Coronavirus updates: ‘Disturbing situation’ with COVID-associated illness, Cuomo says – ABC News

A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than 290,000 people worldwide.

More than 4.2 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations' outbreaks.

Since the first cases were detected in China in December, the United States has become the worst-affected country, with more than 1.3 million diagnosed cases and at least 81,805 deaths.

Today's biggest developments:

Here's how the news is developing today. All times Eastern. Please refresh this page for updates.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom released new guidelines for the reopening of industries like offices that cannot telework, malls for curbside pickup and outdoor museums.

Before reopening, Newsom said all facilities are required to: "perform a detailed risk assessment and implement a site-specific protection plan"; apply physical distancing rules; start disinfection protocols; implement control measures and screenings; and train employees on how to limit the spread and how to screen themselves for symptoms.

A lone pedestrian passes by Madame Tussauds wax museum on the largely empty Hollywood Boulevard as shutdown orders continue in California due to the coronavirus pandemic, May 11, 2020, in Los Angeles.

When all these steps are finished, businesses can post that checklist to show customers and employees that they're open, according to the state.

In Los Angeles County,officials are recommending another three months for the stay-at-home order, reported ABC Los Angeles station KABC. Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the county's public health director, said Tuesday that the order will be extended"with all certainty"unless there's a "dramatic change to the virus and tools at hand," KABC reported.

California has over 69,000 cases of COVID-19 and 2,847 people in the state have died.

Customers wait for their order outside at the Park Bench Cafe, May 12, 2020, in Huntington Beach, Calif. California restaurants waiting for permission to reopen have been preparing for the "new normal" in the age of the coronavirus.

Tune into ABC at 1 p.m. ET and ABC News Live at 4 p.m. ET every weekday for special coverage of the novel coronavirus with the full ABC News team, including the latest news, context and analysis.

New York state is investigating approximately 100 cases of thePediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome Associated with COVID-19, aninflammatory syndrome which has features that overlap with Kawasaki disease.

Playground equipment is taped off, March 30, 2020, in the Old Bethpage hamlet of Oyster Bay on Long Island, New York.

Three young people in New York state have died: a 5-year-old boy, a 7-year-old boy and an 18-year-old woman, Gov. Andrew Cuomosaid Tuesday.

"This is a truly disturbing situation and I know parents around the state and around the country are very concerned," Cuomo said. "If we have this issue in New York, it's probably in other states and probably hasn't been diagnosed yet in other states because, again, these children don't present the usual COVID symptoms."

The governor urged parents to monitor their children for these symptoms:

Those with tickets to New York City Broadway shows that were scheduled through Sept. 6 can now get refunds and exchanges, the Broadway League announced Tuesday.

Broadway went dark on March 12 -- and will stay dark until further notice.

Broadway stands closed and empty in Times Square, May 4, 2020, in New York City, during the coronavirus pandemic.

In New York City, the latest tracking progress indicators are mixed, but show progress.

A MTA worker cleans subway trains at a station, May 7, 2020, in New York City.

On May 10, there were51 people admitted to New York City hospitals for suspected COVID-19 -- down from 55 admissions on May 9.

There were 550 patients in intensive care units on May 10, a slight increase from 537 patients on May 9.

And of those tested citywide, 14% were positive on May 10. Of those tested on May 9, 13% were positive.

New York City has 52 confirmed cases of thePediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome Associated with COVID-19, aninflammatory syndrome which has features that overlap with Kawasaki disease.

NYPD officers hand out free face masks on May 11, 2020 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.

Out of the city's 52 cases, 25 tested positive for COVID-19 and 22 others had antibodies, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.

One fatality has been reported, the mayor said. Tenmore cases are pending.

Howard Zucker, commissioner of the New York State Department of Health, said last week that "most children with COVID-19 only experience mild symptoms, but in some, a dangerous inflammatory syndrome can develop."

De Blasio on Tuesday urged parents to call their pediatrician immediately if their child has symptoms including persistent fever, rash, abdominal pain and vomiting.

"We want people not to hesitate here," the mayor said. "The quicker the parent reports it in ... the more chance of protecting the child."

Buckingham Palace will not open to the public this summer due to the challenges of social distancing,The Royal Collection Trust said.

Cyclists rest in front of Buckingham palace, May 8, 2020, in London.

Frogmore House and Clarence House will also not open in August.

Those who booked tickets will be refunded.

A fire that broke out in a Saint Petersburg hospital early Tuesday killed five coronavirus patients, according to Russian state media.

Four of the patients were attached to ventilators in the intensive care unit of St. George hospital when the blaze erupted, while the fifth patient was on a ventilator in a neighboring ward, state media reported. The identities of the deceased were not immediately known, and the cause of the fire is under investigation.

Preliminary reports suggested an overheated ventilator had short-circuited and caught fire.

Russian emergency workers attend the scene of a fire at St. George Hospital in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on May 12, 2020. Russian state media reported that the blaze killed five coronavirus patients who had been put on ventilators at the hospital.

A source who worked closely with the hospital before it began treating coronavirus patients and wished to remain anonymous confirmed to ABC News what state media has reported on the incident.

A local emergency official told ABC News that firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze.

Russia's investigative committee announced it has launched a criminal investigation into the incident.

The proportion of deaths occurring in care homes in England and Wales that involved the novel coronavirus is increasing, according to a report released Tuesday by the United Kingdom's Office for National Statistics.

"In the most recent days, the proportion of deaths occurring in care homes has accounted for 40.4% of all deaths involving COVID-19," the report states.

The latest data was from deaths registered in the week ending May 1. The proportion was up from 35.7% the previous week.

"Although we expect numbers of deaths to increase as more are registered," the report states, "it currently appears that deaths per day are decreasing."

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov reportedly has been hospitalized after testing positive for the novel coronavirus.

"Yes, I've gotten sick. I'm being treated," Peskov was quoted as telling Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

In this file photo taken on June 15, 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to the media after his annual televised call-in show as his press secretary Dmitry Peskov (right) smiles in Moscow, Russia. Peskov told state media on May 12, 2020, that he is hospitalized after testing positive for the novel coronavirus.

Peskov said he last met face-to-face with Putin a month ago and has since been communicating with him only by telephone or video call.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin also tested positive for the novel coronavirus last week and is still being treated for it in the hospital. Nonetheless, he chaired a cabinet meeting via video last week.

New data shows that the novel coronavirus was present in Ohio as early as January, according to Dr. Amy Acton, director of the state's health department.

Acton revealed the new data during Monday's coronavirus briefing, explaining that antibody testing now shows at least five COVID-19 cases in five Ohio counties have a date of symptom onset in January. The earliest one dates back to Jan. 7.

Previous data showed an onset of symptoms as early as February.

The Ohio Department of Health is investigating these cases and looking to see whether they are linked to any recent travel, according to Acton.

As more antibody testing is conducted, Acton said health officials will learn more about how long the virus has been circulating in the Midwestern U.S. state. As of Monday, the state had reported a total of 24,777 cases of COVID-19 with 1,357 deaths and 4,413 hospitalizations, according to Columbus ABC affiliate WSYX.

Meanwhile, retail stories across Ohio were allowed to reopen Tuesday so long as they adhere to the state's guidelines for social distancing.

Bars, restaurants, beauty salons and barber shops will be allowed to reopen across Italy this month rather than having to wait till June.

Regional governors got their way on Monday when Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte dropped his plan to keep restaurants and hair salons closed until June 1 and instead moved up their reopening to May 18. A list of coronavirus-related safety precautions for those businesses will be issued later this week.

While some Italian provinces move ahead with reopening businesses earlier than originally planned by the central government, Conte still has the power to overrule policy decisions made by governors if the number of COVID-19 cases start to climb again. Monday marked the first day that Italy's nationwide total of patients in intensive care units fell to under 1,000.

A young hairdresser and a customer wearing face masks and gloves to protect against the coronavirus in a salon in Brixen, Italy, Monday, May 11, 2020. The northern Italian province of South Tyrol is moving ahead of policies by the central government, reopening restaurants and shops closed during the coronavirus crisis earlier than planned by Rome.

Once the hardest-hit country in Europe, Italy was the first nation in the world to impose a nationwide lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. Last week, Italy began to slowly lift the strict lockdown by easing some restrictions.

Italy's Civil Protection Agency recorded the country's lowest daily death toll from COVID-19 on Sunday. The single-day rise of new infections also fell below 1,000 for the first time since early March.

Italy is one of the worst-affection nations in the world in the pandemic, with more than 219,000 diagnosed cases of COVID-19 and at least 30,739 deaths.

Russia reported more than 10,000 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday for the 10th day in a row, as the country emerges as a new hot spot in the coronavirus pandemic.

There were 10,899 new cases and 107 new deaths confirmed in Russia over the past 24 hours, according to the country's coronavirus response headquarters.

A man wearing a face mask walks at Savyolovskaya metro station in Moscow, Russia, on May 12, 2020, on the first day of mandatory use of masks and gloves on Moscow public transportation amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The latest daily tally is down from Monday's record of 11,656 new infections.

So far, Russia has reported a total of 232,243 confirmed cases of COVID-19, making it the second-largest national tally in the world, behind the United States. Russia also has one of the world's fastest rates of new infections in the coronavirus pandemic, second only to the U.S.

The Seoul metropolitan government is ramping up its efforts to trace clubgoers at risk of contracting the novel coronavirus.

A police task force team of over 8,500 members are combing through mobile phone records, credit card bills and even surveillance footage to identify individuals who recently visited reopened clubs and bars in the popular nightlife district of Itaewon, after 21 new cases of COVID-19 linked to the area were confirmed on Tuesday.

So far, South Korea's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has counted a total of 102 confirmed cases tied to individuals who were at Itaewon bars or nightclubs that reopened after anti-virus measures were relaxed or who had come in contact with those who were. Authorities have since shut down more than 2,100 nightclubs, hostess bars and discos in the South Korean capital.

Quarantine workers spray disinfectant at a nightclub in the Itaewon district of Seoul, South Korea, on May 12, 2020, amid an outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

Seoul police have secured a list from mobile operators of 10,905 customers who were present in the Itaewon area for over 30 minutes between April 24 and May 6 and sent text messages asking the owners of those mobile phones to get tested for COVID-19. Police also tracked the credit card transactions of 494 people out of about 1,000 who paid tabs at the clubs and bars currently under investigation there.

"Messages have already been sent to everyone and will be sent once more this afternoon," Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said in a press briefing Tuesday. "Those who have received the messages should visit the nearby health center or screening clinic soon for the testing."

Some 10,300 people tied to the Itaewon area have been tested for COVID-19 so far. Many of the individuals are in their 20s and 30s.

South Korea has begun to gradually ease its strict social-distancing measures that were put in place to curb the spread of the virus. Last week, people resumed their daily routines while museums, libraries and other public facilities reopened under the relaxed rules. The number of new cases reported in the country have stayed low for weeks, but the sudden spike among the younger generation has raised concerns that the quarantine measures may have been lifted too soon.

