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Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Results of Completed Antibody Testing Study of 15000 People Showing 12.3 Percent of…

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Results of Completed Antibody Testing Study of 15,000 People Showing 12.3 Percent of Population Has COVID-19 Antibodies | Governor Andrew M. Cuomo Skip to main content

State Will Distribute Over7 Million More Cloth Masks to Vulnerable New Yorkers and Frontline Workers Across the State

State is Distributing $25 Million to Food Banks Across the State Through the Nourish New York Initiative

Confirms 4,663 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 312,977; New Cases in 44 Counties

Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the results of the state's completed antibody testing study, showing 12.3 percent of the population have COVID-19 antibodies. The survey developed a baseline infection rate by testing 15,000 peopleat grocery stores and community centers across the state over the past two weeks.Of those tested, 11.5% of women tested positive and 13.1% of men tested positive. A regional breakdown of the results is below:

Region

Percent Positive

Capital District

2.2%

Central NY

1.9%

Finger Lakes

2.6%

Hudson Valley(Without Westchester/Rockland)

Long Island

11.4%

Mohawk Valley

2.7%

North Country

1.2%

NYC

19.9%

Southern Tier

2.4%

Westchester/Rockland

13.8%

Western NY

Audio Photos

The Governor also announced that the state will distribute over seven million more cloth masks to vulnerable New Yorkers and essential workers across the state. The masks will be distributed as follows:

While we're in uncharted waters it doesn't mean we proceed blindly, and the results of the 15,000 people tested in our antibody survey program - thelargest survey in the nation - will inform our strategy moving forward

The Governor also announced the state is distributing $25 million to food banks across the state through the Nourish New York Initiative. The Nourish New York initiative, announced earlier this week by Governor Cuomo, is working to quickly reroute NewYork's surplus agricultural products to the populations who need them most through New York's network of food banks. Funding will be distributed as follows:

"While we're in uncharted waters it doesn't mean we proceed blindly, and the results of the 15,000 people tested in our antibody survey program - thelargest survey in the nation - will inform our strategy moving forward,"Governor Cuomo said."We're also going to undertake a full survey of antibody testing for transit workers, who have been on the front lines of this crisis. We've said thank you to our essential workers thousands of times but actions speak louder than words, and we want them to know that we're doing everything we can do to keep them safe."

Finally, the Governor confirmed 4,663 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 312,977 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 312,977 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:

County

Total Positive

New Positive

Albany

1,238

Allegany

Broome

305

Cattaraugus

Cayuga

Chautauqua

Chemung

124

Chenango

Clinton

Columbia

205

Cortland

Delaware

Dutchess

3,049

Erie

3,598

117

Essex

Franklin

Fulton

Genesee

155

Greene

142

Hamilton

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Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Results of Completed Antibody Testing Study of 15000 People Showing 12.3 Percent of...

Covid-19 recap: Benchmarks, restrictions, and round two? – Port City Daily

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. (Port City Daily photo illustration/Courtesy CDC)

WILMINGTON The last two weeks saw some light at the end of the tunnel, with some local restrictions lifted and hope for a phased state-wide reopening. Still, tensions continue to mount over how and when to fully reopen businesses and public spaces.

What follows is a snapshot that, at least for the time being, covers some of the major moving parts of the Covid-19 situation: the states new metrics for reopening, restrictions and resistance to those restrictions, and what the future beyond reopening in the next months might hold.

If youre looking for resources, you can find some useful ones here:Covid-19 resource roundup: Wilmington-area small businesses, childcare, health, info [Free read]. If youre looking for whats still open, you can find a directory of local businesseshere.

Of course, its hard to recap the whole week, so you can find all of Port City Dailysfree reporting on Covid-19 here.We also encourage you to send comments, questions, and concerns to info@portcitydaily.com.

Late last month, Governor Roy Cooper announced the state was looking at a three-phase reopening plan, beginning as soon as May 8 (when the current stay-at-home order expires). The plan looks to four variables to decide when to move ahead into each new phase: (1) number of Covid-like cases, (2) positive laboratory tests, (3) percentage of total tests that come back positive, and (4) hospitalization.

Take a deep dive into the place with our podcast, here.

Its important to note that these variable go beyond just the number of new cases. While some news outlets continue to announce daily increases, at least some of those dramatic efforts to ramp up testing meaning those with minor symptoms, not just serious respiratory issues, are getting counted now. As Dr. Mandy Cohen, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, put it, the more you test, the more cases youll find.

So where are things right now? Unfortunately, several of the metrics continue to trend slightly upward, including the number of hospitalizations (at any given time) in the graph above.

Below, graphics based on data from NCDHHS on Covid-like cases, testing, and positive tests.

Cases with symptoms similar to Covid-19 Mild COVID-19 illness presents with symptoms similar to influenza-like illness, so surveillance systems that have historically been used during influenza seasons are being used to track trends of mild COVID-19 illness and allow for comparison with prior influenza seasons. It also includes influenza, allowing the state to determine the level of Covid-19 cases above and beyond typical levels of flu cases, according to NCDHHS.

Laboratory-confirmed cases Unfortunately, it doesnt yet look like the case numbers are leveling off, let alone decreasing. However, thats not the whole story (see percentage of tests, below).

Percentage of tests that come back positive Because of increased testing supplies and aggressive efforts to implement those tests, a wider portion of the population is being tested. That means, to some extent, increased numbers of cases arent necessarily new cases as much as they are previously undocumented ones. In other words, its just a better picture of whats out there.

To that end, the percentage of tests that come back positive rather than just the total number of positives is the more important data figure. And, in that department, the percentage of positive cases do appear to be leveling and even decreasing.

This week, New Hanover County allowed its restrictions (which went beyond Governor Coopers executive orders) to lapse, leaving it up to beach towns and Wilmington whether or not to keep stricter rules.

Beach towns including Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach have opened access points and allowed limited activities, mostly mobile exercise (i.e. running is ok, yoga is not) and requiring social distancing. While the mayors of those towns have said relaxed rules could be put back in place, theres also hope for additional restrictions to be lifted. (For example, on Friday, Carolina Beach announced it would allow fishing from the public beach strand starting Monday).

Its worth noting that some of the moves including the selective reopening of fishing piers in Wrightsville Beach and Kure Beach seem to pose some serious state constitutional issues.

Wilmington continued its State of Emergency (and will formally approve it on Tuesday), maintaining six of the nine additional restrictions initially imposed by the county in April. These include the closure of short-term rentals, motels, and hotels (except were in accordance with government efforts to provide emergency lodging and resource management). It also includes keeping public playgrounds and sports facilities (except golf, tennis, and pickleball) closed.

The updated state of emergency does allow for take-out food from restaurants, relaxing the curbside-only policy put in place in March.

Additionally, auto sales are allowed after considerable back-and-forth between the local dealers (backed by the statewide dealership lobby) and local leaders.

Much of the states plan for reopening is based on the best and latest data available but theres a great deal of uncertainty. It remains unclear what the diseases actual mortality rate is, how widespread it actually is right now, and perhaps most importantly whether or not those who get the disease develop lasting immunity (or any immunity at all).

Immunity is a spectrum, after all. With some viruses like Chickenpox humans develop lifelong immunity. With others like HIV theres nearly no protection at all. It remains unclear where SARS-CoV-2 lies on the spectrum (for a good overview,check out Scientific Americans article on the issue).

This uncertainty has led to speculation about whether there will be a second wave of Covid-19 in the fall of 2020. And, while recent polling by Meredith College indicated that three out of four North Carolinians supported Governor Coopers restrictions, its worth considering how many would be willing to go through another round of lock-downs and closures after just a few months.

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Covid-19 recap: Benchmarks, restrictions, and round two? - Port City Daily

Livingston County COVID-19 cases at 80 with 5 new cases confirmed Saturday – The Livingston County News

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

The Livingston County Department of Health reported five new positive cases of COVID-19 in Livingston County this morning.

The total number of positive cases the county has had is 80, with 34 of those cases active as of Saturday, according to the countys COVID-19 data tracking map.

The newest cases include a male in his 40s living in Mount Morris, a male in his 20s who resides in Mount Morris, a female in her 50s who resides in Geneseo, a male in his 70s who resides in Conesus, and a male infant living in North Dansville.

The individuals and any associated household members are now in the county Department of Health quarantine process, according to Jennifer Rodriguez, the countys public health director.

The county Department of Health has begun outreach to identify close contacts and potential exposure areas per prescribed New York State regulations, Rodriguez said.

The county has reported 33 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 13 days. The last day without a new case reported was April 18.

Rodriguez attributed the succession of positive cases to the increased testing the county has been able to conduct. More than 1,100 Livingston County residents have been tested for COVID-19, including nearly 50 on Friday. The results include 1,078 negative test results, and 80 positive tests.

COVID-19 testing is available for Livingston County residents at curbside testing locations in Dansville and Geneseo. The tests are to confirm the presence of the COVID-19 virus and are not an antibody test, which is a blood test that looks for antibodies that are created in your body after you have had COVID-19.

Individuals seeking a test will need to first call their primary care physician to get a requisition for a test. Individuals who do not have a healthcare provider, should call the Livingston County Department of Health at (585) 243-7270 to see if they meet the COVID-19 testing criteria.

Testing includes those with COVID-19 symptoms such as fever, cough or trouble breathing. Testing has also been expanded to include those who are considered essential healthcare workers and those without a fever, but having other respiratory ailments, or those who are vulnerable due to underlying health conditions.

COVID-19 testing in Livingston County has also been prioritized for individuals with or without symptoms who are employed as health care workers, first responders, or in any position within a nursing home, long-term care facility, or other congregate care setting.

Confirmed cases in Livingston County include 25 in Avon, including 13 at the Avon Nursing Home; 11 in Geneseo, 10 in Mount Morris, six in Nunda, five each in Caledonia, Livonia, North Dansville and York, four in Lima, three in Conesus, and one in Springwater.

The county has reported that 41 patients have recovered from the virus. These include eight each in Geneseo and Avon, five each in Mount Morris and Nunda, four in Livonia, three in North Dansville and York, two in Conesus, and one each in Caledonia, Lima and Springwater, according to the countys COVID-19 data tracking map.

The county has reported five deaths attributed to COVID-19.

The county updates its COVID-19 tracking map daily. To view it, click here.

If you have a fever, cough or trouble breathing, call your health care provider for an assessment of your symptoms.

If you feel as though you may have had exposure to COVID-19, call the county Department of Health at (585) 243-7270.

For general information on COVID-19 or to learn how to volunteer, call 1-877-280-6775.

Livingston County Mental Health has created a help line for community members who need someone to talk to during these stressful times. This is a free and confidential service. Call (585) 243-7251 Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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Livingston County COVID-19 cases at 80 with 5 new cases confirmed Saturday - The Livingston County News

Covid-19 in prisons and meatpacking plants shed a light on Americas moral failures – Vox.com

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

In 2010, the moral philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah made a list of practices that he believed people in the distant future will condemn our generation of humanity for, much as people in the 21st century almost universally condemn slavery or the denial of womens suffrage.

His four candidates were the American prison system, which cages about 2.3 million Americans at any given time; the exploitation of animals in factory farms; the abandonment of Americas elderly (and the elderly of many rich countries) in nursing homes; and environmental degradation.

My friend Avi Zenilman, a journalist turned nurse, sent me Appiahs piece a few weeks into the coronavirus pandemic, when Appiahs list started to read like a premonition. Excluding the environment climate change specifically, which has gotten a temporary respite as we do much less carbon emitting under quarantine Appiahs list doubles as a rundown of the most prominent and brutal vectors of Covid-19 in the US.

