America, along with the rest of the world, is working swiftly to develop a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus responsible for COVID-19.

Many people are pinning their hopes on the development of a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19 that can stop the spread of the virus. Through itsOperation Warp Speed initiative, the Trump administration is investing billions of dollars to accelerate efforts in the U.S. to develop, manufacture and distribute such vaccines.

But despite the efforts to work quickly, safety remains the top priority of researchers in the U.S.

We are moving as quickly as we can to shorten the timelines to get a vaccine to the public, but we will not compromise one iota the multiple safety checks and safety processes that we have always had in place for vaccine development and testing, says Kayvon Modjarrad, director for emerging infectious diseases at the U.S. Armys Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, which is working to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. We cannot and will not take any shortcuts when it comes to safety assessments of the vaccines we are advancing.

The FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] will only approve or make available a COVID-19 vaccine if we determine that it meets the high standards that people have come to expect of the agency, said Peter Marks, director of the FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.

Vaccines typically take years to develop, and extensive testing is built into the process. In the U.S., promising vaccines developed in the lab move on to animal studies, followed by human studies called clinical trials. The FDA sets guidelines for the three phases of clinical trials, with each phase increasing in population size. Phase 3 clinical trials, for example, typically involve thousands of volunteers receiving the test vaccine.

If the clinical trials show that the vaccine is effective without harmful side effects, the vaccine manufacturer can apply for FDA approval to publicly administer it. Even after the vaccine is in widespread use, the federal government continually monitors it for adverse effects.

History shows the potential risks associated with vaccine development. A polio vaccine developed by renowned scientist Jonas Salk was licensed for public use in 1955, but a production error caused some batches of the vaccine to contain the live virus. The incident led to increased quality-control measures in the U.S., to ensure safe immunization of children.

Peoples lives are too important for us to cut corners on the safety side of things.Robert Hopkins, chair of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee

Today, the FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research oversees vaccine safety and reviews and licenses vaccine candidates in the U.S.

David Jones, a professor of the history of science at Harvard University, says vaccine development is inherently safer than in the past. Rather than live virus, most vaccines contain either an inactivated form of the virus or a specific protein of the virus that is used to trigger the bodys immune response.

New candidate COVID-19 vaccines, including those in development by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNtech, are exploring new technologies using the viruss genetic code.

Nevertheless, safety is critical. Theres a tremendous amount at stake, says Jones. If a vaccine is developed without safety at the forefront of the process, it could harm peoples health and create a loss of trust. That could potentially decrease vaccination rates for polio, measles and everything else, says Jones.

The U.S. is working to shorten the path to a COVID-19 vaccine without compromising safety, says Robert Hopkins, chair of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, which advises the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Vaccine Program on development and safety.

Whats being done with Operation Warp Speed and a lot of our current vaccine trials is that were taking some of those [usual] steps and instead of doing them one after the other, were doing some of them in parallel, says Hopkins. We are doing things in a slightly different sequence in order to get to the end point more rapidly, but that doesnt mean were cutting out any of the steps when it comes to assessing safety and efficacy. Peoples lives are too important for us to cut corners on the safety side of things.

Modjarrad, of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, says that manufacturers typically wait for all the clinical studies and approvals from the FDA to be complete before making large doses of the vaccine. That adds on months, if not years, to the timeline, he says. Not so with Operation Warp Speed, which is partnering with the private sector to scale up manufacturing of multiple candidate COVID-19 vaccines.

By not waiting for the clinical studies to be completed to make the large doses of vaccine, we will have vaccine ready for large populations the day it is approved by the FDA, Modjarrad says. (Note: If it is not approved, the doses will not be used.)

Whats more, he says, our expertise with coronaviruses; our experts in immunology, structural biology and virology; our manufacturing facility and clinical trials center have all come together to compress the timeline of vaccine development. Nowhere along the way have we skipped any steps in ensuring, assessing and reassessing safety processes.

I cannot stress enough how controlled and regulated a process vaccine development is when it comes to safety, Modjarrad continues. That is the prime objective, safety, when it comes to the development of these vaccines.

Freelance writer Linda Wang wrote this article.

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Safety is top of mind as US develops coronavirus vaccine - US Embassy in Georgia

About a month after closing bars and mandating masks, Nashville officials say the city has made promising but fragile progress against the spread of coronavirus, offering a rare sign of hope in a state where the pandemic is otherwise growing.

The average number of new daily infections in Nashville has dropped 28% percent in just the past week. Hospitalizations, which climbed throughoutmuch of July, have begun to flatten. Fatalities remain low.

The steps we took a month ago, mandating masks, going to a modified Phase Two and closing bars, are working, said Dr. Alex Jahangir, head of the Nashville coronavirus task force, on Tuesday.We are seeing our metrics improve, but we are not out of the woods yet. And most of you are doing your part.

Dr. Michael Caldwell, Director of the Metro Public Health Department, reminds people to wear masks on Lower Broadway in Nashville, Tenn., Friday, July 31, 2020.(Photo: Andrew Nelles / The Tennessean)

Nashville made this progress despite a worsening statewide outbreak and an impasse on Lower Broadway, the heart of the citys entertainment district, where unmasked crowds gather in brazen defiance of public health orders. City officials have become increasingly desperate to rein in Broadway but have largely failed to do so.

CORONAVIRUS: Nashville officials signal intent to prosecute organizers of Fashion House party

Mayor John Cooper said Tuesday the city may soon try "different strategies on Broadway and conceded that closing the street altogether was a possibility. Cooper suggested Nashville is making progress, despite defiance on Broadway, because thosecrowds are largely composed of tourists.

The fact is that a lot of people on Lower Broadway may be testing positive and not showing up in our numbers. They dont live here Cooper said. We dont want COVID-19 to show up in these folks home communities either.

As of Tuesday, Nashville had recorded 21,879 residents with coronavirus, including about 3,500 active infections, 700 total hospitalizations and 199 deaths. Average daily infections peaked in July at more than 400 and have since fallen to about 250. More than 220 people were actively hospitalized two weeks ago, but that count has since fallen to 170. Test positivity rates, as calculated by the city, have fallen to their lowest point since June.

The slowing of infections in Nashville is a likely result of themandatingmasks on June 28 and closingbars on July 3. The city followed up two weeks later by ordering restaurants to shut their doors at 10 p.m. in an effort to limit restaurants that essentially became bars after dark.

Cooper said these decisions were recently validated by the White House coronavirus task force, which recommended similar precautions statewide. Gov. Bill Lee gave county mayors the authority to require masks but hasn't issued a statewide mandate and rejected a White House recommendation to close bars.

Although the virus is slowing in Nashville, the story is not the same statewide. Tennessee infections and deaths increased throughout most of July, and average hospitalizations reached record levels just last week. Experts warn the virus is moving away from major citieslike Nashville and Memphisand into smaller cities and rural areas that have less hospitals and public health resources to combat an outbreak.

Brett Kelman is the health care reporter for The Tennessean. He can be reached at 615-259-8287 or at brett.kelman@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @brettkelman.

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In Nashville, fewer coronavirus infections and a glimmer of hope - Tennessean

Many people worry about bats as a source of viruses, including the one that has caused a worldwide pandemic. But another question is surfacing: Could humans pass the novel coronavirus to wildlife, specifically North American bats?

It may seem like the last pandemic worry right now, far down the line after concerns about getting sick and staying employed. But as the spread of the novel coronavirus has made clear, the more careful we are about viruses passing among species, the better off we are.

The scientific consensus is that the virus originated in bats in China or neighboring countries. A recent paper tracing the genetic lineage of the novel virus found evidence that it probably evolved in bats into its current form. The researchers also concluded that either this coronavirus or others that could make the jump to humans are likely present in bat populations now we just havent found them yet.

So why worry about infecting new bats with the current virus? The federal government considers it a legitimate concern both for bat populations, which have been devastated by a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome, and for humans, given potential problems down the road.

The U.S. Geological Survey and the Fish and Wildlife Service, two agencies involved in research on bats, took the issue seriously enough to convene a panel of 12 experts to analyze the likelihood of human-to-bat transmission of the virus, SARS-CoV-2, in North America.

Another team of scientists, mostly from the two agencies, assessed the expert opinions and issued a report in June. They concluded that there is some risk, although how much is hard to pin down. Taking precautions, like wearing masks, gloves and protective clothing, could significantly cut it down.

Kevin Olival, a vice president for research at EcoHealth Alliance, an independent group and an author of the report, said that as the virus began to spread around the globe, there was a real concern that not only North American but wildlife populations all over the world could be exposed.

While the group studied interactions between North American bats and scientific researchers, Dr. Olival said wildlife-control workers and people who rehabilitate injured bats, for example, may come into contact with bats even more than researchers do.

Evaluating risk meant trying to cope with unknowns piled on unknowns: the risk of an infected research scientist or wildlife worker encountering bats; the risk of the bats becoming infected in that situation; the risk of an infected bat passing the virus onto other bats so that the virus becomes established in the population.

The authors of the paper concluded there was a risk of humans infecting bats with the novel coronavirus. How much risk? You might say little, or small, or unknown, but this report is from two federal agencies, so it describes the risk as non-negligible.

Although the issue of how bat researchers should conduct their work may seem narrow, the potential consequences are broad. The report notes that if SARS-CoV-2 became established in North American bats, it would allow the virus to keep propagating in animals even if it didnt cause disease. And the virus could potentially spill back over to humans after this pandemic is contained.

Another concern involves how readily the coronavirus might spread from bats to other kinds of wildlife or domestic animals, including pets. Scientists have already shown that domestic cats and big cats can become infected, and domestic cats can infect each other. Ferrets are easily infected, as are minks. On the suspicion that they may be passing the disease to people, Spain and the Netherlands have slaughtered thousands of minks at fur farms.

A small number of infected pets has gotten a good deal of publicity. But public health authorities like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that, although information is limited, the risk of pets spreading the virus to people is low. They do recommend that any person who has Covid-19 take the same precautions with their pets that they would with human family members. National Geographic reported Thursday that the first U. S. dog known to have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, had died. The dog, Buddy, apparently had lymphoma.