People wait in line to be tested for COVID-19 at a testing station in the nightlife district of Itaewon in Seoul, South Korea, on May 12, 2020. Seoul authorities are using mobile phone data to trace nightclub visitors as they try to tackle a coronavirus cluster, they said, promising anonymity to those being tested due to the stigma surrounding homosexuality, as the Itaewon area caters to a large LGBT community.

City health authorities have said that all testing will be free for those who come forward and no questions will be asked. But a number of clubgoers are still reluctant to get tested for fear of being stigmatized, as the Itaewon area caters to a large LGBT community.

"This is not a matter of being gay or not. This is a problem that arose unexpectedly to all young people," David Kim, an LGBT activist at the Sinnaneun Center in Seoul, told ABC News. "No one expected an outbreak. Even the government said it's OK to reopen the clubs after a two month break. It's just sad that we are being targeted by conservative media and social opinions as if we are the villains."

South Korea once had the largest outbreak outside China, where the novel coronavirus first emerged, but the country quickly implemented an extensive "trace, test and treat" strategy. A total of 10,936 people across the nation have been diagnosed with COVID-19, of which 9,670 have recovered and 258 have died, according to South Korea's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Wuhan, the Chinese city that was ground zero of the coronavirus pandemic, plans to test its entire population for the novel coronavirus after a cluster of new cases emerged.

The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued an emergency notice on Monday announcing a "10 Day Battle" to ramp up its ability to conduct nucleic acid tests on the city's 11 million residents. Each district must submit a detailed plan by Tuesday on how they will test their respective communities, according to an official leaflet which has been circulated on social media and carried by state-run media.

The document did not state a timeline for the completion of the testing drive itself.

Wuhan, the capital of central China's Hubei province, reported its first cluster of coronavirus infections on Monday in over a month, stoking fears of a second wave. The five new locally transmitted cases arose from a previously asymptomatic patient who then spread the virus to four others in their residential compound, according to the official state-run Xinhua News Agency.

A worker wearing a face mask checks passengers' body temperatures as well as a health code on their cellphones before they take a taxi after arriving at Hankou railway station in Wuhan, in China's central Hubei province, on May 12, 2020. China reported no new locally-transmitted infections of the novel coronavirus on May 12, after two consecutive days of double-digit increases, including a new cluster over the weekend in Wuhan which fueled fears of a second wave of infections.

China's National Health Commission said Tuesday morning that no new cases had been reported in Hubei province over the past 24 hours.

Wuhan was the first city in the world to go under a coronavirus-related lockdown after the newly identified virus was thought to have first emerged there in December. The lockdown was lifted last month and life in the city has slowly been returning to normal. Last week, Chinese authorities decided to downgrade the entire country from high- to low-risk for the novel coronavirus as the number of new infections continued to hover just above zero and no new deaths had been reported for several consecutive days.

But Wuhan's Dongxihu district raised its risk level from low to medium after a new locally-transmitted case was confirmed there over the weekend, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Since the start of the pandemic, the Chinese mainland has reported 82,919 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 4,633 deaths. There are still 115 people with the disease in hospitals, according to the National Health Commission.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence will maintain a physical distance from each other in the immediate future, a senior administration official told ABC News.

The decision was made in consultation with the medical unit at the White House, the official said. The change comes after two aides on the White House campus, including Pence's press secretary, tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Sources had told ABC News earlier that there were discussions over the weekend about keeping the president and vice president separated, but no decision on that had been made until now. It's unlikely the two will be attending meetings together unless necessary, sources said.

U.S. President Donald Trump turns to Vice President Mike Pence as they depart following a coronavirus response news conference in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., on April 27, 2020.

Pence spent all of Monday at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where he maintains his ceremonial office and where most of his staff have offices, a senior administration official told ABC News.

The Eisenhower Executive Office Building is part of the White House campus and situated adjacent to the White House building itself. Pence did not go to the White House at all on Monday, the official said.

While in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Pence followed the guidelines for critical infrastructure workers laid out by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the official told ABC News. The vice president qualifies as a critical infrastructure worker because he's a key member of a government entity that works to provide public health access, among other critical functions, according to the official.

Those guidelines call for people to take their temperature before going into work, monitor for any symptoms, wear a mask at all times in the workplace for 14 days after last exposure to an infected individual, maintain a six-foot distance from others and practice social distancing at work as much as possible, as well as disinfect and clean workspaces regularly.

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Coronavirus updates: 'Disturbing situation' with COVID-associated illness, Cuomo says - ABC News

Coronavirus Vaccine FAQs: How Is It Being Developed? When Will It Be Ready? : Goats and Soda – NPR

Engineers work on a potential vaccine for the coronavirus at a Beijing lab. Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Engineers work on a potential vaccine for the coronavirus at a Beijing lab.

Most health experts agree that the need for a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 is clear.

"To return to a semblance of previous normality, the development of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines is an absolute necessity" is how a perspective in Science magazine puts it.

So it's hardly surprising that, around the world, anticipation is high. With more than 100 coronavirus vaccines under development, researchers are reasonably confident that at least one will be successful. Skeptics, and there are some, remind us that optimism about an AIDS vaccine was once high, and 40 years later there is no vaccine.

Still, even if experts today are right that a vaccine for COVID-19 will be easier to develop than an AIDS vaccine, estimates for when it will be widely available vary. Here are some of the vaccine-related questions being raised and what we know at this point.

Is the timeline for COVID-19 faster than for previous vaccines?

President Trump has offered perhaps the most optimistic estimate. He said he expects the United States to have a vaccine by the end of 2020.

So far, it does seem as though the vaccine will be developed faster than ever before in vaccine history. It took more than two decades to come up with a successful polio vaccine. Federal health officials suggest a COVID-19 vaccine may be ready in a tenth of that time.

But there are only some things that you can fast-track, and others, not so much. And even though the Food and Drug Administration is going to be evaluating the various stages of testing with great speed in this case, certain standards must be met: First, you have to prove that a vaccine is safe. Then you need to prove that it generates the immune response you want. And then you need to find out if it actually prevents people from getting sick if they're exposed to the virus.

How would researchers know they have developed a vaccine that works?

Vaccine studies present researchers with a conundrum: You want people to be exposed to the disease being targeted because you need to know if your vaccine is working, and yet in another sense you don't want them being exposed because you don't want them to get sick.

The way you know that the vaccine is effective is that you give a vaccine to one group of people and another group gets a sham injection that doesn't contain the vaccine being tested. Then you see if the vaccinated group is protected.

So how are they going to get exposed to, in this case, the novel coronavirus? Well, if there's a lot of virus circulating in the population, that's one way.

Another possibility that people have talked about is intentionally infecting volunteers with the virus and then seeing if a candidate vaccine prevents them from getting sick. That way you know for sure that the volunteer testers have been exposed and can be confident the vaccine works if that person does not get sick. Such studies, known as challenge trials, are ethically fraught, since you are deliberately infecting volunteers with a potentially lethal virus for which there is no cure.

The alternative to challenge trials is to vaccinate enough people so that you can be confident that some fraction of them will be exposed to the virus. The number you need to vaccinate depends on how prevalent the coronavirus is in the area where the vaccine is being tested. You then compare the vaccinated group with another group that received a sham vaccine to look for efficacy.

Once a vaccine has been developed, how does the manufacturing process work?

"The requirement to scale up to the kinds of numbers we're talking about within the short time-frame that we're speaking about would be an extraordinary effort," says Emilio Emini, who has been working on vaccines for decades and now leads the HIV program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which is a funder of NPR and of this blog).

Making billions of doses of vaccine is a herculean task.

The tools that you need for manufacturing one vary considerably depending on the kind of vaccine you're making, but in many cases, you need something called a bioreactor a giant tank that allows the organisms that are actually spewing out the vaccine of interest to grow.

Sometimes you could be talking about a 20,000-gallon bioreactor, and you're not going to go down to your local hardware store and pick one of those up. So that's one issue. There's specialty equipment that has to be made.

In addition to the big stuff, there are smaller things to take into consideration, such as medical-grade glass.

"You have to put a product into a sterile vial or syringe, and there's only so much of that glass to go around," says Fred Porter, senior vice president for technical operations at Adrenas Therapeutics. "If we're thinking about billions of doses to be able to deliver vaccines around the world, that becomes a significant bottleneck."

Is making a vaccine available globally important?

Definitely.

Seth Berkley, CEO of an organization called Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, believes you can't roll out a vaccine one country at a time.

"We're not going to be safe as a world unless everywhere is safe," he says. "So even if we had parts of the world that would have low spread or no spread, if you had large reservoirs of the virus in other places, of course you have a risk of reintroduction."

With more than 100 vaccines in development around the world, is it safe to say the majority of them are never going to become viable candidates?

Yes.

They may not succeed for a variety of reasons. They may not work, or they work but are too hard to manufacture. At this stage of development, many are expected to fail. That's just the nature of vaccine trials.

Is it possible that we don't get just one vaccine but that multiple vaccines are developed that might work even in somewhat different ways?

It seems likely because there are multiple approaches to making vaccines that have advantages and disadvantages. Some are tried and true and have worked for other viral illnesses. Some you can make much faster, but it's unclear that they'll be as effective. Experts such as Emilio Emini believe the parallel development of multiple vaccines is a good thing.

"It's my perspective that this is going to require more than one successful vaccine," he says. "It's going to require at least several, if not more, that are successfully developed in parallel so that the scope of what will be needed can be satisfied."

Will the coronavirus vaccine be like the annual flu vaccine in that it changes every year because the virus changes every year, or will it be more like the measles or the polio vaccine, which is fixed?

Unfortunately, right now the answer is unclear. There is some indication that this virus doesn't change very rapidly, so if you find a vaccine that works against it, it may work in perpetuity. But researchers also don't know how long immunity to this virus lasts, so we may need to get booster shots not a different shot every year but a booster of the same shot to make the vaccine actually work for multiple years.

How hopeful should we be that there will be a vaccine that works and that we can get our hands on by next year?

Several companies, governments and foundations are betting billions of dollars that it will be possible.

Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer for Johnson & Johnson, says he's optimistic because of his company's recent experience making vaccines for other viral diseases.

"We have done it with Zika, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), Ebola," he says. "We know what we do. And if we plug a new virus into that system, we are pretty sure we can get to a vaccine."

That said, vaccine people will tell you that every time you start working on a vaccine for a new virus, you don't know what the hurdles will be. There's a lot of work that needs to be done before we know for sure whether those bets will pay off.

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Coronavirus Live News: Updates and Analysis – The New York Times

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About 100 N.Y. Children Treated for Illness Tied to Virus: Live Updates – The New York Times

About 100 children in N.Y. are suspected of having a rare illness tied to the virus.

New York State health officials are investigating about 100 cases of a rare and dangerous inflammatory syndrome that afflicts children and appears to be connected to the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Tuesday.

More than half of the states pediatric inflammatory syndrome cases 57 percent involved children ages 5 to 14.

Earlier the day, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that 52 cases of the syndrome had been reported in New York City, with 10 potential cases also being evaluated.