Coronavirus outbreaks have been reported at carceral facilities across the country, including pretrial detention centers like Rikers Island where most inmates have not yet been convicted of the offense with which theyre charged; one prison in Ohio reported that 78 percent of inmates tested positive. More humane states are releasing prisoners simply to avoid a medical catastrophe that feels inevitable if they stay caged.

The Tyson, Smithfield, and JBS meat production companies have shut down pork plants that collectively produce 15 percent of Americas pork due to coronavirus spread. Tysons CEO took out a full-page newspaper ad warning that the nations food supply is breaking down. Thats a ludicrous exaggeration (experts say the US isnt about to run out of food), but it is true that the factory farming industry is particularly vulnerable to Covid-19 and poses a pandemic risk generally.

Nursing homes for both older people and those with disabilities are likewise seeing widespread coronavirus outbreaks. The Washington Post analyzed news reports and state data releases and found that almost 1 in 10 nursing homes in the US have reported coronavirus cases. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that in the 23 states for which data exists, 27 percent of deaths from Covid-19 have occurred in nursing homes. In several states, like Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, most deaths have occurred in nursing homes.

Its not a coincidence that Covid-19 is foregrounding these institutions. This crisis has cast a spotlight on inequalities that have plagued American life for decades, and it is forcing us to look seriously at how we relate to one another. Social distancing has a way of clarifying social reality, and Americas social reality is one of haves and have-nots.

If I were more religious, I would say this feels like a biblical plague, a force beyond our control identifying our worst societal sins to get us to finally pay attention. But that would be incorrect, because in many ways the spread of this virus is within our control. That the coronavirus has ripped through the US via these vectors only underscores how complicit Americans have been in making ourselves more vulnerable to this disease.

What factory farms, prisons, and nursing homes have in common is that theyre warehousing efforts. They all involve placing people or animals into confined facilities where most of society doesnt have to think too hard about them anymore. They are institutions optimized for neglect.

Few people would likely be able to eat a Chicken McNugget if each order came with a photo of the tortured chickens who were killed to fulfill that order; but because that torture takes place behind closed doors, confined to a few big facilities in rural areas and staffed by invisible low-wage workers, people are free to forget about the actual chickens and the working conditions there and eat their nuggets in peace. Its no fluke that ag gag laws banning the dissemination of information about factory farms are one of the industrys main lobbying priorities. Big corporations know perfectly well what would happen if people actually paid attention.

Prisons enable governments to take people that civilian society doesnt want to deal with anymore and stash them out of sight so that average citizens can forget about them. That enables truly horrendous conditions. Groups of prisoners in Washington, DC, and Texas are so desperate that theyve sued for access to soap, cleaning supplies, and toilet paper amid the pandemic. On at least one unit, a closet full of cleaning supplies and clean rags is present, but residents are told they will be punished if they attempt to access or use those supplies to clean the unit, their own cells, or their hands and bodies, the DC lawsuit alleges.

These conditions are hardly new a one-ply-per day rationing of toilet paper and a ban on showering more than once a week were among the policies at Attica state prison in New York that sparked the 1971 prisoner takeover there. But this neglect is increasingly deadly in a pandemic.

Nursing homes are not necessarily an injustice, and there are plenty of valid reasons for families to place relatives there, or for residents to ask to be placed in homes. My family is no exception. But the same mechanisms through which nursing homes ease pressure on family caregivers make them places where widespread neglect is possible. Richard Mollot, an advocate for long-term care patients, notes that about one-third of Medicare beneficiaries admitted to nursing homes reported suffering some kind of harm within two weeks of entering the home.

These are the short-term residents for whom homes are paid the most and who are typically most able to articulate their concerns if something is wrong, Mollot writes. Where does that leave a majority of residents who are there long-term, most of whom are older, frail and cognitively impaired?

Warehousing leaves its victims vulnerable to Covid-19 through at least two mechanisms. First, it forces affected individuals into close proximity with one other including those maintaining the warehouse, like factory farm staff or prison guards or nursing home attendants. Its difficult to socially distance under those conditions.

But the second mechanism is subtler and arguably just as important. Warehousing fosters social inequality, and we know that social inequality kills.

Pandemics are times of scarcity. Tests are scarce, doctors and nurses are scarce, masks and gloves are scarce. And scarce goods tend to be distributed according to existing social inequalities, because those inequalities reflect varying levels of respect paid to various groups by governments, businesses, and other social decision-makers.

So it is with coronavirus. Its fairly well-known at this point that Covid-19 has disproportionately affected black Americans. Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that out of Covid-19 patients for whom race is known, 30 percent are African American, more than double African Americans share of the overall population.

Unauthorized immigrants in detention, or working close-proximity jobs at farms and as delivery staff, or just existing in the US without access to most of the social safety net, are uniquely vulnerable too, and not just in the US but in many rich countries. Many report fear of seeking out health care because of the risk that their status will be uncovered.

We see the same inequalities with factory farms, nursing homes, and prisons. Incarcerated people, especially ones locked up for violent offenses, have long suffered from politicians, and the publics, conviction that their past deeds make them undeserving of help. Thats especially true now, with grave consequences for both them and their guards.

Nursing home patients are victims not just of density but of a broader societal disregard toward older people and those with disabilities. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick famously suggested that Americans 70-plus should be willing to die to get the economy back running again.

Meanwhile, the Covid-19 outbreaks at factory farms arent among their animals but among their staffers and the staffers at meatpacking facilities, who are disproportionately black, Latino, and/or immigrants. Warehousing hurts the people enlisted to do the warehousing, too. (And, it should be noted, even though the coronavirus didnt originate in a factory farm, factory farms are a pretty big pandemic risk if not this pandemic, it may well be the next one.)

None of this is an accident. Social inequality, as the political theorist Judith Shklar taught us, fosters cruelty. In unequal societies, where one group of individuals is privileged in power above others, that power differential creates the social estrangement necessary for the powerful to treat the less powerful with cruelty.

But social equality can remedy social cruelty. If such social distances create the climate for cruelty, then a greater equality might be a remedy, she wrote. Even Machiavelli had known that one cannot rule ones equals with cruelty, but only ones inferior subjects.

Covid-19 is not simply a natural disaster. It is a brutal reminder of the consequences of inequality Shklar identified. And it is a reminder that things can be different. The US can shrink its prisons. It can create housing laws, social supports, and other structures that enable older people to live with their families whenever possible. It can abolish factory farming, for both the animals and the workers sakes.

Pandemics are social phenomena, and addressing pandemics requires attacking social inequalities head-on.

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Covid-19 in prisons and meatpacking plants shed a light on Americas moral failures - Vox.com

Antibody, Antigen And PCR Tests For COVID-19: Know The Differences : Shots – Health News – NPR

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

A COVID-19 antibody testing center is seen at Steve's 9th Street Market in Brooklyn on April 25. Here's a quick guide to sorting out the pluses and minuses to each type of test. Michael Nagle/Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images hide caption

A COVID-19 antibody testing center is seen at Steve's 9th Street Market in Brooklyn on April 25. Here's a quick guide to sorting out the pluses and minuses to each type of test.

Testing for the coronavirus has been very much in the news. The first and most urgent focus is on increasing access to tests to diagnose people with current infections. But now other tests are appearing as well. Antibody tests, which can identify people with signs of past infection, are starting to be available. And a third type of test is on the way.

Here's a quick guide to sorting out the pluses and minuses to each type of test.

What it does: Doctors use this test to diagnose people who are currently sick with COVID-19. This is the one we've been hearing so much about.

How it works: This test uses a sample of mucus typically taken from a person's nose or throat. The test may also work on saliva that's under investigation. It looks for the genetic material of the coronavirus. The test uses a technology called PCR (polymerase chain reaction), which greatly amplifies the viral genetic material if it is present. That material is detectable when a person is actively infected.

How accurate is it: Generally speaking, these are the most reliable tests. However, a few days may pass before the virus starts replicating in the throat and nose, so the test won't identify someone who has recently been infected. And swabs can sometimes fail to pick up signs of active infection.

How quick is it: These samples are generally sent to centralized labs for analysis, so it can take several days to get results back. Wait times were longer earlier in the pandemic because of a testing backlog. There are also two rapid PCR tests, which can be run on specialized equipment already widely distributed throughout the U.S. The speediest one, by Abbott Laboratories, can provide a result in 13 minutes, but one study suggests this test can miss more than 10% of cases.

What it does: Antibody tests identify people who have previously been infected with the coronavirus. They do not show whether a person is currently infected. This is primarily a good way to track the spread of the coronavirus through a population.

How it works: This is a blood test. It looks for antibodies to the coronavirus. Your body produces antibodies in response to an infectious agent such as a virus. These antibodies generally arise after four days to more than a week after infection, so they are not used to diagnose current disease.

How accurate is it: There are more than 120 antibody tests on the market. The Food and Drug Administration has allowed them to be marketed without FDA authorization, and quality is a great concern. A few tests have voluntarily submitted to extra FDA approval. Other tests are being validated by individual medical labs or university researchers.

In general, these tests aren't reliable enough for individuals to act based on the results. And researchers say, even if you were certain you had antibodies to the coronavirus, it's still unknown if that protects you from getting sick again. Still, these tests can provide good information about rates of infection in a community, where errors in an individual result have less impact.

How quick is it: These tests generally produce results in a few minutes, based on a drop of blood taken from the finger. Some research labs use a more sophisticated antibody test, called an Elisa (Enzyme-linked immunoassay) that are more accurate but are not as widely available.

What it does: This test identifies people who are currently infected with the coronavirus. It may be used as a quick test to detect active infections. Initially it will not be used to diagnose disease, but it may be used to screen people to identify those who need a more definitive test.

How it works: Antigen tests can identify virus in nose and throat secretions. It does this by looking for proteins on the surface of the virus (as opposed to the diagnostic test, which looks for genetic material that is carried inside the virus). This is the same technology used in your doctor's office for rapid strep testing.

How accurate is it: These tests are not yet on the market, so there is currently no information about their accuracy. Researchers do not expect it to be as accurate as the PCR diagnostic test, but it is possible they could be used to screen patients for infection. Dr. Jordan Laser, a lab director at Northwell Health, notes antigen testing is used for rapid strep tests, which are reliable, and rapid flu tests, which are not.

How quick is it: These tests should provide results in just a few minutes. As a result, they could be used to screen people in hospitals, certain workplaces, or in other instances where it's important to find out quickly whether someone is currently at risk of spreading the disease. But unless these tests are proven to be highly accurate, physicians would still need to follow up a positive result with a PCR test to make a medical diagnosis.

You can contact NPR science correspondent Richard Harris at rharris@npr.org.

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Antibody, Antigen And PCR Tests For COVID-19: Know The Differences : Shots - Health News - NPR

COVID-19 tests offered to diverse neighborhoods in Harrisonburg – WHSV

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

HARRISONBURG, Va. -- Harrisonburg partnered with the Virginia Department of Health and Sentara Healthcare to bring free COVID-19 testing to two diverse neighborhoods in the city.

100 tests total, administered on a first-come-first-served basis, was given at testing sites in the Mosby Court and Harris Gardens neighborhoods of the city.

To receive a test, Vice-Mayor Sal Romero said people needed to have at least one COVID-19 symptom, like cough, fever, shortness of breath, or diarrhea.

Tests were only given to one person per household.

Romero said they hope to bring more testing centers to locations across the city in the upcoming weeks.

"We're working very hard to ensure that we bring additional tests because we know that there are more people in our city who do lack the access to the tests, so we want to make sure that it's available to more people across the city," Romero said.

He said they not only brought coronavirus tests, but also educational materials about what COVID-19 is, what to do if you're sick, and prevention.

