities and banning most movement take a heavy toll on the economy. In total, the country had 119,827 cases and 14,681 deaths.In France, daily intensive-care admissions fell for a fourth day, adding to signs that lockdown measures across Europe may be helping to bring the outbreak under control. The total number of fatalities is 6,507, including 1,416 deaths from nursing homes -- data that was partially included for the first time on Thursday.Despite Merkel returning to work, Germany's fight against the outbreak suffered a setback. Fatalities and confirmed cases rose by more than the previous day on Friday, with total deaths climbing past 1,000. The mortality rate is probably underestimated because of insufficient testing, according to Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute.The country -- which has 84,794 infections, the third-most in Europe -- may still need additional intensive-care space, even after boosting capacity by more than 40% since the crisis began, the head of Germany's public health authority said."My personal appraisal is that it will not be enough," Wieler said at a press briefing. "I would be happy to be wrong."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| New York reports deadliest day from coronavirus, makes plea for help Posted: 03 Apr 2020 08:42 AM PDT  New York suffered its deadliest single day from the novel coronavirus, with 562 additional deaths in the last 24 hours for a total of 2,935 fatalities, by far the most of any U.S. state, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Friday. Cuomo warned that people were "going to die in the near term" due to a lack of ventilators and hospital beds and called for resources from across the United States to be deployed to New York to help it deal with the growing crisis in the state - the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak.
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| Coronavirus live updates: Cloth masks in public now recommended; US death toll passes 7,100; nation lost 701K jobs in March Posted: 03 Apr 2020 07:54 PM PDT  New research has prompted authorities to change their position Friday on the widespread use of non-medical masks in public.
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| Putin says Russia ready to cooperate on cutting oil production Posted: 03 Apr 2020 05:03 PM PDT  Russia is ready to cooperate with Saudi Arabia and the United States to cut oil production, President Vladimir Putin said Friday. Putin said Russia was willing to make agreements within the framework of the OPEC+ group and that "we are ready for cooperation with the United States of America on this issue," according to a statement published by the Kremlin. Oil prices have tumbled in recent weeks in the face of a drop in demand and global economic uncertainty over the new coronavirus pandemic.
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| Pandemic pushes U.S. gun sales to all-time high Posted: 03 Apr 2020 03:11 PM PDT  The FBI conducted 3.7 million background checks last month, the highest total since the national instant check system was launched in 1998.
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| 27 Best Home Office Decor Ideas to Keep You in the Zone Posted: 03 Apr 2020 02:33 PM PDT |
| 'It is everywhere already': Fox News hosts amp up the pressure on Trump to give up on coronavirus lockdowns and reopen the economy Posted: 03 Apr 2020 02:47 PM PDT  Primetime host Tucker Carlson attacked "the public health establishment," which he argued "failed us badly" by recommending stay-home orders that are hurting the economy.
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| "Shoot them dead": Duterte orders police to kill Filipinos who defy coronavirus lockdown Posted: 02 Apr 2020 07:03 PM PDT  "Do not challenge the government," he warned the nation Wednesday. "You will lose."
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| A small trial finds that hydroxychloroquine is not effective for treating coronavirus Posted: 03 Apr 2020 05:40 AM PDT  On Saturday the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of two antimalarial drugs, hydroxychloroquine and a related medication, chloroquine, for emergency use to treat COVID-19. The drugs were touted by President Trump as a "game changer" for COVID-19. However, a study just published in a French medical journal provides new evidence that hydroxychloroquine does not appear to help the immune system clear the coronavirus from the body. The study comes on the heels of two others - one in France and one in China \- that reported some benefits in the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for COVID-19 patients who didn't have severe symptoms of the virus.I am a medicinal chemist who has specialized in discovery and development of antiviral drugs for the past 30 years, and I have been actively working on coronaviruses for the past seven. I am among a number of researchers who are concerned that this drug has been given too much of a high priority before there is enough evidence to show it is indeed effective. There are already other clinical studies that showed it is not effective against COVID-19 as well as several other viruses. And, more importantly, it can have dangerous side effects, as well as giving people false hope. The latter has led to widespread shortages of hydroxychloroquine for patients who need it to treat malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, the indications for which it was originally approved. The idea that the combination of hydroxychloroquine with an antibiotic drug, azithromycin, was effective against COVID-19 gained more attention after a study published on March 17. This study described a trial of 80 patients carried out by Philippe Gautret in Marseille, France. Although some of their results appeared to be encouraging, it should also be noted that most of their patients only had mild symptoms. Furthermore, 85% of the patients didn't even have a fever – one of the major telltale symptoms of the virus, thus suggesting that these patients likely would have naturally cleared the virus without any intervention.In another study, posted on medRxiv, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, Chinese