The dead included a 5-year-old boy, who died last week in New York City; a 7-year-old boy and an 18-year-old girl, Mr. Cuomo said.

This is a truly disturbing situation, Mr. Cuomo said at his daily news briefing. And I know parents around the state and around the country are very concerned about this, and they should be.

The governors announcement came as he reported 195 more virus-related deaths in the state, an increase from Mondays total but the second consecutive day that the toll was under 200.

The pediatric illness began to appear in the region in recent weeks, and doctors and researchers are still investigating how and why it affects children.

Connecticut reported its first cases of the syndrome on Monday. As of Tuesday, six children in the state were being treated for the ailment, officials said.

Gov. Ned Lamont announced three of the Connecticut cases at a briefing on Monday.

I think right now its a very, very tiny risk of infection, he said. It was not really ever detected in Asia, which, I dont quite know what that implies.

Three other children were being treated for the syndrome at the Connecticut Childrens Medical Center in Hartford, a spokeswoman, Monica Buchanan, said on Tuesday. Two of the three were confirmed to have the illness, Ms. Buchanan said.

As of Monday, health officials in New Jersey said they were investigating eight potential cases of the syndrome.

With New York making steady progress in its battle against the virus and three upstate regions poised to start a gradual reopening by this weekend, Mr. Cuomo on Tuesday reiterated the importance of federal aid as the state charts its recovery.

The number of people hospitalized in New York continued to decrease, Mr. Cuomo said, one of the key metrics that officials are monitoring in assessing whether the outbreaks severity is waning.

The number of new daily hospitalizations has fallen close to where it was on March 19, just before Mr. Cuomo issued executive orders shutting down much of the state.

Were making real progress, theres no doubt, Mr. Cuomo said. But theres also no doubt that its no time to get cocky, no time to get arrogant.

While sounding that warning, Mr. Cuomo urged lawmakers in Washington to give state and local governments whose budgets have been ravaged by the pandemic the financial help they need to rebound.

To get this economy up and running, were going to need an intelligent stimulus bill, Mr. Cuomo said.

New York state needs an estimated $61 billion in federal support to avoid enacting 20 percent cuts to schools, local governments and hospitals, Mr. Cuomo said.

He also said it would be impossible for New York to resume business as normal without the money it needs to develop a sophisticated testing and contact tracing apparatus.

It is unclear whether Congress will give Mr. Cuomo the help he is seeking. Like President Trump, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, said he last month that he did not support what he has labeled a blue state bailout.

Mr. Cuomo called Mr. McConnells characterization one of the really dumb ideas of all time.

Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey began outlining plans on Tuesday for the testing and contact tracing that he said would be critical to reopening the states battered economy.

Still, Mr. Murphy made the case that New Jersey which, along with New York, has been an epicenter of the pandemic is currently the state most affected by the coronavirus outbreak. New Jersey, he said, had overtaken New York and Connecticut in the rate of new infections and deaths.

There are still thousands in our hospitals, and sadly an untold number more will perish, the governor said, while noting that the number of hospitalizations, deaths and new cases had plunged since the states peak in mid-April.

To continue to beat back the outbreak, New Jersey officials said they planned to test up to 20,000 people a day by the end of the month. The state would also be sending out hundreds of contact tracers to determine who has had a close interaction with a sick person, Mr. Murphy said.

Mr. Murphy said the goal in New Jersey was to recruit a racially diverse group of contact tracers who can speak various languages and identify with the communities in which they will work. The pay is about $25 an hour, he said.

The drop in the number of new coronavirus cases means that the state can consider a limited reopening, Mr. Murphy said, but he warned impatient residents about the risks of loosening restrictions too soon. After closing parks and golf courses in early April, the state reopened them on May 2; the governor did not say which businesses other places may open next.

Also on Tuesday, Mr. Murphy announced 198 new deaths 139 more than were reported the day before for a total of 9,508. About half of those fatalities were of residents of nursing homes. The daily report of new deaths in New Jersey may include deaths that occurred weeks ago and were only recently confirmed.

Those numbers dont lie, Mr. Murphy said. We are still the most impacted state in America.

The puzzle of how to revive New York Citys tourist trade is so vexing that city officials are pulling together a group of industry experts and one of the biggest names on Broadway to try to solve it.

On Tuesday, the citys tourism agency, NYC & Company, said it was establishing the Coalition for NYC Hospitality & Tourism Recovery. Among the groups leaders: Lin-Manuel Miranda, the composer, lyricist and actor who created the musical Hamilton.

The coalitions task is to come up with a plan for wooing people back to the city once it starts to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, a chapter that appears to be months off at least after the Broadway League said on Tuesday that its members were canceling shows through Sept 6.

It is time to consider how we can begin to reopen our doors and safely reconnect with our city and with each other, and with the visitors who will one day again flock to New York, said Charles Flateman, NYC & Companys chairman and executive vice president of the Shubert Organization.

Joining Mr. Flatemen and Mr. Miranda at the groups helm are Ellen Futter, the president of the American Museum of Natural History, which recently announced a number of layoffs; Thelma Golden, the Studio Museum in Harlems director and chief curator; the restaurateur Danny Meyer; and Peter Ward, the president of the New York Hotel & Motel Trades Council.

Before the pandemic struck, NYC & Company was forecasting an 11th straight year of increased tourism. In 2019, the city had more than 66 million visitors who generated about $70 billion of economic activity that supported 400,000 jobs, according to the agencys estimates.

Together, we will create a next act for our city, Mr. Miranda said in a statement.

Mr. de Blasio on Tuesday announced an expansion of coronavirus testing and tracing across New York City, but he warned again that a limited reopening of the city was weeks away at best.

Twelve new testing sites will be set up in the next three weeks in a push to double the public hospital systems testing capacity, the mayor said at his daily news briefing. The city was also training 535 contact tracers, with a goal of having 2,500 in the field by early June.

Still, the city, the pandemics U.S. epicenter, has met just four of the seven criteria required to start to reopen, Mr. Cuomo said on Monday while announcing that three upstate regions had achieved all of the necessary benchmarks.

Mr. de Blasio has said he is closely monitoring three measures in weighing the citys progress toward reopening: the number of new virus infections; the number of infected patients in intensive care units; and the percentage of residents testing positive for the virus.

Clearly, these indicators are not getting us the kind of answers we need to change our restrictions in May, the mayor said. Youve got to have 10 days to two weeks of consistent, downward motion. We havent had that in a sustained way at all.

As Connecticut continues to respond to a virus outbreak that has killed more than 3,000 people in the state, Gov. Ned Lamont said on Tuesday that he was replacing the public health commissioner, Renee Coleman-Mitchell.

Mr. Lamont did not provide a reason for the change, only saying that he had appointed the commissioner of the states Department of Social Services, Deidre Gifford, to act as Ms. Coleman-Mitchells replacement.

In a statement, Mr. Lamont said that Ms. Coleman-Mitchells service over the last year has been a great deal of help, particularly in the face of the global Covid-19 pandemic that has brought disruption to many throughout the world.

Ms. Coleman-Mitchell began her tenure in April 2019. Though she appeared at Mr. Lamonts daily news briefings in early April, she has been absent from them in recent weeks.

The coronavirus outbreak has brought much of life in New York to a halt and there is no clear end in sight. But there are also moments that offer a sliver of strength, hope, humor or some other type of relief: a joke from a stranger on line at the supermarket; a favor from a friend down the block; a great meal ordered from a restaurant we want to survive; trivia night via Zoom with the bar down the street.

Wed like to hear about your moments, the ones that are helping you through these dark times. A reporter or editor may contact you. Your information will not be published without your consent.

Reporting was contributed by Maria Cramer, Michael Gold, Patrick McGeehan, Jesse McKinley and Azi Paybarah.

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About 100 N.Y. Children Treated for Illness Tied to Virus: Live Updates - The New York Times

How we ‘Leeeeroy Jenkins’-ed the coronavirus reopening – CNN

The video featured 20-ish people plotting how to attack a boss. (It was in an area known as "upper black rock spire" in the game.) It was an intricate plan, with all sorts of coordinated moves being worked out and even a guy calculating the group's chances of survival. (It was "32.33, uh, repeating of course" if you were wondering. You weren't.)

The plotting went on for an extended period of time -- right up until one of the players yelled, "Time's up. Let's do this. Leeeeeerrrroy Jenkins!!!!" and sprinted into the room to battle the boss. ("Leroy Jenkins" was his screen name in the game.) They all followed him because, well, what the hell else were they going to do?

The "Leroy Jenkins" video has become the stuff of absolute legend on the internet -- as almost every piece of the video has been transformed into an internet meme of some sort.

What, you are wondering at this point, doesany of that have to do with the coronavirus -- and the way in which governors are reopening their states?

A lot, actually. In fact, "Leroy Jenkins" is the perfect way to understand how we got to a place where 48 of the 50 states will be at least partially reopened by May 17 despite the fact that very few of them have met the federal guidelines for reopening.

Once Leroy -- er, I mean Kemp -- had run through that reopening doorway, the other governors had no choice but to follow.

Because the political pressure to do so -- once Kemp had broken the seal -- became even more intense. And faced with growing protests and economic numbers that hadn't been so bad since the Great Depression, governors rushed to reopen their states, plans, plots and federal guidelines be damned.

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How we 'Leeeeroy Jenkins'-ed the coronavirus reopening - CNN

Where is the coronavirus in N.J.? Latest map, update on county-by-county cases. (May 12, 2020) – NJ.com

Among the nations 50 states, New Jersey continues to rank No. 2 among coronavirus cases and deaths, sitting behind No. 1 New York.

According to Worldometer here is the updated Top 10 list of states with coronavirus cases reported and deaths:

New York: 345,987/26,874

New Jersey: 140,930/9,312

Illinois: 79,007/3,459

Massachusetts: 78,462/5,108

California: 67,986/2,719

Pennsylvania: 60,557/3,843

Michigan: 47,552/4,584

Florida: 40,982/1,735

Texas: 40,251/1,137

Georgia: 33,927/1,441

New Jersey health officials have been reporting statewide totals and providing a county-by-county breakdown, but some county and municipal health departments have been providing additional detail, including town-by-town case numbers. NJ Advance Media has compiled that information below.

ATLANTIC COUNTY (State reports 1,533 with 77 deaths; county reports 1,530 cases and 77 deaths, with 351 who have recovered.)

Atlantic County officials reported 15 new cases and 3 new deaths Monday. Town-by-town numbers:

Absecon: 122 with 6 deaths

Atlantic City: 153 with 6 deaths

Brigantine: 19 with 1 death

Buena Borough: 30 with 1 death

Buena Vista Township: 230

Corbin City: 10

Egg Harbor City: 190

Egg Harbor Township: 190 with 15 deaths

Estell Manor : 70

Folsom: 100

Galloway: 180 with 6 deaths

Hamilton: 111 with 3 deaths

Hammonton: 253 with 24 deaths

Linwood: 56 with 5 deaths

Longport: 20

Margate: 150

Mullica: 190

Northfield: 70 with 4 deaths

Pleasantville: 132 with 6deaths

Port Republic: 30

Somers Point: 310

Ventnor: 280

Weymouth: 100

BERGEN COUNTY (State reports 17,028 with 1,358 deaths; 17,060 with 1,358 deaths, according to county officials)

Bergen County officials released town-by-town totals Monday. 793 of the people who died resided in a long-term care facility. 383 cases have not been associated with a municipality.