Updated August 4, 2020

As to the susceptibility of North American bats, Dr. Olival was not aware of any published work on whether they can be infected with the virus. Researchers in Hong Kong have reported that in a lab the coronavirus infected the intestinal cells of Chinese rufous horseshoe bats. A report this month in The Lancet found that fruit bats could become infected with the virus.

Beyond bats, Dr. Olival said that scientists should be concerned about how they conduct research on wildlife in general and consider what precautions to take to avoid potentially infecting one species or another. One step, he said, would be evaluating research goals to weigh what level of contact would be necessary.

In some cases, he said, observation and data recording could be done without handling animals. If not, gloves and other precautions make sense, although some old-school researchers have balked at the suggestions, he said.

He said his group continues to recommend, the highest level of personal protective equipment when you work with wildlife, because its not just a risk that you will pick up something from the wildlife, but that you dont give something back to them.

He acknowledged that research precautions with wildlife will have a very small effect, given the greater number of people who hunt wildlife or come into contact in other ways. Education efforts are underway to try to change some of those practices; in addition that, he said, researchers should set some kind of standard.

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Can Humans Give Coronavirus to Bats, and Other Wildlife? - The New York Times

LSU senior linebacker Travez Moore shared his experience with coronavirus on Twitter on Tuesday morning. He is thought to be the first Tigers football player to speak publicly about his experience with the virus during a pandemic that has shut down large parts of the country and altered the direction of every sport.

The 6-foot-4 Bastrop High graduate said he lost significant weight, dropping from 256 pounds to 229. He said he lost his appetite and had difficulty breathing. He lost senses of taste and smell, both of which are symptoms of the virus.

"Bro coronavirus is real," wrote Moore, who recorded three tackles, a half tackle for loss and half a sack in 2019.

Multiple LSU football players tested positive for coronavirus when the team first reported to campus on June 8. The total number of cases began with a group of five to six players, a source said, andSports Illustrated reportedat least 30 of LSU's 115 players were quarantined because they either tested positive or had contact with a player who tested positive.

Orgeron later said that reported numberwas too high and that the team's case numbers are "way down."At last week's Baton Rouge Rotary Club meeting, Orgeron said "I think we have two guys right now," that have tested positive for the virus.

Health and safety concerns have been addressed by such leadership. The Southeastern Conference announced in mid-July that players who opted to sit out the fall season would not lose their scholarships an action recommended by the league's athletic directors and approved unanimously by the league's presidents and chancellors.

Orgeron said at the Rotary Club meeting that no LSU players have chosen to sit out this season because of health concerns.

"None of our players have talked about that," Orgeron said. "I know that they have the option. Our players are eager to play. These guys are elite. These guys want to win championships. They believe in each other. I don't expect much of that to happen."

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LSU's Travez Moore issues warning after coronavirus experience; virus 'is real' - The Advocate

On 1 July, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution calling for a global COVID-19 ceasefire, as the Secretary-General had urged months earlier. Their appeal has fallen flat. Council members should use their August downtime to look at how it might still do some good.

Just over a month ago, on 1 July, the UN Security Council passed a resolution addressing COVID-19 that looked hugely ambitious on paper. Echoing an earlier initiative by UN Secretary-General Antnio Guterres, Resolution 2532 centres on a call for all parties to armed conflicts to engage immediately in a durable humanitarian pause lasting 90 days in response to the pandemic. This document will earn a footnote in histories of the UN, as it is the first time the Council has advocated such a global ceasefire. But beyond that, it seems unlikely to be widely remembered, as its practical effects have been all but nil. Only one conflict party Colombias National Liberation Army or ELN has explicitly cited the resolution in offering to suspend hostilities and the Colombian government rejected the overture. Elsewhere, governments and armed groups engaged in fighting have shown no sign of heeding the Councils call.

Resolution 2532s lack of impact to date is disappointing in part because, earlier in the pandemic, it briefly looked like the Council could lend momentum to Secretary-General Guterres aspirational but worthy ceasefire effort, and so play a part in the global response to COVID-19. Guterres first floated the ceasefire idea in late March, and he declared that armed groups in almost a dozen countries had responded positively by early in April. Yet rather than seizing the moment to back the initiative, the Council stumbled into three months of fighting about it, while many of the armed groups that welcomed the UN appeal resumed hostilities.

With Council members looking forward to an August lull in business especially after the tedium of months of online meetings it is time for them to take stock of what the Councils halting reaction to the pandemic reveals about the body, and to consider how the Secretary-General and Council members might still salvage something useful from Resolution 2532.

A Trivial Process

The Councils disarray over the novel coronavirus has certainly been a setback for its aspirations to address non-traditional security threats, as UN officials term a grab bag of challenges including pandemics, climate change and organised crime.

The Council has engaged to some degree with these challenges in the post-Cold War era, first taking up health in the context of HIV/AIDS in 2000 and then climate change starting in 2007. With a handful of exceptions, its work in these areas has been fairly tentative, and some current members of the body would like to see it take a more active role. Belgium and Germany have, for example, prioritised climate change, while Estonia has made cybersecurity its flagship issue. But these members face considerable pushback from China and Russia, which insist that the Council should concentrate on more traditional peace and security issues, and the present U.S. administration, which has a particular dislike for talk of climate change. In July, Germany decided to drop proposals for a resolution focusing on climate security authorising a UN envoy to tackle the subject after the U.S. promised to veto it.

Of these non-traditional threats, pandemic response has often seemed to be the most promising area, aside from organised crime, for Security Council action. In 2014, otherwise a difficult year of UN diplomacy over Syria and Ukraine, the Council united around a resolution endorsing international efforts to stamp out Ebola in West Africa. Through 2019 and 2020, the Council monitored a further Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo where UN peacekeepers worked with health experts to get aid into volatile regions. Prior to COVID-19, Germany clairvoyantly signalled that it wanted to use its Council term to spur discussion of pandemics, a personal priority for Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as climate change.

Yet COVID-19 demonstrated at least two significant weaknesses concerning its policy tools and major power politics in the Councils capacity to deal with global health crises.

First, as a practical matter, the Councils toolkit is still limited. As the pandemic spread, it was not entirely evident what the Security Council could concretely do about it, beyond expressing concern. In 2014, the Councils tools for dealing with Ebola in West Africa were pretty clear. The UN had peacekeepers in Liberia who could assist with logistics and other aspects of the medical response, as well as a significant humanitarian and development presence in the other two countries affected by the disease, Guinea and Sierra Leone. By throwing its weight behind use of these UN assets to counter the disease, and encouraging member states to pledge additional resources to the effort, the Council added urgency to the global response to Ebola, while the U.S. largely coordinated the successful effort to contain the outbreak. (It helped that the U.S. and China worked collaboratively to fight the disease, rather than lobbing political grenades at each other as they have in the COVID-19 era.)

By contrast, COVID-19 presents a threat of a different scale and nature. As of March, there were reported cases on every inhabited continent. In most places where it struck early, like Iran and Italy, there was little if any UN humanitarian or security presence, reducing the Security Councils ability to forge a response. Had a major power launched a global effort to marshal resources to meet the crisis, as the U.S. did with Ebola in 2014, the Council might have lent its political heft to supporting that. But that did not happen: Washington sat on the sidelines and its biggest competitor, Beijing, did not step into its shoes.

Lacking many of the options that had been available to the UN in the Ebola crisis, the Council members spent early April tussling over the scope of any potential resolution. All agreed that the Council should endorse efforts by UN peace operations to help tackle the disease in their areas of deployment a task that the blue helmets undertook even without Council urging, while trying to avoid spreading the disease themselves. But while Tunisia, which led discussions among the ten elected Council (E10) members, initially envisaged a broad resolution with passages calling for international cooperation on public health issues, including training medics and developing a COVID-19 vaccine, the majority of diplomats felt that the Council should not (in the words of one European official) bite off more than it can chew by commenting on non-security-related matters.

It was against this backdrop that both the E10 and the five permanent (P5) Council members, led by France, began to focus on Guterres call for a global ceasefire as a well-defined flagship topic that both served the purposes of pandemic response and clearly fell within the bodys remit of preserving international peace and security. Although some of the P5, including Russia, the UK and the U.S., made it clear that they would not sign onto any text curtailing their conduct of counter-terrorism operations (and indeed Resolution 2532 contains caveats allowing them to fight on), nobody was fundamentally opposed to the ceasefire idea.

The second Council weakness that the episode highlighted is that, even when confronting a true global threat like the virus, policy is often beholden to politics. While everyone could get behind a global ceasefire in theory, it was not anyone's overwhelming priority, and China and the U.S. in particular had bigger point-scoring goals to pursue. The U.S. saw the resolution as a chance to try to assign China responsibility for the disease (at first demanding that any Security Council text refer to Wuhan virus) while refusing to accept even a passing reference to the World Health Organization (WHO) after President Donald Trump suspended funding to that body in April. Chinas immediate priority was to block any implicit or explicit criticism of its handling of the disease, but it also saw an opportunity to embarrass the U.S. for abandoning the WHO and cast Washington as a spoiler on the Council. While Chinese and U.S. officials in New York were ready to compromise on an indirect reference to the WHO in May, Washington nixed this deal, killing off further Council discussions of COVID-19 until late June.

The basic reason that the Security Council underperformed in the face of COVID-19 was, therefore, exactly the reason the Council underperforms on many issues: big power tensions. This fact hardly went unnoticed in New York. Some Council members favoured calling a vote on the COVID-19 resolution in early May, to see if either Beijing or Washington would really veto it. France, which had led P5 discussions of the process, demurred, along with Tunisia. One diplomat observed that the whole process was trivial, as both China and the U.S. placed throwing political punches above securing a resolution, while other Council members did not feel strongly enough about the idea to challenge them.

While France and Tunisia eventually found a formula for referring to the WHO that everyone could accept, the whole episode was discouraging for those who would like to see the Council do more to address non-traditional threats. It left the sense that the Council presently has neither a solid policy framework for dealing with pandemics on the scale of COVID-19 or their security implications nor the collective political will necessary to tackle such challenges.

What Now?