scientists from Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, in Wuhan, China, gave hydroxychloroquine to patients with only mild infections who were free of medical issues, similar to the Gautret study. The results showed that the 31 patients who received the drug showed a lessening of their symptoms 24 hours earlier than patients in the control group. In addition, pneumonia symptoms improved in 25 of the 31 patients versus 17 of 31 in the control group. As noted in several of the comments associated with the manuscript, there are issues related to the translation of the paper, thus clouding interpretations of some of the results. The paper also appears to focus more on pneumonia than COVID-19. However, these issues may be cleared up or addressed once the paper finishes the peer-review process. But two other studies have conflicting results.A second French group, led by Jean-Michel Molina, has now tested the hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin combination treatment in 11 patients at the Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris, France, and their results were strikingly different. Like the Marseille study, the Molina trial was also a small pilot study. Molina and colleagues used the same dosing regimen as Gautret. In contrast, however, to the Gautret study, eight of the 11 patients had underlying health conditions, and 10 of 11 had fevers and were quite ill at the time the dosing began. These Paris researchers found that after five to six days of treatment with hydroxychloroquine (600 mg per day for 10 days) and azithromycin (500 mg on day 1 and 250 mg on days 2 to 5), eight of the 10 patients still tested positive for COVID-19. Of these 10 patients, one patient died, two were transferred to the ICU and another had to be removed from the treatment due to serious complications. In addition, a similar study in China also showed no difference in viral clearance after seven days either with or without the hydroxychloroquine with the patients in the trial. This supports Molina's findings. Thus, despite the recent approval of this drug for use against COVID-19, questions remain as to the efficacy of this treatment. As Molina and colleagues note: "Ongoing randomized clinical trials with hydroxychloroquine should provide a definitive answer regarding the alleged efficacy of this combination and will assess its safety."[You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help. Read The Conversation's newsletter.]This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * Could chloroquine treat coronavirus? 5 questions answered about a promising, problematic and unproven use for an antimalarial drug * Medical supply chains are fragile in the best of times and COVID-19 will test their strengthKatherine Seley-Radtke receives funding for her research from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases.
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| Venezuela navy vessel sinks after 'ramming cruise ship' Posted: 03 Apr 2020 04:54 AM PDT  The cruise ship's owners say the naval vessel rammed it, but Venezuela accuses the ship of "piracy".
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| Senators urge formal probe of Navy carrier commander's firing over coronavirus plea Posted: 03 Apr 2020 11:23 AM PDT  A group of prominent Democratic senators formally requested on Friday that the Pentagon's independent Inspector General investigate the Navy's firing of the commander of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, who called for stronger measures to halt a coronavirus outbreak on board. Captain Brett Crozier was relieved of his command on Thursday after his scathing letter was leaked to the media. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland led the push and were joined by 15 other U.S. senators, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris.
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| A California ER nurse told her family that if she gets COVID-19 she doesn't want a ventilator and to give it to someone else who needs it more Posted: 03 Apr 2020 06:11 PM PDT  "If I were to get really sick, my sisters know I don't want to take a ventilator from someone else who may need it," Paige said.
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| Cuomo Announces Highest Single-Day Increase in N.Y. Coronavirus Hospitalizations and Deaths Posted: 03 Apr 2020 09:55 AM PDT  New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Friday that 562 state residents had died in the past 24 hours of Wuhan coronavirus, the highest single-day increase in the state. As of Friday, 2,935 state residents had died of the illness.The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in New York also saw its highest single-day increase of 10,482, with the state now reporting 102,863 cases in total. Cuomo announced he would sign an executive order allowing the state to appropriate whatever personal protective equipment and medical gear the government needs to combat the outbreak."I'm not going to let people die," Cuomo said at a press conference. "I'm not going to get into a situation where I know we are running out of ventilators and we could have people dying because there are no ventilators, but there are hospitals in other parts of the state that have ventilators that they're not using." The governor called on the federal government to increase aid to the state, and said New York has "no money" because of expenditures on health care.Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York's rural 21st District, expressed concern that Cuomo's executive order could deprive her constituents of necessary medical care."I am very concerned about the Governor's announcement regarding shifting ventilators from Upstate to Downstate. I represent demographically the largest number of seniors of any District in NY," Stefanik wrote on Twitter. "Our rural hospitals are already very limited in resources & we must ensure Upstate's needs for testing supplies & ventilators are met."New York state has reported roughly 40 percent of coronavirus cases in the U.S., with 51,809 cases in New York City alone as of Friday morning, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker.
