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Coronavirus could attack immune system like HIV by targeting protective T cells, scientists warn

Coronavirus could attack immune system like HIV by targeting protective T cells, scientists warn

South China Morning Post reports: The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 could kill the powerful immune cells that are supposed to kill the virus instead, scientists have warned. The surprise discovery, made by a team of researchers from Shanghai and New York, coincided with frontline doctors’ observation that Covid-19 could attack the human immune system and cause damages similar to that found in HIV patients. Lu Lu, from Fudan University in Shanghai, and Jang Shibo, from the New York Blood Centre,…

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How San Francisco flattened the coronavirus curve

How San Francisco flattened the coronavirus curve

The Atlantic reports: London Breed wasn’t going to wait around for COVID-19. San Francisco had yet to confirm a single case of the coronavirus when Breed, the city’s 45-year-old first-term mayor, declared a state of emergency in late February. Two weeks later, Breed’s decision to ban gatherings of more than 1,000 people forced the hand of the Bay Area’s beloved Golden State Warriors, who this year moved into San Francisco’s Chase Center after nearly a half century in Oakland. Her…

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The first Americans to recover from Covid-19 test drive immunity

The first Americans to recover from Covid-19 test drive immunity

The New York Times reports: Christy Karras and her husband received a tantalizing text the other day from friends they had not seen since February, when all four were among the first people in the United States to be sickened by the new coronavirus. “Dinner at our place?” It had been a week and a half since any of them had experienced symptoms, past the point when Covid-19 patients are thought to be contagious. And, assuming conventional virology wisdom applies,…

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America’s billionaires’ gifts to charity are mostly PR stunts

America’s billionaires’ gifts to charity are mostly PR stunts

Robert Reich writes: As millions of jobless Americans line up for food or risk their lives delivering essential services, the nation’s billionaires are making conspicuous donations – $100m from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos for food banks, billions from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for a coronavirus vaccine, thousands of ventilators and N95 masks from Elon Musk, $25m from the Walton family and its Walmart foundation. The list goes on. On Wednesday, Forbes released its annual billionaires list, happily noting that “the planet’s…

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Bolsonaro dragging Brazil towards coronavirus calamity, experts fear

Bolsonaro dragging Brazil towards coronavirus calamity, experts fear

The Guardian reports: Medical experts have said they fear that Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, could be hastening the country’s march towards a devastating public health crisis like those to have hit northern Italy and New York by undermining social distancing measures. Bolsonaro is one of just four world leaders still downplaying the threat of coronavirus to public health, alongside the authoritarian presidents of Nicaragua, Belarus and Turkmenistan. Over Easter, Brazil’s far-right leader repeatedly sniffed at his own health ministry’s distancing…

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Coronavirus conspiracy theorists infecting academia

Coronavirus conspiracy theorists infecting academia

The Times reports: Prominent British academics have been sharing conspiracy theories about the coronavirus online, The Times can disclose. They included suggestions from other social media users that Bill Gates, the billionaire philanthropist, and the World Economic Forum (WEF) that meets in Davos may be involved in plots to exploit the illness and speculation that it was a biological weapon. The academics include Tim Hayward, a professor of environmental political theory at the University of Edinburgh, and Piers Robinson, co-founder…

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The largest Arctic ozone hole ever measured is hovering over the North Pole

The largest Arctic ozone hole ever measured is hovering over the North Pole

Science News reports: A curious confluence of atmospheric events has produced the largest ozone hole ever measured over the Arctic. A powerful polar vortex has trapped especially frigid air in the atmosphere above the North Pole, allowing high-altitude clouds to form in the stratosphere, where the ozone layer also sits. Within those clouds, chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons already high in the atmosphere — gases used as refrigerants — react with ultraviolet rays from the sun to release chlorine and bromine atoms,…

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He could have seen what was coming: Behind Trump’s failure on the pandemic

He could have seen what was coming: Behind Trump’s failure on the pandemic

The New York Times reports: “Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad,” a senior medical adviser at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Carter Mecher, wrote on the night of Jan. 28, in an email to a group of public health experts scattered around the government and universities. “The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe.” A week after the first coronavirus case had been identified in the United States, and six long…

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Experts fear ‘national naivete’ on Covid-19 optimism

Experts fear ‘national naivete’ on Covid-19 optimism

The Hill reports: After an unprecedented month of strict social distancing and an economic lockdown that has cost tens of millions of jobs and untold billions in damage, Americans saw the faintest glimmers of hope last week that the worst of the coronavirus crisis may be passing. Modelers at the University of Washington downgraded their projections of the number of people who would die. Some states closed field hospitals they never had to use. Major professional sports leagues began considering…

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In six days more Americans died from Covid-19 than died from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined

In six days more Americans died from Covid-19 than died from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined

Business Insider reports: The US has become the first country in the world to record more than 2,000 coronavirus deaths in a single day. 2,108 people lost their lives on Friday, according to data collated by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. The US also surpassed half a million infections at the end of what has been a devastating week. More Americans died between Monday and Saturday (8,800) than died from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. The US death…

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The Trump administration has many task forces — but still no plan for beating the coronavirus crisis

The Trump administration has many task forces — but still no plan for beating the coronavirus crisis

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration still has no clear plan for ending the coronavirus crisis, but it does have many task forces. There is the official task force led by Vice President Pence that meets daily and is supposed to oversee the government’s sprawling response to the deadly pandemic that has cratered the economy and, as of Saturday, killed more than 19,000 in the United States alone. There is the “Opening Our Country Council,” an economic task force…

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White House rejects bailout for U.S. Postal Service battered by coronavirus

White House rejects bailout for U.S. Postal Service battered by coronavirus

The Washington Post reports: Through rain, sleet, hail, and even a pandemic, mail carriers serve every address in the United States, but the coronavirus crisis is shaking the foundation of the U.S. Postal Service in new and dire ways. The Postal Service’s decades-long financial troubles have worsened dramatically as the volume of the kind of mail that pays the agency’s bills ― first-class and marketing mail ― withers during the pandemic. The USPS needs an infusion of money, and President…

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The lethal toll of not shutting down spring break earlier

The lethal toll of not shutting down spring break earlier

The New York Times reports: You could find Beatriz Diaz at this spring’s Winter Party Festival in Miami Beach, giving out hand sanitizer. It was early March. She knew the coronavirus was beginning to make its way around the world, but she figured if she kept her hands clean and avoided sweaty people, she would be safe. “I was thinking, ‘OK, well, hold on, the government did not cancel it, so it should be fine,’” she said. Within days, reports…

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Trump is draining the last reserves of decency among us at a time when we need it most

Trump is draining the last reserves of decency among us at a time when we need it most

Tom Nichols writes: Trump is a spiritual black hole. He has no ability to transcend himself by so much as an emotional nanometer. Even narcissists, we are told by psychologists, have the occasional dark night of the soul. They can recognize how they are perceived by others, and they will at least pretend to seek forgiveness and show contrition as a way of gaining the affection they need. They are capable of infrequent moments of reflection, even if only to…

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