Allendale: 61

Alpine: 22

Bergenfield: 748

Bogota: 167

Carlstadt: 94

Cliffside Park: 466

Closter: 79

Cresskill: 107

Demarest: 46

Dumont: 290

East Rutherford: 132

Edgewater: 126

Elmwood Park: 510

Emerson: 204

Englewood: 733

Englewood Cliffs: 55

Fair Lawn: 582

Fairview: 343

Fort Lee: 430

Franklin Lakes: 145

Garfield: 742

Glen Rock: 116

Hackensack: 1,229

Harrington Park: 28

Hasbrouck Heights: 194

Haworth: 35

Hillsdale: 111

Ho-Ho-Kus: 45

Leonia: 106

Little Ferry: 187

Lodi: 632

Lyndhurst: 364

Mahwah: 254

Maywood: 222

Midland Park: 84

Montvale: 74

Moonachie: 65

New Milford: 422

North Arlington: 250

Northvale: 57

Norwood: 67

Oakland: 214

Old Tappan: 60

Oradell: 175

Palisades Park: 239

Paramus: 941

Park Ridge: 154

Ramsey: 125

Ridgefield: 184

Ridgefield Park: 257

Ridgewood: 283

River Edge: 131

River Vale: 106

Rochelle Park: 153

Rockleigh: 99

Rutherford: 182

Saddle Brook: 292

Saddle River: 72

South Hackensack: 56

Teaneck: 1,020

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Where is the coronavirus in N.J.? Latest map, update on county-by-county cases. (May 12, 2020) - NJ.com

Ranked: The 10 US Cities Best Positioned To Recover From Coronavirus (And The 10 Worst) – Forbes

The coronavirus pandemic has impacted cities across the country with varying force. New York City has been hardest hit, and its no secret that the Big Apple is going to be one of the places that will have the most challenging time bouncing back from the coronavirus pandemic, no matter when things subside. But which cities will have the best coronavirus recovery? And which other cities will struggle? Moodys Analytics has issued a report that examines the potential to recover from coronavirus among the top 100 metro areas in the U.S.and while some of the results are to be expected, some are more surprising.

The most dynamic recoveries may well bypass traditional powerhouses and take place instead in areas that either were or were poised to lead the way in 2020 before everything changed, writes Adam Kamins, senior regional economist at Moodys Analytics and the author of the report.

Moodys grouped the 10 cities best poised to recover quickly from the coronavirus pandemic and the 10 cities worst poised to recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Note that they are sorted alphabetically in order to avoid assigning false precision to our calculations, Kamins told Forbes Women.

READ MORE: The Ultimate Coronavirus Travel Deal: This Island Wants To Pay You To Come Visit

A new list has ranked the cities that are best positioned to recover from coronavirusand the worst ... [+] cities.

Best Cities for a Coronavirus Recovery

Among the 10 cities best poised to recover, Kamins points out that small college towns are particularly well positioned for a recovery. Durham, North Carolina and Madison, Wisconsin could enjoy a surge in growth in the years to come, says Kamins.

Fast-growing tech hubs in the West and South will also lead in the post-coronavirus era. Silicon Valley is nobodys idea of an up-and-coming area. But there is a notable contrast between the San Jose metro area, with its sprawling tech campuses, and tightly packed San Francisco, says Kamins, who notes that Raleigh, North Carolina could also prove to be more attractive in a new, post-COVID-19 world.

Cities that were fast-growing pre-coronavirus will continue their rise. Denver and Salt Lake City are well positioned to retake their crown as two of the fastest-rising metro areas in the U.S., says Kamins.

While Washington, D.C. is one of the more densely populated metro areas in the nation, its highly educated workforce and its architecture will pay off. Its longstanding height limit on buildings [will help] leave it in better shape than the rest of the region, says Kamins.

Other cities on the top 10 best list include Boise City, Idaho; Durham, North Carolina; Provo, Utah; and Tucson, Arizona. Read on forthe full list of best cities for recovery.

New York City is going to be one of the worst cities to recover from coronavirus.

Worst Cities for a Coronavirus Recovery

A significant number of cities in the Northeast made it to the bottom of the list. The region of the country that I think is worst off is going to be the Northeast, says Kamns. You've got New York, Philadelphia, New Haventhree of the 10. It is a highly educated area, but so many large urban centers have an outsize share of residents living in big cities. That may be difficult to sustain, especially in the short term.

And despite the fact that New York City has a large, skilled workforce, there are other factors that will hold it back. Riding the subway, dining in crowded restaurants and attending Broadway shows may be viewed as inherently risky for some time, consistent with the city's status asthe single-most economically exposed metro area, writes Kamins.

Honolulu also made it onto the worst list, Kamins says, because of its exposure to tourism.

Kamins says he was surprised by some of the cities on the worst list, including McAllen, Texas and Stockton, California. McAllen is more densely populated than most areas with [a lot of] poverty and low degrees of educational attainment. And inland California is much worse off economically than coastal California. Plus, a place like Stockton is a little bit more compressed. There's not as much space there. So there's a bit more risk, says Kamins. We think that in the aftermath of COVID-19 or even while the pandemic is still going on over the next couple of years, potentially, if there's no vaccine, that these are areas that might be less attractive.

Other places on the list of 10 worst cities to recover include Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami and Tampa, Florida. Read on forthe full list of worst cities for recovery.

The Data

In analyzing the cities, Moodys Analytics looked at population density and plotted it against two measures of workforce quality, both using educational attainment. In the first comparison, Moodys used data to compare population density against the share of jobs that require either a college or graduate degree. Those economies that can provide high-paying jobs to would-be city residents are especially well positioned, writes Kamins.

Moodys also looked at CBSAs (core-based statistical areas), a U.S. geographic area defined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that consists of one or more counties (or equivalents) anchored by an urban center of at least 10,000 people plus adjacent counties that are socioeconomically tied to the urban center by commuting. In this case, Moodys used educational attainment and theaverage density across countiesthat was used to calculate regional exposure to COVID-19.

The Impact of Coronavirus on Big Cities

One of the biggest impacts the country might witness, post-coronavirus, is a migration away from living in big cities. The generation that is growing up today could remember the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on large, densely populated urban areas and be more likely than its predecessors to opt for less densely packed pastures in the decades to come, writes Kamins.

Kamins believes that this will also impact where business is done. Firms will need to follow those workers, writes Kamins. Places that are more spacious, rely more heavily on car travel and provide ample access to single-family housing are likely to emerge as more attractive as a result, especially among those who choose to bypass the highly urbanized Northeast.

Austin, Texas is a city to watch in the post-coronavirus era.

Beyond the Lists

Other urban areas that didnt make the top 10 list, but are places to watchaccording to Moodysinclude Austin, Texas; Seattle; and Minneapolis. Meanwhile, the draw of suburban areas should not be overlooked, says Kamins. The Silver Spring, Maryland; Montgomery-Bucks-Chester County Pennsylvania; and Cambridge, Massachusetts metro divisions could become appealing alternatives to their neighboring cities in a world in which physical proximity is viewed as inherently risky.

And while they didnt make it into the top 10 list, more isolated places in the Midwest could also succeed, including Omaha and Des Moines. Kamins points out that that they will benefit from the fact that they face few land constraints.

Kamins believes that the coronavirus fallout could damage some of the nations other dynamic economies in the future, including Boston and San Franciscowhich didnt make the 10 worst list, but will also fare poorly in the post-coronavirus era. Each place is resilient enough to eventually find its footing again, but out-migration could pick up in the medium term, writes Kamins.

Here arethe 10 best and 10 worst cities for recovery.Note that Moodys sorted the cities alphabetically in order to avoid assigning false precision to the calculations.

Boise, Idaho will be one of the cities best poised to bounce back from coronavirus.

Top 10: Cities Best-Positioned to Recover From Coronavirus

(Note: These are alphabetically sortednot listed in order)

Boise City, Idaho

Denver, Colorado

Durham, North Carolina

Madison, Wisconsin

Provo, Utah

Raleigh, North Carolina

Salt Lake City, Utah

San Jose, California

Tucson, Arizona

Washington, D.C.

Los Angeles is predicted to be among the worst cities to recover from coronavirus.

Bottom 10: Cities Worst-Positioned to Recover From Coronavirus

(Note: These are alphabetically sortednot listed in order)

Detroit, Michigan

Honolulu, Hawaii

Los Angeles, California

McAllen, Texas

Miami, Florida

New Haven, Connecticut

New York City

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Stockton, California

Tampa, Florida

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Ranked: The 10 US Cities Best Positioned To Recover From Coronavirus (And The 10 Worst) - Forbes

Were All Casualties of Trumps War on Coronavirus Science – The New York Times

In 2004, 60 Minutes aired a segment on what it called virus hunters, scientists searching for bugs that can leap from animals to humans and cause pandemics. What worries me the most is that we are going to miss the next emerging disease, said a scientist named Peter Daszak, describing his fear of a coronavirus that moves from one part of the planet to another, wiping out people as it moves along.

In the intervening years, Daszak became president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research organization focused on emerging pandemics. EcoHealth worked with Chinas Wuhan Institute of Virology to study coronaviruses in bats that could infect humans, and, as Science magazine put it, to develop tools that could help researchers create diagnostics, treatments and vaccines for human outbreaks. Since 2014, the EcoHealth Alliance has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health, until its funding was abruptly cut two weeks ago.

The reason, as 60 Minutes reported on Sunday evening, was a conspiracy theory spread by Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who in March wore a gas mask on the House floor to mock concern about the new coronavirus. On April 14, Gaetz appeared on Tucker Carlsons Fox News show and claimed that the N.I.H. grant went to the Wuhan Institute, which Gaetz intimated might have been the source of the virus the institute may have birthed a monster, in his words.

The first of Gaetzs claims was flatly false, and the second unlikely; the C.I.A. has reportedly found no evidence of a link between the virus and the Wuhan lab. But at a White House briefing a few days later, a reporter from the right-wing website Newsmax told President Trump that under Barack Obama, the N.I.H. gave the Wuhan lab a $3.7 million grant. Why would the U.S. give a grant like that to China? she asked.

In fact, Trumps administration had recently renewed EcoHealths grant, but Trump didnt appear to know that. The Obama administration gave them a grant of $3.7 million? he asked. Then he said, We will end that grant very quickly.

And they did. But ending the grant dealt a blow to efforts to find treatments and a vaccine for the coronavirus. Remdesivir, the antiviral drug thats shown some promise in Covid-19 patients, was earlier tested against bat viruses EcoHealth discovered. Now the nonprofit is facing layoffs.

