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Americans officials at WHO transmitted real-time information about coronavirus to Trump administration

Americans officials at WHO transmitted real-time information about coronavirus to Trump administration

The Washington Post reports: More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials. A number of CDC staff members are regularly detailed to work at…

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‘They’re killing us,’ Texas residents say of Trump rollbacks of public health and environmental protections

‘They’re killing us,’ Texas residents say of Trump rollbacks of public health and environmental protections

The Associated Press reports: Danielle Nelson’s best monitor for the emissions billowing out of the oil refineries and chemical plants surrounding her home: The heaving chest of her 9-year-old asthmatic son. On some nights, the boy’s chest shudders as he fights for breath in his sleep. Nelson suspects the towering plants and refineries are to blame, rising like a lit-up city at night around her squat brick apartment building in the rugged Texas Gulf Coast city of Port Arthur. Ask…

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Don’t reopen yet, governors tell Trump as coronavirus death toll crosses 40,000

Don’t reopen yet, governors tell Trump as coronavirus death toll crosses 40,000

Reuters reports: Governors in U.S. states hardest hit by the novel coronavirus sparred with President Donald Trump over his claims they have enough tests and should quickly reopen their economies as more protests are planned over the extension of stay-at-home orders. New York continued to see hospitalizations decline to 16,000 from a high of 18,000, and the number of patients being kept alive by ventilators also fell. There were 507 new deaths, down from a high of more than 700…

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Lack of FDA vetting opens door to inaccurate coronavirus antibody tests

Lack of FDA vetting opens door to inaccurate coronavirus antibody tests

The New York Times reports: A law firm in Scottsdale, Ariz., tested employees who hoped, with the prick of a finger, to learn if they might be immune. In Laredo, Tex., community leaders secured 20,000 of the new tests to gauge how many residents had been infected. In Chicago, a hospital screened firefighters to help determine whether they could safely stay on the job. In recent weeks, the United States has seen the first rollout of blood tests for coronavirus…

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Music is a balm right now. But there’s little comfort for musicians

Music is a balm right now. But there’s little comfort for musicians

John Harris writes: [P]ublic performances of any kind have all been cancelled, and the hiatus could conceivably last well into next year. Festival season seems to be a write-off. And in the fine details of research about how the virus spreads, there are actually suggestions that the participatory aspects of music have been in part responsible for Covid-19’s transmission: witness a senior German virologist’s claim that over the last weeks and months, “wherever there was singing and dancing, the virus…

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The soldiers on the front lines saving America right now are mostly women and more likely not white

The soldiers on the front lines saving America right now are mostly women and more likely not white

The New York Times reports: Every day, Constance Warren stands behind the cold cuts counter at a grocery store in New Orleans, watching the regular customers come and go. They thank Ms. Warren and tell her they do not like being stuck indoors, waiting out the epidemic. She wraps their honey-smoked turkey and smiles. It is good to have a job right now, the mixed fortune of being deemed an essential worker. But she wonders whether, once everyday life is…

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Gretchen Whitmer isn’t backing down

Gretchen Whitmer isn’t backing down

The New York Times reports: She is a first-term governor and rising star in the Democratic Party, a frequent critic of the Trump administration for its handling of the coronavirus health crisis and a prominent foil of the president’s in the heated debate over when to reopen the nation for business. Now the governor, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, has also become a prime target in the growing partisan storm over stay-at-home orders during the outbreak, which was highlighted on Wednesday…

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Trump is inciting the violent overthrow of government

Trump is inciting the violent overthrow of government

Mary McCord writes: President Trump incited insurrection Friday against the duly elected governors of the states of Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia. Just a day after issuing guidance for re-opening America that clearly deferred decision-making to state officials — as it must under our Constitutional order — the president undercut his own guidance by calling for criminal acts against the governors for not opening fast enough. Trump tweeted, “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” followed immediately by “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and then “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save…

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Coronavirus testing needs to triple before the U.S. can reopen, experts say

Coronavirus testing needs to triple before the U.S. can reopen, experts say

The New York Times reports: As some governors consider easing social distancing restrictions, new estimates by researchers at Harvard University suggest that the United States cannot safely reopen unless it conducts more than three times the number of coronavirus tests it is currently administering over the next month. An average of 146,000 people per day have been tested for the coronavirus nationally so far this month, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which on Friday reported 3.6 million total tests…

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Want to know how many people have the coronavirus? Test randomly

Want to know how many people have the coronavirus? Test randomly

Polls and surveys use random sampling. Why not pandemic testing? Gerville/E+ via Getty Images By Daniel N. Rockmore, Dartmouth College and Michael Herron, Dartmouth College Consider these two questions: What percentage of Americans are, or have been, infected with the coronavirus? And, what is the probability of dying from the virus if you catch it? One of the most unsettling aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic is that these two fundamental rates – the coronavirus infection rate and the case fatality…

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What history can teach us about building a fairer society after the coronavirus pandemic

What history can teach us about building a fairer society after the coronavirus pandemic

Richard Power Sayeed writes: In the middle of the 14th century, the Black Death killed perhaps a third of Europe’s population, hastening the breakdown of rigid social hierarchies – what we now call “feudalism” – to an astonishing degree. But there was nothing inevitable about that transformation. It happened because people such as William Caburn exploited the crisis. Two years after the plague hit England, this Lincolnshire ploughman was in court for “refusing to work at the daily rate”. He…

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What do you owe your neighbor? The pandemic might change your answer

What do you owe your neighbor? The pandemic might change your answer

Alexander W. Cappelen, Ranveig Falch, Erik O. Sorensen, Bertil Tungodden and Gus Wezerek write: America will almost certainly emerge from the coronavirus pandemic as a different society. A new survey suggests the experience has already changed what we believe we owe our neighbors and how much economic inequality we find acceptable. Seeking to understand how the crisis might affect Americans’ moral perspectives, Times Opinion partnered with Alexander W. Cappelen, Ranveig Falch, Erik O. Sorensen and Bertil Tungodden at FAIR —…

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We are probably only one-tenth of the way through the coronavirus pandemic

We are probably only one-tenth of the way through the coronavirus pandemic

David Wallace-Wells writes: We are, finally, beginning to see some real plans from people with the power to enact them. On Tuesday, California governor Gavin Newsom unveiled a sort of road map for a gradual “reopening” of the state — including benchmarks for testing and hospital capacity, and continued social-distancing guidelines and even temperature checks. A handful of serious, sobering national proposals have been put forward by think tanks and the like in the U.S., and the White House has…

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Early data on antiviral drug suggests Covid-19 patients are responding to treatment

Early data on antiviral drug suggests Covid-19 patients are responding to treatment

STAT reports: A Chicago hospital treating severe Covid-19 patients with Gilead Sciences’ antiviral medicine remdesivir in a closely watched clinical trial is seeing rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms, with nearly all patients discharged in less than a week, STAT has learned. Remdesivir was one of the first medicines identified as having the potential to impact SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, in lab tests. The entire world has been waiting for results from Gilead’s clinical trials, and…

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