With Resolution 2532 wrapped up, the Council has turned to other matters, although none is a cause for celebration. July saw Russia succeed in pressing to reduce the number of crossing points for humanitarian assistance into rebel-held areas of Syria to just one; by 2021, the number is likely to be zero. The main topic of conversation around the Council these days is the possibility that the U.S. will force a major crisis among the P5 in the coming months by demanding the renewal of sanctions on Iran. New York-based diplomats are aware of the pandemics ongoing challenges, of course. They have heard sobering reports from UN officials on the diseases potential to spark food crises, which could in turn lead to violence. But there is little sign that Council members will use Resolution 2532 as a starting point for initiatives to address particular conflicts or even engage the UN Secretariat on how to follow up.

Can any good still come out of the Secretary-Generals call or out of Resolution 2532? Back in April, when it still seemed possible that the Council could move quickly to a resolution, Crisis Group argued that it could have two main benefits. The first, as noted above, was simply to send a positive political signal about the main UN powers unity in the face of the pandemic. This nod, we argued, might also encourage those conflict parties that signed onto the Secretary-Generals ceasefire idea early to maintain their cessations of hostilities. Whether or not the gambit would have worked and there are, of course, strong reasons to doubt that it would have the Council missed that chance.

But we also suggested in April that a Council resolution could have a second, more procedural, benefit, noting that it could create a formal framework for Guterres to monitor and update the Council on ceasefire implementation. The idea was not so much that the Council would use its enforcement powers such as sanctions to compel states or guerrillas to honour COVID-19 ceasefires. It could, however, offer the Secretary-General a platform to report on where conflict parties were taking real steps to contain the virus and where others were failing to do so.

This idea may still be salvageable: Resolution 2532 does offer Guterres a platform, requesting that he provide updates to the Security Council on the UN efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic in countries in situations of armed conflict or affected by humanitarian crises. This matter is partly technical: the Secretary-General will need to keep the Council up to date on how peacekeeping operations, political missions and other actors are adapting to the virus. But with a bit of creativity, he can also interpret this mandate as permitting him to talk far more generally with Council members about how the pandemic is affecting the international security landscape. After all, it is clear that the coronavirus is not merely a pathogen causing a health crisis but also is a catalyst for economic shocks that can (as we have already seen in Lebanon) lead to political crises and disorder. It is not clear how the disease will play out region by region and so far it has not been quite as destructive in some weak countries as seemed likely in March but it would be a brave ambassador at the UN who would bet that the health, economic and social fallout from COVID-19 will not lead to more political instability.

Secretary-General Guterres should take an expansive view of his mandate to report on COVID-19 to the Council offering Council members early warnings of potential virus-related crises and conflicts based on UN economic and humanitarian analysis as well political reporting. If the Secretary-General feels uncomfortable about calling out specific states in writing, he can also offer these warnings orally in closed meetings.

To date, the Council has proved ill prepared to respond to a global challenge on the scale of COVID-19. Secretary-General Guterres cannot resolve the rifts among the P5 that severely hamper the Council. But he can at least use Resolution 2532 as the basis to warn Council members of the pandemics evolving security implications, in the hope that they will respond a little better to the risks it creates than they have so far.

Contributors

Richard GowanUN Director

Ashish PradhanSenior Analyst, UN Advocacy and Research

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Salvaging the Security Council's coronavirus response - World - ReliefWeb

FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) The widow of a Texas man who died of COVID-19, blamed President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott in her husbands obituary for his needless death.

David Nagys obituary calls out President Trump and Gov. Abbott in his obituary published in the Jefferson Jimplecute on July 30.

Dave did everything he was supposed to do, but you did not, his widow Stacey Nagy wrote. Shame on all of you, and may Karma find you all!

Houston Chronicle web producer Jordan Ray tweeted an image of the newspaper obituary.

David Nagy was 79 and died in the intensive care unit at Christus Good Shepherd Hospital in Longview, Texas on July 22.

He suffered greatly from the ravages of the COVID-19 virus and the separation from his much loved family who were not allowed at his bedside, the obituary said.

He left being his wife, five children and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

David Nagys family members blame his death and the deaths of all other innocent people, on Trump, Abbott and all of the other politicians who did not take this pandemic seriously and were more concerned with their popularity and votes than lives, his widow wrote. Also to blame are the many ignorant, self-centered and selfish people who refused to follow the advice of the medical professionals, believing their right not to wear a mask was more important than killing innocent people.

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Texas Widow Blames President Trump, Gov. Abbott In Husbands Obituary For Coronavirus Death: Shame On All Of You - CBS Dallas / Fort Worth

but theres no budget for it. What lessons can brand marketers derive from this kind of memetic activity?

Recently, I came across this meme on social media; youve probably seen versions of it many times already.

I have a joke on, but...

I was preparing for an important presentation, and needing a distraction to get kick-started, I dived right in and churned out a few okay more than a few. Heres some of my contributions to this meme conversation.

I have a joke on Darwin. But its still evolving. I have a joke about editors. But it wont make the cut. I have a joke on Aryabhata. But I am likely to get zero credit for it. I have a joke about Monday. But it typically called in sick. I have a joke on capitalism. But it wants money to appear. I have a joke about Mount Everest. But you have to be really high to get it. I had wanted to share a joke on Rajnikanth. But it ended up sharing me, instead.

Try it. Its a great mental warm up. You can thank me later.

Not only did it trigger my thinking on the presentation, it made for some very fun interactions on social media. It also caused many on my timeline, several from professions other than marketing or media, to take up the baton and produce some of their own.

The point here, beyond the interesting corollary of always having something cerebrally light on the side, when engaging in more challenging mental work, is around what makes things viral these days. And by exploring this line of thought further, what lessons can brand marketers derive from this kind of memetic activity?

That conversation needs to be contextualised with some of the trends I have observed in the lockdown period. These taken together make for some pertinent pointers, the branding world probably needs to take cognizance of going forward.

The audience has turned the remote on themselves

There is a memorable line enthusiastically put forth by Geet (essayed wonderfully by actress Kareena Kapoor) in that breezy film Jab We Met. She says, in response to no one in particular asking, Main khud ki favourite person hoon. And that kind of sums up what has happened during the lockdown.

At a time when self-appreciation was anyways on the rise, when a lot of television entertainment was forced into a phase of reruns, people rediscovered their own creative sides. The amount of articles, blogs, pictures and videos being posted rose to unprecedented levels. The number of people going live, feeling comfortable uploading their songs or starting their own pages, rose faster than mask and sanitiser stocks running out.

People probably came to the conclusion that the best thing to watch on screen was themselves. Many began worshipping the celebrity within. In several decades, when the retrospective lens might be called into action, this lockdown phase might well be identified as the critical tipping point as far as general public uploaded content goes.

The time for open source communication is upon us

Linus Torvalds is one of the most underappreciated tech legends. He ushered in a liberating openness in culture, at a time when being obsessed with others copying from your examination paper or design seemed to be the norm.

The idea of open source functioning was to allow users to participate in creation. This is going to become particularly more relevant in brand communication now.

First, because budgets - those ever oppressive numerical checkpoints - are going to get increasingly reduced. In that scenario, leveraging customers as potential communication platforms makes all the more sense.

Second, as mentioned above, consumers are going to want to have their own say in brand communication. The more they can participate, the deeper they will engage and evangelize things.

Third, the credibility of the public promoting something is a lot more. Let me make that a lot, lot more. Think back to the social media storm caused by Mark Mansons first book. Reflect on how many voluntarily posted pictures posing with it. Trust me, nothing subtle happened to sales after that.

Set up a creative construct which is easy to participate in

Creativity is frequently described as the exploration of new ideas. But creativity in brand communication often juggles a paradox. It has to appear new, while still retaining some fundamentally familiar elements. This is because a brand essentially represents a template of a certain set of expectations, values and benefits the audience is already acquainted with.

However, as of now, most brand stories don't naturally make for audience participation. That might have to change, going forward. Getting the consumer more involved in communication creation and brand evangelism has to become a marketing priority. This might only happen when structural templates which reinforce the brand, and yet allow for consumers to express their creative sides, are released into the public space.

The meme, which began the article, is a classic case in point. Every new addition, reinforces it, and inspires newer participants. Some might feel this accession of communication control, might lead to some poor creative expressions. Yes, that might be the case. But the distance between the brand and the hearts of consumers also could be reduced, because nothing appeals more than something that feels genuine. To borrow a term from the startup revolution, it might now be all about crowd-sourcing communication as well.

To conclude, these are going to be challenging times to be sure. But there are also promising trends and insights about changing behaviours and mindsets that brand marketers can exploit. This might be the era of open source communication. One just has to be open to that idea.

(Vinay Kanchan is a brand storyteller, innovation catalyst, and the author of Sportivity, Lessons from the Playground and The Madness Starts at 9.)

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I have a joke on brand communication - afaqs

How will the Orlando Magic cope after losing young defensive star Jonathan Isaac to a torn ACL? Mark Deeks examines the team's options and which players will now need to step up.

The NBA's Eastern Conference standings are divided into distinct tiers. At the top, there is the Milwaukee Bucks and defending champions the Toronto Raptors. There is then a group of four reasonably-evenly ranked teams - the Boston Celtics, the Miami Heat, the Indiana Pacers and the Philadelphia 76ers, all of whom are indisputably good.

Down the bottom and outside of the playoff picture, there are six teams so far adrift that they were not invited to the bubble; their seasons deemed not worth resuming. And that, then, only leaves three.

While they currently reside in seventh, eighth and ninth in the east, essentially operating on a tier of their own, the trio of the Orlando Magic, Brooklyn Nets and Washington Wizards are themselves very disparate. The Magic are the head of the pack in the provisional seventh seed with a 32-35 record that ranks them nearer to the 76ers than the ninth-place Wizards, who can only be said to still be in playoff consideration despite being 19 games below .500 due to the absurdity of this season and the new-fangled play-in tournament.

The Wizards are without several key players and have not looked remotely threatening in the bubble. The Nets meanwhile have a patchwork quilt of a roster, with more players on substitute contracts than the rest of the conference combined. It is more to do with the poor quality of everyone from Washington on down than their own play this season that sees the Nets almost certainly making this season's playoffs.

That, then, leaves the Magic, winners of five in a row, the second-longest streak in the league currently. But it was in the fifth of those games over the weekend that, in a blowout victory over the Sacramento Kings, that their season may have essentially wrapped up as well.

Star young forward Jonathan Isaac fell in the fourth quarter on a non-contact play and immediately looked in serious pain, leaving the court in the wheelchair, and the evitable news soon followed - he had suffered a torn ACL and would be out indefinitely.