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| Stacey Abrams trends after Georgia governor said he didn't know about asymptomatic spread Posted: 03 Apr 2020 08:00 AM PDT  "This is a criminal level of negligence," said a Twitter user over Republican Gov. Brian Kemp's comments.
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| Mexico murder rate reaches new high as violence rages amid Covid-19 spread Posted: 03 Apr 2020 07:52 AM PDT  * March sees 2,585 homicides – highest monthly figure on record * Mexico tries to pour resources into containing coronavirusMexico's homicide rate raced to a new record in March, as violence raged even as Covid-19 spread across the country and authorities urged the population to stay home and practise social distancing.Mexico registered 2,585 homicides in March – the highest monthly figure since records began in 1997 – putting 2020 on track to break last year's record total for murders.The surge in killings comes as federal and state officials put resources into containing the Covid-19 crisis and confront the prospect of an already sluggish economy falling even further – potentially deepening the misery for the more than 40% of the population living in poverty."It's business as usual [for drug cartels] with a risk of further escalation, especially if at some point the armed forces are called away for pandemic control," said Falko Ernst, senior Mexico analyst at the International Crisis Group.Violence has flared throughout the country, but it has been especially intense in the central state of Guanajuato, where criminal groups have battled over lucrative territories rife with theft from pipelines.The bloodshed has hit shocking levels in the city of Ceyala – home to a major automotive manufacturing plant – with gunmen engaging security forces in shootouts, blockading streets and torching businesses.Francisco Rivas, director of the National Citizen Observatory, which monitors security issues, attributed the increasing violence in Guanajuato to the fallout of the federal government trying to stamp out petrol theft.The crackdown weakened the local Santa Rosa de Lima cartel, Rivas said, prompting the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG) to move in and attempt to take its territory.Other causes for rising violence, Rivas said, include growing pains with a new militarised police known as the national guard, the lack of a federal strategy and cutting the security budget to its lowest level in 20 years."We're seeing iolence hitting its peak and we're left asking, 'who's going to stop it?'" Rivas said.Calderón sends in the armyMexico's "war on drugs" began in late 2006 when the president at the time, Felipe Calderón, ordered thousands of troops onto the streets in response to an explosion of horrific violence in his native state of Michoacán.Calderón hoped to smash the drug cartels with his heavily militarized onslaught but the approach was counter-productive and exacted a catastrophic human toll. As Mexico's military went on the offensive, the body count sky-rocketed to new heights and tens of thousands were forced from their homes, disappeared or killed.Kingpin strategySimultaneously Calderón also began pursuing the so-called "kingpin strategy" by which authorities sought to decapitate the cartels by targeting their leaders.That policy resulted in some high-profile scalps – notably Arturo Beltrán Leyva who was gunned down by Mexican marines in 2009 – but also did little to bring peace. In fact, many believe such tactics served only to pulverize the world of organized crime, creating even more violence as new, less predictable factions squabbled for their piece of the pie.Under Calderón's successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, the government's rhetoric on crime softened as Mexico sought to shed its reputation as the headquarters of some the world's most murderous mafia groups.But Calderón's policies largely survived, with authorities targeting prominent cartel leaders such as Sinaloa's Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.When "El Chapo" was arrested in early 2016, Mexico's president bragged: "Mission accomplished". But the violence went on. By the time Peña Nieto left office in 2018, Mexico had suffered another record year of murders, with nearly 36,000 people slain."Hugs not bullets"The leftwing populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador took power in December, promising a dramatic change in tactics. López Obrador, or Amlo as most call him, vowed to attack the social roots of crime, offering vocational training to more than 2.3 million disadvantaged young people at risk of being ensnared by the cartels. "It will be virtually impossible to achieve peace without justice and [social] welfare," Amlo said, promising to slash the murder rate from an average of 89 killings per day with his "hugs not bullets" doctrine.Amlo also pledged to chair daily 6am security meetings and create a 60,000 strong "National Guard". But those measures have yet to pay off, with the new security force used mostly to hunt Central American migrants.Mexico now suffers an average of about 96 murders per day, with nearly 29,000 people killed since Amlo took office.President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on Friday that a drop in violence had been expected towards the end of March when coronavirus cases had started increasing in Mexico, "but it didn't turn out like that."López Obrador came to power promising to solve Mexico's security woes by tacking what he considered the root causes of crime: poverty and corruption. But the strategy has so far failed to rein in the violence."The [anti-crime] strategy isn't a strategy," said Rivas. "The national guard isn't pulling its weight because building an institution is difficult and expensive. Budget cuts to public security have been brutal. These all have serious effects."The president stirred further outrage during a visit to Sinaloa state on Sunday, when he stopped to greet the mother of convicted cartel kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán – breaking with social-distancing protocols to shake her hand.López Obrador downplayed the greeting as little more than a courtesy to a mother who hadn't seen her son in five years, but his comments prompted outrage from families of victims of violence, who say he has failed to extend the same courtesy to them."For society and victims, who have been having a hard time meeting or being listened to by the president," Ernst said, "it's a heavy slap in the face."
