Saturday, May 30, 2020

Coronavirus News (126)

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Gripped by disease, unemployment and outrage at the police, America plunges into crisis  A global pandemic has now killed more than 100,000 Americans and left 40 million unemployed in its wake. Protests — some of them violent — have once again erupted in spots across the country over police killings of black Americans. .........  “The threads of our civic life could start unraveling, because everybody’s living in a tinderbox” ...........  “People are seething about all kinds of things” ........ “There are major turning points and ruptures in history. . . . This is one of these moments, but we’ve not seen how it will fully play out.” ..........  some said the tumult, set in the broader context of the twin health and economic emergencies, could mark a rupture as dramatic as signature turning points in the country’s history, from the economic dislocation of the Great Depression to the social convulsions of 1968. ........ the past is filled with events whose outcomes have not been as sweeping as they seemed to portend ........ the European revolutions of 1848 — famously said to be the “turning point at which modern history failed to turn” — and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which exposed lethal failures but did not cause political transformation. ...........  Floyd’s death followed the slaying of a black man, Ahmaud Arbery, who was jogging in Georgia, and a viral dust-up in New York’s Central Park when a white woman called the police on a black man there to bird-watch. ...........  A president’s impeachment, demonstrations over police killings and even global pandemics all have precedents. But their confluence in such a short span of time — under this president, who consistently pushes the boundaries of historic norms associated with his office — has exacerbated the nation’s sense of unease. .........  for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’ — whether it’s while dealing with the health care system, or interacting with the criminal justice system, or jogging down the street, or just watching birds in a park. ........... Trump responded to the latest crisis Friday as he often does: by lashing out. .......   the unrest was a result of “generations of pain, of anguish” over racism in policing. ............  Trump, he said, seems to see the unrest as a potentially helpful “political issue,” if he can position himself as a law-and-order candidate cracking down on anarchy and possibly distract from the pandemic. ......... “Is this going to be the summer of covid-19? Or is this going to be the summer of urban unrest?” Brinkley said. “And Trump does not want it to be the summer of covid-19.” ..........  at a time when what is most needed is thoughtful, calm, deliberate leadership, we have the opposite 




Pandemic’s overall death toll in U.S. likely surpassed 100,000 weeks ago A state-by-state analysis shows that deaths officially attributed to covid- 19 only partially account for unusually high mortality during the pandemic ........ Between March 1 and May 9, the nation recorded an estimated 101,600 excess deaths, or deaths beyond the number that would normally be expected for that time of year .........   Allies of President Trump have claimed that the government tally is inflated, contending that it includes people with other medical conditions who would have died with or without an infection. ........  an examination of excess deaths by state paints a portrait of two Americas, one pummeled by the pandemic and the other only lightly scathed. ..........  the gap between excess deaths and official covid-19 tallies has been particularly pronounced in several states that currently have the least restrictive social distancing rules in place.  

South Korea closes schools again amid coronavirus spike, days after reopening School districts in the United States that have been closed for months are now trying to figure out when and how they can reopen safely. Some are watching how other countries are handling the reopening of schools, including South Korea, which has been successful in containing the spread of the virus. ............  After putting plastic barriers in many schools to separate students while they eat and learn, disinfecting, and other preventive steps, some schools began to open last week for the first time in several months ..........  But new clusters of the coronavirus have been identified in recent days, leading the government to close not only schools but also parks and museums — and people are being urged again not to gather in big numbers.   





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Coronavirus News (125)