It does not take much sleuthing to see quite how important Isaac had become. A breakout defensive star in his third season, Isaac's basic per-game averages of 11.9 points, 6.8 rebounds, 1.4 assists, 1.6 steals and 2.3 blocks a night are impressive and versatile already, yet it is the harder-to-capture deterring defensive presence that he provides - so long, so versatile, so committed to that end - that was giving the Magic a top-10 defense despite their continued offensive mediocrity.

The Magic do not have much in the way of offensive diversity or dribble-drive creation at all. Aaron Gordon certainly tries to be Blake Griffin, and Evan Fournier certainly tries to be Klay Thompson, yet the poor overall spacing (25th in the NBA in three-point shooting) combined with the inability of any guard other than Markelle Fultz to get beyond the first line of defense regularly means that on the season as a whole, the Magic are only 22nd in offensive rating and frequently getting stuck.

The recent scoring uptick at the core of the winning streak came from increasing the pace, which in turn came from turning up the defense and winning more possessions. Indeed, in recent years, the team's love of length and defensive potential has become somewhat memetic, yet it is also largely working, and there has been no better embodiment of that than Isaac, who had become a legitimate All-NBA Defensive Team potential candidate this season. They cannot replace him from outside at this time, so any papering over the cracks must come from within.

That, though, will be hard to do. In a modern NBA more concerned with productive depth than ever before, the Magic come up a little short. Shot-happy sixth man Terrence Ross has not been able to continue his sweet shooting stroke of last season, and now that he has moved into a reserve role to accommodate Fultz, long-time former starter DJ Augustin has not been able to keep up his scoring efficiency either.

Meanwhile, although everyone else is around primarily for their defense, they all have rigid and limited roles. Khem Birch is a presence inside the paint, but does not much leave it, and barely looks to score. Michael Carter-Williams is having a useful career resurgence as a havoc-wreaking defensive combo guard, but he should not look to score much either, Wesley Iwundu do is just sort of 'there' in the young Jared Dudley role, making few errors but also not making many plays. And Mo Bamba has not developed much at all.

In a sense, the Magic will be prepared for life without Isaac given that they had already missed him for half the season. Having also missed the bulk of his rookie campaign as well, life in an Isaac-less world is nothing new - the third-year player has only 136 games played in his career thus far, and may not now play all of next season either.

It is also not to be forgotten that Isaac's return for these bubble games was far from a sure thing. As recently as last week, he and Magic personnel were undecided on the issue, and Isaac openly admitted that his left leg (which he always seems to land on rather than trying to cushion the impact by using both, which might explain why he keeps hurting it) was still not ready. In the darkest possible way, it turns out he was right about that.

Nevertheless, they must go on. The most immediate and obvious onus to pick up the slack falls onto Gordon, the defensively capable, long, rangy and versatile defensive player, or at least, a player who can be all of those things when he puts his mind to it. In his career-long bid to become an offensive All-Star, he has drifted away from the defensive discipline and motor of his youth, sometimes for seasons at a time. Time to plug fully back in.

As alluded to earlier, the Magic need the defense to fuel their sticky offense, which starts from winning possessions. And while nobody on the team can protect the rim like Isaac, it greatly benefits the team if they can clear the glass, deflect the ball away, use Fultz and Gordon's handling in the open court to get out in transition and push the pace.

Having another frontcourt defender would sorely help with that. Unfortunately, Al-Farouq Aminu - who was signed last summer to be that very reserve to the pairing of Gordon and Isaac, as a veteran with good defensive chops and who understands his role - is not with the team in the bubble either and has himself missed the majority of this season through injury. Now, there are really not that many options left.

In the wider purview of the Magic franchise, Isaac provided more than just defense, youth, athleticism, finishing and rim protection for the team. He also provided hope.

At this stage in his career, Gordon looks to have peaked and Bamba looks to have made little progress either. It was hoped that Isaac along with Fultz could be the springboard Orlando needed to move up the East and give them a foundation to be excited about in a way that they have not had for years.

Isaac's return to good health and good play, either to finish up this season or for the start of the next one, was supposed to be the salvation. Given the Magic are so many tiers behind the top two teams in the East, who will likely easily overwhelm them in the first-round series anyway, it still is - but not for another year.

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How will the Orlando Magic cope without injured Jonathan Isaac? - Sky Sports

The Dark Ages were rife with plague, fanaticism, and accusations that Jews secretly fed off the blood of children. In 2020, we too are beset with plague, rampant medical misinformation, and a persistent rumor that global elites torture children to harvest the chemical adrenochrome from their blood, which they then inject in order to stay healthy and young.

A favorite topic of interconnected QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracy communities, so-called adrenochrome harvesting long predates these groups. It has, however, resurrected during the Covid-19 pandemic. Google Trends shows significant spikes in searches for adrenochrome in March and June of 2020. Its prevalent on TikTok, Youtube, and Instagram. Reddit removed a dedicated adrenochrome subreddit on July 30. On Friday, July 31, conspiracy theorists plan to hold the first Child Lives Matter protest in Hollywood to expose child trafficking, advertising the event with references to #adrenochrome.

WIRED OPINION

ABOUT

Brian Friedberg is the senior researcher for the Technology and Social Change Research Project at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School. Blending academic research and open-source intelligence techniques, Friedberg is an investigative ethnographer, focusing on the impacts that alternative media, anonymous communities, and unpopular cultures have on political communication and organization.

The adrenochrome harvesting conspiracy theory is a potent example of hidden virality and the ways in which unpopular culture animate social media platforms outside of the mainstream view. Named by researchers Britt Parris and Joan Donovan, hidden virality describes dominant content in specific pockets of the internet that are largely unseen by journalists and mass audiences, making them difficult for social media companies to identify and act upon. The impact of hidden virality cant be stopped by retroactively banning a few thousand Twitter accounts; it is an iterative, memetic phenomenon that outpaces terms of service. Even with early intervention by Reddit and recent movements by Twitter, Facebook and TikTok to crack down on QAnon, adrenochrome harvesting remains a mainstream conversation for some online communities.

Toxic social attitudes spread virally alongside hoaxes and disinformation. Adrenochrome harvesting isnt outwardly blamed on Jews, but on satanic and globalist elitesdog whistle terms for the far right. The modern adrenochrome obsession is a permutation of blood libel, an anti-Semitic myth that pervaded Europe throughout the middle ages, and a mutated strain of medical misinformation.

The Lineage of a New Blood Libel

The most effective conspiracy theories are built around kernels of truth. Adrenochrome is a compound that occurs in the body, but about which little scientific research has been done beyond a few studies in the mid-20th century on whether it could play a role in schizophrenia. The question transfixed the writers Aldous Huxley and Hunter S. Thompson, who were obsessed with mind-altering substances. To them, adrenochrome became a psychotropic, akin to mescaline. In his famous Doors of Perception, written just after the first adrenochrome studies, Huxley described adrenochrome as a clue that was being systematically followed. The sleuthsbiochemists, psychiatrists, psychologistsare on the trail, he wrote. Biologists didnt find much of interest.

Nearly 20 years later, Thompson cast adrenochrome as a psychedelic that must be violently extracted from human glands in his novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The scene was immortalized in Terry Gilliams 1998 film; a YouTube clip of Johnny Depps character taking adrenochrome, which to date has more than 1.7 million views, has drawn thousands of comments referencing the conspiracy.

Thompson is explicitly invoked in what seems to be the earliest recorded posts about adrenochrome harvesting on 4Chans /x/ and /pol/ boards, in 2013 and 2014 respectively. In an anti-Semitic 4chan /pol/ thread an anonymous poster linked a restricted, unsearchable video named Jew Ritual BLOOD LIBEL Sacrifice is #ADRENOCHROME Harvesting. Within these same online communities, Pizzagate formalized and grew in 20152016 before spreading to more mainstream social media.

In 2016 this same video was shared in a Pizzagate thread about the artist Marina Abromovich and her spirit cooking ceremonies. The next several months saw increasingly outlandish claims online, particularly that the Pixar film Monsters Inc. was a cryptic reference to adrenochrome harvesting. As some Pizzagate adherents entered the burgeoning QAnon community in 2017, they brought the adrenochrome conspiracy with them.

These factions expanded their audiences in 2018, citing new investigations and circulating the rumor that a (hoax) website sold adrenochrome in exchange for cryptocurrency. Conspiracy filmmaker Jay Myers released a video, Adrenochrome The Elite's Secret Super Drug! While the original video was taken down, it remains live on his backup channel and has been uploaded elsewhere online.

Read more:

The Dark Virality of a Hollywood Blood-Harvesting Conspiracy - WIRED

Halo Infinite can best be described as Xbox'sLegend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Expectations were high forBreath of the Wildto be amazing. While fans had criticized recentZeldagames for being too linear,from the get-go Nintendo promisedthe nextZeldatitle would return to the series's roots and allow players to explore the world without the constraints of an overbearing narrative that shuttled them down a single path.

The stakes weren't high just because the game was hotly anticipated. Its success would also determine the entire fate of Nintendo's future in an industry that seemed to be leaving them behind. However, the game was able to live up to the hype and make the Switch a system that still flies off the shelf.

RELATED:Halo: 10 Cortana Quotes That Will Stick With You

Now, Xbox is attempting to do the same with its flagship franchiseHalo. The launch game for the Xbox Series X, Halo Infinite, seeks to revitalize the series and bring in new and old fans alike.Once again, tensions are high and the future of an entire company rests upon the shoulders of a single game. It is a stressful time forHalofans. So let's look at some memes to take the edge off!

Before diving straight into the epic tale ofHalo Infinite's upcoming release, it would help to have alittlebackground on what's been going on in the game's history so far. That way we can understand the memes.

TheMaster Chief Collection (a compilation of pastHalogames) released on November 11, 2014, on theXbox One. While a new mainline entry had released in the form ofHalo 4,the compilation promised to enhance the visuals of the original games to entice newplayers and give long-time fans a new way to play their favorite games. There had also beenHalo 4(which most gamersenjoyed) andHalo 5(which most gamers didn't).