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COVID-19 tests offered to diverse neighborhoods in Harrisonburg - WHSV

Increased testing continues to push COVID-19 count higher – The Southern

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

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Gov. JB Pritzker says during a news conference Saturday in Chicago that the increased number of cases of COVID-19 in Illinois is directly a result of increased testing.

SPRINGFIELD Illinois COVID-19 confirmed case count grew by nearly 2,500 again Saturday as a sustained increase in testing continues to drive the number upward.

It really is a function of doing more testing, Gov. JB Pritzker said of the increased positive case count at his daily briefing on the virus Saturday.

There are now 58,505 confirmed cases in Illinois in 97 counties, including 2,559 deaths.

But the state reported another 15,208 test results, meaning about 16 percent of those resulted in positive cases. That number has gone down in recent weeks from a consistent appearance in the 20s to more frequently appearing in the teens. They had spiked, however, in the two days prior to Saturday.

There have been just less than 300,000 tests conducted in Illinois since the outbreak began, and the state has tested more than 10,000 residents daily for more than a week.

We're doing more and more testing, that is a very good thing, Pritzker said. It's a very good sign, because more testing leads us to be able to keep more people at home who may have come in contact with those people so that we can have fewer infections across the state rather than more.

There were also 105 more deaths related to the virus reported in the past 24 hours, and 4,717 COVID-19 patients were still hospitalized as of midnight Friday, according to Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike. There were 1,250 COVID-19 patients in intensive care beds and 789 on ventilators as of midnight as well, according to IDPH.

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Increased testing continues to push COVID-19 count higher - The Southern

Man and his daughter die of Covid-19 within days of each other – The Guardian

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

A woman has had to bury her daughter and husband within days of each other after both died from coronavirus.

Tributes were paid to former police officer and Red Cross director David Whincup, 79, and his daughter Joanne Rennison, 52, who both passed away after contracting the disease.

MP David Davis described Whincup, from Cottingham in east Yorkshire, as an utterly decent man. David was the kindest, most thoughtful and utterly decent man I have ever had the privilege to meet. He had a fantastic commitment to selfless public service. We shall all miss him greatly, he added.

Whincup, who lived with his wife, Margaret, their daughter Joanne and granddaughter Alice, said his greatest achievement was his family. He worked as a director for the Red Cross and prior to that he was a Humberside police officer for more than 30 years.

His charity work raised thousands of pounds for causes in Hull and East Yorkshire and he supported many other charities as a founder member of Haltemprice Lions club in 1973, serving as president four times and as secretary.

Rennison also became a Red Cross fundraising manager. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when she was 30, her family said the MS Society was always a focus in her fundraising efforts.

Tributes have also been paid to 25-year-old Nasro Ade a beautiful spirit. Her devastated family told how they had to say their final goodbyes on a video call as she lay in a hospital bed.

Ade, originally from Somalia, had kidney failure and died within 11 days of being diagnosed with the virus at St Georges hospital in Tooting, south London, last month.

Her sister Fartuun Ade, 23, said the family were unable to visit her before she passed away, and had to say their goodbyes via FaceTime.

Its been so difficult for family not to be with her and tell her how much we love her. Its been so hard to take in. But all this love we have been receiving from people all around the world, who were touched by Nasros story. It has brought comfort to our family, said Fartuun.

She added: Theres probably thousands of millions of families around the world experiencing the same thing. I pray for everyone, for their health, for their life. Nasro was a blessing to us and to so many she touched.

For one family there was relief after a 16-year-old girl managed to recover from the disease waking from a coma on her birthday.

Marisa Bappoo spent 21 days in Southampton childrens hospitals intensive care unit, much of the time on a ventilator, when she woke to find nurses had put up birthday banners, cards and pictures of her family.

She said: Mum and dad say the nurses were always holding my hand and stroking my head. They gave me massages and plaited my hair. I came round still attached to the ventilator.

I was frightened, but one of the nurses was there holding my hand to reassure me. I was amazed when I saw the happy birthday banner. Later they gave me loads of presents as if I was their daughter. Its something I will never forget.

Bappoo is among just a small number of children to have fallen seriously ill with the virus. Her father, Roshan, 48, a graphic designer from Basingstoke, said: Wed all been suffering from the virus and were recovering, but Marisa didnt.

She became very poorly. It was shocking to see her struggling to breathe. They were going to start to bring her round when she woke up by herself on her 16th birthday. We were elated. It was the best birthday present.

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Man and his daughter die of Covid-19 within days of each other - The Guardian

Congress is investigating cruise ship company Carnival over COVID-19 outbreaks – The Verge

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

Congress has opened a probe into Carnival Corporation, the operator of the Princess Cruises line of cruise ships, over its handling of COVID-19 outbreaks, according to a report from Bloomberg. Officials are now requesting Carnival turn over documents and communications about its coronavirus response and its plans for future improvement.

The investigation, led by the US House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, is specifically looking into how much Carnival executives were aware of the severity of the coronavirus outbreaks on its cruise ships and the lack of action it took during active cruises after being informed of the risks. More than 1,500 confirmed COVID-19 cases can be traced back to the company's cruise ships, and dozens of Carnival customers and crew members have since died from the virus.

The probe cites a damning Bloomberg feature story from writers Austin Carr and Chris Palmeri from last month that delves intricately into how Florida-based Carnival handled news of the COVID-19 outbreaks aboard nine of its ships. The story itself, which everyone should go read, is astonishing, featuring illuminating interviews with crew members and passengers and a lengthy sit-down with Carnival CEO Arnold Donald. It paints the picture of a company that, even in early March as the threat of the novel coronavirus become abundantly clear worldwide, did not take action fast enough to order its passengers into self-isolation and dock its cruise ships. Instead, many ships decided to let customers remain in extremely close contact with one another in swimming pools and in dining areas featuring buffets.

We would hope that the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic will place a renewed emphasis on public health and passenger safety, but frankly that has not been seen up to this point, wrote House member Peter DeFazio (D-OR) in the letter sent to Carnival announcing the investigation. It seems as though Carnival Corporation and its portfolio of nine cruise lines, which represents 109 cruise ships, is still trying to sell this cruise line fantasy and ignoring the public health threat.

Bloomberg reports that many of the customers who received refunds from Carnival were given the option to receive the credit for a future cruise, and Carnival in some cases sweetened the deal by giving out free vouchers as well. While the company suspended its cruises starting in March, some passengers and crew remain stuck on ships around the world. Our goal is the same as the committees goal, Carnival said in a statement to Bloomberg, to protect the health, safety and well-being of our guests and crew, along with compliance and environmental protection.

In addition to the House probe, Australian police last month launched a criminal investigation into how Carnival handled the docking of one of its Princess ships, the Ruby Princess, in Sydney on March 19th. The investigation is looking into whether Carnival officials misled Australian authorities about the COVID-19 outbreak aboard the ship, as Carnival customers at the time made up nearly one-third of all Australian deaths from the virus.

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Congress is investigating cruise ship company Carnival over COVID-19 outbreaks - The Verge

The effect of human mobility and control measures on the COVID-19 epidemic in China – Science Magazine

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

Tracing infection from mobility data

What sort of measures are required to contain the spread of severe acute respiratory syndromecoronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)? The rich data from the Open COVID-19 Data Working Group include the dates when people first reported symptoms, not just a positive test date. Using these data and real-time travel data from the internet services company Baidu, Kraemer et al. found that mobility statistics offered a precise record of the spread of SARS-CoV-2 among the cities of China at the start of 2020. The frequency of introductions from Wuhan were predictive of the size of the epidemic sparked in other provinces. However, once the virus had escaped Wuhan, strict local control measures such as social isolation and hygiene, rather than long-distance travel restrictions, played the largest part in controlling SARS-CoV-2 spread.

Science, this issue p. 493

The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak expanded rapidly throughout China. Major behavioral, clinical, and state interventions were undertaken to mitigate the epidemic and prevent the persistence of the virus in human populations in China and worldwide. It remains unclear how these unprecedented interventions, including travel restrictions, affected COVID-19 spread in China. We used real-time mobility data from Wuhan and detailed case data including travel history to elucidate the role of case importation in transmission in cities across China and to ascertain the impact of control measures. Early on, the spatial distribution of COVID-19 cases in China was explained well by human mobility data. After the implementation of control measures, this correlation dropped and growth rates became negative in most locations, although shifts in the demographics of reported cases were still indicative of local chains of transmission outside of Wuhan. This study shows that the drastic control measures implemented in China substantially mitigated the spread of COVID-19.

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread rapidly from its origin in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China (1). A range of interventions were implemented after the detection in late December 2019 of a cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown etiology and identification of the causative virus, severe acute respiratory syndromecoronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), in early January 2020 (2). Interventions include improved rates of diagnostic testing; clinical management; rapid isolation of suspected cases, confirmed cases, and contacts; and, most notably, restrictions on mobility (hereafter called cordon sanitaire) imposed on Wuhan city on 23 January 2020. Travel restrictions were subsequently imposed on 14 other cities across Hubei Province, and partial movement restrictions were enacted in many cities across China. Initial analysis suggests that the Wuhan cordon sanitaire resulted in an average 3-day delay of COVID-19 spread to other cities (3), but the full extent of the effect of the mobility restrictions and other types of interventions on transmission has not been examined quantitatively (46). Questions remain over how these interventions affected the spread of SARS-CoV-2 to locations outside of Wuhan. Here, we used real-time mobility data, crowdsourced line list data of cases with reported travel history, and timelines of reporting changes to identify early shifts in the epidemiological dynamics of the COVID-19 epidemic in China, from an epidemic driven by frequent importations to local transmission.

As of 1 March 2020, 79,986 cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in China (Fig. 1A) (7). Reports of cases in China were mostly restricted to Hubei until 23 January 2020 (81% of all cases), after which most provinces reported rapid increases in cases (Fig. 1A). We built a line list dataset from reported cases in China with information on travel history and demographic characteristics (8). We note that the majority of early cases (before 23 January 2020; see the materials and methods) reported outside of Wuhan had known travel history to Wuhan (57%) and were distributed across China (Fig. 1B), highlighting the importance of Wuhan as a major source of early cases. However, initial testing was focused mainly on travelers from Wuhan, potentially biasing estimates of travel-related infections upward (see the materials and methods). Among cases known to have traveled from Wuhan before 23 January 2020, the time from symptom onset to confirmation was 6.5 days (SD = 4.2 days; fig. S2), providing opportunity for onward transmission at the destination. More active surveillance reduced this interval to 4.8 days (SD = 3.03 days; fig. S2) for those who traveled after 23 January 2020.

(A) Epidemic curve of the COVID-19 outbreak in provinces in China. Bars indicate key dates: implementation of the cordon sanitaire of Wuhan (gray) and the end of the first incubation period after the travel restrictions (red). The black line represents the closure of the Wuhan seafood market on 1 January 2020. The width of each horizontal tube represents the number of reported cases in that province. (B) Map of COVID-19 confirmed cases (n = 554) that had reported travel history from Wuhan before travel restrictions were implemented on 23 January 2020. Colors of the lines indicate date of travel relative to the date of travel restrictions.

To identify accurately a time frame for evaluating early shifts in SARS-CoV-2 transmission in China, we first estimated from case data the average incubation period of COVID-19 infection [i.e., the duration between time of infection and symptom onset (9, 10)]. Because infection events are typically not observed directly, we estimated the incubation period from the span of exposure during which infection likely occurred. Using detailed information on 38 cases for whom both the dates of entry to and exit from Wuhan were known, we estimated the mean incubation period to be 5.1 days (SD = 3.0 days; fig. S1), similar to previous estimates from other data (11, 12). In subsequent analyses, we added an upper estimate of one incubation period (mean + 1 SD = 8 days) to the date of Wuhan shutdown to delineate the date before which cases recorded in other provinces might represent infections acquired in Hubei (i.e., 1 February 2020; Fig. 1A).