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| Here's How the Army Will Pay New Recruits Who Can’t Get to Basic Training Posted: 03 Apr 2020 06:21 AM PDT  The 1,400 recruits on hold because of the novel coronavirus pandemic will likely be paid as privates.
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| A 1,000-bed Navy hospital ship was meant to help relieve New York City's overburdened hospitals. So far it's 2% full, and a hospital director called it a 'joke.' Posted: 03 Apr 2020 02:27 AM PDT  The ship hasn't been able to accept many patients because of strict Navy guidelines and the lack so far of many non-coronavirus patients in the city.
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| Birx: 5 states could be among next coronavirus 'hot spots' Posted: 02 Apr 2020 05:01 PM PDT  Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, listed several states that could be the next "hot spots" for large numbers of COVID-19 cases, based on how many positive cases they have now.
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| U.S. sounds alarm on coronavirus in Japan, Tokyo pushes for state of emergency Posted: 02 Apr 2020 08:49 PM PDT  The U.S. government on Friday sounded alarm about the surge in coronavirus cases in Japan, adding to a chorus of prominent domestic voices - including the governor of Tokyo - who have called for decisive action to avoid an explosive outbreak. Amid growing clamour for tighter curbs on people's movements to stem a rising tide of infections, the government has so far been reluctant to pull the trigger, warning of the heavy damage that could ensue in the world's third-biggest economy, already close to recession. Instead, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has urged school closures and called on citizens to avoid unnecessary and non-urgent gatherings and outings while preparing to roll out an economic stimulus plan next week - even as he acknowledged the country was barely avoiding a major jump in infections.
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| Report: Federal Agency Shipped Face Masks Overseas as Veterans Affairs Hospital Rationed Them Posted: 03 Apr 2020 01:48 PM PDT  A federal agency reportedly shipped face masks overseas from a Miami warehouse even as a nearby Veterans Affairs hospital was rationing them due to the coronavirus outbreak.The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) had a warehouse of face masks sitting unused in Miami while a Veterans Affairs hospital in the city was telling its health care workers to use the same face mask for an entire week, Fox News reported.Later, USAID exported the masks overseas. Since then, however, the administration has reportedly halted USAID shipments of personal protective equipment out of the country.The administration is also considering cracking down on private companies that persist in shipping supplies out of the country even as U.S. states grapple with a shortage of the life-saving supplies, potentially increasing the death toll from the coronavirus. The restrictions will likely come in an order President Trump intends to sign Friday targeting American "shady brokers," who sell masks and ventilators to foreign countries at high prices.Governor Cuomo of New York, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak with more than 92,000 cases, said Thursday that the state only has enough ventilators to last six more days. On Friday, Cuomo signed an order allowing the state National Guard to appropriate ventilators and personal protective equipment from hospitals and medical institutions and transfer them where they are most needed. Ventilators are desperately needed to treat cases of the coronavirus, a respiratory virus that attacks the lungs and causes shortness of breath."It's not that we're going to leave any health care facility without adequate equipment, but they don't need excess equipment now," Cuomo said.States have also turned to buying ventilators from private manufacturers, where they compete with both the federal government and other states."It's like being on eBay with 50 other states bidding on a ventilator," the New York governor said of the process.Meanwhile, the federal government is evaluating which states should receive the nearly 10,000 ventilators it had available in its stockpile as of Thursday. The government has also been unable to fill more than 90 percent of the requested number of N95 protective face masks.
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| Asian countries impose new restrictions as coronavirus cases come roaring back Posted: 02 Apr 2020 03:28 PM PDT  After appearing to have the virus under control, Singapore, Vietnam and Hong Kong are imposing new controls as COVID-19 infections continue to rise.
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| IMF May Hold Remote Consultations With Argentina Amid Pandemic Posted: 03 Apr 2020 03:00 AM PDT |
| US judge dismisses New Mexico's immigration lawsuit Posted: 02 Apr 2020 03:47 PM PDT |
| Coronavirus: Holland America lets off cruise passengers; 14 critically ill taken to Florida hospitals Posted: 03 Apr 2020 03:52 PM PDT  President Trump weighed in after passengers from the Holland America Zaandam cruise ship were allowed to touch dry land for the first time in weeks.
