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It’s now or never for the U.S. to prevent coronavirus spreading out of control

It’s now or never for the U.S. to prevent coronavirus spreading out of control

Tom Bossert, Donald Trump’s former homeland security adviser, writes: School closures, isolation of the sick, home quarantines of those who have come into contact with the sick, social distancing, telework and large-gathering cancellations must be implemented before the spread of the disease in any community reaches 1 percent. After that, science tells us, these interventions become far less effective. Simply put, as evidence of human-to-human transmission becomes clear in a community, officials must pull the trigger on aggressive interventions. Time…

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Social distancing is the only way to stop the coronavirus

Social distancing is the only way to stop the coronavirus

Yascha Mounk writes: We don’t yet know the full ramifications of the novel coronavirus. But three crucial facts have become clear in the first months of this extraordinary global event. And what they add up to is not an invocation to stay calm, as so many politicians around the globe are incessantly suggesting; it is, on the contrary, the case for changing our behavior in radical ways—right now. The first fact is that, at least in the initial stages, documented…

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Epic failure: The U.S. is woefully behind other countries on coronavirus tests per capita

Epic failure: The U.S. is woefully behind other countries on coronavirus tests per capita

Business Insider reports: As of Sunday, 1,707 Americans had been tested for the novel coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. South Korea, by contrast, has tested more than 189,000 people. The two countries announced their first coronavirus cases on the same day. In the US, test-kit shortages have hampered health authorities’ ability to get a clear sense of how many Americans are infected. Compared with many other countries affected by the coronavirus, in fact, the US…

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Trump administration stalls release of intel report warning the U.S. still isn’t ready for a pandemic

Trump administration stalls release of intel report warning the U.S. still isn’t ready for a pandemic

Time magazine reports: An annual intelligence report that has been postponed without explanation by President Donald Trump’s administration warns that the U.S. remains unprepared for a global pandemic, two senior government officials who have reviewed a draft of the report tell TIME. The office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was scheduled to deliver the Worldwide Threat Assessment to the House Intelligence Committee on Feb. 12 and the hearing has not been rescheduled, according to staffers and members of…

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Deforestation plays a key role in triggering epidemics

Deforestation plays a key role in triggering epidemics

On Feb. 18, 2020, in Seoul, South Korea, people wearing face masks pass an electric screen warning about COVID-19. AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon By Suresh V Kuchipudi, Pennsylvania State University The coronavirus disease, known as COVID-19, is a frightening reminder of the imminent global threat posed by emerging infectious diseases. Although epidemics have arisen during all of human history, they now seem to be on the rise. In just the past 20 years, coronaviruses alone have caused three major outbreaks worldwide….

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Ecosystems the size of Amazon ‘can collapse within decades’

Ecosystems the size of Amazon ‘can collapse within decades’

The Guardian reports: Even large ecosystems the size of the Amazon rainforest can collapse in a few decades, according to a study that shows bigger biomes break up relatively faster than small ones. The research reveals that once a tipping point has been passed, breakdowns do not occur gradually like an unravelling thread, but rapidly like a stack of Jenga bricks after a keystone piece has been dislodged. The authors of the study, published on Tuesday in the Nature Communications…

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The unique incompetence of Donald Trump in a crisis

The unique incompetence of Donald Trump in a crisis

Daniel W. Drezner writes: I needed to do two kinds of research when writing “Theories of International Politics and Zombies.” The first was mastering the zombie genre. The second was reading the social science literature on the politics of disasters and pandemics, because those kind of events most closely mirrored what a zombie apocalypse would look like. The conclusion I drew from that research, which I noted during the 2014 Ebola outbreak as well, was that conflicting trends would dominate…

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Trump, germophobe-in-chief, is privately terrified about getting the virus

Trump, germophobe-in-chief, is privately terrified about getting the virus

Gabriel Sherman writes: Trump’s press conference on Friday at the CDC was a Trumpian classic, heavy on braggadocio and almost entirely lacking a sense of the seriousness of the crisis. “I like this stuff. I really get it,” Trump told reporters, his face partly hidden under a red “Keep America Great” hat. “People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors say, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe…

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Seattle’s Patient Zero spread coronavirus despite Ebola-style lockdown

Seattle’s Patient Zero spread coronavirus despite Ebola-style lockdown

Bloomberg reports: The man who would become Patient Zero for the new coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. appeared to do everything right. He arrived Jan. 19 at an urgent-care clinic in a suburb north of Seattle with a slightly elevated temperature and a cough he’d developed soon after returning four days earlier from a visit with family in Wuhan, China. The 35-year-old had seen a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention alert about the virus and decided to get…

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Coronavirus sufferers symptom-free for five days on average, study finds

Coronavirus sufferers symptom-free for five days on average, study finds

The Guardian reports: People infected with coronavirus are symptom-free for an average of five days, according to a study that reinforces the need for strict quarantine measures. The analysis found that 5.1 days was the median length of time before people started showing signs of illness, although there was a wide range of incubation periods, with a tiny minority of people taking up to two weeks. Justin Lessler, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and senior author…

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Facebook and Twitter fail to thwart a surge of coronavirus misinformation

Facebook and Twitter fail to thwart a surge of coronavirus misinformation

The New York Times reports: As the coronavirus has spread across the world, so too has misinformation about it, despite an aggressive effort by social media companies to prevent its dissemination. Facebook, Google and Twitter said they were removing misinformation about the coronavirus as fast as they could find it, and were working with the World Health Organization and other government organizations to ensure that people got accurate information. But a search by The New York Times found dozens of…

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China’s excessive coronavirus public monitoring could be here to stay

China’s excessive coronavirus public monitoring could be here to stay

The Guardian reports: Over the last two months, Chinese citizens have had to adjust to a new level of government intrusion. Getting into one’s apartment compound or workplace requires scanning a QR code, writing down one’s name and ID number, temperature and recent travel history. Telecom operators track people’s movements while social media platforms like WeChat and Weibo have hotlines for people to report others who may be sick. Some cities are offering people rewards for informing on sick neighbours….

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There is no homunculus in our brain who guides us

There is no homunculus in our brain who guides us

M.R. O’Connor writes: In the early 1980s, the psychologist Harry Heft put a 16 mm camera in the back of a sports car and made a movie. It consisted of a continuous shot of a residential neighborhood in Granville, Ohio, where Heft was a professor at Denison University. It didn’t have a plot or actors, but it did have a simple narrative: The car started moving at 5 miles per hour and made nine turns from one street to another…

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At nursing home 13 residents died, 70 employees got sick, as others waited for virus test; Trump’s mismanagement helped fuel coronavirus crisis

At nursing home 13 residents died, 70 employees got sick, as others waited for virus test; Trump’s mismanagement helped fuel coronavirus crisis

The New York Times reports: A week after a deadly coronavirus outbreak was reported inside a nursing home in the Seattle suburbs, officials from the long term care center said on Saturday that 70 staff members were out sick with symptoms resembling coronavirus and six residents were also ill. A federal strike team of nurses and doctors arrived Saturday to support the staff at the long-term nursing home, Life Care Center of Kirkland, Wash., where officials have announced the deaths…

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