Music: Lars Danielsson — ‘Tarantella’
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Music: Stacey Kent — ‘Mais Uma Vez’
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…
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…
When Covid-19 arrived in rural America
The Associated Press reports: Black people have been dying at alarming rates across the country: the latest Associated Press analysis of available data shows that African Americans represent about 14% of the population in the areas covered but nearly one-third of those who have died. By nearly every measure, coronavirus patients are faring worse in rural Georgia than almost anywhere else in America, according to researchers at Emory University in Atlanta. Although New York City had thousands more deaths, the…
Trump vows to terminate health insurance for millions of Americans during pandemic
The Washington Post reports: President Trump said Wednesday he will continue trying to toss out all of the Affordable Care Act, even as some in his administration, including Attorney General William P. Barr, have privately argued parts of the law should be preserved amid a pandemic. “We want to terminate health care under Obamacare,” Trump told reporters Wednesday, the last day for his administration to change its position in a Supreme Court case challenging the law. “Obamacare, we run it…
Doctors are fed up with harassment by coronavirus conspiracy theorists
NBC News reports: At the end of another long shift treating coronavirus patients, Dr. Hadi Halazun opened his Facebook page to find a man insisting to him that “no one’s dying” and that the coronavirus is “fake news” drummed up by the news media. Hadi tried to engage and explain his firsthand experience with the virus. In reply, another user insinuated that he wasn’t a real doctor, saying pictures from his profile showing him at concerts and music festivals proved…
Lincoln Project has its biggest day of fundraising after president attacks ‘Never Trump’ group
CNBC reports: The Lincoln Project, which is run by Republican operatives who oppose President Donald Trump, raised $1 million after the president ripped the group on Twitter this week – marking it the super PAC’s biggest day of fundraising yet. Reed Galen, a member of the Lincoln Project’s advisory committee, told CNBC that the total came after the president’s Tuesday morning Twitter tirade in reaction to an ad titled “Mourning in America,” which unloads on Trump’s response to the coronavirus…
The roots of writing lie in hopes and dreams — not in bookkeeping
Michael Erard writes: Recent scholars of the history of writing describe what was first and foremost an administrative tool. According to their ‘administrative hypothesis’, writing was invented so that early states could track people, land and economic production, and elites could sustain their power. Along the way (their argument goes) writing became flexible enough, in how it captured spoken language, to be used for poetry and letters and, eventually, word games such as Mad Libs and fortune cookies. The writing/state…