To understand whether the volume of travel within China could predict the epidemic outside of Wuhan, we analyzed real-time human mobility data from Baidu Inc., together with epidemiological data from each province (see the materials and methods). We investigated spatiotemporal disease spread to elucidate the relative contribution of Wuhan to transmission elsewhere and to evaluate how the cordon sanitaire may have affected it.

Among cases reported outside of Hubei province in our dataset, we observed 515 cases with known travel history to Wuhan and a symptom onset date before 31 January 2020, compared with only 39 cases after 31 January 2020, illustrating the effect of travel restrictions (Figs. 1B and 2A and fig. S3). We confirmed the expected decline of importation with real-time human mobility data from Baidu Inc. Movements of individuals out of Wuhan increased in the days before the Lunar New Year and the establishment of the cordon sanitaire, before rapidly decreasing to almost no movement (Fig. 2, A and B). The travel ban appears to have prevented travel into and out of Wuhan around the time of the Lunar New Year celebration (Fig. 2A) and likely reduced further dissemination of SARS-CoV-2 from Wuhan.

(A) Human mobility data extracted in real time from Baidu Inc. Travel restrictions from Wuhan and large-scale control measures started on 23 January 2020. Gray and red lines represent fluxes of human movements for 2019 and 2020, respectively. (B) Relative movements from Wuhan to other provinces in China. (C) Timeline of the correlation between daily incidence in Wuhan and incidence in all other provinces, weighted by human mobility.

To test the contribution of the epidemic in Wuhan to seeding epidemics elsewhere in China, we built a nave COVID-19 generalized linear model [GLM (13)] of daily case counts (see the materials and methods). We estimated the epidemic doubling time outside of Hubei to be 4.0 days (range across provinces, 3.6 to 5.0 days) and estimated the epidemic doubling time within Hubei to be 7.2 days, consistent with previous reports (5, 12, 14, 15). Our model predicted daily case counts across all provinces with relatively high accuracy (as measured with a pseudo-R2 from a negative binomial GLM) throughout early February 2020 and when accounting for human mobility (Fig. 2C and tables S1 and S2), consistent with an exploratory analysis (6).

We found that the magnitude of the early epidemic (total number of cases until 10 February 2020) outside of Wuhan was very well predicted by the volume of human movement out of Wuhan alone (R2 = 0.89 from a log-linear regression using cumulative cases; fig. S8). Therefore, cases exported from Wuhan before the cordon sanitaire appear to have contributed to initiating local chains of transmission, both in neighboring provinces (e.g., Henan) and in more distant provinces (e.g., Guangdong and Zhejiang) (Figs. 1A and 2B). Further, the frequency of introductions from Wuhan were also predictive of the size of the early epidemic in other provinces (controlling for population size) and thus the probability of large outbreaks (fig. S8).

After 1 February 2020 (corresponding to one mean + one SD incubation period after the cordon sanitaire and other interventions were implemented), the correlation of daily case counts and human mobility from Wuhan decreased (Fig. 2C), indicating that variability among locations in daily case counts was better explained by factors unrelated to human mobility, such as local public health response. This suggests that whereas travel restrictions may have reduced the flow of case importations from Wuhan, other local mitigation strategies aimed at halting local transmission increased in importance later.

We also estimated the growth rates of the epidemic in all other provinces (see the materials and methods). We found that all provinces outside of Hubei experienced faster growth rates between 9 January and 22 January 2020 (Fig. 3, A and B, and fig. S4b), which was the time before travel restrictions and substantial control measures were implemented (Fig. 3C and fig. S6); this was also apparent from the case counts by province (fig. S6). In the same period, variation in the growth rates is almost entirely explained by human movements from Wuhan (Fig. 3C and fig. S9), consistent with the theory of infectious disease spread in highly coupled metapopulations (16, 17). After the implementation of drastic control measures across the country, growth rates became negative (Fig. 3B), indicating that transmission was successfully mitigated. The correlation of growth rates and human mobility from Wuhan became negative; that is, provinces with larger mobility from Wuhan before the cordon sanitaire (but also larger number of cases overall) had more rapidly declining growth rates of daily case counts. This could be due partly to travel restrictions but also to the fact that control measures may have been more drastic in locations with larger outbreaks driven by local transmission (for more details, see Current role of imported cases in Chinese provinces section).

(A) Daily counts of cases in China. (B) Time series of province-level growth rates of the COVID-19 epidemic in China. Estimates of the growth rate were obtained by performing a time-series analysis using a mixed-effects model of lagged, log linear daily case counts in each province (see the materials and methods). Above the red line are positive growth rates and below are negative rates. Blue indicates dates before the implementation of the cordon sanitaire and green after. (C) Relationship between growth rate and human mobility at different times of the epidemic. Blue indicates before the implementation of the cordon sanitaire and green after.

The travel ban coincided with increased testing capacity across provinces in China. Therefore, an alternative hypothesis is that the observed epidemiological patterns outside of Wuhan were the result of increased testing capacity. We tested this hypothesis by including differences in testing capacity before and after the rollout of large-scale testing in China on 20 January 2020 [the date that COVID-19 became a class B notifiable disease (18, 19)] and determined the impact of this binary variable on the predictability of daily cases (see the materials and methods). We plotted the relative improvement in the prediction of our model (on the basis of normalized residual error) of (i) a model that includes daily mobility from Wuhan and (ii) a model that includes testing availability (for more details, see the materials and methods). Overall, the inclusion of mobility data from Wuhan produced an improvement in the models prediction [delta-Bayesian information criterion > 250 (20)] over a nave model that considers only autochthonous transmission with a doubling time of 2 to 8 days (Fig. 3B). Of the 27 provinces in China reporting cases through 6 February 2020, we found that the largest improvements in prediction for 12 provinces could be achieved using mobility only (fig. S5). In 10 provinces, both testing and mobility improved the models prediction, and in only one province (Hunan) was testing the most important factor improving model prediction (fig. S5). We conclude that laboratory testing during the early phase of the epidemic was critical; however, mobility out of Wuhan remained the main driver of spread before the cordon sanitaire. Large-scale molecular and serological data will be important to investigate further the exact magnitude of the impact of human mobility compared with other factors.

Because case counts outside of Wuhan have decreased (Fig. 3B), we can further investigate the current contribution of imported cases to local epidemics outside of Wuhan by investigating case characteristics. Age and sex distributions can reflect heterogeneities in the risk of infection within affected populations. To investigate meaningful shifts in the epidemiology of the COVID-19 outbreak through time, we examined age and sex data for cases from different periods of the outbreak and from individuals with and without travel from Wuhan. However, details of travel history exist for only a fraction of confirmed cases, and this information was particularly scant for some provinces (e.g., Zhejiang and Guangdong). Therefore, we grouped confirmed cases into four categories: (I) early cases (i.e., reported before 1 February 2020) with travel history, (II) early cases without travel history, (III) later cases (i.e., reported between 1 February and 10 February 2020) with travel history, and (IV) later cases without travel history.

Using crowdsourced case data, we found that cases with travel history (categories I and III) had similar median ages and sex ratios in both the early and later phases of the outbreak (age 41 versus 42 years; 50% interquartile interval: 32.75 versus 30.75 and 54.25 versus 53.5 years, respectively; P value > 0.1, 1.47 versus 1.45 males per female, respectively; Fig. 4D and fig. S7). Early cases with no information on travel history (category II) had a median age and sex ratio similar to those with known travel history (age 42 years; 50% interquartile interval: 30.5 to 49.5, P value > 0.1; 1.80 males per female; Fig. 4D). However, the sex ratio of later cases without reported travel history (category IV) shifted to ~1:1 (57 male versus 62 female, 2 test, P value < 0.01), as expected under a null hypothesis of equal transmission risk [Fig. 4, A, B, and D; see also (21, 22) and the materials and methods], and the median age in this group increased to 46 (50% interquartile interval: 34.25 to 58, t test: P value < 0.01; Fig. 4, A to C, and fig. S7). We hypothesize that many of the cases with no known travel history in the early phase were indeed travelers who contributed to disseminating SARS-CoV-2 outside of Wuhan. The shift toward more equal sex ratios and older ages in nontravelers after 31 January 2020 confirms the finding that epidemics outside of Wuhan were then driven by local transmission dynamics. The case definition changed to include cases without travel history to Wuhan after 23 January 2020 (see the materials and methods).

(A) Age and sex distributions of confirmed cases with known travel history to Wuhan. (B) Age and sex distributions of confirmed cases that had no travel history to Wuhan. (C) Median age for cases reported early (before 1 February) and those reported later (between 1 and 10 February). Full distributions are shown in fig. S7. (D) Change through time in the sex ratio of (i) all reported cases in China with no reported travel history, (ii) cases reported in Beijing without travel history, and (iii) cases known to have traveled from Wuhan.

Containment of respiratory infections is particularly difficult if they are characterized by relatively mild symptoms or transmission before the onset of symptoms (23, 24). Intensive control measures, including travel restrictions, have been implemented to limit the spread of COVID-19 in China. Here, we show that travel restrictions are particularly useful in the early stage of an outbreak when it is confined to a certain area that acts as a major source. However, travel restrictions may be less effective once the outbreak is more widespread. The combination of interventions implemented in China was clearly successful in mitigating spread and reducing local transmission of COVID-19, although in this work it was not possible to definitively determine the impact of each intervention. Much further work is required to determine how to balance optimally the expected positive effect on public health with the negative impact on freedom of movement, the economy, and society at large.

T. J. Hastie, D. Pregibon, Generalized linear models in Statistical Models in S, J. M. Chambers, T. J. Hastie, Eds. (Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole, 1992), pp. 195246.

M. J. Keeling, O. N. Bjrnstad, B. T. Grenfell, Metapopulation dynamics of infectious diseases in Ecology, Genetics and Evolution of Metapopulations, I. Hanski, O. E. Gaggiotti, Eds. (Elsevier, 2004), pp. 415445.

J. H. McDonald, Handbook of Biological Statistics (Sparky House, ed. 3, 2014).

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The effect of human mobility and control measures on the COVID-19 epidemic in China - Science Magazine

Recovered patients who tested positive for COVID-19 likely not reinfected – Livescience.com

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

More than 260 COVID-19 patients in South Korea tested positive for the coronavirus after having recovered, raising alarm that the virus might be capable of "reactivating" or infecting people more than once. But infectious disease experts now say both are unlikely.

Rather, the method used to detect the coronavirus, called polymerase chain reaction (PCR), cannot distinguish between genetic material (RNA or DNA) from infectious virus and the "dead" virus fragments that can linger in the body long after a person recovers, Dr. Oh Myoung-don, a Seoul National University Hospital doctor, said at a news briefing Thursday (April 30), according to The Korea Herald.

These tests "are very simple," said Carol Shoshkes Reiss, a professor of Biology and Neural Science at New York University, who was not involved in the testing. "Although somebody can recover and no longer be infectious, they may still have these little fragments of [inactive] viral RNA which turn out positive on those tests."

Related: 13 coronavirus myths busted by science

That's because once the virus has been vanquished, there is "all this garbage of broken-down cells that needs to be cleaned up," Reiss told Live Science, referring to the cellular corpses that were killed by the virus. Within that garbage are the fragmented remains of now non-infectious viral particles.

To determine whether or not someone is harboring infectious virus or has been reinfected with the virus, a completely different type of test would be needed, one that is not typically performed, Reiss said. Instead of testing the virus as it is, lab technicians would have to culture it, or place that virus in a lab dish under ideal conditions and see if it was capable of growing.

