Music: Stacey Kent — ‘To Say Goodbye’
General population probably won’t have vaccine until the second half of 2021 — ‘and that’s if everything works OK’
STAT reports: The WHO has called for equitable sharing of Covid-19 vaccines, insisting they should be seen as a global resource. But there have been concerns from the earliest days of this pandemic that countries that are home to vaccine production facilities will nationalize any output to ensure domestic needs are met before vaccine can be exported for use elsewhere. Robin Robinson, who led the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority from 2008 to 2016, said the agency has spent…
Trump wants a coronavirus vaccine already and imagines Jared Kushner can deliver it at ‘warp speed’
The Daily Beast reports: Already under fire for his role atop a shadow task force aiding the administration’s response to the coronavirus, senior White House aide Jared Kushner is now being handed another critical job: helping get a vaccine for the disease developed in record time. President Donald Trump, who has said he believes a COVID-19 vaccine will be available by the end of the year, is turning to his son-in-law to help streamline the effort, branded, “Operation Warp Speed.”…
Rising fears that Trump will incite a global vaccine brawl
Politico reports: When global leaders gathered virtually last month at the behest of the World Health Organization to commit to distributing a future coronavirus vaccine in an internationally equitable way, the United States didn’t join in. On Monday, the European Union is hosting a gathering for countries to pledge funding for research into vaccines and treatments for Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. But once again the U.S. government isn’t expected to participate. The Trump administration’s apparent lack…
As Trump touted reopening, his team privately sounded alarms
Politico reports: President Donald Trump boasted on May 1 that his success in responding to the coronavirus pandemic has made ventilator, test kit and mask shortages a thing of the past, and that much of the country is ready to quickly send people back to work. “We’ve ensured a ventilator for every patient who needs one,” he said. “The testing and the masks and all of the things, we’ve solved every problem. We solved it quickly.” But that same day,…
Wuhan virologist identified dozens of deadly SARS-like viruses in bat caves and warns more are out there
Scientific American reports: Before SARS, the world had only an inkling of coronaviruses—so named because their spiky surface resembles a crown when seen under a microscope, says Linfa Wang, who directs the emerging infectious diseases program at Singapore’s Duke-NUS Medical School. Coronaviruses were mostly known for causing common colds. “The SARS outbreak [in 2003] was a game changer,” Wang says. It was the first emergence of a deadly coronavirus with pandemic potential. The incident helped to jump-start a global search…
The growing and increasingly dangerous antagonism between the U.S. and China
Cary Huang writes: The harshness of the language used and antagonism shown in the war of words between China and the US over the coronavirus outbreak is reminiscent of the Cold War confrontation in the 1950s and 1960s, when Pacific powers were engaged in war in the Korean peninsula and Vietnam. Indeed, the finger-pointing and name-calling has escalated steadily as the pandemic continues to ravage the world. US President Donald Trump and his top lieutenant, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,…
‘A large criminal enterprise’: Win or lose, Trump’s top campaign aides rake in the cash
HuffPost reports: The bad news for President Donald Trump: He may well lose reelection later this year. The good news for his top campaign staff: They will wind up really rich either way. Brad Parscale, whom Trump named to run his 2020 effort in early 2018, has already collected $38.9 million through his companies from Trump’s various reelection committees between January 2017 and the end of March, according to a HuffPost analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. Gerrit Lansing’s payment…
Music: Stacey Kent — ‘O Barquinho’
Scientists say a now-dominant strain of the coronavirus appears to be more contagious than original
The Los Angeles Times reports: Scientists have identified a new strain of the coronavirus that has become dominant worldwide and appears to be more contagious than the versions that spread in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The new strain appeared in February in Europe, migrated quickly to the East Coast of the United States and has been the dominant strain across the world since mid-March,…
The complex biology powering the coronavirus pandemic
Nature reports: In 1912, German veterinarians puzzled over the case of a feverish cat with an enormously swollen belly. That is now thought to be the first reported example of the debilitating power of a coronavirus. Veterinarians didn’t know it at the time, but coronaviruses were also giving chickens bronchitis, and pigs an intestinal disease that killed almost every piglet under two weeks old. The link between these pathogens remained hidden until the 1960s, when researchers in the United Kingdom…
No scientific evidence the coronavirus was made in or escaped from a Chinese lab, says Fauci
National Geographic reports: Anthony “Tony” Fauci has become the scientific face of America’s COVID-19 response, and he says the best evidence shows the virus behind the pandemic was not made in a lab in China. Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, shot down the discussion that has been raging among politicians and pundits, calling it “a circular argument” in a conversation Monday with National Geographic. “If you look at the evolution of the…
New study shows just how badly black people have been hit by Covid-19
Politico reports: Counties across the country with a disproportionate number of African-American residents accounted for 52 percent of diagnoses and 58 percent of coronavirus deaths nationally, according to a new study released Tuesday. The study, conducted by epidemiologists and clinician-researchers at four universities in conjunction with the nonprofit AIDS research organization amFar and PATH’s Center for Vaccine Innovation and Access, attempts to fill in the blanks as states report piecemeal data on race and ethnicity. The Centers for Disease Control…
Whistleblower alleges Trump administration ignored dire Covid-19 warnings
The Daily Beast reports: The Trump administration was warned in late January that it had a critical shortage of surgical masks needed to combat coronavirus and that it needed to prioritize the development of a vaccine. But it failed to take action, a top administration health official alleges in a whistleblower complaint formally filed on Tuesday. The complaint from Dr. Rick Bright, who led the government’s efforts to find a vaccine for the coronavirus before being reassigned to a position…
Trump lashes out at conservative critics over ‘Mourning in America’ ad
Politico reports: President Donald Trump late Monday lashed out online against a cadre of conservative critics seeking to thwart his reelection bid — a group that includes attorney George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway. The president’s multitweet screed came in response to the latest anti-Trump advertisement released earlier Monday by The Lincoln Project, the super PAC launched last December by a handful of prominent disaffected Republicans and former party members. The ominous, minute-long spot — titled…
Trump’s war on accountability
In an editorial, the New York Times says: President Trump can’t handle the truth — at least, not when it makes his administration look bad. With his move Friday night to replace the top watchdog for the Department of Health and Human Services, the latest in a series of direct attacks on statutory oversight of his administration, it’s clear that the president remains committed to withholding the truth from the American people as well. Mr. Trump’s latest target, Christi Grimm,…