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| Dr. Fauci Shuts Down ‘Fox & Friends’ on Coronavirus Cure: ‘We Don’t Operate on How You Feel’ Posted: 03 Apr 2020 07:44 AM PDT  Top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci left the hosts of Fox & Friends disappointed and frustrated Friday when he threw cold water on their insistence that the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine is a game-changing cure for the coronavirus.Citing a recent poll showing that 37 percent of doctors around the world feel the drug is currently the most effective treatment of COVID-19, co-host Steve Doocy added that frequent Fox News guest Dr. Mehmet Oz recently touted a small Chinese study that found the drug had some efficacy in treating the virus.Doocy went on to play a clip of Dr. Oz wondering whether Fauci was impressed with the results of that study. The Fox host asked the top physician to respond to the TV doctor."That was not a very robust study," replied Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force. He also pointed out that while there's still a possibility of a "beneficial effect," the scale and strength of the evidence is not "overwhelmingly strong.""But getting back to what you said just a moment ago that 'X percent'—I think you said 37 percent—of doctors feel that it's beneficial. We don't operate on how you feel. We operate on what evidence is, and data is," he continued. "So although there is some suggestion with the study that was just mentioned by Dr. Oz—granted that there is a suggestion that there is a benefit there—I think we've got to be careful that we don't make that majestic leap to assume that this is a knockout drug."Co-host Brian Kilmeade, meanwhile, pushed back against the disease expert, claiming a large percentage of doctors in other countries are now prescribing the drug to treat coronavirus. He then speculated as to whether those taking the drug for other conditions were prevented from infection of COVID-19.Seth Meyers Exposes Fox News' Sean Hannity Over Huge Coronavirus 'Hoax' Lie"I would be very curious, doctor, to see if anyone who was taking this for lupus or arthritis has gotten the coronavirus, that would be one way to go the other way to see about this study," Kilmeade wondered aloud."I mean, obviously this is a good drug in many respects for some of the diseases you mentioned, and the one thing we don't want to happen is that individuals who really need a drug with a proven indication don't have it available," Fauci responded, adding that it doesn't matter if a large percentage of doctors "think that it works."Co-host Ainsley Earhardt then jumped in, suggesting that "Democratic leaders" are preventing patients from receiving hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the disease and asking Fauci what could be done to make sure we're giving it to everyone in need."Well first of all, this is an approved drug for another indication, and doctors can, and the FDA has made it very clear that doctors can prescribe it on what we call off label," he explained. "There's no inhibition for that. So a considerable amount of drug was made available, as you remember, just a few days ago. But the FDA was very clear that they're not going to be inhibiting anyone from doing an off label prescription of the drug. So they're free to do that if they want to."While President Donald Trump and many Fox News personalities have been bullish on the possibility that the drug is a miracle cure for the virus, Fauci has repeatedly attempted to temper expectations, noting that the benefits have largely been anecdotal and that there are other studies showing no noticeable effects at all.This isn't the first time that pro-Trump Fox News hosts have tried to get Fauci to boost hydroxychloroquine. Laura Ingraham, who has been at the forefront of touting the drug, asked the doc last week if he would take it if he were stricken with the virus. Fauci, for his part, said only if it were part of a clinical trial.Dr. Anthony Fauci: I Don't Want to 'Embarrass' TrumpRead more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| China declared whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang a 'martyr' following a local campaign to silence him for speaking out about the coronavirus Posted: 03 Apr 2020 03:01 AM PDT  Li Wenliang sounded the alarm about the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan on December 30. He died of the virus on February 7.
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| Trump says administration "hit 3M hard" over face masks Posted: 02 Apr 2020 06:10 PM PDT  President Trump announced Thursday that he invoked the Defense Production Act to get the company to produce face masks
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| Colombia quarantine brings evictions for Bogota's poorest Posted: 02 Apr 2020 01:01 PM PDT  Jose Ramirez - whose total belongings fit into a scratched black suitcase and a backpack - is resigned to spending the night in a scruffy park in the depressed center of Colombia's capital, Bogota. Mayor's office officials said it was unclear where he could be housed.