This political hit on Daszaks work is far from the only way that the Trump administrations contempt for science has undermined Americas coronavirus response. Conservative antipathy to science is nothing new; Republicans have long denied and denigrated the scientific consensus on issues from evolution to stem cell research to climate change. This hostility has several causes, including populist distrust of experts, religious rejection of information that undermines biblical literalism and efforts by giant corporations to evade regulation.

But its grown worse under Trump, with his authoritarian impulse to quash any facts, from inauguration crowd sizes to hurricane paths, that might reflect poorly on him.

Until recently, it seemed as if Trumps sabotage of efforts to combat climate change would be the most destructive legacy of his disregard for science. But the coronavirus has presented the country with an emergency that only sound science can solve. That means that the Trump administrations disdain for expertise, its elevation of slavish loyalty over technical competence, has become a more immediate threat.

Months before this pandemic began, Reuters reported, the Trump administration axed the job of an epidemiologist working for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in China to help detect emerging disease outbreaks. As the pandemic raged, the administration removed Rick Bright, one of Americas premier experts on vaccine development, from an agency overseeing efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Last week Bright filed a whistle-blower complaint claiming hed suffered retaliation because he resisted funding potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections and by the administration itself. (A federal watchdog agency has called for him to be reinstated pending its investigation.)

Another whistle-blower complaint, filed by a former volunteer on the coronavirus team assembled by Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner, claims the effort has been beset by inexperience and incompetence. The Associated Press reported on how the White House buried guidance from the C.D.C. on how communities could safely reopen. Now the president is urging Americans to return to work even as the White House itself has proved unable to keep the coronavirus at bay.

According to Axios, Trump has even privately started expressing skepticism of the coronaviruss death toll, suggesting its lower than official statistics say. (Most experts believe the opposite.) A senior administration official said he expects the president to begin publicly questioning the death toll as it closes in on his predictions for the final death count and damages him politically, reported Axios. The Trump administrations approach to the coronavirus began with denialism, and thats likely how it will end.

Any progress America makes in fighting Covid-19 will be in spite of its federal government, not because of it. I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science not politics or cronyism has to lead the way, Dr. Bright said when he went public with his complaint in April. Trump wont let that happen. Hed rather essentially give up on combating it at all.

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Were All Casualties of Trumps War on Coronavirus Science - The New York Times

Coronavirus is the ultimate demonstration of the real-world impact of racism – The Guardian

A

s coronavirus continues to rampage across the globe, it has become apparent that, while biologically the virus may not discriminate, it is having a much worse effect on people from ethnic minorities. As the researcher Omar Khan has noted, BAME Covid-19 deaths track existing social determinants of health such as overcrowding in homes, insecure work and lack of access to green spaces. In other words, the virus is hitting people harder not because it can see their race but because racialised people those who are categorised by societies as, say, black or brown are more vulnerable.

And this is not the only way that race is playing a role in the crisis. All around the world, minority communities are disproportionately targeted by ramped-up policing that has accompanied the enforcement of lockdown measures. Data from New South Wales in Australia reveals that, although the richer, whiter Sydney beach suburbs have the majority of Covid-19 infections, it is in the neighbourhoods with larger numbers of people of migrant origin and indigenous Australians that people have received the most fines for breaching social distancing directives. The US has seen a business-as-usual approach to police brutality targeting black people while, at the same time, groups of overwhelmingly white people in New Yorks West Village freely breached social distancing.

Some voices are uninterested in this connection between race and the virus or treat it with derision. Campaigners are twisting BAME Covid data to further their victimhood agenda, reads a commentator in the Daily Telegraph. An article in Quillette the online magazine of the so-called intellectual dark web asks the question Do Covid-19 racial disparities matter? before concluding: The fact is our culture is obsessed with race. These responses are the product of a discourse in the west that for decades has claimed that making it about race unnecessarily sensationalises an issue. But as BAME people die and suffer disproportionately from a virus, it is clear that race is about power which is very much contrary to the way that it is usually discussed.

The usual discussion of race in Britain is exemplified by conservative academics and political commentators who argue against what they see as an unhelpful leftwing moralism around issues of race and migration, which silences the concerns of a working class that they portray as uniquely white. In 2018, the online publication UnHerd organised a panel discussion originally titled Is rising ethnic diversity a threat to the west?, before this was changed following a backlash. In response to an open letter against the event signed by more than 230 academics, two of the organisers, Eric Kaufmann and Matthew Goodwin, wrote that large numbers of people across western democracies do feel under threat from immigration and rising ethnic diversity. There is no point shying away from it.

Labelling those concerned about immigration racists is unhelpful. But through books, media appearances and social media, these commentators created a climate where the conversation around race is defined by free-speech rationalists pitted against irrational antiracists. These antiracists see race everywhere, supposedly demonising and silencing everyone with concerns about migrants, Muslims or black people the same people who are now dying disproportionately of Covid-19. But race is not a category that antiracists impose on the world, or a debating point about individual morality: it is a factor that shapes the lives of the people who are racialised.

At its most extreme, this discourse has enabled a return of eugenics treating the pseudoscience as just another part of the marketplace of ideas. The seemingly benign term race realism is defended by a growing circle of pundits who argue for the spurious claims of behavioural genetics and differential IQ dividing the middle class from the poor; white and Asian from black people.

The British associate editor of Quillette magazine, Toby Young, epitomises the worrying nexus between free speech advocacy, eugenics cheerleading and now coronavirus scepticism. Young has advocated for genetically engineered intelligence to be offered to parents on low incomes with below-average IQs. He has now started Lockdown Sceptics, a website opposing measures to stem the spread of Covid-19 by staying home. It publishes links to articles by other sceptics whose past output has the common thread of opposing antiracism in the name of free speech.

Racial inequality is expressed in all dimensions of life. But given that it takes the form during the coronavirus pandemic of disproportionate deaths, the growing calls to relax social distancing measures across the global north further signal societies disregard for the lives of racialised people. This disregard was made possible in societies that declare themselves post-race by the treatment of racism as a matter of mere opinion, with commentators and activists given carte blanche to vilify migrants and Muslims, double down on anti-blackness and anti-Roma racism, and ramp up antisemitism in the interests of media balance.

The pandemic shows us that race is not a biological fact, as the race realists believe, since there is no meaningful biological explanation for the BAME experience of Covid-19. Instead it is a technology of governance that shapes the life chances of many racialised people and maintains white supremacy.

Alana Lentin is an associate professor in cultural and social analysis at Western Sydney University and author of Why Race Still Matters

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Coronavirus is the ultimate demonstration of the real-world impact of racism - The Guardian

Tony Shalhoub reveals that he and his wife have recovered from coronavirus – CNN

The "Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" actor revealed the news on the new Peacock web series, "The At-Home Variety Show," and compared his real life experience to playing germaphobe detective Adrian Monk, who lives with obsessive compulsive disorder on the TV series "Monk."

"I hope you are all being careful and following the protocol. We really are all Monk now," he said. "Last month, my wife Brooke and I came down with the virus, and it was a pretty rough few weeks. But we realize that so many other people have and had it a lot worse."

Now recovered, Shalhoub remains hunkered down in New York City, he said. He participates in city's nightly ritual of cheering for the frontline workers.

"Time to go out and show our appreciation to all our heroes -- the health care workers, the first responders. Let's go. Stay safe and stay sane," he said.

The show, hosted by Seth MacFarlane, is aiming to bring awareness and raise money to support essential workers and communities most in need.

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Tony Shalhoub reveals that he and his wife have recovered from coronavirus - CNN

I negotiated canceled flights, an unknown carrier and a ‘sleep box’ to get to my son – CNN

They left Turkey on one of the last flights out to London in March. My son, Alex, is used to me traveling so our goodbyes were relaxed and I was content, sure that if I needed to, I'd be able to just jump on a plane and catch up with them.

In the days after they left, I kept convincing myself that it would be fine, that there was no way Turkey would just stop all flights.

But it did.

After a couple of weeks of separation and self-isolation, I had to get back with my family. But with shut borders and airports it seemed impossible. Until my hours on Twitter proved fruitful, with advisories from the UK and US embassies about commercial flights still operating out of Istanbul for those who wanted to leave.

Qatar Airways was up and running with a #Takingyouhome campaign. Ticket prices were significantly higher than usual but I booked my route to London via Doha.

The thought of going through airports and sitting on planes at a time like this was terrifying, so I packed my carry-on with the essentials for traveling during a global pandemic: several masks, hand sanitizer, gloves and surface wipes.

The night before the flight I woke up several times, and nervously took my temperature, knowing that there were already fever checks in place at Istanbul airport.

Then the next morning I woke again to a message that the flight has been delayed. And from there it went from bad to worse. Another delay, then another, then what I really did not want to hear -- the flight was canceled.

Mentally, I was prepared for the trip, the risks, the restrictions, the unknown -- but I was not ready for this. I just wanted to see my family and the weeks of bottling up all the anxieties and emotions came rolling out with a flood of tears.

My booking was moved to the next scheduled flight. My husband, Matt, on the other end of the phone kept saying, "It's OK, it's just another five days."

But it wasn't. Before the next flight, Qatar Airways suspended its services out of Istanbul. Months of separation from my family was suddenly a very real possibility.

I was too emotional to think clearly, but thankfully colleagues in Istanbul and Abu Dhabi helped me look up different options. We found one way out, on Belarus' national carrier via its capital, Minsk.

I'll confess I had never heard of the Belavia airline before but some research and reassurance from coworkers in Moscow who'd flown with them made me decide to take the flight.

I fly regularly on one of the many three and a half hour daily flights to London from Istanbul. But this journey was scheduled for 28 hours -- 22 hours of them a layover in Minsk Airport.

The flight to Minsk was almost like being in the pre-coronavirus days. Many passengers wore masks and regularly used hand sanitizer, but the flight crew seemed pretty relaxed. They didn't all wear masks and gloves, and it did not seem like there were any attempts to enforce social distancing on board.

It was a similar story at Minsk Airport -- no temperature checks or social distancing guidelines, a far cry from the strict measures of Turkey where masks are mandatory.

But Belarus does impose 14 days of compulsory quarantine for anyone entering the country, so remaining in the airport was the only option for transiting passengers like me.

In the transit area, people were spaced out simply because there weren't that many passengers around. But there was no way I was going to sit in a communal area for 22 hours. I am a journalist and I usually enjoy exploring new places even if it's just a country's airport. But this time, all I wanted to do was find a corner and hide.

So I rented a "sleep box" -- a little wooden cabin in the middle of the airport. It offered a bed, an electrical outlet and social distancing -- all that I needed!

The bed had disposable linens, but I still covered the pillow with my scarf.

It was a long 22 hours. I was counting the hours to seeing my family and trying not to think of all the things that could still go wrong. A Turkish friend joked I could become stranded like Tom Hanks in "The Terminal" but I didn't want to even think of that. There was always the possibility my onwards flight would not materialize, so Matt and I had decided not to tell Alex I was coming until I landed in the UK.

