Senators sold stocks before coronavirus sank the markets

Senators sold stocks before coronavirus sank the markets

USA Today reports: Senators are facing backlash for selling in some cases millions of dollars in personal stocks shortly before the coronavirus pandemic sent markets into a freefall earlier this month. Based on publicly available financial transaction disclosures, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., all appear to have sold stock earlier this year. The question is whether the senators were aware, based on briefings, that the coronavirus scare was…

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A New York doctor’s coronavirus warning: The sky is falling

A New York doctor’s coronavirus warning: The sky is falling

Cornelia Griggs writes: Today, at the hospital where I work, one of the largest in New York City, Covid-19 cases continue to climb, and there’s movement to redeploy as many health care workers as possible to the E.R.s, new “fever clinics” and I.C.U.s. It’s becoming an all-healthy-hands-on-deck scenario. The sky is falling. I’m not afraid to say it. A few weeks from now you may call me an alarmist; and I can live with that. Actually, I will keel over…

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Before pandemic, a cascade of warnings went unheeded

Before pandemic, a cascade of warnings went unheeded

The New York Times reports: The outbreak of the respiratory virus began in China and was quickly spread around the world by air travelers, who ran high fevers. In the United States, it was first detected in Chicago, and 47 days later, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic. By then it was too late: 110 million Americans were expected to become ill, leading to 7.7 million hospitalized and 586,000 dead. That scenario, code-named “Crimson Contagion” and imagining an influenza…

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Senate Intelligence Chair dumped up to $1.6 million of stock after reassuring public about coronavirus preparedness

Senate Intelligence Chair dumped up to $1.6 million of stock after reassuring public about coronavirus preparedness

By Robert Faturechi and Derek Willis, ProPublica, March 19, 2020 Soon after he offered public assurances that the government was ready to battle the coronavirus, the powerful chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, sold off a significant percentage of his stocks, unloading between $582,029 and $1.56 million of his holdings on Feb. 13 in 29 separate transactions. As the head of the intelligence committee, Burr, a North Carolina Republican, has access to the government’s most highly classified information…

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China emerges as the global leader in pandemic response

China emerges as the global leader in pandemic response

Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi write: With hundreds of millions of people now isolating themselves around the world, the novel coronavirus pandemic has become a truly global event. And while its geopolitical implications should be considered secondary to matters of health and safety, those implications may, in the long term, prove just as consequential—especially when it comes to the United States’ global position. Global orders have a tendency to change gradually at first and then all at once. In…

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Social distancing is here to stay for much more than a few weeks

Social distancing is here to stay for much more than a few weeks

Gideon Lichfield writes: To stop coronavirus we will need to radically change almost everything we do: how we work, exercise, socialize, shop, manage our health, educate our kids, take care of family members. We all want things to go back to normal quickly. But what most of us have probably not yet realized—yet will soon—is that things won’t go back to normal after a few weeks, or even a few months. Some things never will. It’s now widely agreed (even…

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Social distancing: What it is and why it’s the best tool we have to fight the coronavirus

Social distancing: What it is and why it’s the best tool we have to fight the coronavirus

Staying just a few feet away from other people can help prevent the coronavirus from spreading. Klaus Vedfelt/ DigitalVision via Getty Images By Thomas Perls, Boston University As the coronavirus spreads into more and more communities, public health officials are placing responsibility on individuals to help slow the pandemic. Social distancing is the way to do it. Geriatrician Thomas Perls explains how this crucial tool works. What is social distancing? Social distancing is a tool public health officials recommend to…

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Coronavirus and the isolation paradox

Coronavirus and the isolation paradox

Abdullah Shihipar writes: In December, a woman in Tulsa, Okla., used a Craigslist post to plea for holiday companionship. “Anybody need a grandma for Christmas?” she wrote. “I’ll even bring food and gifts for the kids! I have nobody and it really hurts.” More than three in five working Americans report feeling lonely. Now that the country is facing a disease outbreak that demands measures like “social distancing,” working from home and quarantines, that epidemic of loneliness could get even…

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Viruses live on doorknobs and phones and can get you sick – smart cleaning and good habits can help protect you

Viruses live on doorknobs and phones and can get you sick – smart cleaning and good habits can help protect you