Now, into the world ofHalo Infinite. You might expectMaster Chief, the main character of theHaloseries, to star on a box ofHalocereal. However, instead, the spotlight is given to this lowly Brute.

As one can see, it's likely that a Brute has been chosen instead of Master Chief since they bear more than a passing resemblance to a certain gorilla (there's two in the background). But why have fans immediately glommed onto this Harambe-adjacent alien? The reasons for this, and all the recent discourse aroundInfinite, will become apparent soon.

Recently Microsoft showed off the first gameplay footage ofInfinite. It showed Master Chief taking on alien baddies while trying to take down some anti-aircraft cannons. He's helped by a grappling hook, a new item in the series, but for the most part its good old-fashionedHalofun.

So why have fans started complaining? Well, on its face it may seem like gamers aren't enthralled bygameplay that doesn't offer anything new except a grappling hook. However, look at the Brute's face a little more closely and the issues players have with the trailer may become more apparent.

Enough has already been said in this article about how sky-high the expectations for this game already are. Players didn't want to just be blown away by the trailer. They wanted to be blown straight past the moon, slingshotted around Mars, and back to their local GameStop so they could pre-order a copy of the game.

RELATED:10 Movie/TV/Gaming Franchises That Deserve The LEGO Treatment

But just like E.T. going home,it isn't always that simple.

So, the way the game looks didn't exactly blow gamers into outer space. For the harshest of critics, the graphics barely blew them out of the atmosphere.

As this meme states, the graphics didn't live up to what the initial teaser trailer promised. For better or worse, this is a common trend in video games advertising. EvenBreath of the Wild's reveal trailer has arguably better graphics. Why a game's final look tends to be worse rather than better would take another article to explain. The best way to sum it up is that making video games is very,verycomplicated.

There's a bevy of things fans are pointing to that show why they think Infiniteissubpar in the graphics department. The main one going around is a memetic comparison of the beards of two characters from two entirely different games.

It's easy to seewhythis comparison has become so widely shared. The ruggedly handsome man on the left, Joel, is from the recently releasedThe Last of Us: Part II. It makes sense the pilot's less detailed beard would be looked down upon since he's supposed to be from a next-gen title. To make matters worse,Part IIis a flagship franchise for the Playstation 4. The Xbox One has already lost this generation. As weird as it sounds, beards could be harbingers of the next generation of video games.

After the mixed response to theHalotrailer, it'd be easy for fansto be unsettled. However, there is no need to be upset. Sit down, take a few deep breaths, drink a cool glass of water, and let the gentle eyes of this Brute soothe you.

RELATED:Halo Wars: The 10 Best Units In The Game, Ranked

In another comparison toBreath of the Wild,Infiniteis going to be released on next-generation and current-generation consoles (Wildwas released on the Wii U and Switch.Infinitewill be released on Xbox One and Xbox Series X).

To bringBreath of the Wildback up for the ten-thousandth time, graphics don't always mean a great game. That game has a beautiful art style that distracts from the fact that the game had to work on incredibly underpowered Wii U. In addition,Infiniteseems to be going for a much more colorful art style thanthe dour and dark aesthetic ofThe Last of Us.Despite that, Xbox hasn't even touched on the Infinite'smultiplayer yet.Halois known just as much, if not more, for its incredible multiplayer. So even if a beard bothers a player, there's likely to be an addictively fun multiplayer that they can sink hours and hours into.

Of course, there's nothingwrongwith being dissatisfied with the appearance of the game. Even ifInfiniteis launching on current-generation hardware, so didThe Last of Us: Part II. In addition, many took umbrage with the fact that the gameplay in the trailer was a bit generic.

The most exciting gameplay trailers typically show the midpoint in the game when the tensions are high. It's oftentimes one of the most exciting sequences in the game. However, maybe there's something to the fact thatInfiniteonly showed what seemed to be an early mission. They're not spoiling the best parts and, if that's not it, it leaves more stuff for Xbox to hype up at later date.

No matter how good or badInfiniteends up being, the old games will always still exist. That doesn't mean it's bad to be disappointed. Almost everyone wants amazing new entries in their favorite video game series.

However, even ifInfiniteis so bad it figuratively launches players into the sun, the series will always be as legendary, genre-defining, and beloved. It inspired countless games and its impact on the gaming industry will never be forgotten. Just like memes,Halowill always entertain millions around the globe.

NEXT:Halo: The Master Chief's 10 Most Memorable Quotes

Next Persona: Every Bad Ending In The Franchise (& How To Trigger Them)

Aaron Damron is a Houstonian who loves to write. He is a former intern at the award-winning news station KLTV and a graduate of the ETBU mass communications program. Now he writes at GameRant and is a big fan of The Legend of Zelda, Star Wars, Batman, and most of all Sonic the Hedgehog.

See the article here:

10 Halo Memes That Will Keep You Laughing Until Infinite Releases - GameRant

FormerDMACC Boone Campusstudent Pedro Salazar of Des Moines and currentDMACC Ankeny Campusstudent Mehmet Sefer of Ames, have been selected for yet another NASA project. Salazar, a 2015 graduate of Des Moines East High School, and Sefer, a 2018 graduate ofHorizon International School of Uganda,were most recently each chosen as a 2020-2021 NASA Lucy Student Pipeline Accelerator and Competency Enabler (LSPACE) Lucy Ambassador. The virtual program was designed around NASAs upcoming 2021Lucy mission.

Salazar, who just graduated from the DMACC Boone Campus, said Lucy will be the first space mission to explore a population of small asteroids known as the Trojans. The Trojans, orbiting the Sun, provide a unique, never-before-explored sample of the remnants of our early Solar System. The mission takes its name from the fossilized human ancestor (called Lucy by her discoverers) whose skeleton provided unique insight into humanitys evolution.

Earlier, he was named a Summer 2020 NASA internship recipient chosen to participate in the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, CA.

During the fall 2019 semester, Salazar was chosen to work for 12-weeks at theLSPACE Virtual Academy.

In addition, he has also completed the NCAS (Nasa Community Aerospace Scholars) program.

Im very excited for Pedro! He continues to volunteer his time, energies and talent in amazing ways, said DMACC Boone Campus Physics and Math Professor Dr. Nancy Woods.

Salazar and Sefer said they have been having biweekly Zoom meetings with Sheri Klug Boonstra, Director of the NASA LSPACE Program; Dann Garcia, Deputy Director of the NASA LSPACE Program and Katherine Kretke, Lucy Team Liaison Researcher at Southwest Research Institute since mid-July.

As Lucy Ambassadors, Sefer and Salazar are two of about 70 students who take part in these discussions focusing on an overview of the Lucy Mission, its expectations and resources.

They are referred to as Ambassadors for the NASA Lucy Mission to the Trojan Asteroids.

Salazar said his one-year commitment as a Lucy Ambassador means he is responsible for three outreach events during the year.

The presentations can last anywhere from 30 minutes to one hour each, Salazar said. I hope to conduct at least one in Spanish so the Hispanic community can be informed, too, of what is happening with the Lucy Mission.

Salazar admits he has followed NASA his entire life.

As a kid I looked up to NASA because they never stopped asking questions, Salazar said. Curiosity is something we all share, and the Lucy Mission is just that, looking for answers about the solar system history, what are the asteroids really made of and what do they look like.

Sefer will be a second-year DMACC Liberal Arts student in the fall and enrolled in the Admission Partnership Program between DMACC and Iowa State University, where he plans to major in Aerospace Engineering.

Sefer, too, said he has been invited to participate in several NASA programs. Earlier this year, he was selected as a NASA LSPACE Mission Concept Academy participant. His eight-member team selected him as project manager. Under his leadership, Sefer said the team developed a ten kilogram lander which will investigate the polar ice on the Lunar South Pole. His team also submitted a 190-page proposal, which is being reviewed by NASA.

In addition, Sefer was selected as a member of the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge, where the participating teams were required to design and build a human-powered rover by considering unusual Lunar and Martian surfaces.

Sefer said as part of his role as a Lucy Ambassador he will be talking about theLucy Mission and the future of the space industry.

I will be trained by NASA administrators in the fields of Science Communication strategies, tactics and time management, Sefer said.

He said hes excited about where this next round of space exploration is heading.

Under the leadership of NASA, exploration in this new area of space will give us deeper information about our Solar System and lay the foundations for the next research, Sefer said. To go even further in space, NASA is going back in time and following the traces of the birth of our Solar System.

Sefer and Salazar both said they hope to be able to attend the launch in October 2021.

I feel that as an ambassador, I will have a voice to help recruit more students into the LSPACE Academy, the Lucy mission and NASA in general, Salazar said. I want to show other students that even during these difficult times, they can participate in diverse NASA programs.

For more on the Lucy mission, click here.

(contributed article and photos, DMACC)

Excerpt from:

A Present and a Former DMACC Have Been Selected as NASA L'Space-Lucy Ambassadors - kwbg.com

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia Unemployed and shunned as possible coronavirus carriers, Ethiopian migrant laborers are returning home by the thousands, placing a huge strain on Ethiopias poorly equipped medical system.

More than 30,000 workers have re-entered Ethiopia since mid-March, according to the government, some of them after suffering abuse and detention in unhealthy conditions in the countries they left, often on the Persian Gulf or in other parts of Africa.

At least 927 migrant laborers were infected with the virus when they returned, Ethiopian officials say, but the true number is probably much higher. The government has not updated that figure for more than a month, and it does not include those who have slipped back into the country unnoticed.

Ethiopia has had more than 16,000 confirmed infections and 250 Covid-19 deaths, according to figures compiled by The New York Times. Those are very low counts for a nation of 115 million people, but the numbers are rising and many cases go undetected by the countrys sparse testing.

Doctors fear the outbreak may be primed to explode, fueled in part by returning migrants whose journeys often include crowded, unsanitary conditions jails in the countries where they worked, informal migrant camps in countries like Yemen and Djibouti and quarantine centers once they arrive back in Ethiopia.

Dr. Yohanes Tesfaye, who runs a government Covid-19 treatment center near the eastern city of Dire Dawa, said that within a month of opening, the center had treated 248 infected migrants. And, he warned, we have a long border, so we cant be sure whether many more people with the virus are entering the country undetected.