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| Passover on Zoom: Jewish leaders split on digital Seders Posted: 02 Apr 2020 07:01 PM PDT  The Jewish holiday of Passover has long inspired intense debate, with favourite topics including whether Moses actually parted the Red Sea or if the Ten Plagues were an ethical response to enslavement. The videoconferencing application has emerged as an essential tool during a crisis that has confined people across the globe in their homes. Passover, an eight-day holiday that marks the Jewish people's biblical exodus from Egypt, begins Wednesday evening with a Seder, one of the most important events of the year for Jews.
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| Deported amid coronavirus: US sends Guatemalan family home to face new threat Posted: 02 Apr 2020 03:00 AM PDT  María and the niece she's raised as a daughter were separated for a year. Now they are back in Guatemala, fighting to build a new lifeAs the plane descended into Guatemala City, María tried to calm her six-year-old niece. "Mami, I feel like I'm falling," the girl told her from the window seat next to her. María, 26, was scared too, and not just because this deportation flight was her first time in the air. They were returning to Guatemala – the country they had fled after a gang murdered all their living relatives.The pair had been reunited in a Phoenix-area airport just a few hours before, nearly a year after border officials at an Arizona port of entry separated them. María had raised her niece as a daughter since the girl was an infant. But border officials did not recognize them as a family unit and sent the girl to foster care in New York and María to an immigrant detention center in Arizona.María, who could not shake the memory of her little girl being ripped out of her arms, had waited a year to hug her niece. They both wept. The moment was bittersweet.María and her girl landed in Guatemala as the coronavirus was taking hold in countries around the world. On the day of their deportation flight, the World Health Organization declared the rapidly growing outbreak a pandemic.The spread of the coronavirus has exacerbated concerns for immigrants held in detention centers across the US. At least four migrant children in government shelters in New York have tested positive for Covid-19, as have six adult detainees and five detention officers. Immigrant rights advocates, health experts, some members of Congress and even a former official for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) are calling for detainees to be released due to the risks of the virus spreading.For deported asylum seekers like María, the crisis means many are returning to even more dire situations than the threats they originally fled. In Guatemala, the local economy is paralyzed by the pandemic, with businesses and many government offices shuttered. For those arriving on deportation flights, finding jobs and housing has become all but impossible.•••The US has deported more than 11,600 people to Guatemala since the beginning of this year, according to data from Guatemala's Migration Institute. As the corona crisis intensified, concern grew among Guatemalan officials about deportation flights contributing to the spread of Covid-19. Within a week of María's 11 March arrival, the Guatemalan government closed its borders and announced no new deportation flights from the US could come in until Guatemala prepared new health protocols for repatriated citizens. The flights resumed a few days later but are now less frequent.Ice has begun taking the temperatures of immigrants before they board. Anyone testing above 100.4F gets referred to a medical screening. Guatemalan officials check again when the passengers deplane. The repatriated citizens are then instructed to self-quarantine. Still, a 29-year-old man on a 26 March deportation flight from Arizona tested positive for Covid-19 over the weekend, Guatemala's health ministry confirmed, and became the country's 36th case. (The country had confirmed 10 more cases, as of Wednesday night.)"Prior to boarding, the detainee was screened and neither had a temperature nor presented symptoms at that time," said an Ice spokesperson in a statement. The agency said before he was deported, the man was booked into a Calexico, California, facility on 5 March and was transferred to a facility in Florence, Arizona, on 17 March.Officials at Guatemala's foreign relations ministry have said they will continue to receive deportation flights for now.When María and her niece arrived at the Guatemalan airport, local authorities took their temperatures but didn't offer any further assistance or support, María told the Guardian in Spanish.The pair's first days in Guatemala were confusing, she said.As she had no family left in the country, her former cellmate at the Eloy detention center offered her a place to stay. But American officials had failed to give María back her Guatemalan ID before her flight, and with Guatemalan government offices closed amid the pandemic, she cannot replace it.She tried to bring a sense of normalcy to her little girl's life. They went to church, they celebrated the girl's seventh birthday and they had Guatemala's classic Pollo Campero chicken. María was relieved to eat something besides the potato-based meals served in detention. But with the pandemic lurking, things were anything but normal.Eleven days after María arrived, President Alejandro Giammattei, a former doctor, instituted a nationwide lockdown between 4pm and 4am every day. Since then, Guatemala's national civil police have detained more than 5,000 people for violating the rules. Public service announcements show images of deserted streets, bridges and bus stops. Police parade through neighborhoods playing the national anthem, and the president, wearing a protective mask, provides updates on social media.On Sunday, Giammattei said that public officials were doing everything they could to contain Covid-19, but also "to preserve the economic stability that the country has had for a long time"."It is a great challenge, it's not easy, but if we unite it will be easier," he