Patients in South Korea who re-tested positive had very little to no ability to spread the virus, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Korea Herald reported.

Reports of patients testing positive twice aren't limited to South Korea; they have also poured in from other countries, including China and Japan. But the general consensus in the scientific community with all the information available to date on the new coronavirus is that people aren't being reinfected, but rather falsely testing positive, Reiss said.

What's more, "the process in which COVID-19 produces a new virus takes place only in host cells and does not infiltrate the nucleus," or the very core of the cell, Oh said during the briefing, the Herald reported. Here's why: Some viruses, such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the chickenpox virus, can integrate themselves into the host genome by making their way into the nucleus of human cells, where they can stay latent for years and then "reactivate." But the coronavirus is not one of those viruses and instead it stays outside of the host cell's nucleus, before quickly bursting out and infiltrating the next cell, Reiss said.

"This means it does not cause chronic infection or recurrence," Oh said. In other words, it's highly unlikely that the coronavirus would reactivate in the body soon after infection, Reiss said.

But reinfection at some point is a theoretical possibility. "We don't know what's going to happen a year from now, nobody has that kind of crystal ball," Reiss said.

Reassuringly, the virus is currently undergoing very small genetic changes that are "too tiny" to evade the immune systems of people who have already been infected. The genetic changes would have to be substantial enough that a person's existing antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 would no longer work against a new strain. So far, that seems unlikely.

"If this virus remains as it is [with] really tiny changes then it's highly unlikely" that a person would be reinfected next year, Reiss added.

In the best-case scenario, which Reiss thinks is likely, the virus will behave like the virus that causes chickenpox, "imprinting" on the host immune memory. Then, even if antibody levels drop over time, people will retain a population of memory cells that can rapidly boost production of more antibodies if they are exposed to the virus again, Reiss said. Of course, this is still an "assumption," and it will be some time before we can fully understand the strength of the army the immune system creates against this virus and whether that army's protection is long-lasting.

Editor's Note: This article was updated on May 2 to clarify the names of those quoted.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Recovered patients who tested positive for COVID-19 likely not reinfected - Livescience.com

After Covid-19: How will a socially distanced high street actually work? – The Guardian

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

Britains once bustling high streets are now eerily quiet, with all non-essential shops closed and thousands of staff furloughed. Many may never reopen as the lockdown accelerates shifts to online shopping, while others will have to find ways to adapt to a radically different retail world of long-term social distancing rules and nervous customers afraid of catching the virus.

The British Independent Retailers Association warned last week that one fifth of their members might close for good if footfall is low. Yet some of the big non-food retailers such as Homebase and B&Q are starting to reopen stores, and the British Retail Consortium has issued guidance on how non-essential shops could trade while keeping customers and staff safe.

The Observer spoke to five shop owners on one British high street to find out how they are faring and what the future holds for their businesses.

Hairdresser Anne Murray misses her regulars and the small intimacies that are shared during haircuts at her usually busy salon on Wares High Street. People really open up to you, she says from her home in the Hertfordshire commuter-belt town. Were like secondary counsellors.

Her salon, Mint, has been closed since the lockdown was announced at the end of March. She has been able to furlough the other hairdresser she employs and is planning to use a 10,000 cash grant to pay her bills. But she worries she might be one of the last shops to reopen as hairdressers will struggle to comply with social distancing rules, which are likely to stay in place until at least the end of the year. When you cut someones hair, you are rarely face to face, she says. But the physical proximity makes it hard. It is impossible to stay two metres away.

Murray, 37, would consider wearing PPE if it was made available to shop workers. I would definitely do that in order to protect other people and myself, she adds. But hairdressing is quite a personal service and so it would be very odd.

However, an extended closure could potentially put the salon at risk. I cant think of many businesses that could survive for that long unless they are online, she says. It makes me feel sad and anxious. In my household, it is a major source of income. My salon brings in more than my husbands business.

She sometimes walks down the High Street during her exercise and wonders how it will look after the coronavirus crisis is over: Its eerie and so quiet. I go past the other shops and cant help thinking which ones will and wont survive.

Al Bramley is getting ready for the phone to start ringing with takeaway orders in the Mexican restaurant he launched with his business partner, Brett Cahill-Moreno, in September.

People tend to do their own stuff at the start of the week and then treat themselves at weekend. Theres a lot of Zoom parties and quizzes and they tend to buy takeaways for those occasions, he says taking a quick break, while two chefs prep food in the kitchen.

Before the lockdown, the restaurant was packed with diners. Now the tables and chairs are stacked up against the walls. Bramley, 50, and Cahill-Moreno, 47, closed completely for two weeks, with all 10 staff furloughed. But last month they brought back two chefs and two front-of-house staff to provide takeaway meals. Weve had to adapt and change the way we do things, says Bramley.

Last weekend, they had 140 orders and they are hoping to expand beyond Ware. They have even launched an app to speed up ordering: It went live last week and weve had 650 downloads already.

However, their turnover has halved and they will only be able to keep going if they can secure a long-term rent reduction. We are going to have to renegotiate our rent with our landlord, Bramley says. I havent had that conversation yet, but its coming.

Bramley has been thinking hard about how he could lay out the tables in the restaurant to keep diners and staff two metres apart. We could do about 25 covers inside. And if the sun is shining, we could do another 30 covers outside, he says. With the takeaway market and a rent reduction, we could just about survive.

The tiny Book Nook on Wares High Street had not even been open a year before it was forced to shut. The owner Julia Chesterman, 49, had to mark the anniversary with a cup of tea and slice of cake in an empty shop. I sat down with the bookshop cat and I had a tear in my eye, she says. In a year we have become a little community hub and achieved so much.

Chesterman initially tried delivering books but it wasnt practical. I was taking telephone orders and leaving books on peoples doorsteps but to be honest I wasnt getting enough orders, she says. In the end she closed completely and furloughed herself.

Even though the shop is quite narrow, Chesterman is confident she could reopen safely. She would probably only need to limit the number of customers on a Saturday morning, when lots of people come in for tea and cake. We never really get overwhelmed, she adds.

Chesterman, who used to work for the library service, is not especially worried about reduced footfall. Bookselling can be quite challenging, she says. Im not in this business to make a massive profit. I just want to do something that I love and be part of the community.

The last time estate agent Jake Shropshire, 49, was in Wares branch of Jonathan Hunt was in March. I was able to rescue my telephone and computer, he says.

Since then the usual buying and selling of property has almost ground to a halt. Theres been no property viewings, he says. It has all stopped.

Shropshire is trying to keep existing house sales on track. We are nursing along sales as best we can, but 60% of the lawyers we deal with have been furloughed so there are challenges.

There are buyers stuck in property chains containing vulnerable individuals. We have one where a person is shielding so everyone else in that chain will have to wait, says Shropshire.

A few are moving, however. He is giving the keys to the buyers of a derelict Grade II-listed house this weekend. There is no crossover of people. There is no danger of contamination, he says. Im just going to leave the keys on their doorstep, ring the bell and run off.

While he can ride out rest of the lockdown, Shropshire has some concerns about reopening. Staff will need to be paid but it will take a while for new houses to be marketed and sold. Our income is not instantaneous. Its going to be three months at best before any money comes in, he says. Thats going to be the tough part.

Cathy Emmerson, 53, decided to close her card shop the day before Boris Johnson announced a national lockdown. We closed at the end of Mothers Day, she says. Ive got four members of staff and I didnt feel comfortable asking them to come to work.

It might be difficult to maintain social distancing when the shop eventually reopens as it is not much bigger than a living room. We deal with people directly. The elderly like us to read cards to them. Staff need to move around the shop too, she says.

Nonetheless, she is confident she will find a way to comply. If we have to put up a sign saying two customers only we will, she says. Its a card and greetings shop. It only gets busy on Saturday and around occasions.

She worries more about the market for party products. Im hoping people will want balloons to party but how much socialising will we be allowed to do? Some of our business came from people going out for meals and having drinks at parties. But the greetings card side will definitely remain because people like to send a card.

After Covid-19: How will a socially distanced high street actually work? - The Guardian

Stroke and coronavirus: Blood clotting is a new Covid-19 mystery – Vox.com

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

As more people around the world are infected with Covid-19, were learning that the novel coronavirus can not only cause severe respiratory illness, but also can attack just about every major organ system in the body. And lately doctors have been sounding the alarm about a disturbing new outcome: blood clots and strokes, which are striking even healthy young people with no known risk factors and sometimes no other symptom of the virus.

An April 28 report in the New England Journal of Medicine details the cases of five people, ages 33 to 49, in New York City who had strokes and subsequently tested positive for Covid-19. All of them had large-vessel strokes outside of the hospital before experiencing other severe symptoms of the virus; one of them has since died.

It was very surprising to see the increase in this large-vessel stroke in young people, Thomas Oxley, a neurosurgeon at Mount Sinai in New York and a coauthor of the new report, tells Vox. As he explains, The bigger the vessel, the bigger the stroke.

Its the biggest story emerging about Covid-19, he adds. The rate of large-vessel stroke victims under 50 they saw was seven times higher than before the pandemic.

Blood clots are also causing other unexpected problems for Covid-19 patients. For example, Broadway actor Nick Cordero, who has been hospitalized since March with severe Covid-19, had his right leg amputated earlier this month after doctors were unable to control clotting there.

And many patients are developing small clots in their lungs, reducing the amount of oxygen they can move into their bodies. For others, their blood is clogging dialysis machines (which has been a problem due to the amount of kidney failure this illness is also causing).

Im a hematologist, and this is unprecedented, says Jeffrey Laurence of Weill Cornell Medical College, who has been in the field for three decades. This is not like a disease weve seen before.

Nearly every patient he has seen for blood disorders in the past month and a half has had Covid-19. Ive never had so many consults in my life. These people are clotting, and we cant shut it off.

Doctors and researchers are racing to figure out why this is happening, and how they might be able to best use existing therapies, such as blood thinners, to mitigate it in patients. The clots and strokes also add to the list of potential symptoms some people with Covid-19 might experience early on and gives another possible reason that the number of coronavirus-related deaths around the country is looking far larger than those officially being counted in hospitals.

When we get injured, we depend on our bloods ability to clot to stop the flow of blood. Clotting is a complex process that involves small cell fragments called platelets congregating and changing shape, proteins that help even more cells bind together, and the secretion of substances called blood clotting factors. If any of these processes go off course, people can experience excessive bleeding, which can be life-threatening.

On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes clots form inside blood vessels (more rarely, in arteries) without an injury. These can cause serious harm and sometimes death. There are many risk factors for developing internal blood clots, including smoking, obesity, heart disease, and others. And, now, it looks like Covid-19 is a risk factor as well.

Some clots remain in the place where they form and are known as thrombosis. This can cause severe pain and swelling. These clots can also travel to or form in a major organ, where they can do even more serious damage.

For example, a clot in the leg can travel up to the lungs, cutting off blood flow and causing a pulmonary embolism (which can lead to death or permanent lung damage). A clot can also flow to the heart, triggering a heart attack. And one in or near the head can block blood flow in part of the brain, bringing on a stroke.

Small early studies and case reports about the link between the novel coronavirus and blood clots are now pouring in. For example, one team in the Netherlands followed 184 severe Covid-19 patients who were receiving treatment in three different intensive care units. They found that 31 percent of these people had some sort of blood clotting issue, a percentage they call remarkably high.

Other data is emerging with similar implications. In patients with severe disease, various forms of blood clots are estimated to occur in 15-35 percent of patients, Behnood Bikdeli, a cardiology fellow at Columbia University Medical Center, tells Vox. And these clots, especially the small ones, could impact the illness severity and involvement of many of the organs, he says. (He and an international team of dozens of researchers published an April review of clotting issues in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.)