All this is occurring in a country that has just one respiratory therapist, ill-equipped public hospitals and few medical resources in rural areas, and is also suffering the economic blow of the pandemic. Major hotels in the capital city, Addis Ababa, are almost empty, jobs in tourism and construction have disappeared and the flow of money sent home by workers overseas has dried up.

Adding to Ethiopias struggles have been deadly conflicts between ethnic groups that prompted the government to shut down the internet for more than three weeks before recently restoring it. Hundreds of people died in clashes and anti-government protests following the killing in June of the singer Hachaluu Hundessa, who was particularly revered by the Oromo ethnic group.

Many of the migrants have returned voluntarily, suddenly unable to work abroad after the pandemic shut down entire economies. Whether out of economic hardship or fear of contagion, employers have abruptly laid off migrant domestic workers, often leaving them at their countries embassies.

But many others have been rounded up, confined and deported by host governments that had previously tolerated them. In interviews, senior government officials, doctors, health workers and more than a dozen returnees from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Djibouti and Lebanon describe scenes of workers being mistreated in detention before being sent back to Ethiopia.

The police were throwing racial slurs at us. They called me an animal, said Selam Bizuneh, 26, who worked as a maid in Kuwait until her employer stopped paying her. She said she spent 40 days in a detention center in Kuwait Citys Al Farwaniyah district in May and June, adding, we were roughed up and forced to stand.

Shortly after arriving back in Ethiopia in late June, she said, she tested positive for the coronavirus.

Birhan Tesfay, 27, left Ethiopia hoping to find work in Saudi Arabia, but turned back as the pandemic spread. He said he paid smugglers $300 to cross the Red Sea from Yemen to Djibouti in the middle of the night on June 5.

We were shot at by Djiboutis navy on our way back, he said in a telephone interview from a quarantine center. One migrant died while the smugglers attempted to escape.

His story was verified by a United Nations staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss it. Mr. Birhan was arrested by Djiboutian security forces and returned to Ethiopia.

People who work with them say that out-of-work migrants, fearing detention and abuse, stay on the fringes of society, where infections are unlikely to be detected much less treated and band together in ways that prevent social distancing.

It is extremely important that at this time we restrict the movement of people as there is a direct link between movement and the number of Covid cases, said Tsion Teklu, Ethiopias State Minister for Economic Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs.

This is particularly important in Ethiopia, where the number of cases is increasing, the economy is strained right down to the level of local vendors and the health sector is under pressure.

Before the pandemic, about 100,000 Ethiopians made the perilous trip each year to other parts of the world to find work often illegally as maids, construction workers, drivers, hairdressers, guards and more. The largest number make their way to the Arabian Peninsula, though workers have also been sent back this year by Lebanon, India, Pakistan, the United States, Kenya and other countries.

Updated August 3, 2020

Coronavirus travel restrictions adopted by Saudi Arabia have left many migrants stranded in Yemen and Djibouti. In Yemen, in particular, African migrants have been scapegoated as virus spreaders, and some have been shot by the Houthi militia, as it tries to chase them out of the parts of the country it controls.

Saudi Arabia alone said in May that 12,000 Ethiopians were in the country illegally and were to be repatriated, though not all of them have been.

The Ethiopian government said on July 20 that it had helped 30,087 of its citizens return home since the pandemic began. The government and the United Nations have been in talks with other nations about managing repatriation in a way that does not overwhelm Ethiopia.

Mass movements at a time like this will only exacerbate the spread of Covid-19, said Maureen Achieng, chief of mission in Ethiopia for the International Organization for Migration, an arm of the United Nations. In this regard, government-to-government discussions will be critical to reaching agreement on a common approach to containing Covid-19.

Once the migrants make it back to Ethiopia, there remain large gaps in the services they need.

Those who return through official channels are tested for the coronavirus. If they test positive, they are supposed to go to treatment centers; those who test negative are supposed to go to quarantine centers, where they are monitored until they are released.

But the facilities have serious shortages of equipment and staff, and local officials sometimes confuse the two kinds of centers, said Zia Hassan, program director for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Ethiopia, which has provided beds and other goods to several quarantine centers.

Ethiopias health ministry is really struggling to understand the situation to provide the necessary action that has to be taken, he said.

Even if they are healthy and free, returning migrant workers face uncertain prospects in a poor country facing a multitude of challenges.

Zeytuna Kemal, 33, said she left her job as a maid in Kuwait after her employer failed to pay her for three months of work. She decided to flee the country, she said, but the police arrested her and jailed her for four days without food or water.

Then she was transferred with dozens of other Ethiopians to a detention center near the international airport and eventually flown back to her home country. I am now lost and confused, she said. And she is worried about providing for her children and mother.

I will not find a job here.

Tiksa Negeri contributed reporting from Addis Ababa.

More here:

Ethiopian Workers Are Forced to Return Home, Some With Coronavirus - The New York Times

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This story will be updated.

Another Mainer has died as 15 more cases of the coronavirus were reported on Monday.

Mondays report brings the total coronavirus cases in Maine to 3,970. Of those, 3,541 have been confirmed positive, while 429 were classified as probable cases, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

New cases were reported in Cumberland (7), Kennebec (2), Penobscot (2), Sagadahoc (1) and York counties (3), state data show.

The agency revised Sundays cumulative total to 3,955, down from 3,958, meaning there was a net increase of 12 over the previous days report, state data show. As the Maine CDC continues to investigate previously reported cases, some are determined to have not been the coronavirus, or coronavirus cases not involving Mainers. Those are removed from the states cumulative total.

The latest death involved a man in his 50s from Cumberland County, bringing the statewide death toll to 124. Nearly all deaths have been in Mainers over age 60.

So far, 389 Mainers have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Of those, 12 people are currently hospitalized, three in critical care and one on ventilators.

Meanwhile, nine more people have recovered from the coronavirus, bringing total recoveries to 3,396. That means there are 450 active and probable cases in the state, which is up from 448 on Sunday.

A majority of the cases 2,215 have been in Mainers under age 50, while more cases have been reported in women than men, according to the Maine CDC.

As of Monday, there have been 177,040 negative test results out of 182,625 overall. Just under 3 percent of all tests have come back positive, Maine CDC data show.

The coronavirus has hit hardest in Cumberland County, where 2,058 cases have been reported and where the bulk of virus deaths 69 have been concentrated. It is one of four counties the others are Androscoggin, Penobscot and York, with 548, 150 and 658 cases, respectively where community transmission has been confirmed, according to the Maine CDC.

There are two criteria for establishing community transmission: at least 10 confirmed cases and that at least 25 percent of those are not connected to either known cases or travel. That second condition has not yet been satisfied in other counties.

Other cases have been reported in Aroostook (32), Franklin (45), Hancock (34), Kennebec (169), Knox (26), Lincoln (34), Oxford (55), Piscataquis (3), Sagadahoc (51), Somerset (34), Waldo (62) and Washington (9) counties. Information about where another two cases were reported wasnt immediately available Monday morning.

As of Monday morning, the coronavirus has sickened 4,675,628 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as caused 154,944 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.

Excerpt from:

Another Mainer dies as 15 new coronavirus cases are reported - Bangor Daily News

ROME When the coronavirus erupted in the West, Italy was the nightmarish epicenter, a place to avoid at all costs and a shorthand in the United States and much of Europe for uncontrolled contagion.

You look at whats going on with Italy, President Trump told reporters on March 17. We dont want to be in a position like that. Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, used Italys overwhelmed hospitals as evidence for his opposition to Medicare for All at a presidential debate. It is not working in Italy right now, he said.

Fast forward a few months, and the United States has suffered tens of thousands more deaths than any country in the world. European states that once looked smugly at Italy are facing new flare-ups. Some are imposing fresh restrictions and weighing whether to lock down again.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain on Friday announced a delay to a planned easing of measures in England as the infection rate there rose. Even Germany, lauded for its efficient response and rigorous contact tracing, has warned that lax behavior is prompting a surge in cases.

And Italy? Its hospitals are basically empty of Covid-19 patients. Daily deaths attributed to the virus in Lombardy, the northern region that bore the brunt of the pandemic, hover around zero. The number of new daily cases has plummeted to one of the lowest in Europe and the world, said Giovanni Rezza, director of the infective illness department at the National Institute of Health. We have been very prudent.

And lucky. Today, despite a tiny uptick in cases this week, Italians are cautiously optimistic that they have the virus in check even as Italys leading health experts warn that complacency remains the jet fuel of the pandemic. They are aware that the picture can change at any moment.

How Italy has gone from being a global pariah to a model however imperfect of viral containment holds fresh lessons for the rest of the world, including the United States, where the virus, never under control, now rages across the country.

After a stumbling start, Italy has consolidated, or at least maintained, the rewards of a tough nationwide lockdown through a mix of vigilance and painfully gained medical expertise.

Its government has been guided by scientific and technical committees. Local doctors, hospitals and health officials collect more than 20 indicators on the virus daily and send them to regional authorities, who then forward them to the National Institute of Health.

The result is a weekly X-ray of the countrys health upon which policy decisions are based. That is a long way from the state of panic, and near collapse, that hit Italy in March.

This week, Parliament voted to extend the governments emergency powers through Oct. 15 after Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte argued the nation could not let its guard down because the virus is still circulating.

Those powers allow the government to keep restrictions in place and respond quickly including with lockdowns to any new clusters. The government has already imposed travel restrictions on more than a dozen countries to Italy, as the importation of the virus from countries is now the governments greatest fear.

There are a lot of situations in France, Spain, the Balkans, which means that the virus is not off at all, said Ranieri Guerra, assistant director general for strategic initiatives at the World Health Organization and an Italian doctor. It can come back at any time.

There is no doubt that the privations of the lockdown were economically costly. For three months, businesses and restaurants were ordered closed, movement was highly restricted even between regions, towns and streets and tourism ground to a halt. Italy is expected to lose about 10 percent of its gross domestic product this year.

But at a certain point, as the virus threatened to spread uncontrollably, Italian officials decided to put lives ahead of the economy. The health of the Italian people comes and will always come first, Mr. Conte said at the time.

Italian officials now hope that the worst of the cure came in one large dose the painful lockdown and that the country is now safe to resume normal life, albeit with limits. They argue that the only way to start up the economy is to keep tamping down the virus, even now.