said.Small business owners in Guatemala City like Sergio Valdés don't see such a promising forecast. Just 20 days after he opened the doors of his small restaurant, he had to close its doors. He was allowed to offer takeout, but his five employees could not get to work due to public transportation closures. "The president says that everything is going to get better, but that's not the reality," Valdés said. "If you keep a business closed for a while, it will die."Many Guatemalans who rely on remittances from family members in the US are losing that income as the US unemployment rate climbs. Migrant shelters in Guatemala have reported requests for help from not only migrants and those recently deported, but also Guatemalans who have lost their livelihoods due to the shut-down economy. The global pandemic has revealed the vulnerability of populations already living on the fringes, said Father Mauro Verzeletti, director of Casa del Migrante, a shelter in Guatemala City.In a recent tweet, Guatemala's ombudsman for human rights, Jordán Rodas Andrade, called for a moratorium on deportations, or at least a slowdown, that would allow the country's system of shelters to ramp up to meet the needs of these populations. But deportation proceedings for many detained immigrants have continued. The US government is requiring immigration attorneys to bring their own N95 masks, eye protection and gloves at a time when those items are in short supply for healthcare workers. And under new border policies adopted by the Trump administration since the Covid-19 pandemic, most migrants and asylum seekers apprehended crossing the border are now swiftly returned to their countries. Those asking for asylum at ports of entry are turned away.•••María looked for work as a waitress as soon as she arrived. She knocked on the doors of 15 restaurants and was rejected each time. "Right now, no one is hiring workers, they're firing people," María said. Under the lockdown, she has had to put her search on hold.María's options in Guatemala are limited, particularly since it is not safe for her to go back to her home town. She and her little girl fled Guatemala for the US in late 2018 after the same gang that murdered María's entire family over a land dispute, including the little girl's mother, killed María's partner and shot at María. Last summer, a US immigration judge found María's account credible but decided her case did not meet the narrow legal standard for asylum. María filed an appeal but could no longer endure being locked up away from her niece. Because she was not the girl's biological mother, Ice refused to release her from detention to reunite the family. After nearly a year apart, María requested deportation with the hope she and the girl could return together."It was notably easier for Ice to concede the bona fides of the relationship between María and her niece when removal to Guatemala was the goal," said Suzannah Maclay, María's attorney.María was craving freedom after so long in detention but still finds herself spending her days inside. She wants her niece to go to school and get the education she never got. She feels restless, unable to start building a better life for them both. "I can't do anything," she said.She believes the gang that murdered her family still wants to kill her, and she is always fearful they will discover she is back. She doesn't want her niece to grow up alone. She tries to give the girl a sense of security, but the truth is hard to hide. "Why did they send us here?" the girl asked her upon arriving in Guatemala. "It's too dangerous."As María and her child focus on day-to-day survival, they are also trying to heal from the trauma of their separation. Sometimes the girl tells María about foster care in New York. The stories are hard to hear. The girl describes getting her hands slapped when she touched things or being scolded in restaurants. "They humiliated her," María said."Mami, I missed you so much," the girl tells her. "I don't ever want to be apart again." María responds with a promise: "This won't happen again."Grecia Ortiz in Guatemala City contributed reporting
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| NRA Sues New York State Governor Over Closure of Gun Stores Posted: 03 Apr 2020 07:06 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- The National Rifle Association sued New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for closing gun shops during the coronavirus pandemic, saying the restriction is unconstitutional and leaves citizens defenseless while prisoners are being released early as a result of the crisis.Cuomo's March 20 executive order that included firearms retailers as non-essential businesses which must close is a "pointless and arbitrary attack on the constitutional rights of New York citizens and residents," the NRA said in a complaint filed late Thursday in Syracuse, New York.New York ordered most businesses to close to prevent the spread of the virus, but deemed grocery stores, liquor stores, pharmacies and restaurants that do take-out as essential and allowed them to remain open. New York City is the center of the outbreak in the U.S., accounting for more than 1,300 of the 5,700 deaths in the country.New York officials are "going out of their way to protect liquor stores and release criminals onto the streets, while ignoring the public's outcry over the suspension of Second Amendment rights," the suit says.The New York lawsuit follows similar action the NRA took in Northern California, where it sued several cities including San Jose for ordering gun stores to close. Earlier this week in New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy lifted a temporary ban on the sale of guns in the state after the NRA filed suit to block it, and Los Angeles County also backed off an earlier ban.Gun shops around the country have reported surges in sales, and shares of gun and ammunition manufacturers have risen. The final week of February saw the third largest number of background checks since at least 1998, behind the weeks following the Sandy Hook and San Bernardino shootings, according to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System, known