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The U.S. faces the same problem it did two months ago: There aren’t enough tests to contain the coronavirus

The U.S. faces the same problem it did two months ago: There aren’t enough tests to contain the coronavirus

Robinson Meyer writes: The United States is mired in one of the most immiserating peacetime moments in its history. In little more than two months, more than 70,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, a disease that did not have a name in early February. The U.S. economy, which began the year as an engine of global stability, is in shambles. The unemployment rate has surged to a level unseen since the 1930s, the Labor Department announced on Friday. Only about…

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Without food, there can be no exit from the pandemic

Without food, there can be no exit from the pandemic

Máximo Torero write: The coronavirus pandemic has laid many things bare, none more so than how interconnected our world is. The impact of globalization is most obvious in the stuttering supply chains that threaten food security worldwide. Maintaining or reweaving these webs is going to take technology, innovation and political determination. As chief economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), I fear that few countries have recognized that their measures to contain the virus and…

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Obama says in private call that ‘rule of law is at risk’ in Michael Flynn case

Obama says in private call that ‘rule of law is at risk’ in Michael Flynn case

Yahoo News reports: Former President Barack Obama, talking privately to ex-members of his administration, said Friday that the “rule of law is at risk” in the wake of what he called an unprecedented move by the Justice Department to drop charges against former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn. In the same chat, a tape of which was obtained by Yahoo News, Obama also lashed out at the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as “an absolute chaotic…

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Sugars on coronavirus spike protein offer vaccine clues

Sugars on coronavirus spike protein offer vaccine clues

Jordana Cepelewicz writes: Cells are furry. That might come as a surprise, since textbook illustrations so often represent a cell as smooth — “something like a balloon full of water,” said Elisa Fadda, a computational chemist at Maynooth University in Ireland. “But that is absolutely not true.” In reality, the surface of a cell is adorned with a forest canopy of sugars, intricate and diverse clusters of carbohydrates that extend like branches and leaves from protein tree trunks. And because…

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Three hypotheses on post-pandemic life

Three hypotheses on post-pandemic life

Alan Durning writes: In spring 1986, as a wet-behind-the-ears research assistant at a Washington, DC, think tank, I spent my first year after college studying the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. The catastrophe’s consequences were immediate: death, displacement, downwind irradiation for hundreds of miles, and an unprecedented quasi-military cleanup that cost more than $100 billion. I assembled and summarized for my supervisor piles of news reports and research papers, and I knew what the experts said the Chernobyl disaster would mean…

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Trump suppresses coronavirus information as he pushes to restart the economy

Trump suppresses coronavirus information as he pushes to restart the economy

The Washington Post reports: President Trump in recent weeks has sought to block or downplay information about the severity of the coronavirus pandemic as he urges a return to normalcy and the rekindling of an economy that has been devastated by public health restrictions aimed at mitigating the outbreak. His administration has sidelined or replaced officials not seen as loyal, rebuffed congressional requests for testimony, dismissed jarring statistics and models, praised states for reopening without meeting White House guidelines and,…

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Why U.S. jobless figures don’t capture the true state of the coronavirus economy

Why U.S. jobless figures don’t capture the true state of the coronavirus economy

MarketWatch reports: ‘The virus is still spreading throughout much of the country. We have to continue to be very measured and not reopen too quickly because we may pay the price for that.’ That’s the cautious view Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari shared on NBC’s Today Show in an interview ahead of Friday’s monthly employment report, which he says won’t give the clearest picture of job losses amid the coronavirus pandemic. “That bad report tomorrow is actually going…

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Beware overblown claims about new strains of the coronavirus

Beware overblown claims about new strains of the coronavirus

Ed Yong writes: As if the pandemic weren’t bad enough, on April 30, a team led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory released a paper that purportedly described “the emergence of a more transmissible form” of the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. This new form, the team wrote, “began spreading in Europe in early February.” Whenever it appeared in a new place, including the U.S., it rapidly rose to dominance. Its success, the team suggested, is likely due to a single…

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Justice Dept. lawyer: ‘It’s deeply disheartening to see politics infect Justice. It’s everywhere now under Barr’

Justice Dept. lawyer: ‘It’s deeply disheartening to see politics infect Justice. It’s everywhere now under Barr’

Politico reports: Asked if he was doing Trump’s bidding [by dismissing charges against Michael Flynn], Barr said: “I’m doing the law’s bidding.” The proclamation rang hollow to numerous Justice Department employees. “There seems to be a different set of rules for political appointees,” said one longtime DOJ official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I was surprised. I didn’t think it would end like this — and this quickly.” The official said Barr’s move was another signal to career officials…

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The attorney general is supposed to work for the American people, but Bill Barr is Trump’s personal fixer

The attorney general is supposed to work for the American people, but Bill Barr is Trump’s personal fixer

In an editorial, the New York Times says: It can be hard to recall, since so many members of President Trump’s inner circle have been indicted, convicted of federal crimes and even sent to prison, but the first felon to emerge from this administration was Michael Flynn. Mr. Flynn, who served less than a month as the national security adviser before resigning in disgrace, pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to F.B.I. investigators about his communications with the Russian…

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How Michael Moore became a hero to climate deniers and the far right

How Michael Moore became a hero to climate deniers and the far right

George Monbiot writes: Planet of the Humans, whose executive producer and chief promoter is Michael Moore, now has more than 6 million views on YouTube. The film does not deny climate science. But it promotes the discredited myths that deniers have used for years to justify their position. It claims that environmentalism is a self-seeking scam, doing immense harm to the living world while enriching a group of con artists. This has long been the most effective means by which…

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Psychobiome: The gut bacteria that may alter how you think, feel, and act

Psychobiome: The gut bacteria that may alter how you think, feel, and act

Science reports: Katya Gavrish is searching for new brain drugs in a seemingly unlikely place: human stool samples. An earnest and focused microbiologist who trained in Russia and loves classical music, she’s standing in front of a large anaerobic chamber in a lab at Holobiome, a small startup company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She reaches into the glass-fronted chamber through Michelin Man–like sleeves to begin to dilute the sample inside. That’s the first step toward isolating and culturing bacteria that Gavrish…

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Trump administration blocks CDC guidance on safely reopening the country

Trump administration blocks CDC guidance on safely reopening the country

The Associated Press reports: The Trump administration has shelved a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the still-raging coronavirus outbreak. The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they…

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Hispanics are almost twice as likely as whites to have lost their jobs amid pandemic, poll finds

Hispanics are almost twice as likely as whites to have lost their jobs amid pandemic, poll finds

The Washington Post reports: Hispanics are nearly twice as likely as whites to have lost their jobs amid the coronavirus shutdowns, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll, underlining that the pandemic is wreaking a disproportionate toll on some racial and ethnic groups. The poll finds that 20 percent of Hispanic adults and 16 percent of blacks report being laid off or furloughed since the outbreak began in the United States, compared with 11 percent of whites and 12 percent of…

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