Music: Jim Tomlinson & Stacey Kent — ‘What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life’
Three potential futures for Covid-19: recurring small outbreaks, a monster wave, or a persistent crisis
Sharon Begley writes: As epidemiologists attempt to scope out what Covid-19 has in store for the U.S. this summer and beyond, they see several potential futures, differing by how often and how severely the no-longer-new coronavirus continues to wallop humankind. But while these scenarios diverge on key details — how much transmission will decrease over the summer, for instance, and how many people have already been infected (and possibly acquired immunity) — they almost unanimously foresee a world that, even…
Apple data shows shelter-in-place is ending, whether governments want it to or not
John Koetsier writes: Bye-bye shelter-in-place. Hello re-opening. Apple’s Mobility Trends report shows that traffic in the US and other countries like Germany has pretty much doubled in the past three weeks. It had been down up to 72%. And location data provider Foursquare says that gas and fast food visits are back to pre-COVID-19 levels in the American Midwest. Rural areas are following the same pattern. “Gas station traffic has returned to pre-COVID-19 levels in the Midwest, and in rural…
The coronavirus genome is like a shipping label that lets epidemiologists track where it’s been
The steady rate of genetic changes lets researchers recreate how a virus has travelled. nextstrain.org, CC BY By Bert Ely, University of South Carolina and Taylor Carter, University of South Carolina Following the coronavirus’s spread through the population – and anticipating its next move – is an important part of the public health response to the new disease, especially since containment is our only defense so far. Just looking at an infected person doesn’t tell you where their version of…
Can Drs. Birx and Fauci serve Trump in good conscience?
Frances Z. Brown write: How should a decorated public health professional serving in the White House react when the president of the United States stands next to her and openly muses about the medical potential of injecting disinfectant? This is the moral dilemma facing Deborah Birx, Anthony Fauci, Robert Redfield and other physicians and scientists coordinating the government’s pandemic response. When President Trump offers sorcery over evidence-based medicine — as when he said, in February, that warm weather would make…
Investigate Tara Reade’s allegations against Joe Biden
In an editorial, the New York Times says: Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrats’ presumptive nominee for president, has forcefully denied allegations of sexual harassment and assault made against him by Tara Reade, a former staff assistant in his Senate office. “They aren’t true,” Mr. Biden said in a statement on Friday. “This never happened.” Ms. Reade’s accusations, which have been percolating for several weeks, are grave and graphic. She charges that, in the spring of 1993, Mr. Biden…
Diary of Samuel Pepys shows how life under the bubonic plague mirrored today’s pandemic
There were eerie similarities between Pepys’ time and our own. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images By Ute Lotz-Heumann, University of Arizona In early April, writer Jen Miller urged New York Times readers to start a coronavirus diary. “Who knows,” she wrote, “maybe one day your diary will provide a valuable window into this period.” During a different pandemic, one 17th-century British naval administrator named Samuel Pepys did just that. He fastidiously kept a diary from 1660 to 1669 – a period of…
The ‘murder hornet’ has arrived in North America
The New York Times reports: In his decades of beekeeping, Ted McFall had never seen anything like it. As he pulled his truck up to check on a group of hives near Custer, Wash., in November, he could spot from the window a mess of bee carcasses on the ground. As he looked closer, he saw a pile of dead members of the colony in front of a hive and more carnage inside — thousands and thousands of bees with…
Music: Brian Culbertson — ‘City Sleigh Ride’
Expert report predicts up to two more years of coronavirus pandemic misery
CNN reports: The new coronavirus is likely to keep spreading for at least another 18 months to two years—until 60% to 70% of the population has been infected, a team of longstanding pandemic experts predicted in a report released Thursday. They recommended that the US prepare for a worst-case scenario that includes a second big wave of coronavirus infections in the fall and winter. Even in a best-case scenario, people will continue to die from the virus, they predicted. “This…
Coronavirus was ‘not manmade or genetically modified’ says lead U.S. intelligence agency
CNBC reports: The top U.S. spy agency said for the first time on Thursday that the nation’s collective intelligence community does not believe that the coronavirus was manmade or genetically modified. “The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified,” the Office of Director of National Intelligence said in a rare statement. “The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began…
The only way to get back to normal this summer is to test everyone in the U.S., says leading economist
The Washington Post reports: Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer says a return to nearly normal life is possible this summer if the United States does wide-scale testing for the coronavirus. Romer is calling on the U.S. government to test everyone in the nation once every two weeks and isolate people who test positive for the deadly coronavirus. He estimates that doing so would cost $100 billion, a hefty sum but far less than the $2 trillion Congress has spent so…
Biden denies he sexually assaulted former Senate aide, calls on National Archives to release complaint if it exists
The Washington Post reports: Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Friday denied that he sexually assaulted a former Senate aide, addressing the accusations publicly for the first time under increasing pressure from his party to speak about it. “I want to address allegations by a former staffer that I engaged in misconduct 27 years ago,” Biden said in a statement released by his campaign. “They aren’t true. This never happened.” Biden echoed his denial on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” shortly…
Threat to DACA health care workers could thwart America’s pandemic response
Priscilla Chan and Sam Hawgood write: The health care community has a responsibility to anticipate worst-case scenarios and develop response plans for epidemics that may be years or decades away. It should model how outbreaks might cause shortages in medical supplies and devise protocols to compensate for them. It should plan for what would happen if those protocols fail and shortfalls in staff or equipment make it difficult to provide care to each and every patient. Crises like Covid-19 are…
Should you get an antibody test?
James Hamblin writes: The road to ending social distancing is less contentious than it may seem. Many priorities are clear: Invest in comprehensive testing for the coronavirus, in effectively treating the disease, and in vaccine development and production. Invest in research to understand transmission of the virus, and precisely how to prevent it. The fundamental mystery to solve is how people develop immunity, the key to which will be testing for antibodies in the blood. Identifying antibodies will help inform…
‘A bomb in the center of the climate movement’: Michael Moore damages our most important goal
Bill McKibben writes: If you’re looking for a little distraction from the news of the pandemic — something a little gossipy, but with a point at the end about how change happens in the world — this essay may soak up a few minutes. I’ll tell the story chronologically, starting a couple of weeks ago on the eve of the 50th Earth Day. I’d already recorded my part for the Earth Day Live webcast, interviewing the great indigenous activists Joye…