Laurence has been studying small blood clots in HIV/AIDS patients for decades. In March, a dermatologist sent him a photo of surprising skin lesions on a young man who was severely ill with Covid-19. Laurence was stunned. Its a picture of microvascular clotting, where you can see exactly where the vessels have clotted, he says. He started wondering if something similar might be happening in the lungs.

Just hours later, another doctor called, giving him access to an autopsy of a different Covid-19 patient. Not only did this individual have small clots in the skin but also in his lungs. (Laurence and his colleagues published descriptions of these and three other cases of severe clotting in an April Translational Research paper.)

The presence of small clots in the lungs is disturbing, but it also might help to explain a puzzling trend medical staff have noticed in some Covid-19 patients. When people develop more advanced illness, their lungs can become stiff, making breathing on their own very difficult. This leads to a drop in blood oxygen if they are not on mechanical ventilation.

But health care workers have seen many patients with low oxygen levels but who still have fairly flexible lungs, Laurence explains. This points to the presence of microvessel clots [in the lungs] shutting off the ability of people to bring oxygen into their blood, he says. (He also noted that sustained time on a ventilator can, itself, increase lung stiffness, which could have been throwing off clinicians who were seeing that as an outcome of the illness, and perhaps along the way missing signs that something else was going on.)

Laurence also describes the multitude of people sick with Covid-19 whose blood clots are plugging up the dialysis machines in their wards. Beyond that, he says, even as the nurses are drawing their blood, its clotting in the tubes, and theyre on full doses of Heparin and other blood-thinning medications. Everyone is seeing a similar kind of thing, he says.

These observations also bear out in autopsies.

A team of Chinese researchers that looked at 183 people hospitalized with Covid-19 pneumonia in Wuhan, China, found evidence of clotting in 71 percent of those who died but less than 1 percent of those who didnt. (Notably, this paper was published early in the pandemic, in February.)

The prevalence of blood clots also raises the question of whether some stroke or heart attack home deaths in recent months were actually linked to Covid-19. Its yet another possible way Covid-19 fatalities might be being undercounted. Many people who have already died are not currently tested for Covid-19 (often in the interest of preserving tests for those who are still alive). But more widespread posthumous testing could help clarify the full impact of this disease.

Scientists still dont understand exactly what is triggering this excessive blood clotting. (Some viruses, such as the Ebola virus, cause extreme bleeding, but others, such as HIV, can trigger small clots.) And its not yet clear if these changes in the blood are from the virus itself or the bodys immune response to the infection.

One of the hypotheses has to do with how the virus gains entry to our cells. Researchers have found that this coronavirus manages to sneak into our cells via a specific type of receptor known as ACE2. These are prominently found in the lungs, which might explain why so much of the viruss damage has been centered there. But ACE2 receptors are also very common along the walls of blood vessels throughout the body, Oxley explains. So its possible that its presence there is spurring additional inflammation of the vessels, prompting the formation of blood clots.

Laurence also points to this inflammatory problem. It is this insidious feedback loop of inflammation, he says. And once its going, he says, you cant intervene in that system effectively.

To be sure, sustained immobility, such as in a hospital bed, can increase the risk for blood clots, but the rates currently being reported in Covid-19 patients is way above what would normally be expected, Laurence notes.

With the new evidence about this viruss potential effect on the blood, doctors at many major medical facilities have begun administering low doses of preventative blood thinners to Covid-19 patients.

Its a tricky move, though, because too much blood thinner can cause a patient to bleed internally and possibly die. To gauge the best doses, many physicians are going off of a patients D-dimer levels, which is a biomarker for the presence of blood clots. New clinical trials have quickly spun up (including a multi-state one in the US to test one type of powerful blood thinners, known as tPA (tissue plasminogen activator) in Covid-19 patients, as STAT News reports). And Bikdeli and others have formed an international collective to provide interim consensus-based guidance, he says. What is needed most is high-quality data.

But these preventive treatments wont help those whove had strokes or other major blood-clot complications before receiving medical care. And that number, though still small, is real, as the five young stroke victims from New York City show.

The New England Journal of Medicine report included all stroke patients under 50 at the Mount Sinai health system in New York City during a two-week period in late March and early April. That this rate was nearly seven times the number of stroke patients in that age group during any average two-week period over the previous year indicates a very strong correlation between Covid-19 even mild and asymptomatic cases and the potential for major blood-clotting.

These patients were at home with mild or no symptoms who suddenly developed signs of stroke, Oxley says.

Some of these young patients had also been reluctant to seek medical attention even after fairly severe stroke symptoms. And it wasnt unreasonable for them not to be on the lookout for such a major neurological issue. These are people among the least likely statistically to have a stroke, J Mocco, a Mount Sinai neurosurgeon and coauthor of the report, told the Washington Post.

For example, the youngest, a 33-year-old woman, developed slurred speech and felt weak and numb on her left side for 28 hours before seeking help. She (as well as one other stroke patient in the study) was concerned about going to a hospital during the pandemic, the authors noted even though she had had a cough, headache, and chills for a week.

She is one of the lucky ones. She is the only one who has been able to start speaking again. After 10 days in the hospital to treat her blood clotting, she was discharged to a rehabilitation center.

There is also a question of how long the danger of Covid-19-related clotting lasts. Laurence notes that a lot of our cases, they went through their cough and fever, then all of a sudden, theres a stroke or a blood clot in their legs. For other patients, after having recovered from their primary Covid-19 symptoms, their difficulty of breathing came back, signaling that they have a pulmonary embolism in their lungs, he says. So people have to be vigilant to look for possible signs even after they feel like they have passed the worst of their illness.

Additionally, people at high risk for thrombotic events need to be vigilant, keep good hydration, and keep being active, especially during the period of social distancing and lockdown, Bikdeli says. This group includes people with a family history of blood clots or strokes, obesity, some cancer treatments and surgeries, pregnancy, some birth control methods, and others.

But major strokes can be treatable, Oxley notes. Its just a question of timing. For best results treatment must begin within six hours of stroke. As he told the Washington Post, the message we are trying to get out is if you have symptoms of stroke, you need to call the ambulance.

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Stroke and coronavirus: Blood clotting is a new Covid-19 mystery - Vox.com

Where The Latest COVID-19 Models Think We’re Headed And Why They Disagree – FiveThirtyEight

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

Models predicting the potential spread of the COVID-19 pandemic have become a fixture of American life. Yet each model tells a different story about the devastation to come, making it hard to know which one is right. But COVID-19 models arent made to be unquestioned oracles. Theyre not trying to tell us one precise future, but rather the range of possibilities given the facts on the ground.

One of their more sober tasks is predicting the number of Americans who will die due to COVID-19. FiveThirtyEight with the help of the Reich Lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has assembled six models published by infectious disease researchers to illustrate possible trajectories of the pandemics death toll. In doing so, we hope to make them more accessible, as well as highlight how the assumptions underlying the models can lead to vastly different estimates. Here are the models U.S. fatality projections for the coming weeks.

See forecasts from

TodayMay 1April 21April 14April 7

Forecasts like these are useful because they help us understand the most likely outcomes as well as best- and worst-case possibilities and they can help policymakers make decisions that can lead us closer to those best-case outcomes.

And looking at multiple models is better than looking at just one because it's difficult to know which model will match reality the closest. Even when models disagree, understanding why they are different can give us valuable insight.

Each model makes different assumptions about properties of the novel coronavirus, such as how infectious it is and the rate at which people die once infected. They also use different types of math behind the scenes to make their projections. And perhaps most importantly, they make different assumptions about the amount of contact we should expect between people in the near future.

Understanding the underlying assumptions that each model is currently using can help us understand why some forecasts are more optimistic or pessimistic than others.

Below are individual forecasts for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

See forecasts from

Forecasts from

TodayMay 1April 21April 14April 7

Scroll to a state

AllAlabamaAlaskaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareDistrict of ColumbiaFloridaGeorgiaHawaiiIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew MexicoNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaOhioOklahomaOregonPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasUtahVermontVirginiaWashingtonWest VirginiaWisconsinWyoming

Show models

AllColumbia Univ.IHMELos AlamosMITNortheastern Univ.Univ. of Texas

288deathsas ofMay 2

9deaths

330deaths

72deaths

2,180deaths

832deaths

2,436deaths

168deaths

240deaths

1,364deaths

1,177deaths

16deaths

64deaths

2,559deaths

1,115deaths

175deaths

142deaths

248deaths

1,993deaths

56deaths

1,251deaths

3,846deaths

4,021deaths

394deaths

291deaths

376deaths

16deaths

73deaths

255deaths

84deaths

7,742deaths

138deaths

24,198deaths

431deaths

24deaths

1,022deaths

238deaths

109deaths

2,695deaths

296deaths

267deaths

21deaths

209deaths

863deaths

49deaths

51deaths

617deaths

830deaths

48deaths

334deaths

7deaths

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Where The Latest COVID-19 Models Think We're Headed And Why They Disagree - FiveThirtyEight

COVID-19: France wants people to ride their bikes instead of public transport – World Economic Forum

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

As Albert Einstein wrote to his son Eduard, in 1930: Life is like riding a bicycle, to keep your balance, you must keep moving.

In todays coronavirus pandemic, world leaders are looking for ways to get people out of lockdown and the economy moving again, while also balancing the impact on public health and the environment.

In France, the bicycle could play a key role in that, as the government plans to encourage people to cycle more after the lockdown measures are eased, to keep pollution levels down and people safe.

"We want this period to take a step forward in cycling culture, and that the bicycle is the little queen of deconfinement in a way," the Minister for Ecological Transition lisabeth Borne said.

The $22 million scheme involves allowing people to have repairs at registered bike shops of up to $55, as well as paying for training and temporary parking spaces.

Its hoped that people will switch to pedal power rather than driving for short journeys, with the ministry noting that 60% of "trips made in France in normal times are less than 5 kilometres".

The move comes after France announced tentative measures to ease lockdown from 11 May, including the gradual reopening of schools, non-essential shops and markets.

Face masks will have to be worn on public transport, including all trains and the metro in Paris.

The capital city is also banning private cars from one of its main streets, the Rue de Rivoli, along which lies the Louvre, famously housing the Mona Lisa.

Mayor Anne Hidalgo said: I would like there to be an axis dedicated exclusively to bikes and another reserved only for buses, taxis, emergency vehicles and craftsmen's vehicles, but not cars.

Its part of an existing plan to roll out more bike lanes across the city and around the country, to triple the rate of daily commutes taken on two wheels from 3% to 9% by 2024 - but its been accelerated because of the need to get people around safely as lockdown eases.

Around 48,000 people in France die prematurely each year due to air pollution, according to the Public Health France agency. But levels in Paris have dropped since the lockdown was introduced.

Were really witnessing an improvement in air quality, including pollutants responsible for global warming such as carbon dioxide, Karine Leger, head of the Airparif agency which monitors air quality in the greater Paris region, told Reuters.

Globally, its estimated that levels of harmful particulate matter have dropped by up to 60% from the previous year in cities around the world, based on a three-week lockdown.

A new strain of Coronavirus, COVID 19, is spreading around the world, causing deaths and major disruption to the global economy.

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

The Forum has created the COVID Action Platform, a global platform to convene the business community for collective action, protect peoples livelihoods and facilitate business continuity, and mobilize support for the COVID-19 response. The platform is created with the support of the World Health Organization and is open to all businesses and industry groups, as well as other stakeholders, aiming to integrate and inform joint action.

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

Post-lockdown public transport

The World Health Organization recommends walking or cycling to help social distancing.