I sat around the corner from the gate long before other passengers or airline staff showed up. Anxiously I watched the information board and almost burst into tears when it was time to get on.

The flight was pretty empty but again seemed to be business as usual, with the exception of a "Public Health Locator Form" we were given to fill out, to allow health officers to contact you if a communicable disease was later found to have been on board.

We touched down at Gatwick, the airport south of London that hosts many holiday charter flights. I used to fly into there regularly when I was based in Libya and I remember the long waits for baggage surrounded by hundreds of British holidaymakers in flip flops and shorts and children running around screaming and laughing.

This was a very different Gatwick. A desolate place. As we got off the plane, we were greeted by armed police officers spread out across the terminal. Elevators and escalators were turned off, ATMs were out of service and currency exchange shops shuttered. With no other flights, our baggage was straight out.

But finally, more than 30 hours after I left my Istanbul apartment, there was my husband, waiting for me in a stunningly quiet arrivals hall. We have had no airport pick-up like this one -- no hugs, not even a touch. I had been in public places and on planes for two days. The hugs and surprising Alex would have to wait until after a shower and change of clothes.

As we walked out to the car, down deserted stairwells and through empty parking lots, I realized I was still holding my pandemic tracing form. No one had asked me for it.

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I negotiated canceled flights, an unknown carrier and a 'sleep box' to get to my son - CNN

This Baseball Mascot Was Struck Out By The Coronavirus Pandemic – NPR

David Edwards was the team mascot for the Quad Cities River Bandits in Davenport, Iowa. David Edwards hide caption

David Edwards was the team mascot for the Quad Cities River Bandits in Davenport, Iowa.

David Edwards thought he'd be spending this baseball season prowling the ballpark in Davenport, Iowa, trading high-fives and cheering the home team.

After all, it would be his second season playing mascot for the Quad Cities River Bandits.

"I am the big raccoon," Edwards says. "It's the most fun I've ever had."

But there's no joy in Davenport the River Bandits aren't playing ball this year because of the pandemic. While major league teams hope to revive their season for a TV-only audience later this year, Single-A clubs like the River Bandits depend on in-person ticket sales and concessions to pay the bills.

David Edwards (left) and Ray Hernandez, manager of the Quad City River Bandits. David Edwards hide caption

David Edwards (left) and Ray Hernandez, manager of the Quad City River Bandits.

Edwards lost a second job, showing visitors around a regional zoo, when that also closed to the public.

"All the plans for this year went out the window," Edwards says. "Guest relations aren't essential when nothing is open."

Edwards, who majored in music at Iowa State University, also planned to audition for classical singing gigs this summer. But with most big cities under lockdown, that's on hold, too. That's three strikes, and Edwards is worried.

"I feel very scared about my future," he says. "I just don't know what funding is going to be, what festivals or programs are going to survive."

For now, Edwards is living off savings, trying to figure out what life's going to look like after the summer and keeping a positive attitude.

"Just trying to do what's right and what's recommended and what's healthy," he says. "I just don't want to be part of the problem."

Read more stories in Faces Of The Coronavirus Recession.

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This Baseball Mascot Was Struck Out By The Coronavirus Pandemic - NPR

The Folly of Trumps Blame-Beijing Coronavirus Strategy – The New Yorker

Illustration by Joo Fazenda

When an Ebola epidemic erupted in West Africa, in 2014, the United States and China, the worlds two largest economic powers, responded in starkly different fashions. The Obama Administration dispatched the 101st Airborne and other troops to build treatment hospitals, and donated more than half of the $3.9 billion in relief funds collected from governments worldwide. Within six months, the outbreak was under control, and the U.S.-led effort was hailed as a template for handling future epidemics.

Chinese mining and construction firms had big businesses in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, but Beijing struggled to mount a humanitarian response. Between August and October of that year, nearly ten thousand Chinese nationals fled those countries in a panic. China, unaccustomed to such missions, sent medical teams and supplies, but, over all, it contributed less than four per cent of the relief funds.

Six years later, however, neither nation can claim to have led the way in managing the COVID-19 pandemic, which has so far killed more than a quarter of a million people around the world. The efforts of both have been marred by denial, coverup, and self-deception. President Donald Trumps trade war and President Xi Jinpings hostility to Western influence had already frayed the countries relationship to its most fragile point in decades. Now, in a bid to deflect criticism, they are turning against each other in perilous ways.

For President Xi, containing the disease, which first emerged in Hubei Province four months ago, has been a race against both a public-health and a political calamity. After initially silencing doctors who reported the virus, Beijing gained control of the outbreak by locking down Hubei, testing millions of people, and quarantining suspected cases, even if it required forcibly removing residents from their homes. By mid-March, China was reporting nearly no new cases, a claim that outside experts considered doubtful but in the neighborhood of truth.

Shaping the narrative of Chinas role in the pandemic will be more difficult. In April, the Associated Press obtained government documents showing that leaders in Beijing knew the potential scale of the threat by January 14th, but Xi waited six days before warning the publica catastrophic interlude of dinners, train rides, and handshakes that helped unleash the pandemic. The government staged a public-relations offensive, touting Chinas exports of medical gear to other nationsa tactic dubbed mask diplomacy. It also suggested, with no evidence, that the source of the virus was a delegation from the United States that had participated in the Military World Games in Wuhan in October. The offensive backfired: buyers complained of faulty or undelivered shipments, and U.S. officials accused China of using social media to promote divisive and false information.

The Trump Administration, for its part, has cut off funds to the World Health Organization and declined to join the European-led fund for vaccine research. Trumps delusionsthat the virus would vanish in a miracle, that an antimalarial drug would shortcut science, that ingesting disinfectant could helphave further reduced the Administrations reputation to a baleful farce. Last week, Kevin Rudd, the former Prime Minister of Australia, wrote in Foreign Affairs that the Administration had left an indelible impression around the world of a country incapable of handling its own crises, let alone anybody elses. In Rudds view, the uncomfortable truth is that China and the United States are both likely to emerge from this crisis significantly diminished.

The Administration could credibly have criticized Chinas early mishandling of the virus, and its efforts to control international scrutiny of the viruss origins. Instead, the White House seized on a blame-Beijing strategy to undermine Chinas growing global power and shore up Trumps bid for relection. (An ad from a pro-Trump super PAC says, To stop China, you have to stop Joe Biden.) Unnamed Administration officials floated revenge fantasies to reporters, such as abandoning U.S. debt obligations to China, an act that, investors noted, would gut Americas financial credibility. As Adam Posen, the president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told the Washington Post, In economic terms, this is worse than telling people to drink bleach.

In the riskiest line of attack, members of the Administration, conservative lawmakers, including Senator Tom Cotton, and Fox News have promoted an unverified theory that the coronavirus may have originated in an accidental leak from a Chinese virology lab. On April 30th, Trump said that he had seen convincing evidence of this, but gave no details. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo followed up three days later, claiming simply that there was enormous evidence to support the theory. More credible voicesincluding those of Anthony Fauci, the governments top expert on infectious diseases, and General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffhave declined to endorse that view.

Yet Trump and Pompeos rhetoric has some in the intelligence community concerned that the Administration may try to push on the origins of the virus much the way that, in 2002, Vice-President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, pressured intelligence agencies to provide material that might support the theory that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Chris Johnson, a former China analyst at the C.I.A. who now heads the China Strategies Group, said, If we have a smoking gun, the Administration would have leaked it. There are specters of Libby and Cheney, and it worries me.

More worrying, perhaps, this month in Beijing the Ministry of State Security presented to Xi and other leaders an assessment that reportedly describes the current hostilities as creating the most inhospitable diplomatic environment since the Tiananmen Square massacre. According to Reuters, some members of Chinas intelligence community regard the assessment as a Chinese version of the Novikov Telegram, a 1946 dispatch that the Soviet Ambassador to Washington, Nikolai Novikov, sent to Moscow, forecasting the advent of the Cold War.

To John Gaddis, the dean of Cold War historians, Americas advantage over the Soviet Union hinged less on aggression than on competent governance. The country can be no stronger in the world than it is at home, he said. This was the basis for projecting power onto the world scene. Weve lost that at home right now. If the Trump Administration uses the coronavirus to heighten its conflict with China, it will not only have ignored a basic lesson of U.S. history; it will expose America to yet another crisis for which it is plainly unprepared.

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The Folly of Trumps Blame-Beijing Coronavirus Strategy - The New Yorker

Coronavirus in Chicago: A running list of restaurants that have closed – Eater Chicago

A large number of Chicagos restaurants have shut down for the duration of Illinoiss ban on dining room service, now slated to potentially end in late June as part of Gov. J.B. Pritzkers Restore Illinois plan, but a growing group has closed permanently as the hospitality industry across the country grapples with an uncertain future.

Among the losses are beloved neighborhood institutions like Jeris Grill, as well as more recent establishments like Luellas Gospel Bird in Bucktown.

These closures are likely to mount in the coming months as restaurant owners face ongoing rent and utility payments. Some Chicago hospitality leaders are calling on the governor to allow dining rooms to open as early as June 1, but much still remains unclear about what a return will look like for workers and diners.

Below, Eater is cataloging permanent restaurant closures in Chicago. If you know of a restaurant, bar, or other food establishment that has permanently closed since the start of the pandemic, please email chicago@eater.com. We will continue to update this post.

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Bowmanville: Barbecue spot Baobab BBQ, which served ribs, rib tips, and brisket, is closed after two years. The restaurant added a South African touch to American barbecue, borrowing from several regions. Chef Andrew Dunlop made the announcement via Facebook on May 4.

Bucktown: Luellas Gospel Bird, chef Darnell Reeds (Luellas Southern Kitchen) fried chicken restaurant, is closed permanently, he told Eater Chicago on April 8. Prior to the pandemic, Reed was handling operations at both of his restaurants while also caring for his children. The restaurant relied in large part on catering orders, but the pandemic lead to mass cancelations and Reed decided to close the business.

Bucktown: Lauded local chef Mindy Segal told Eater Chicago on April 29 that shed permanently closed her popular restaurant Mindys Hot Chocolate after 15 years. Segal already had plans to close the restaurant by the end of May before the COVID-19 pandemic, but mandated dining room closures expedited the process. Shes transitioning toward converting the space into Mindys Bakery selling bagels, coffee, hot chocolate, and pantry items.

Bucktown/Lincoln Park: Toast, a much-loved 24-year-old breakfast and brunch restaurant with two Chicago locations, is permanently closed due to the impact of the coronavirus, according to owner Jeanne Roeser. She announced the closures on April 22.

Edgewater: The owners of Income Tax, a popular neighborhood restaurant and wine bar, announced it would not reopen in a Facebook post on May 9. The North Side restaurant managed to deliver an adventurous menu without alienating residents. Owners say theyll continue to sell alcohol to go while thinning inventory.

Hyde Park: Local dessert mini-chain Vanille Patisserie closed its Hyde Park storefront permanently on March 17. In a Facebook post, ownership pointed to the devastating economic situation caused by COVID-19. The business also has locations in Lincoln Park and in Chicagos French Market.