Pakistan locusts




राष्ट्रवादको ‘महामारी’ अघि राष्ट्रवाद कोरोना भाइरसभन्दा चर्को र खुङ्खार अवतारमा ताण्डवरत छ ।Trump announces unprecedented action against China announced a slew of retaliatory measures that will plunge US-China relations deeper into crisis. ........... decried the way Beijing has "raided our factories" and "gutted" American industry, casting Beijing as a central foil he will run against in the remaining months of his re-election campaign .........  the US will strip Hong Kong of the special policy measures on extradition, trade, travel and customs Washington had previously granted it. ............ the US would also take action on a number of other fronts, including barring "certain foreign nationals from China" from entering the US and sanctioning officials in China and Hong Kong for their direct or indirect role in "smothering" Hong Kong's freedoms. ........... "US-China relations are in full crisis," said Richard Fontaine, the CEO of the Center for a New American Security. "We've hit the floor and keep falling through it. Beijing will retaliate in response to the Hong Kong steps the administration takes, and then the ball will be back in the President's court. Things will get worse -- potentially much worse -- before they get any better." ..........  revoking Hong Kong's special status and extending Trump's tariffs to the enclave "would have very little immediate impact," given that in 2019, the US imported less than $5 billion of goods from Hong Kong that Trump could hit with new tariffs. ......  Beijing could strike back in ways that would hurt American businesses. .............  the State Department's travel advisory for Hong Kong will be revised "to reflect the increased danger of surveillance and punishment by the Chinese state security apparatus." ..........  "Beijing moving to end Hong Kong's separate political system should trigger an American response, including by terminating Hong Kong's special economic status. The administration has zigged and zagged on questions of democracy and human rights abroad and I'm glad it is standing up."  ..........  visa restrictions on Chinese graduate students and researchers could be among them. .................  Shortly after Trump's remarks, the White House issued a presidential proclamation suspending US entry for graduate and postgraduate students and researchers from China that takes effect at noon on Monday and remains in effect until it is terminated by the President. ............  In October 2019, the State Department began requiring Chinese diplomats posted in the US to report all their meetings with state and local officials, as well as visits to educational and research institutions. And in March, the State Department imposed caps on the number of Chinese nationals who may be employed at five Chinese media entities after designating them as foreign diplomatic missions as opposed to journalistic outlets.

Our Economy Was Just Blasted Years Into the Future The crisis is compressing and accelerating trends that would have taken decades to play out .......... Last week, Seidman Becker launched Clear into a brand new digital space — “touchless technology,” a play built around the fear that the coronavirus may lurk on any surface, anywhere. Against this threat, airports are deploying a new level of security including thermal cameras, all but assuring exceptionally long lines once people resume flying. ...........  hands-free navigation: Clear will upload its clients’ Covid-19 test results, ID, air tickets, credit card, and health quiz. This, along with iris and face scans, will allow them to pass through the new phalanx faster. .........  The concept is now spreading well beyond the airport. Clear, along with Swiftlane and Envoy, are among the companies that have begun to offer similar services to office buildings. They say the technology is deployable anywhere someone needs to prove identity or take out their wallet to pay, raising the specter of biometric entrance to many or most of the places people frequent. The possibilities are limitless. ...................... Big Tech companies were vacuuming up data from laptops, front doors, appliances, kitchens, living rooms, and smartphones and selling the resulting market intelligence for hundreds of billions of dollars a year. ...............  In this makeover, “touchless” becomes more like “wireless,” a benign appellation meant to milk the zeitgeist. ............. Covid-19 had enabled technology to leapfrog into an immediate future of touchless elevators, doors, and trash cans. ..........   In the 16th and 17th centuries, smallpox, measles, and other diseases brought by the Spanish wiped out up to 90% of the South and Central American population, utterly transforming the historic order. Conversely, the global flu pandemic of 1918 to 1919 appeared to establish no new norms .............  Rather, the approximately 50 million flu deaths seemed to blend into the general slaughter of World War I and go on to be all but forgotten until modern historians began to write about the calamity in the 1970s. .............  acceleration is a natural byproduct of crises like pandemics, which “tend to jolt the current system.” ........... Against the backdrop of a two-century period of faster and faster transformation, the coronavirus is compressing and further accelerating the arc of events. .............  look for one after the other to embrace lesser, limited autonomy such as lane changing, highway driving, and automatic parking. ............  A primary economic bright spot in 2019 was the lowest-paid tier of workers, whose wages rose by a dramatic 4.5% after decades of a shrinking share of the economic pie. Companies were snapping up some of the hardest-core unemployed — among them the long-time jobless, felons, and drug users, necessary because, with the unemployment rate at 3.6%, there was no one else to fill the jobs. ..................   42% of those laid off won’t get their jobs back. .........  The virus clearly changed consumer behavior; in just a few weeks, e-commerce achieved years of growth. .......... the opportunity for vulture investment firms .........   For years, trends have favored so-called “superstar companies” — Big Tech and other mega-businesses that typically attract the best research talent, buy up the most valuable new patents, and cut the most advantageous deals. The Covid-19 age is entrenching their dominance ...........  during the Great Depression, the most important inventions, regardless of the creator, ended up in the hands of the largest companies 