Image: WHO

Around the world, public transport is starting to move again, but new measures are being introduced to ensure passenger safety.

In Germany, where lockdown measures have already been lifted, its now mandatory to wear facemasks on public transport.

The European cities Milan and Brussels are increasing the number of cycle lanes to give people alternatives to using public transport.

When Wuhan, the city where the COVID-19 pandemic started, reopened trains and bus networks at the end of March, strict measures were in place, including social distancing, temperatures being taken, and passengers scanning a QR code to enable them to go through the gates.

In the UK, a report seen by the BBC from the London Strategic Coordination Group warns that the London Underground could be overwhelmed by demand if social distancing rules stay in place once lockdown is lifted.

The 2m social distance would mean capacity dropped to just 15% of normal levels on the Tube - and 12% on buses.

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World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

COVID-19: France wants people to ride their bikes instead of public transport - World Economic Forum

Let’s hear scientists with different Covid-19 views, not attack them – STAT

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

When major decisions must be made amid high scientific uncertainty, as is the case with Covid-19, we cant afford to silence or demonize professional colleagues with heterodox views. Even worse, we cant allow questions of science, medicine, and public health to become captives of tribalized politics. Today, more than ever, we need vigorous academic debate.

To be clear, Americans have no obligation to take every scientists idea seriously. Misinformation about Covid-19 is abundant. From snake-oil cures to conspiracy theories about the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease, the internet is awash with baseless, often harmful ideas. We denounce these: Some ideas and people can and should be dismissed.

At the same time, we are concerned by a chilling attitude among some scholars and academics, who are wrongly ascribing legitimate disagreements about Covid-19 to ignorance or to questionable political or other motivations.

A case in point involves the response to John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, who was thrust into the spotlight after writing a provocative article in STAT on Covid-19. He argued in mid-March that we didnt have enough information on the prevalence of Covid-19 and the consequences of the infection on a population basis to justify the most extreme lockdown measures which, he hypothesized, could have dangerous consequences of their own.

We have followed the dialogue about his article from fellow academics on social media, and been concerned with personal attacks and general disparaging comments. While neither of us shares all of Ioannidis views on Covid-19, we both believe his voice and those of other legitimate scientists is important to consider, even when we ultimately disagree with some of his specific analyses or predictions.

We are two academic physicians with different career interests who sometimes disagree on substantive issues. But we share the view that vigorous debate is fundamental to the existence of universities, where individuals with different ideas who have a commitment to reason compete to persuade others based on evidence, data, and reason. Now is the time to foster not stifle open dialogue among academic physicians and scientists about the current pandemic and the best tactical responses to it, each of which involve enormous trade-offs and unanticipated consequences.

Since Covid-19 first emerged at the end of 2019, thousands of superb scientists have been working to answer fundamental, vital, and unprecedented questions. How fast does the virus spread if left unabated? How lethal is it? How many people have already had it? If so, are they now immune? What drugs can fight it? What can societies do to slow it? What happens when we selectively evolve and relax our public health interventions? Can we develop a vaccine to stop it? Should governments mandate universal cloth masks?

For each of these questions, there are emerging answers and we tend to share the consensus views: Without social distancing, Covid-19 would be a cataclysmic problem and millions would die. The best current estimate of infection fatality rates may be between 0.4% and 1.5%, varying substantially among age groups and populations. Some fraction of the population has already been infected by SARS-CoV-2 and cleared the virus. For reasons that arent yet totally clear, rates of infection have been much higher in Lombardy, Italy, and New York City than in Alaska and San Francisco. To date no drug has shown to be beneficial in randomized trials the gold standard of medicine. And scientists agree that it will likely take 18 months or longer to develop a vaccine, if one ever succeeds. As for cloth masks, we see arguments on both sides.

At the same time, academics must be able to express a broad range of interpretations and opinions. Some argue the fatality rate will be closer to 0.2% or 0.3% when we look back on this at a distance; others believe it will approach or eclipse 1%. Some believe that nations like Sweden, which instituted social distancing but with fewer lockdown restrictions, are pursuing the wisest course at least for that country while others favor the strictest lockdown measures possible. We think it is important to hear, consider, and debate these views without ad hominem attacks or animus.

Covid-19 has toppled a branching chain of dominoes that will affect health and survival in myriad ways. Health care is facing unprecedented disruption. Some consequences, like missed heart attack treatment, have more immediate effects while others, like poorer health through economic damage, are no less certain but their magnitude wont immediately become evident. It will take years, and the work of many scientists, to make sense of the full effects of Covid-19 and our responses to it.

When the dust settles, few if any scientists no matter where they work and whatever their academic titles will have been 100% correct about the effects of Covid-19 and our responses to it. Acknowledging this fact does not require policy paralysis by local and national governments, which must take decisive action despite uncertainty. But admitting this truth requires willingness to listen to and consider ideas, even many that most initially consider totally wrong.

A plausible objection to the argument we are making that opposing ideas need to be heard is that, by giving false equivalence to incorrect ideas, lives may be lost. Scientists who are incorrect or misguided, or who misinterpret data, might wrongly persuade others, causing more to die when salutatory actions are rejected or delayed. While we are sympathetic to this view, there are many uncertainties as to the best course of action. More lives may be lost by suppressing or ignoring alternate perspectives, some of which may at least in part ultimately prove correct.

Thats why we believe that the bar to stifling or ignoring academics who are willing to debate their alternative positions in public and in good faith must be very high. Since different states and nations are already making distinct choices, there exist many natural experiments to identify what helped, what hurt, and what in the end didnt matter.

We believe that the bar to stifling or ignoring academics who are willing to debate their alternative positions in public and in good faith must be very high.

Society faces a risk even more toxic and deadly than Covid-19: that the conduct of science becomes indistinguishable from politics. The tensions between the two policy poles of rapidly and systematically reopening society versus maximizing sheltering in place and social isolation must not be reduced to Republican and Democratic talking points, even as many media outlets promote such simplistic narratives.

These critical decisions should be influenced by scientific insights independent of political philosophies and party affiliations. They must be freely debated in the academic world without insult or malice to those with differing views. As always, it is essential to examine and disclose conflicts of interest and salient biases, but if none are apparent or clearly demonstrated, the temptation to speculate about malignant motivations must be resisted.

At this moment of massive uncertainty, with data and analyses shifting daily, honest disagreements among academic experts with different training, scientific backgrounds, and perspectives are both unavoidable and desirable. Its the job of policymakers, academics, and interested members of the public to consider differing point of views and decide, at each moment, the best courses of action. A minority view, even if it is ultimately mistaken, may beneficially temper excessive enthusiasm or insert needed caveats. This process, which reflects the scientific method and the culture that supports it, must be repeated tomorrow and the next day and the next.

Scientific consensus is important, but it isnt uncommon when some of the most important voices turn out to be those of independent thinkers, like John Ioannidis, whose views were initially doubted. Thats not an argument for prematurely accepting his contestable views, but it is a sound argument for keeping him, and others like him, at the table.

Vinay Prasad is a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor of medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University and author of Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People with Cancer (Johns Hopkins University Press, April 2020). Jeffrey Flier is an endocrinologist, professor of medicine, and former dean of Harvard Medical School.

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Let's hear scientists with different Covid-19 views, not attack them - STAT

Mick Jagger and Will Smith to perform in India Covid-19 concert – The Guardian

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

Mick Jagger and Will Smith will be among dozens of international and Indian celebrities performing from their homes in a four-hour concert to raise funds for the battle against coronavirus in India, where the number of cases is surging.

The countrys cricket captain Virat Kohli, actors Priyanka Chopra and Shah Rukh Khan are some of the top domestic names billed to perform or read messages during the event on Sunday.

The performances will be livestreamed by Facebook and will pay tribute to workers fighting the pandemic.

Organised by the Bollywood directors Karan Johar and Zoya Akhtar, the event is intended to raise millions of dollars for more than 100 groups providing food and other essential services during the crisis.

Concert organisers said the money was needed for those who have no work and no home and do not know where their next meal is coming from.

Indias 1.3 billion people have been in lockdown since 25 March. Restrictions have recently been eased, but they are expected to last until at least 17 May.

The shutdown has stranded millions of migrant workers in cities with little food or money. Special trains were organised on Saturday to help thousands of labourers finally return home.

India has so far reported 37,335 coronavirus cases and 1,218 deaths. More than 2,000 new infections were recorded in the last 24 hours. Experts fear a lack of testing and poor reporting procedures mean the death toll is much higher.

The government has announced a series of special activities to rally support for frontline workers. The Indian air force is to stage a flypast on Sunday and military helicopters will shower petals on hospitals caring for coronavirus patients. Warships will also put on a special display.

Other participants at the concert, called I For India, are reported to include Bryan Adams, Mindy Kaling, Jack Black and the Indian stars AR Rahman and Akshay Kumar.

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Mick Jagger and Will Smith to perform in India Covid-19 concert - The Guardian

Handful of armed protesters gather in Raleigh to promote free speech and gun rights – Winston-Salem Journal

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

On Friday, about a dozen demonstrators marched around the old Capitol in Raleigh. As many as six had visible firearms, the Associated Press reported, including one with a pistol and several with long guns. The group marched peacefully and left in the afternoon about two hours after marching.

The small group of protesters, most of them carrying guns, gathered first at a cemetery near downtown, the News & Observer of Raleigh reported.

One of the men in the group told the News & Observer he thought Gov. Roy Cooper's stay-home order was unconstitutional, although it was not completely clear what the people were protesting. A Facebook post calling for a rally said it was to promote free speech and gun rights, the Associated Press reported.

A group of mostly armed demonstrators march around downtown Raleigh on Friday.

People with weapons march across a street in Raleigh on Friday. About a dozen demonstrators marched Friday afternoon around the area of the Old Capitol, Legislative Building and Executive Mansion. Several had visible firearms. It was not immediately clear what specific issues they were protesting, as none carried signs. A Facebook post calling for a rally on Friday morning had said it was to promote Constitutional free speech and gun rights. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

People hold weapons stand on a street corner in Raleigh on Friday. About a dozen demonstrators marched Friday afternoon around the area of the Old Capitol, Legislative Building and Executive Mansion. Several had visible firearms. It was not immediately clear what specific issues they were protesting, as none carried signs. A Facebook post calling for a rally on Friday morning had said it was to promote constitutional free speech and gun rights. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

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Handful of armed protesters gather in Raleigh to promote free speech and gun rights - Winston-Salem Journal

How Can Anyone Argue With A Straight Face That China’s Approach To Speech Online Is Better Than The US’s During A Pandemic – Techdirt

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

from the authoritarian-nonsense dept

We've been writing a number of pieces lately about how incredibly dangerous China's internet censorship has been during COVID-19, from silencing medical professionals to hiding research results tod trying to ignore Taiwan's success in fighting COVID-19, it's shown a pretty clear pattern that Chinese internet censorship is literally killing people. This is not to say that the US government's response has been much better -- it's obviously been a disaster, but at least we have more free speech online and in the press, which is enabling all sorts of useful information to spread.

But you might not know that if you read this odd piece in the Atlantic by Jack Goldsmith and Andrew Keane Woods arguing that China has the right approach to handling free speech online during a pandemic, and the US has not. While the overall piece is, perhaps, a bit more thoughtful than the headline and tagline, it has moments that simply defy any sense of what's happening in the world.

In the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong. Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with a societys norms and values.

Again, this defies all evidence of what we've seen to date.