Disinfecting an area takes time and effort. And there is only so much you can do. AP Photo/Seth Wenig By Joseph Eisenberg, University of Michigan One vomiting episode from someone infected with norovirus emits billions and billions of individual viruses. That’s enough to fuel an outbreak – and is exactly what happened in an elementary school in Seattle, Washington a few months ago. Over 100 children got sick with the stomach-churning bug, and the school doors remained closed until workers…

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How South Korea trounced the U.S. in the race to test people for coronavirus

How South Korea trounced the U.S. in the race to test people for coronavirus

Reuters reports: In late January, South Korean health officials summoned representatives from more than 20 medical companies from their lunar New Year celebrations to a conference room tucked inside Seoul’s busy train station. One of the country’s top infectious disease officials delivered an urgent message: South Korea needed an effective test immediately to detect the novel coronavirus, then running rampant in China. He promised the companies swift regulatory approval. Though there were only four known cases in South Korea at…

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Scientists say mass tests in Italian town have halted coronavirus

Scientists say mass tests in Italian town have halted coronavirus

The Guardian reports: The small town of Vò, in northern Italy, where the first coronavirus death occurred in the country, has become a case study that demonstrates how scientists might neutralise the spread of Covid-19. A scientific study, rolled out by the University of Padua, with the help of the Veneto Region and the Red Cross, consisted of testing all 3,300 inhabitants of the town, including asymptomatic people. The goal was to study the natural history of the virus, the…

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Scientists find that up to 86 percent of coronavirus infections go undetected

Scientists find that up to 86 percent of coronavirus infections go undetected

GeekWire reports: Computer modeling of the coronavirus outbreak’s course in China, in the weeks before a travel shutdown was imposed on Jan. 23, suggest that 86% of the infections went undocumented. Those undocumented infections were about half as contagious as the documented cases, but were the source of two-thirds of the documented cases, according to a study published online today by the journal Science. The findings parallel other research into the role of what’s known as stealth or cryptic transmission…

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At ‘lockdown parties’ around the world, young people ignore their impact on the rest of humanity

At ‘lockdown parties’ around the world, young people ignore their impact on the rest of humanity

The Guardian reports: Authorities in countries around the world in lockdown over the coronavirus outbreak are warning young people to obey the rules on social distancing amid widespread reports of partying and gatherings. Scientists and health officials say that revellers meeting for “lockdown parties” and “end of world” drinking sessions were acting irresponsibly by contributing to the spread of the virus. Statistics show that young people are as likely as older people to get infected and spread the virus. But…

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Investor Bill Ackman urges President Trump and corporate America to shut down the country for 30 days

Investor Bill Ackman urges President Trump and corporate America to shut down the country for 30 days

  CNBC reports: Investor Bill Ackman urged President Donald Trump and corporate America in an impassioned plea on CNBC to shut down the country for 30 days to contain the fast-spreading coronavirus, calling it the only option to rescue the economy. “What’s scaring the American people and corporate America now is the gradual rollout,” Ackman told Scott Wapner on “Halftime Report” on Wednesday. “We need to shut it down now. … This is the only answer.” “America will end as…

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The era of small government is over

The era of small government is over

Jamelle Bouie writes: The outbreak threatens entire industries with destruction. Most restaurants, for example, can probably survive a week or two of social distancing. Some can survive a month. But if self-quarantine lasts for months, then hundreds of thousands of businesses, including suppliers and distributors, will fail. Millions of Americans will be out of work. It’s even worse for travel and tourism. The so-called accommodations sector of the economy, which includes hotels and other forms of lodging, accounts for more…

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COVID-19 social distancing guidelines are impossible inside overpopulated U.S. prisons

COVID-19 social distancing guidelines are impossible inside overpopulated U.S. prisons

Morgan Simon writes: At a time when across the country, states are limiting gatherings of over 250 people and those who can are choosing to self-quarantine, there’s one place where millions of people are involuntarily gathered in close proximity — our nation’s prisons and immigrant detention centers. An epidemiologist at Brown University has recommended that the United States could release close to 44,000 detained immigrants who are being held for civil, not criminal, infractions. This would not only prevent the…

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