Katrina was disastrous for restaurants. The pandemic will be apocalyptic. I lived through one catastrophe for my industry. This one is worse. ............    Hurricane Katrina took everything away from me in one day almost 15 years ago .......  Opening day was a madhouse. Everyone was so happy to be back in a restaurant with full service, complete with wine and real glasses. I’ve never seen such joy and emotion in a restaurant dining room. People were crying. I’m choking up just writing this 15 years later. From that moment on, we were busier than we were before the storm. Six months later, I opened my second restaurant, and the business grew from there. ................   We started offering takeout and delivery but stopped after a week: Our guests weren’t observing social distancing, and no one was wearing a mask. We were also at what turned out to be the height of cases and deaths in the city then. We waited almost two weeks, and when we felt we had safe systems in place, we started up again. But takeout paid only 6 percent of our pre-pandemic business. ..........   the name of the game is survival. We are opening with skeleton crews. We are not going to make money, and we’ve spent all of our reserves. ...........  I find it appalling that the business interruption insurance I have being paying for the past 20 years is absolutely useless. We pay $40,000 to $50,000 a year for coverage to protect us if we’re forced to close. Like many restaurants, we have not received a dime, and it seems unlikely we will, because many insurance policies included loosely worded exemptions for viruses. ..............  My partner said at the start of this crisis: “Donald, you need to be more pessimistic.” 

Former CDC director says U.S. led the world before becoming a global health ‘laggard’    When Tom Frieden looks at the agency he once managed, he’s like a former coach of a championship team watching it suffer under a domineering, impetuous team owner. ..........   “Look at the U.S. role in HIV and malaria under George W. Bush. . . . Look at Ebola under President Obama. The U.S. was clearly the global leader,” he said during an interview. “Now, with covid-19, we’re a global laggard.” ...........  He’s particularly critical of a Trump administration strategy that sidelines the nation’s top public health agency by preventing it from communicating more directly and frequently with the public. ............   The federal response to the pandemic has been exceptionally poor for a country exceptionally rich in knowledge, innovation and resources. .........  In contrast, Frieden has high praise for Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who drew Trump’s ire and right-wing fire for telling the truth. Her early and repeated warnings about the potential devastation of the coronavirus were bad news the president didn’t want. “She got it right,” Frieden said. “I mean, exactly right. At exactly the right time. In exactly the right words.”   

In Puerto Rico, an economic disaster looms amid fears of coronavirus  The bandaged safety net that has buoyed Puerto Ricans imperfectly in times of crisis has weakened for many during the pandemic. It has given way to new levels of scarcity on an island archipelago pummeled in recent years by hurricanes, earthquakes, political upheaval and bankruptcy. ............   Vázquez Garced’s stay-at-home policies curbed new infections without overwhelming Puerto Rico’s compromised health system. But an economic disaster is looming. ............   So many U.S. citizens in the territory applied for unemployment insurance in the past several weeks that the system collapsed, and applications had to be processed by hand. The government received more than 120,000 new applications for food stamps; 30 percent of applicants are still waiting to receive benefits, according to government data. About 1 in 5 residents have received stimulus checks, the government said, and the rest will not receive them until at least June. Meanwhile, food and utility costs are rising, and what was left of the middle class has been decimated. ............  They used a cannon to kill mosquitoes, taking a blanket approach, and shutting off the motors of the economy given their lack of capacity to carry out a more precise public health strategy ...........  “I never imagined having to do this at my age. I am a 45-year-old professional with a master’s degree and I should not have to ask for money from anyone,” Nolla said. “The last thing I want to do is depend on my family. I am blessed, but it’s humiliating.” ..........  “This is much worse than Maria.”  

'Many will starve': locusts devour crops and livelihoods in Pakistan Farmers faced with worst plague in recent history say they have been left to fend for themselves 



Coronavirus started spreading in the U.S. in January, CDC says By early February, there was "cryptic circulation" of the virus.

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