The piece, bizarrely, conflates pervasive digital surveillance with open free speech online:

Two events were wake-up calls. The first was Edward Snowdens revelations in 2013 about the astonishing extent of secret U.S. government monitoring of digital networks at home and abroad. The U.S. governments domestic surveillance is legally constrained, especially compared with what authoritarian states do. But this is much less true of private actors. Snowdens documents gave us a glimpse of the scale of surveillance of our lives by U.S. tech platforms, and made plain how the government accessed privately collected data to serve its national-security needs.

And that's got literally nothing to do with America's approach to free speech online.

The "second" wake up call does relate to speech, but perhaps not in the way the authors mean:

The second wake-up call was Russias interference in the 2016 election. As Barack Obama noted, the most consequential misinformation campaign in modern history was not particularly sophisticatedthis was not some elaborate, complicated espionage scheme. Russia used a simple phishing attack and a blunt and relatively limited social-media strategy to disrupt the legitimacy of the 2016 election and wreak still-ongoing havoc on the American political system. The episode showed how easily a foreign adversary could exploit the United States deep reliance on relatively unregulated digital networks. It also highlighted how legal limitations grounded in the First Amendment (freedom of speech and press) and the Fourth Amendment (privacy) make it hard for the U.S. government to identify, prevent, and respond to malicious cyber operations from abroad.

Yes, the Russians conducted a misinformation campaign -- but it still remains unclear how effective that was beyond at the margins (and, to be fair, in a close election, the margins can be meaningful). But that's hardly a reason to throw out the 1st Amendment. The 1st Amendment has also allowed there to be widespread discussion and debate about all of this, and has helped to get companies better situated to deal with and respond to disinformation campaigns. It has also allowed tons of people to be on the digital frontlines pointing out mis- and dis-information and working on responding to it to limit its impact. There will always be some and there will always be attempts to exploit it, but the idea that China's approach is better seems totally counterfactual to reality (or what plenty of people who have suffered from Chinese internet censorship will tell you).

Incredibly, the authors blame Section 230 for "the free for all" online... but then when they talk about the companies trying to combat disinfo just two paragraphs later, they somehow miraculously leave out the fact that it's Section 230 and the 1st Amendment that allow them to moderate the content on the platform:

Ten years ago, speech on the American Internet was a free-for-all. There was relatively little monitoring and censorshippublic or privateof what people posted, said, or did on Facebook, YouTube, and other sites. In part, this was due to the legal immunity that platforms enjoyed under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. And in part it was because the socially disruptive effects of digital networksvarious forms of weaponized speech and misinformationhad not yet emerged. As the networks became filled with bullying, harassment, child sexual exploitation, revenge porn, disinformation campaigns, digitally manipulated videos, and other forms of harmful content, private platforms faced growing pressure from governments and users to fix the problems.

[....]

After the 2016 election debacle, for example, the tech platforms took aggressive but still imperfect steps to fend off foreign adversaries. YouTube has an aggressive policy of removing what it deems to be deceptive practices and foreign-influence operations related to elections. It also makes judgments about and gives priority to what it calls authoritative voices. Facebook has deployed a multipronged strategy that includes removing fake accounts and eliminating or demoting inauthentic behavior. Twitter has a similar censorship policy aimed at platform manipulation originating from bad-faith actors located in countries outside of the US.

It's the American approach to free speech that makes this even possible.

Then the article argues that misinformation in the age of COVID-19 is something... new. And that it's so serious that perhaps we should change how we think about free speech:

What is different about speech regulation related to COVID-19 is the context: The problem is huge and the stakes are very high. But when the crisis is gone, there is no unregulated normal to return to. We liveand for several years, we have been livingin a world of serious and growing harms resulting from digital speech. Governments will not stop worrying about these harms. And private platforms will continue to expand their definition of offensive content, and will use algorithms to regulate it ever more closely. The general trend toward more speech control will not abate.

Note that they seem to be conflating a few things here. There is the US government's approach to speech (bound by the 1st Amendment, there are very few areas where speech may be limited), and there are internet companies' approaches to hosting speech upon their private platforms. And while those platforms are becoming more aggressive in cracking down on misinformation, there remain plenty of other platforms online that are chock full of misinformation as well. But that's got little to do with our laws (beyond the fact that, as noted above, the 1st Amendment enables platforms to decide for themselves how to handle these things).

But it seems odd for an article that suggests a governmental approach to stifling speech is a good idea literally days after the US President suggesting injecting disinfectant into people as a way to deal with COVID-19. It's not the internet that is the cause of misinformation, guys. And saying that government should crack down on misinformation isn't going to work when it's the head of state spouting off the misinformation, which is then broadcast live by TV networks.

The article then tries to tie free speech to surveillance, but I'm unclear why or how those two things are as connected as the article suggests they are. You can have one without the other -- yet the article continues to assume that if you want free speech, then you must have mass surveillance along with it. It uses the examples of Clearview AI and Ring as examples of greater surveillance, but those have little to nothing to do with the American approach to free speech.

The article all too glibly insists that private company data tracking is the "functional equivalent" of the infamous social score now used in China, without recognizing a number of fundamental differences -- with the largest being the fact that the social score in China is a government program and is used in all sorts of nefarious ways. Yes, the article argues that thanks to COVID-19 it's likely that the US government and companies will be more closely tied, but gives no reason to support that conclusion as inevitable:

Apple and google have told critics that their partnership will end once the pandemic subsides. Facebook has said that its aggressive censorship practices will cease when the crisis does. But when COVID-19 is behind us, we will still live in a world where private firms vacuum up huge amounts of personal data and collaborate with government officials who want access to that data. We will continue to opt in to private digital surveillance because of the benefits and conveniences that result. Firms and governments will continue to use the masses of collected data for various private and social ends.

The harms from digital speech will also continue to grow, as will speech controls on these networks. And invariably, government involvement will grow. At the moment, the private sector is making most of the important decisions, though often under government pressure. But as Zuckerberg has pleaded, the firms may not be able to regulate speech legitimately without heavier government guidance and involvement. It is also unclear whether, for example, the companies can adequately contain foreign misinformation and prevent digital tampering with voting mechanisms without more government surveillance.

The First and Fourth Amendments as currently interpreted, and the American aversion to excessive government-private-sector collaboration, have stood as barriers to greater government involvement. Americans understanding of these laws, and the cultural norms they spawned, will be tested as the social costs of a relatively open internet multiply.

COVID-19 is a window into these future struggles.

Perhaps. It will certainly be interesting to see where the future heads, but the idea that COVID-19 inevitably means that the US will be less speech protective in the future is far from the only possible path forward. And the idea that China somehow has the right idea has little support anywhere. The authors may be correct that the government will try to expand surveillance and limit speech, but that's been happening for years. COVID-19 changes little in that regard.

Filed Under: andrew keane woods, authoritarianism, censorship, content moderation, covid-19, free speech, freedom, internet, jack goldsmith, moderation, pandemic, surveillance

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How Can Anyone Argue With A Straight Face That China's Approach To Speech Online Is Better Than The US's During A Pandemic - Techdirt

Council ousts planner who said let coronavirus take the weak, old and homeless – Gazettextra

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Danzig

ANTIOCH, Calif. At a special meeting Friday night, the Antioch City Council unanimously removed Ken Turnage from the planning commission for declaring on social media that nature should take its course as the coronavirus kills the weak, the old and the homeless.

The impact of commissioner Turnages statements on his Facebook post have caused unnecessary damage during a time of extreme difficulty for this community and for the state and our nation as we deal with extreme consequences, loss of life, severe illness, economic fallout, Mayor Pro Tem Joy Motts said during the three-hour meeting, which drew about 100 public comments, most of them denouncing the planning commission chairmans views.

Turnage, 47, a local home contractor and former Antioch citizen of the year, recently wrote on his personal Facebook page that society should adopt a herd mentality, and although that means the weak, elderly, homeless and others would perish, the nation and planet would strengthen when this is all settled.

He also wrote that this virus is like a human version of a forest fire, a forest fire will burn through and burn off all the dead trees, old trees, fallen brush, and scrub shrub-sucklings that drain the resources of the forest and causing it to be unhealthy.

We would have significant loss of life, we would lose many elderly, that would reduce burdens in our defunct Social Security System, health care cost (once the wave subsided), make jobs available for others and it would also free up housing in which we are in dire need of, he added.

In a phone call to the council during the Zoom meeting, a defiant Turnage stood by his words, reiterating his belief in ecological balance, which he said he wrote about to spark debate.

My personal opinion had nothing to do with the city or my position on the planning commission, so to try to somehow link them or create a nexus to further your political agenda is shameful, Turnage told the council, adding his ouster would amount to a violation of First Amendment rights.

Being removed from the planning commission because my opinion is not liked or agreed with is not a fair reason to be removed, he said. In fact, in a country where we value free speech, it is unconscionable and sends a message that only like-minded people can serve this city.

When he finished speaking, several residents called in to express their opinions and officials read 92 emails into the record. The comments ranged from support for Turnages character and his right to free speech to comparing his viral post to Adolf Hitlers Mein Kampf.

Lucas Stuart Chilcote said that despite Turnages service to the community, that activism doesnt provide you a get-out-of-jail card for making such insensitive comments.

Leslie May called Turnages Facebook post unfathomable.

No, this is not the way of the world, she said. We are not sacrificial lambs or any of the negative connotations he alluded to. We are original offsprings of the pioneers of this nation.

Many of us have served in the military to protect the very land of the people who enjoy it now, whether young or old.

Mary Dunrose called Turnages views sociopathic and a lawsuit waiting to happen.

This is a person who helps promote senior housing, and he thinks all seniors should be dead, she said. He is not impartial he promotes discrimination.

Laura Gilbert wrote that Turnages musings bear a troubling resemblance to the sentiments espoused by the man my 94-year-old father fought to defeat in World War II. Letting remarks like these slide is how the unthinkable becomes possible.

Antioch homeless advocate Nichole Gardner wrote that Turnage and his supporters need to understand that this is not a freedom of speech issue. We should not have people calling to reopen the government so that we could allow nature to run its course and have people who have strong immunities go out and infect the weak, the poor, and the elderly so that they could die, while also representing those same individuals.

But Ron Zaragoza urged the council to let Turnage remain on the commission.

Society has become much too quick to demonize and punish each other, he wrote. We should not throw stones in the big glasshouse that we all live in together.

Retired police Chief Allan Cantando also supported Turnage, noting other council members have written questionable posts. Lets call it like it is its a critical attack, he said in a call to the council, suggesting the proposed removal was politically motivated.

(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

Longtime volunteers Beverly Knight and Michele Kuslits also defended Turnage, saying he has a right to freedom of speech.

But City Attorney Thomas Smith said freedom of speech wasnt the issue.

The focus is what is the reaction and impact that this speech has had on the residents of Antioch and the confidence and the trust in the government, Smith said. This has incited an impact and you as policymakers will have to determine what that impact is.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM)

Councilman Lamar Thorpe called the situation unfortunate before making a motion to remove the commissioner. This is sad for the entire community, he said, noting he had lost confidence in Turnages ability to lead.

Motts called the post absurd, adding that she has received emails from around the country about the viral posting.

It should be noticeably clear to all of us that the words you put out to the public, even on social media, can have grave consequences, she said.

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)

Councilwoman Monica Wilson, who had called for Turnages resignation Tuesday, simply reiterated that he must go.

Mayor Sean Wright, who had called for the special meeting after Turnage rejected his request to resign, got the last words in before the council voted.

City officials are held to a higher standard, he said. When our words as public servants undermine the citys overall position and cause the citizens to lose confidence in us especially in a pandemic when people are losing their lives and families are victims to illness its something that must be examined. The only way out of this crisis is to support one another with our words and our actions.

2020 East Bay Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.)

Visit the East Bay Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.) at http://www.eastbaytimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Council ousts planner who said let coronavirus take the weak, old and homeless - Gazettextra

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