As America leads world in pandemic death toll, Trump announces U.S. withdrawal from World Health Organization

As America leads world in pandemic death toll, Trump announces U.S. withdrawal from World Health Organization

Politico reports: President Donald Trump on Friday said he is terminating the U.S. relationship with the World Health Organization, making good on his April threat to withdraw from the U.N. health agency he’s repeatedly blamed for mishandling the coronavirus pandemic. “We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and directing those funds to worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs,” Trump said in a brief statement from the White House Rose Garden. The move was…

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It’s healthy to be germophobic now — but not in the long run

It’s healthy to be germophobic now — but not in the long run

By Sophie Strosberg, Undark, May 28, 2020 Let’s face it. We’re all germaphobes now. Anecdotal reports suggest that health anxiety disorders are on the rise in the U.S., in part due to a pandemic-driven fear of contamination and germs. Even people who aren’t experiencing clinically significant health anxiety are likely to be fixated on cleanliness. Witness the depleted shelves of hand sanitizer and disinfectant in just about every store you encounter. I’m no exception. I used to wash my hands…

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America’s ‘persistent pandemic is racism’

America’s ‘persistent pandemic is racism’

USA Today reports: Headline after headline, the same story: a black American dead. George Floyd, after a police officer knelt on his neck. Ahmaud Arbery, while on a jog in Georgia. Breonna Taylor, while police raided her Louisville, Kentucky, home. And the ones before: Eric Garner, who couldn’t breathe. Philando Castile, in the car with his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter. Trayvon Martin, only a boy. Scores of killings answered with acquittals. Now, as a pandemic rages, African Americans in…

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The murder of George Floyd

The murder of George Floyd

Steve Almond writes: On Monday, police in Minneapolis were called to the scene of an alleged check forgery. They detained the suspect, a 46-year-old African American security guard named George Floyd, and eventually forced him onto the ground. Police claim Floyd resisted arrest, though explosive video footage from a nearby restaurant calls that claim into question. Three officers then held Floyd’s body down, while one kneeled on his neck for several minutes. Because the entirety of the incident was filmed,…

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Warren as VP would lead to Biden victory, say prominent Democratic pollster

Warren as VP would lead to Biden victory, say prominent Democratic pollster

Politico reports: Stan Greenberg, one of the Democratic Party’s longtime leading pollsters, urged Hillary Clinton in 2016 to pick Elizabeth Warren as her vice president. He thinks Clinton would be president had she listened. Now Greenberg — who popularized the term “Reagan Democrats” and came to prominence as Bill Clinton’s lead pollster — is urging Joe Biden’s team to heed the same advice. Earlier this month, he briefed top Biden campaign officials on two battleground surveys conducted by his firm….

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Graham urges senior judges to step aside before November election so Republicans can fill vacancies

Graham urges senior judges to step aside before November election so Republicans can fill vacancies

The Washington Post reports: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) on Thursday urged federal judges who are in their mid-to-late 60s to step aside so that Republicans, increasingly nervous about holding the Senate majority in the November election as they eye President Trump’s poll numbers, can fill the vacancies now. Graham made the comments in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “This is an historic opportunity,” Graham said. “We’ve put over 200 federal judges on the…

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How coronavirus contact tracing works in a state Dr. Fauci praised as a model to follow

How coronavirus contact tracing works in a state Dr. Fauci praised as a model to follow

Pairing widespread testing with fast, effective contact tracing is considered essential for controlling the coronavirus’s spread as the U.S. passes 100,000 deaths. AP Images/Rick Bowmer By Jenny Meredith, University of South Carolina After weeks of keeping people home to “flatten the curve,” restrictions on U.S. businesses are loosening and the coronavirus pandemic response is moving into a new phase. Two things will be critical to keep COVID-19 cases from flaring up again: widespread testing to quickly identify anyone who gets…

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Yemen was facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Then the coronavirus hit

Yemen was facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Then the coronavirus hit

Science reports: When Abdulla Bin Ghooth saw the computed tomography scan of the lungs of a colleague’s brother in Aden, Yemen, in April, he knew the outlook was grim. The 55-year-old man had complained of a fever and shortness of breath, and likely had COVID-19. But hospital staff, afraid of the novel coronavirus, sent him home with an oxygen cylinder, says Bin Ghooth, an epidemiologist at Hadhramout University College of Medicine. He pleaded with friends at the ministry of health…

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China escalates the coronavirus propaganda war

China escalates the coronavirus propaganda war

Kathy Gilsinan writes: It was posed as an innocent question, not an accusation. If the U.S. was so concerned about transparency, China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying wondered aloud to nearly half a million followers on Twitter earlier this month, why not open its own biodefense lab in Maryland’s Fort Detrick to international inspectors? Hua’s tweet was also an invitation to a conspiracy theory, and a message that, if President Donald Trump was determined to speculate about the virus first…

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Japan ends its state of emergency

Japan ends its state of emergency

Science reports: Japan yesterday declared at least a temporary victory in its battle with COVID-19, and it triumphed by following its own playbook. It drove down the number of daily new cases to near target levels of 0.5 per 100,000 people with voluntary and not very restrictive social distancing and without large-scale testing. Instead, the country focused on finding clusters of infections and attacking the underlying causes, which often proved to be overcrowded gathering spots such as gyms and nightclubs….

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As India’s lockdown ends, exodus from cities risks spreading Covid-19 far and wide

As India’s lockdown ends, exodus from cities risks spreading Covid-19 far and wide

Science reports: One morning in mid-May, Nasim Qureshi suddenly developed a fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Qureshi, a member of Mumbai, India’s street vendor union, rushed to a small private hospital, where doctors gave him a check up but refused to admit him. Later the same day, he was turned away from two more hospitals before he finally found a bed at a municipal hospital. By then, his breathing trouble had worsened—and the hospital only had a few ventilators….

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Coronavirus may become endemic, even with a vaccine

Coronavirus may become endemic, even with a vaccine

The Washington Post reports: There’s a good chance the coronavirus will never go away. Even after a vaccine is discovered and deployed, the coronavirus will likely remain for decades to come, circulating among the world’s population. Experts call such diseases endemic — stubbornly resisting efforts to stamp them out. Think measles, HIV, chickenpox. It is a daunting proposition — a coronavirus-tinged world without a foreseeable end. But experts in epidemiology, disaster planning and vaccine development say embracing that reality is…

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How we make decisions during a pandemic

How we make decisions during a pandemic

By Katherine Harmon Courage, Knowable Magazine, May 26, 2020 With many states and towns lifting strict stay-at-home orders, people are faced with a growing number of new decisions. Mundane logistical questions — Should I go get my hair cut? When can I picnic with friends? What should I wear to the hardware store? — during the Covid-19 pandemic carry implications for personal and public health, in some cases life-or-death ones. When multiplied through the population, seemingly small decisions have the…

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Dishonest Elections Project: Conservative group fighting to restrict voting tied to powerful dark money network

Dishonest Elections Project: Conservative group fighting to restrict voting tied to powerful dark money network

The Guardian reports: A powerful new conservative organization fighting to restrict voting in the 2020 presidential election is really just a rebranded group that is part of a dark money network already helping Donald Trump’s unprecedented effort to remake the US federal judiciary, the Guardian and OpenSecrets reveal. The organization, which calls itself the Honest Elections Project, seemed to emerge out of nowhere a few months ago and started stoking fears about voter fraud. Backed by a dark money group…

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