Lincoln Park: Specialty chocolate company Vosges Haut Chocolat has closed its retail location in Lincoln Park. Prior to the pandemic, the company operated another store on Michigan Avenue and two shops inside OHare International Airport. The Armitage shop served coffee and hot chocolate.

Lincoln Square: Iconic North Side 24-hour diner Jeris Grill is permanently closed after nearly 60 years. Jeris Grill was a part of the past living in a modern world, owner Di Piero writes in the closing announcement, posted May 9. Unfortunately the past can no longer survive in this post pandemic world...if these walls could talk they would tell beautiful and sad stories of many lives.

North Center: Gastropub and sports bar Monty Gaels Tavern and Grill is permanently closed after seven years. A for-sale sign hangs in the window.

Logan Square: Pioneering Macanese restaurant Fat Rice is closed for the foreseeable future after eight years. Adrienne Lo and James Beard Award-winner Abe Conlon also operated a neighboring bakery and a cocktail bar, and last year debuted a stall inside Fulton Markets Time Out Market Chicago. The pair have since transitioned the Fat Rice space into Super Fat Rice Mart, a general store sells $99 meal kits, groceries, and more.

Rogers Park: Family-owned Mexican restaurant Restaurante Cuetzala Gro is permanently closed after owner Saul Moreno died of coronavirus on April 15 at age 58, Block Club Chicago reported. Family members told reporters that the restaurant would never be the same without him and they felt it was best to shut down completely.

Streeterville/Lombard: Chicago-based 4 Star Restaurant Group has permanently closed two of its venues the Windsor in Streeterville and D.O.C. Wine Bar in suburban Lombard because of the coronavirus-related dine-in closures, according to social media posts from May 4. With a heavy heart, we are sad to announce that we are closing our doors for good due to the challenges surrounding the coronavirus shutdown, one post reads.

West Loop: New Orleans-style lounge the Front Room is for sale, according to a Facebook post from March 9. The spot opened in 2018 along Randolph Restaurant Row.

1747 N Damen Avenue, Chicago, IL 60647 773 489 1747

3243 N Broadway St, Chicago, IL 60657

160 E Huron St, Chicago, IL 60611

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Coronavirus: CSU to have mainly online classes in fall 2020 – Los Angeles Times

The 23-campus California State University system plans to all but cancel in-person classes in the fall and instead will offer instruction primarily online, Chancellor Timothy White announced Tuesday.

The vast majority of classes across the Cal State system will be taught online, White said, with some limited exceptions that allow for in-person activity. The decision comes as schools throughout the country grapple with how long to keep campuses closed amid the coronavirus crisis.

Our university when open without restrictions and fully in person is a place where over 500,000 people come together in close and vibrant proximity, White said at a meeting of Cal States Board of Trustees. That approach sadly just isnt in the cards now.

Whites announcement came the same day that infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, told a Senate panel it would be a bridge too far to think treatments or vaccines could be available in time to facilitate students reentry into schools this fall.

It also follows an earlier move by Cal State Fullerton, which in late April became one of the first universities in the nation to announce it was planning for remote instruction this fall.

White said that for the small number of classes where in-person instruction is indispensable and can be justified such as clinical nursing courses, biology labs or merchant marine training sufficient resources and protocols will have to be in place to ensure the health and safety of students and teachers.

The enrollment per section will be less; for instruction and research laboratories the distance between participants greater; the need for personal protective equipment appropriate to the circumstance prevalent; and the need to sanitize and disinfect spaces and equipment between users essential, White said.

On some campuses and within some departments, course offerings will be exclusively virtual.

White said planning for an online fall term was necessary because of the forecast of additional waves of COVID-19 outbreaks later this year, possibly coupled with a difficult flu season. He said it would be irresponsible to wait until August to make a decision only to scramble and not be prepared to provide a robust learning and support environment.

He also acknowledged that the university system currently lacks the resources to provide coronavirus testing for everybody and trace the contacts of infected people should there be an outbreak on a campus.

CSU students and families, along with faculty and staff, can expect to receive more information this month from their respective campuses about instruction in the fall.

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Coronavirus: CSU to have mainly online classes in fall 2020 - Los Angeles Times

The Problem With Stories About Dangerous Coronavirus Mutations – The Atlantic

Read: Should you get an antibody test?

We have evidence for one strain, says Brian Wasik at Cornell University.

I would say theres just one, says Nathan Grubaugh at Yale School of Medicine.

I think the majority of people studying [coronavirus genetics] wouldnt recognize more than one strain right now, says Charlotte Houldcroft at the University of Cambridge.

Everyone else might be reasonably puzzled, given that news stories have repeatedly claimed there are two, or three, or even eight strains. This is yet another case of confusion in a crisis that seems riddled with them. Heres how to make sense of it.

Whenever a virus infects a host, it makes new copies of itself, and it starts by duplicating its genes. But this process is sloppy, and the duplicates end up with errors. These are called mutationstheyre the genetic equivalent of typos. In comic books and other science fiction, mutations are always dramatic and consequential. In the real world, theyre a normal and usually mundane part of virology. Viruses naturally and gradually accumulate mutations as they spread.

Read: The best hopes for a coronavirus drug

As an epidemic progresses, the virus family tree grows new branches and twigsnew lineages that are characterized by differing sets of mutations. But a new lineage doesnt automatically count as a new strain. That term is usually reserved for a lineage that differs from its fellow viruses in significant ways. It might vary in how easily it spreads (transmissibility), its ability to cause disease (virulence), whether it is recognized by the immune system in the same way (antigenicity), or how vulnerable it is to medications (resistance). Some mutations affect these properties. Most do not, and are either silent or cosmetic. Not every mutation creates a different strain, says Grubaugh. (Think about dog breeds as equivalents of strains: A corgi is clearly different from a Great Dane, but a black-haired corgi is functionally the same as a brown-haired one, and wouldnt count as a separate breed.)

Theres no clear, fixed threshold for when a lineage suddenly counts as a strain. But the term has the same connotation in virology as it does colloquiallyit implies importance. Viruses change all the time; strains arise when they change in meaningful ways.

New strains of influenza arise every year. These viruses quickly acquire mutations that change the shape of the proteins on their surface, making them invisible to the same immune cells that would have recognized and attacked their ancestors. These are clearly meaningful changesand they're partly why the flu vaccine must be updated every year.

Read: Why some people get sicker than others

But influenza is notable for mutating quickly. Coronaviruseswhich, to be clear, belong to a completely separate family from influenza viruseschange at a tenth of the speed. The new one, SARS-CoV-2, is no exception. Theres nothing out of the ordinary here, says Grubaugh. Yes, the virus has picked up several mutations since it first jumped into humans in late 2019, but no more than scientists would have predicted. Yes, its family tree has branched into different lineages, but none seems materially different from the others. This is still such a young epidemic that, given the slow mutation rate, it would be a surprise if we saw anything this soon, Houldcroft says.

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The Problem With Stories About Dangerous Coronavirus Mutations - The Atlantic

10-4: How to Reopen the Economy by Exploiting the Coronaviruss Weak Spot – The New York Times

If we cannot resume economic activity without causing a resurgence of Covid-19 infections, we face a grim, unpredictable future of opening and closing schools and businesses.

We can find a way out of this dilemma by exploiting a key property of the virus: its latent period the three-day delay on average between the time a person is infected and the time he or she can infect others.

People can work in two-week cycles, on the job for four days then, by the time they might become infectious, 10 days at home in lockdown. The strategy works even better when the population is split into two groups of households working alternating weeks.

Austrian school officials will adopt a simple version with two groups of students attending school for five days every two weeks starting May 18.

Models we created at the Weizmann Institute in Israel predict that this two-week cycle can reduce the viruss reproduction number the average number of people infected by each infected person below one. So a 10-4 cycle could suppress the epidemic while allowing sustainable economic activity.

Even if someone is infected, and without symptoms, he or she would be in contact with people outside their household for only four days every two weeks, not 10 days, as with a normal schedule. This strategy packs another punch: It reduces the density of people at work and school, thus curtailing the transmission of the virus.

Schools could have students attend for four consecutive days every two weeks, in two alternating groups, and use distance-learning methods on the other school days. Children would go to school on the same days as their parents go to work.

Businesses would work almost continuously, alternating between two groups of workers, for regular and predictable production. This would increase consumer confidence, shoring up supply and demand simultaneously.

During lockdown days, this approach requires adherence only to the level of distancing already being demonstrated in European countries and New York City. It prevents the economic and psychological costs of opening the economy and then having to reinstate complete lockdown when cases inevitably resurge. Giving hope and then taking it away can cause despair and resistance.

A 10-4 routine provides at least part-time employment for millions who have been fired or sent on leave without pay. These jobs prevent the devastating, and often long-lasting, mental and physical impacts of unemployment. For those living on cash, there would be four days to make a living, reducing the economic necessity to disregard lockdown altogether. Business bankruptcies would also be reduced, speeding up eventual economic recovery.

The cyclic strategy is easy to explain and to enforce. It is equitable in terms of who gets to go back to work. It applies at any scale: a school, a firm, a town, a state. A region that uses the cyclic strategy is protected: Infections coming from the outside cannot spread widely if the reproduction number is less than one. It is also compatible with all other countermeasures being developed.

Workers can, and should still, use masks and distancing while at work. This proposal is not predicated, however, on large-scale testing, which is not yet available everywhere in the United States and may never be available in large parts of the world. It can be started as soon as a steady decline of cases indicates that lockdown has been effective.

The cyclic strategy should be part of a comprehensive exit strategy, including self-quarantine by those with symptoms, contact tracing and isolation, and protection of risk groups. The cyclic strategy can be tested in limited regions for specific trial periods, even a month. If infections rates grow, it can be adjusted to fewer work days. Conversely, if things are going well, additional work days can be added. In certain scenarios, only four or five lockdown days in each two-week cycle could still prevent resurgence.

The coronavirus epidemic is a formidable foe, but it is not unbeatable. By scheduling our activities intelligently, in a way that accounts for the viruss intrinsic dynamics, we can defeat it more rapidly, and accelerate a full return to work, school and other activities.

Uri Alon and Ron Milo are professors of computational and systems biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Eran Yashiv is a professor of economics at Tel Aviv University and at the London School of Economics Center for Macroeconomics.

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10-4: How to Reopen the Economy by Exploiting the Coronaviruss Weak Spot - The New York Times

My Coronavirus Patients Are Struggling to Recover – The New York Times

BOSTON Behind a closed door, an elderly man hopes a test will show that he no longer has an active coronavirus infection so that he can return home to his wife of six decades. Until then, he gazes out the window where he can see the trees. Sometimes his mind wanders to the lurid, delirious nightmares of the intensive care unit. He tries to distract himself with poetry.

Down the hall, a younger man works to get stronger so that he too can get back to his family. He feels better, he tells me, but he is so bored, and the Covid cough still bothers him, along with a burning in his hand likely a nerve injury from the days spent lying on his chest when he was intubated. His face bears the scars of that lifesaving maneuver, blackened ulcers on his cheeks, nose and forehead. He too looks out the window. Waiting.