as NICS.New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, said before the lawsuit was filed that she'd defend the state's decision.New York's take on what's essential is at odds with the Trump administration, according to the complaint. On March 28, the Department of Homeland Security issued a list of critical infrastructure, including: "Workers supporting the operation of firearm or ammunition product manufacturers, retailers, importers, distributors, and shooting ranges," the NRA said. The gun-rights organization also says that law enforcement may not be sufficient to protect citizens during the crisis.New Yorkers "have read about the release of thousands of prisoners by state officials, and they are concerned about the ability of police forces to maintain order when officers fear contact with Covid-19 or have fallen ill themselves," the complaint says."Government officials, including Governor Cuomo and Letitia James, are bound by the U.S. Constitution," William Brewer, counsel to the NRA, said in an email. "The NRA will aggressively defend the Second Amendment freedoms of its members and all New Yorkers."(Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, helped launch Everytown for Gun Safety and backs candidates who support measures such as universal background checks.)(Updates with rise in gun sales, Los Angeles County sheriff's statement.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Pelosi Abandons Sweeping Coronavirus Legislative Agenda, Agrees to Narrowly-Tailored Phase-4 Relief Bill Posted: 03 Apr 2020 12:11 PM PDT  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday indicated she would support a phase-4 coronavirus relief bill without a broad infrastructure plan or many of the other unrelated legislative goals she initially called to be included in the legislation."I'm very much in favor of doing some of the things that we need to do to meet the needs of clean water, more broadband, and the rest of that. That may have to be for a bill beyond this," Pelosi told CNBC. "Right now, I think that we have a good model. It was bipartisan, it was signed by the President, but it's not enough.""Let's do the same bill we just did, make some changes to make it current," Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill Friday, according to Politico.The CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act agreed upon by Congress and signed by President Trump last Friday provides $2.2 trillion in economic relief to individual Americans, small businesses and large corporations such as Boeing that have been affected by the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic."The acceleration of the coronavirus demands that we double down on the down payment we made in CARES by passing a CARES 2 package. We must extend and expand this bipartisan legislation," Pelosi told CNN.Pelosi's previous push to include infrastructure legislation came after President Trump wrote on Twitter in support of the idea."We have never, ever gone down a path that involves this much investment for the future, involving this many people in our country, and again now at this time, we're having a further health urgency, an immediate urgency," Pelosi told reporters on Wednesday.Republicans, however, have been wary of adding provisions that are not directly aimed at containing the coronavirus outbreak and the resulting economic damage after Democrats attempted to shoehorn environmental and corporate diversity regulations into previous relief bills.During negotiations over the CARES Act in March, House Majority Whip James Clyburn told colleagues that the bill represented "a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision." Legislation inserted into the bill by Democrats included tougher carbon emissions limits for airlines, mandatory reports on diversity for corporate boards, and more tax credits for solar and wind energy. Republican senators including Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ben Sasse of Nebraska slammed the additions.
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| Driver who said woman coughed on his bus has died of coronavirus Posted: 03 Apr 2020 11:12 AM PDT  Bus drivers in Detroit shut down public transportation last month, fearful of the coronavirus. News of the driver's death has reignited those fears.
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| CDC warned of a coming pandemic two years ago Posted: 02 Apr 2020 04:21 AM PDT  Two years ago, some of the nation's top public health officials gathered in an auditorium at Emory University in Atlanta to commemorate the 1918 influenza pandemic — also known as "the Spanish flu" — which had killed as many as 40 million people as it swept the globe.
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| The UK plans to issue coronavirus 'immunity passports' so people can leave the lockdown early Posted: 03 Apr 2020 01:15 AM PDT  Health Secretary Matt Hancock said people who could prove their immunity to the coronavirus would be allowed to return to "normal life."
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| For DIY face masks, some fabrics work better than others Posted: 03 Apr 2020 03:03 PM PDT  Some fabrics were found to work better at filtering small particles than medical grade masks.
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| Countries face 'fights' over facemasks in China: German health minister Posted: 03 Apr 2020 05:48 AM PDT  Countries' procurement agents are fighting each other in China for access to the protective equipment that must play a key role in stemming the spread of the novel coronavirus, German Health Minister Jens Spahn said. "You hear stories of people fighting in the truest sense of the word over these masks in China," he told reporters on Friday during a visit to a logistics company that is acting for the German government. Germany's mix of lockdown measures and aggressive testing for the novel coronavirus has so far been successful in slowing the spread of the disease, with each patient only infecting one other on average in recent days.
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