The strategy of closing down completely invited criticism that the governments excessive caution was paralyzing the economy. But it may prove to be more advantageous than trying to reopen the economy while the virus still rages, as is happening in countries like the United States, Brazil and Mexico.

That does not mean that calls for continued vigilance, as elsewhere in the world, have been immune to mockery, resistance and exasperation. In that, Italy is no different.

Masks often are missing or lowered in trains or buses, where they are mandatory. Young people are going out and doing the things young people do and risk in that way spreading the virus to more susceptible parts of the population. Adults started gathering at the beach and for birthday barbecues. There is still no clear plan for a return to school in September.

There is also a burgeoning, and politically motivated, anti-mask contingent led by nationalist Matteo Salvini, who on July 27 declared that replacing handshakes and hugs with elbow bumps was the end of the human species.

At his rallies, Mr. Salvini, the leader of the populist League party, still shakes hands and wears his mask like a chin guard. In July, during a news conference, he accused the Italian government of importing infected immigrants to create new clusters and extend the state of emergency.

This week, Mr. Salvini joined other mask skeptics nicknamed the negationists by critics for a protest in the Senate library, along with special guests such as the Italian crooner Andrea Bocelli, who said he did not believe the pandemic was so serious because I know a lot of people and I dont know anyone who ended up in an I.C.U.

But the countrys leading health experts say that the lack of severe cases is indicative of a decrease in the volume of infections, as only a small percentage of the infected get very sick. And so far, Italys malcontents have not been numerous or powerful enough to undermine what has been a hard-won trajectory of success in confronting the virus after a calamitous start.

Italys initial isolation by European neighbors at the outset of the crisis, when masks and ventilators were hardly pouring in from across the borders, may actually have helped, Mr. Guerra, the W.H.O. expert, said.

Updated August 3, 2020

There was competition initially, there was no collaboration, Mr. Guerra said. And everyone acknowledged Italy was left alone at that time. As a result, he said, what they had to do at that time because we were left alone turned out to be more effective than other countries.

Italy first quarantined towns and then the Lombardy region in the north and then the entire peninsula and its islands, despite the near absence of the virus in much of central and southern Italy. That not only prevented workers in the industrial north from returning home in the much more vulnerable south, but it also fostered and forced a unified national response.

During the lockdown, movement was strictly limited, between regions and towns and even city blocks, and people had to fill in auto-certification forms to prove that they needed to go outside for work, health or other necessities. Masks and social distancing regulations were enforced by some regional authorities with steep fines. Generally, if grudgingly, the rules were followed.

As searing scenes of human suffering, empty streets and the heavy toll on an elderly generation of northern Italians spread, the transmission rate of the virus quickly decreased, and the curve flattened, as opposed to other European countries, such as Sweden, which pursued an alternative to locking down.

That the initial outbreak was localized in the overwhelmed hospitals created enormous stress, but it also enabled doctors and nurses to expedite contact tracing.

Then the country reopened, gradually, expanding liberties at two-week intervals to respond to the viruss incubation period.

The lockdown eventually had a secondary effect of decreasing the volume of virus circulating in society, and thus reducing the probability of coming in contact with someone who had it. At the end of the lockdown, the virus circulation had steeply fallen off and in some central and southern regions, there were hardly any chains of transmission at all.

Its always a matter of probability with these pathogens, said Mr. Guerra, adding that new early alarm systems such as the monitoring of wastewater for traces of virus had lowered the probability of infection even more.

Some Italian doctors say they believe that the virus is now behaving differently in Italy. Matteo Bassetti, an infectious-disease doctor in the northwestern city of Genoa, said that during the height of the crisis, his hospital was inundated with 500 Covid-19 cases at one time. Now, he said, his intensive care unit, with 50 beds, has no coronavirus patients, and the 60-bed Covid-19 unit built specially for the crisis is empty.

He said he thought that the virus had weakened an unproven view, he acknowledged, that has nonetheless found an eager audience in Mr. Salvini and other politicians opposed to extending the state of emergency.

Most health experts said that the virus still loomed, and as the government considers a new decree to reopen night clubs, festivals and cruise ship travel, many of them have implored the country not to let down its guard.

Even if the situation is better than in other countries, we should continue to be very prudent, said Dr. Rezza of the National Institute of Health, adding that he thought the question of what Italy had done right was better posed at the end of the epidemic.

We cannot exclude that we will have outbreaks in Italy in the next few days, he said. Maybe its just a matter of time.

Emma Bubola contributed reporting from Milan.

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How Italy Turned Around Its Coronavirus Calamity - The New York Times

Europe had nearly 50 percent more deaths than normal at the peak of the outbreak, according to data compiled by Britains and Frances national statistics agencies, with tens of thousands more people dying the last week of March and the first week of April than in previous years.

As Europe became the center of the pandemic in the late winter and early spring, many countries implemented nationwide lockdowns, which was already killing thousands. Most of the excess deaths were in four big, hard-hit countries Britain, Italy, Spain and France.

In their worst weeks, Belgium, England, France and Spain all had more than twice as many deaths than was usual for the time of year.

England had the second-highest peak mortality after Spain in Europe, and the longest continuous period of excess mortality, according to a report published by Britains Office for National Statistics on Wednesday. Britain had registered over 55,000 confirmed deaths as of mid-July, and is the worst-hit country in Europe.

Although European countries encountered wide discrepancies in their excess deaths, most saw a rise over the course of two deadly weeks, from March 30 to April 12. During the last week of March, the deadliest across Europe with 33,000 excess deaths, Spain alone registered over 12,500 more deaths than would be expected when compared with data from 2016 to 2019, a 155 percent increase, and Italy over 6,500, according to data provided by the French national statistics agency, INSEE. The following week, Belgium recorded over 2,000 excess deaths, an increase of nearly 110 percent compared with data from previous years.

The virus has depleted nursing homes across the continent, infected thousands of health care workers, and revealed how some of the most stable countries in the world were unprepared for a pandemic, although several national security agencies had defined it as one of the most critical threats that their countries could face.

Link:

Fauci to Testify Before Congress on Coronavirus Response - The New York Times

By: KDKA-TV News Staff

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) As the Coronavirus continues to show up in local communities, athletics is one area where teams are seeing positive cases.

Several local teams are now taking a hit.

At Central Catholic High School, a football player has tested positive for COVID-19.

According to the Tribune Review, the player was quarantined and tested after experiencing symptoms.

(Photo Credit: KDKA Photojournalist Brian Smithmyer)

Players and coaches from the team have been asked to quarantine through Thursday.

This comes after a member of the freshman team and a varsity coach contracted the virus earlier this summer.

The Beaver Area School District announced Sunday it was canceling all extracurricular activities for three days so that a deep cleaning can be performed on shared equipment, facilities, and common spaces.

This comes after a student from the district contracted the virus.

The school district says it has determined many contacts between this athlete and other teams in the district.

Sports teams not directly impacted will resume August 6.

Middle School and High School boys and girls soccer teams will resume on August 17.

More information on the Coronavirus pandemic:

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Area Sports Teams Affected By Positive Cases Of Coronavirus - CBS Pittsburgh

As colleges and universities prepare to open up this fall, they face almost insurmountable challenges. The situation is so fluid, uncertain, unpredictable and complicated that any current operational and procedural plan can still change daily. In my career, Ive held leadership positions (dean, provost and president) at five different universities in overseeing and administering the work life of faculty and staff, but Ive never had to confront the challenges brought by COVID-19.

In this article, I offer a perspective from the other side: as one who has been infected by COVID-19.

I was shocked when I got the virus in late May, as my wife and I had been very cautious given our age and her pre-existing health condition. I have no idea how I got it. During my 29-day quarantine, I was for the most part confined to our bedroom in our apartment in Chicago with a beautiful view of Lake Michigan. My wife provided me with food, leaving meals on a tray outside my door, and we communicated by phone during this time. I received all my treatments by telemedicine, except for the four times I walked six blocks to the hospitals COVID-19 testing site.

Every morning, I had to complete a survey for the hospital in which I indicated the degree to which I had a fever, a cough, shortness of breath, sore throat, muscle aches, trouble sleeping, lack of energy, felt ill, diarrhea or stomach pain. I had no energy at the beginning and mostly focused on my survival, just taking one day at a time. Since I had only a slight fever, I was judged to have a mild case. But a month before I tested positive, I had begun to experience a constant light-headedness that stayed with me throughout my quarantine. Weeks later, it has still not completely gone away.

My responses to three questions on the hospital survey best describe my mental health during this time: I worry that the infection will get worse; I worry about spreading my infection; I feel overwhelmed by my condition. They capture my emotional stress, which I have learned is common for those whove been infected.

I feared that my condition would get worse and I would land up in the hospital on a ventilator, especially during the first two weeks. I also worried about my wife getting the virus, since she has a pre-existing health condition. And, again particularly at the beginning, I felt overwhelmed and had moments of utter despair and complete hopelessness. My physical isolation and anxiety over the uncertainty and unpredictability of the virus had a multiplier effect. The treatment offered by the experts of just wait it out was not comforting.

I took to writing self-reflections -- usually from 1to 3a.m. -- to better discern the purpose and meaning in my life and future. My reflections were raw, terribly inarticulate and grossly inadequate in describing my feelings and thinking. But the mere writing of them gave me some peace and insights. I wrote that the grace of God was central to my faith perspective.

What especially gave me meaning was knowing that my family and friends were thinking of me. It provided comfort, strength and the motivation to endure through my uncertain, unpredictable and uncontrollable future. The daily thoughts and prayers of family and friends expressed in emails, cards, phone calls and Zoom meetings were immensely important to my well-being, resilience and hope for the future. As I write this now in my freedom of several weeks, I am still trying to comprehend why I had a mild case, but I am deeply thankful that I did. I didnt go to the hospital. I am alive and well. I can play tennis again.

Suggestions for Colleges and Universities

I offer some suggestions to institutional leaders based on my experience of being on the other side. I have tried to think of what would be helpful if I were still responsible for the work life of faculty members. Some suggestions also pertain to administrators and staff. And some are also relevant to people with any serious illness, such as cancer or heart issues.

Recognize and support faculty members with COVID-19. During this time away from their professional duties, faculty afflicted with the virus may focus more than usual on their personal well-being and not on their professional identity and aspirations. They could be too tired to be concerned about their academic achievement and responsibilities. They will no doubt experience fatigue, loneliness and anxiety, and even become overwhelmed at times.