This is life for the growing number of patients who have survived severe Covid-19 but have not yet recovered. As a critical-care doctor, I could easily avoid seeing this part of the story; it would be almost preferable to think that the removal of a breathing tube or a long-awaited discharge from the I.C.U. is the victorious end to the narrative. But that is not the case. Even as hospitals continue to care for the surge of critically ill patients, it is time to prepare for what comes after.

In a way, its strange that Covid-19 survivors must recover in places that look a bit like nursing homes, the very facilities that have been ravaged by this virus. In my own hospitals intensive care units, we have too often cared for patients transferred from nursing homes, coronavirus-positive and dying. It is little surprise, then, that many skilled nursing facilities refuse to take coronavirus patients after hospital discharge even when these patients are their own long-term residents. Until they have cleared the virus, these survivors are unable to go home again.

Which is why, in recent weeks, dedicated Covid-19 post-acute care facilities have sprung up throughout the country. Here in Boston, I recently started a rotation as the pulmonary consultant at a long-term acute care hospital that has shifted to care for recovering Covid sufferers. While some of our patients are nursing home residents, many are younger and previously healthy, debilitated now after days to weeks of deep sedation and mechanical ventilation. They need to learn to walk again. To dress themselves. We have more than 50 admissions already and a waiting list that is pages long.

At the same time, we are still caring for those without Covid too, transplant recipients and cancer patients, frail and vulnerable. To limit exposure, the Covid patients do not leave their rooms. And as in the acute care hospital, families cannot visit. Physical exams are kept to a minimum and most encounters take place via iPad.

On one recent afternoon, I sat at the central nurses station with a headset on while my patient, just a few paces away down the hall, talked to me through the iPad next to his bed. The machine was at an odd angle, it was nearly impossible to look at him head-on, and behind me the alarms blared and I could barely hear, but when I tried to sign off he asked me please not to go. An adult man with his hospital gown askew, socks halfway off, asking me to keep talking just a bit longer.

I told him how it was finally getting warmer outside and agreed that there really is never anything on television during the day. I did not hang up until a physical therapist in full personal protective equipment entered. It was time for his daily session in the room. The rehab gym down the hall remains empty.

At least we know how to track and treat the physical consequences of our patients prolonged I.C.U. stays. These outcomes are visible. More insidious are the potential psychiatric and cognitive dysfunction that some former I.C.U. patients describe anxiety and depression; hyperarousal and flashbacks to delirium-induced hallucinations that are characteristic of post-traumatic stress; poor planning skills and forgetfulness that might make it hard to remember medications or appointments.

These are far trickier to screen for and to treat. Of course, it is early still, and we do not yet know the burden of these outcomes in our Covid-19 survivors. But given their protracted critical-care stays and the persistent isolation that so many of them endure, these issues will be widespread.

At our hospital, before the coronavirus, we built a clinic for I.C.U. survivors. There, I worked with another critical-care doctor, a psychiatrist and a social worker to screen our patients for common post-I.C.U. problems and to offer them referrals.

Patients asked us to fill in missing details: What happened to me? How long was I on the vent? This scar, what was it from? On a few occasions, we even accompanied patients back to the intensive care unit. I remember how their expressions would shift, fear fading into relief, as they realized that this was just a place that they could now enter by choice and then leave again.

We do not have rigorous studies to tell us that these clinics help our patients. And it will be hard to set them up now, with so many of us critical-care doctors still doing the work of keeping our patients alive, keeping ourselves safe. I do not pretend to have the answers here. But we owe it to our survivors to try.

We have come to recognize that for many patients with coronavirus, the disease follows a characteristic pattern. For them, there is an initial constellation of symptoms fever and cough followed by a period of improvement and then a catastrophic decline. A disease with two waves. I think of us now, as a nation, at the end of our own first wave. We breathe a bit easier. Perhaps we will be OK, after all.

But the second wave is coming not of death this time, but of survival.

That afternoon at the long-term care hospital, I was startled in the middle of writing my notes by an unintelligible announcement on the overhead. I turned to one of the respiratory therapists. A Covid patient is being discharged, he explained. Want to go see?

We rushed down the stairs to join the group that had already gathered, all of us in scrubs and masks, waiting. Someone turned the music on and Here Comes the Sun filled the small lobby. Behind me, the patients two adult sons radiated excitement. When they last saw their father, he could not breathe.

I watched as the elevator doors opened and a nurse emerged, pushing a small man in a wheelchair. He scanned the crowd, spotted his sons and gave us all this proud little wave, like royalty. I clapped as loud as I could for him, mouthing the songs refrain, Its all right, behind my mask, not knowing what this virus would leave him with or what kind of life he would re-enter, but hoping the words were true.

Daniela J. Lamas is a critical-care doctor at Brigham and Womens Hospital.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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My Coronavirus Patients Are Struggling to Recover - The New York Times

Students think ‘outside the box’ to protect grocery shoppers from Covid-19 – Greenville

From left, Clemson University freshmen Carleigh Coffin and Ashlyn Soule are working with Delphine Dean to create a device that could help combat COVID-19 at the grocery store. Dean is the the Ron and Jane Family Innovation Professor.

By Paul Alongi

Two Clemson University freshmen are thinking outside the box-- and shining a light inside it-- to combat Covid-19 at the grocery store.

Carleigh Coffin and Ashlyn Soule say they are designing a device that would be located at supermarket checkout lanes. Groceries would be placed on the conveyor belt and then pass through an enclosed box where they would be exposed to UVC light.

UVC is a type of ultraviolet light that destroys genetic material inside viruses and other microbes, according to The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Running groceries through the device help could kill off the novel coronavirus, preventing its spread, during the pandemic, the students say. When its over, the device could still be useful, helping kill viruses that cause the flu and preventing contamination from pathogens, such as salmonella, they say.

Everyone needs to shop, and a lot of essential workers work in those grocery stores, Soule says. We thought that this would be really helpful to a wide variety of people.

The project is one of many examples of how students and faculty members are stepping up to meet Covid-19s unique challenges, even with campus closed and research groups working remotely to prevent the novel coronavirus from spreading.

Coffin and Soule are designing a prototype under the direction of Delphine Dean, the Ron and Jane Family Innovation Professor of bioengineering. Their work is part of Creative Inquiry, a program that encourages undergraduates to conduct research.

This is not something a professor would come up with, Dean says. As much as they are making a box, they are thinking outside the box. Thats what I enjoy about Creative Inquiry-- you get freshmen and other undergraduates who are early in their careers and flexible in their thinking. They come up with some cool ideas.

For Coffin, the new realities of grocery shopping are thrown into sharp relief every time she goes to work. When she isnt studying or conducting research at Clemson, Coffin is a cashier for a major grocery store chain, giving her a unique, first-hand perspective on the UVC-light project.

I want to create a way to decontaminate groceries so that Im not passing germs and so that Im protecting myself, she says.

Coffin and Soule say the box they are designing will stand about 1-2 feet so that it can fit tall items, such as cereal boxes. The students think they can make each device for about $100 in parts. The UVC lamp is the most expensive piece at about $50 each.

The National Academies has reported that UVC probably kills the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, while cautioning that more study is needed. UVC destroys related coronaviruses, including the one that causes the disease MERS, the National Academies reported.

Coffin and Soule estimate that UVC kills about 99 percent of bacteria and viruses.

Our research showed that after 10 seconds UVC tends to kill bacteria and viruses that are about six inches away, Coffin says.

The box that Coffin and Soule are creating would be lined with aluminum to reflect light onto the groceries and to keep the light inside the box, protecting cashiers, customers and others in the area.

UVC has the potential to damage human skin and should be used only on objects and surfaces, according to the National Academies.

We want to assure people that if this is in their grocery store, this is safe and they are going to be protected, Soule says. The UVC light stays inside the box, similar to the X-ray machines at the airport.

Coffin, of Irmo, is a general engineering student who plans to major in bioengineering. Soule, of Summerville, is a biochemistry major.

Martine LaBerge, chair of the Department of Bioengineering, says that Covid-19 research empowers students to come up with their own solutions to some of the new challenges that society and individuals face.

They have an opportunity to conduct highly relevant research while gaining valuable skills and experience, she says. I am continuously inspired by the unique solutions that students are able to find, and their determination to continue their work in the face of the Covid-19 situation.

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Students think 'outside the box' to protect grocery shoppers from Covid-19 - Greenville

Coronavirus fears used to justify unjustified overreach: Ron Paul – OCRegister

A Fresno, California waffle restaurant dared to open its doors for business this weekend to the delight of a long line of customers, who waited up to two hours for the privilege of willingly spending their money in a business happy to serve them breakfast on Mothers Day.

This freedom of voluntary transaction is the core of what we used to call our free society. But in an America paralyzed by fear ramped up by a mainstream media that churns out propaganda at a level unparalleled in history no one is allowed to enjoy themselves.

Thankfully everyone carries a smartphone these days and can record and upload the frequent violations of our constitutional liberties. In the case of the waffle restaurant, thanks to a cell phone video we saw the police show up in force and try to push through the crowd waiting outside. An elderly man who was next in line to enter was indignant, complaining that he had been waiting two hours to eat at the restaurant and was not about to step aside while the police shut down the place. The police proceeded to violently handcuff and arrest the man, dragging him off while his wife followedsadlybehind him to the police car.

It is hard not to be disgusted by government enforcers who would brutally drag an elderly man away from a restaurant for the crime of wanting to take his wife out for breakfast on Mothers Day. A virus far more deadly than the coronavirus is spreading from Washington down to the local city hall. Tin pot dictators are ruling by decree while federal, state, and local legislators largely stand by and watch as the U.S. Constitution they swore to protect goes up in smoke.

Politicians with perfect haircuts issue executive orders that anyone cutting hair for mere private citizens must be arrested. In Texas a brave salon owner willingly went to jail for the crime of re-opening her business in defiance of executive orders. To add insult to injury, Gov. Greg Abbott very quickly condemned the one week jail sentence of salon owner Shelley Luther but the officers who arrested her were only carrying out Abbotts own orders!

First we were told we had to shut down the country to flatten the curve so that hospitals were not overwhelmed by coronavirus patients. When most hospitals were nowhere near overwhelmed, and in fact were laying off thousands of healthcare workers because there were no patients, they moved the goalposts and said we cannot have our freedom back until a vaccine was available to force on us or the virus completely disappeared neither of which is likely to happen anytime soon.

Many politicians clearly see the creeping totalitarianism but lack the courage to speak out. Thankfully, patriots like Shelley Luther are demonstrating the courage our political leaders lack.

When Patrick Henry famously said give me liberty or give me death in 1775, he didnt add under his breath unless a virus shows up. If we wish to reclaim our freedoms we will have to fight peacefully for them.

As Thomas Paine wrote in 1776, These are the times that try mens souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

Dr. Ron Paul is a former member of the House of Representatives. This article was written for and published by theRon Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

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Coronavirus fears used to justify unjustified overreach: Ron Paul - OCRegister