Communicate frequently with the faculty members and, when appropriate, with their caregivers. The power of people cannot be overestimated. Communication -- emails, notes, Zooming, telephone calls -- makes the battle more personal, which can benefit everyone in understanding and showing empathy. The families and immediate caregivers during this time should also not be forgotten. They worry about getting infected, and they are often in quarantine themselves. The privacy of those infected or those feeling isolated because of the virus and the local institutional guidelines must be considered in your communications.

Help faculty to accept loss in the way they may be engaged in their academic life going forward. A focus on getting back to normal as soon as possible is not a useful mind-set, especially for those infected. When I walked to my office at Elmhurst University every day as its interim president, I passed the statue of Reinhold Niebuhr, a graduate. These words are engraved on it: God, give me the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. I offer this advice for this time.

Assist faculty in their re-entry into their work life. Going back is more than flipping a switch. Previously infected faculty members may experience aftereffects, such as damage to their heart, liver, lungs and neurological system. Will faculty who are infected continue to wonder if there is cognitive damage, not yet visible?

People often recover from COVID-19 more slowly in their energy and interest than they expected. Many faculty members may have heightened sensitivity about even going back to a place that requires face-to-face interactions. They may want to stay and work at home. Doctors suggest that people who have had the virus should continue to be careful. Immunity may be short-lived.

People whove had COVID-19 may also change their goals for both the short and long run. They may experience a new tension about meeting the institutional standards for tenure and promotion and in their expectations about their career and personal life. Has the balance changed? The transition from the pre-COVID-19 era to the current one, already difficult for all faculty members, has just become more acute for those who were infected.

Develop contingency plans. How will the ill faculty members responsibilities, especially those involving teaching, be covered during their absence and recovery? Will faculty colleagues, adjuncts or graduate students be available in an emergency? Students will want to know and be assured that their courses will be covered.

Meanwhile, faculty colleagues not yet infected may have new concerns and anxiety about their own lives. They may start to wonder, Am I next? Do I want to reconsider teaching and attending committee meetings on the campus in the future?

In sum, COVID-19 has just handed higher education another challenge and opportunity. It includes a faculty development issue not just for those infected but for the entire academy. What are the expectations of faculty moving forward? How do they want to contribute to the goals and purpose of higher education in the future? Intentional dialogues with faculty about COVID-19 and its lingering impact may provide some insights for you and your institution.

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A former college president describes getting the coronavirus and offers advice for helping others struggling through it (opinion) - Inside Higher Ed

1. How COVID-19 is affecting the globe

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have topped 18 million around the world, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine. The number of confirmed coronavirus deaths now stands at more than 689,000.

July was the worst month for cases since the outbreak began in many countries, the Guardian reports. Nearly 8 million cases were recorded in July alone.

Cases in Latin America, the world's worst-affected region, have neared 5 million with 200,000 deaths recorded on 1 August.

Stricter measures are being imposed in the state of Victoria, Australia, after a 'state of disaster' was declared. An overnight curfew has been imposed, schools have closed and only one member of the household is allowed to leave once a day, to pick up essentials.

The US is entering 'new phase', with the virus widespread in both rural and urban areas, White House expert Dr Deborah Birx told CNN.

Manila and surrounding provinces in the Philippines are going back into lockdown from 4 August, as infections jumped to more than 100,000.

The outbreak in Danang, Viet Nam has spread to at least four factories, with a workforce of around 3,700.

2. WHO chief: COVID-19 'once-in-a-century' crisis

The Director-General of the World Health Organization said the COVID-19 pandemic is a "once-in-a-century health crisis" which will have effects "felt for decades to come".

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was speaking at the fourth meeting of the Emergency Committee on COVID-19 at which it was unanimously agreed the outbreak still constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).

"Many countries that believed they were past the worst are now grappling with new outbreaks," he added.

"Some that were less affected in the earliest weeks are now seeing escalating numbers of cases and deaths. And some that had large outbreaks have brought them under control."

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic requires global cooperation among governments, international organizations and the business community, which is at the centre of the World Economic Forums mission as the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.

Since its launch on 11 March, the Forums COVID Action Platform has brought together 1,667 stakeholders from 1,106 businesses and organizations to mitigate the risk and impact of the unprecedented global health emergency that is COVID-19.

The platform is created with the support of the World Health Organization and is open to all businesses and industry groups, as well as other stakeholders, aiming to integrate and inform joint action.

As an organization, the Forum has a track record of supporting efforts to contain epidemics. In 2017, at our Annual Meeting, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched bringing together experts from government, business, health, academia and civil society to accelerate the development of vaccines. CEPI is currently supporting the race to develop a vaccine against this strand of the coronavirus.

The WHO first declared a PHEIC on 30 January - when there were fewer than 100 cases and no deaths outside China.

The committee advised countries to support research efforts and enable equitable allocation of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.

July was the worst month for COVID-19 infections.

Image: WHO

3. Ninety-minute COVID-19 tests to be rolled out in UK

Testing times for COVID-19 will be cut from up to 48 hours to just 90 minutes in Britain, with new on-the-spot tests available next week.

Millions of DNA and swab tests will be sent out to hospitals, care homes and laboratories, Reuters reports, which can also detect influenza - and won't need to be administered by a health professional.

Health secretary Matt Hancock said: The fact these tests can detect flu as well as COVID-19 will be hugely beneficial as we head into winter, so patients can follow the right advice to protect themselves and others."

Meanwhile, diners in the UK can get 50% off their bill from 3 to 31 August at restaurants participating in the government's Eat Out to Help Out scheme, designed to kick-start the food industry.

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COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 3 August - World Economic Forum

The West Virginia Department of Health andHuman Resources (DHHR) reports as of 10:00 a.m., on August 2,2020, there have been 291,071 total confirmatorylaboratory results received for COVID-19, with 6,854 totalcases and 117 deaths.

DHHR has confirmed the death of a79-year old male from Kanawha County. Wejoin with the family in grieving the passing of this gentleman, said Bill J.Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary.

In alignment with updated definitions fromthe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the dashboard includes probablecases which are individuals that have symptoms and either serologic (antibody)or epidemiologic (e.g., a link to a confirmed case) evidence of disease, but noconfirmatory test.

CASESPER COUNTY (Case confirmed by lab test/Probable case):Barbour (29/0), Berkeley (633/22), Boone (77/0), Braxton (8/0), Brooke(61/1), Cabell (319/9), Calhoun (6/0), Clay (17/0), Doddridge (4/0), Fayette(129/0), Gilmer (16/0), Grant (76/1), Greenbrier (87/0), Hampshire (74/0),Hancock (95/4), Hardy (53/1), Harrison (192/1), Jackson (157/0), Jefferson(284/5), Kanawha (809/13), Lewis (26/1), Lincoln (67/1), Logan (148/0), Marion(172/4), Marshall (123/2), Mason (46/0), McDowell (36/1), Mercer (164/0),Mineral (108/2), Mingo (125/2), Monongalia (900/16), Monroe (18/1), Morgan(25/1), Nicholas (30/1), Ohio (252/0), Pendleton (36/1), Pleasants (7/1),Pocahontas (40/1), Preston (100/23), Putnam (166/1), Raleigh (183/6), Randolph(204/3), Ritchie (3/0), Roane (14/0), Summers (6/0), Taylor (52/1), Tucker(10/0), Tyler (12/0), Upshur (36/2), Wayne (182/2), Webster (3/0), Wetzel(40/0), Wirt (6/0), Wood (224/11), Wyoming (23/0).

As case surveillance continues at thelocal health department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certaincounty may not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individualin question may have crossed the state border to be tested.Such is the case of Hancock County in this report.

Pleasenote that delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from thelocal health department to DHHR. Visitthe dashboard at http://www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more detailed information.

On July 24, 2020, Gov. Jim Justiceannounced that DHHR, the agency in charge of reporting the number of COVID-19cases, will transition from providing twice-daily updates to one report every24 hours. This became effective August 1, 2020.

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COVID-19 Daily Update 8-2-2020 - West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources

A rising high school senior in Georgia is mourning the loss of both his parents after they lost their lives to COVID-19 in the same week, media outletsreport.

According to WSB-TV, 17-year-old Justin Hunter lost his parents, Eugene and Angie Hunter, last week. His father was 59, his mother was 57.

Hunter said they didnt have any pre-existing conditions.

We were a regular family just trying to stay safe during the pandemic, Hunter told the station. When my mom would go to the store, she would be wearing a mask and she would be wearing gloves.

Hunter told WXIA-TV that the entire family had tested positive for COVID-19 a week earlier and were all quarantined. He was asymptomatic but his parents soon began exhibiting the telltale symptoms: fever, headache and cough.

Hunter waited at home while his parents were admitted to Emory Johns Creek Hospital. On July 26, the hospital called to notify him that his father passed away. Thats when he spoke to his mom over the phone.

(She said) shes going to keep fighting to get better to come back, Hunter told WXIA-TV.

Then four days later, on July 30, he got another call from the hospital saying that his mother died. Hunter was told he couldnt go to the hospital to see them as hes still in quarantine.

Eugene and Angie Hunter were together for 35 years and met in college, according to WSB-TV. Hunters father was known in his church community as a talented saxophone player. His mother was a human resources executive.

Hunter told the station his parents always supported his football dreams. They always discussed plans for him to continue schoolwork, get a football scholarship and eventually go pro.

'There has been a failure': 40 people infected by Hurtigruten outbreak, Paul Gauguin ship quarantined

I know theyre watching me from above and theyre going to be the ones to give me strength to get through this, Hunter told WXIA-TV.

He told the station he plans to live with relatives.

Hunter did not immediately respond to USA TODAYs request for comment, however, heposted a statement on Twitter Friday in memory of his parents, thanking the community for their love and support.

Dear mom and dad, thank you for making me the person I am today, he said. You guys will forever be carried in my heart. And from this day on everything I do is for you. I love you mom, I love you dad. Rest in paradise.

Follow Adrianna Rodriguez on Twitter: @AdriannaUSAT.

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'Rest in paradise': Georgia teen loses both mom and dad to COVID-19 in the same week - USA TODAY