Monthly Archives: May 2020

Moodys Analytics analyzed U.S. metro areas capabilities for a strong recovery post-coronavirus using two primary factors:population density and educational attainment.

The most dynamic recoveries may well bypass traditional powerhouses and take place instead in areas that [werent] poised to lead the way in 2020 before everything changed, wrote Adam Kamins, senior regional economist at Moodys Analytics.

The report examined the top 100 metro areas in the U.S. The metros poised to recover quickly based on the analysis included San Jose, California; Durham, North Carolina; Austin, Texas; Seattle; and Minneapolis.

These cities appear above the best-fit line in the regression analysis below, and lean towards the top left.

(Graphic: David Foster/Yahoo Finance)

Kamins believed that the twin factors of low population density and educational attainment were going to boost these metro areas.

A key difference between this recovery and the last recovery is the population density, he explained. It's going to have a different effect this time than it did last time.

During the Global Financial Crisis, the first place is out of the recession were big densely populated global cities, he explained. But this time, depending on the duration and the eventual outcome of the COVID-19 outbreak, Kamins believed that big densely populated cities are going to be viewed as inherently risky.

So some of the places that we're really looking at now would be places that have high degrees of educational attainment but are lower density [that] have grown very, very well over the last five or six years in particular, are pretty well positioned coming out of this whenever we do, he said.

A general view of the Duke University Chapel on the Duke University campus on March 4, 2016 in Durham, North Carolina. (Photo: Lance King/Getty Images)

Economies built around a major university, such as Durham, North Carolina, and Madison, Wisconsin, could enjoy a surge in growth in the years to come, Kamins wrote in his report.

At the same time, with the coronavirus pandemic putting pressure on colleges finances and with enrollment dropping, could that reliable ingredient to the recovery recipe be in peril?

You could see possibly where we get in a situation four or five years down the road where the pool of available first year workers that have recently graduated colleges is less than usual, Kamins said. But there's just hope at that point you're in a recovery or expansion anyway, and it just creates more labor market tightness, especially at the entry level.

Denver, Salt Lake City, and Washington D.C. were also noted as positioned for a relatively quick recovery.D.C. in particular was an interesting case, Kamins explained: Thats one where I think that was more a function of just as population density being a lot lower than other kind of Northeastern cities.

Two cities that surprised him were Des Moines, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska.

They're not places that you think of as sort of prestigious economies theyre somewhat isolated in terms of where they are relative to the rest of the U.S., Kamins said. But both of those actually have a pretty strong financial services sector, a fairly well educated population, especially compared to the kind of surrounding regions at lots of opportunity to kind of spread out.

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And especially if the trade war with China recedes from memory under a new administration, the farm sectors in those cities could be poised to benefit well.

The skyline of Des Moines, Iowa, is seen as people prepare to head to their caucuses in February 2020. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

On the flip side, cities facing headwinds on the road to recovery are the names we are most familiar with, Kamins wrote.

For instance, New York Citys greatest asset is a large, skilled workforce that is drawn to the fast-paced and highly interactive nature of life in the Big Apple, he explained. But activities such as riding the subway, dining in crowded restaurants, and attending Broadway shows may be viewed as inherently risky for some time, consistent with the city's status asthe single-most economically exposed metro area or division.

Times Square is seen nearly empty as daily life continues amid the coronavirus outbreak on May 08 2020 in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)

Boston, Miami, Las Vegas, and San Francisco could also see some tough challenges ahead. These cities generally appear below the line and lean towards the bottom right in the map above.

Places like San Francisco, Miami, are very high on the list, Kamins said, adding that tourist hotspots like Las Vegas were also in this group because its economy is almost completely shuttered right now and will be for some time as both leisure travel and business travel dry out.

And while big cities are likely to be able to eventually recover, out-migration may pick up, Kamins added, the generation that is growing up today could remember the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic [and eventually] opt for less densely packed pastures in the decades to come.

Would this sort of financial pressure lead some states or cities to opt for a bankruptcy route? Kamins said that it was too soon to tell, but there were signs to watch.

What we would be looking for would be states where the impact is going to be very severe, he explained.

For instance, a state like Illinois has above average exposure, because Chicago [has] densely populated urban characteristics, Kamins said. And the fiscal situation for that state [will be] extremely problematic.

Aarthi is a writer for Yahoo Finance covering consumer finance and higher education. She can be reached at aarthi@yahoofinance.com. Follow her on Twitter@aarthiswami.

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As many speculated during a lopsided UFC 249 event, new UFC interim lightweight champion Justin Gaethje literally broke Tony Fergusons face.

According to UFC president Dana White, Ferguson suffered an orbital fracture during the fight on Saturday.

Such an injury is not shocking given how the fight went for Ferguson, and how his face looked when it was over (slightly NSFW there). Over the course of four and a half rounds, Gaethje delivered blow after blow to Fergusons face.

According to UFC, Gaethje connected on 143 significant strikes against Ferguson, with 100 landing on the head. One of the worst can be seen here:

Referee Herb Dean mercifully ended the fight during a lopsided fifth round, giving Gaethje the TKO victory and a date with lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov once the UFC can set it up amid the coronavirus pandemic.

As for Ferguson, the loss will be a bitter pill to swallow given that he was lined up to face Nurmagomedov for the full belt until the champ ended up stranded in Russia. It was the fifth fight between Nurmagomedov and Ferguson to be called off, and it could be awhile before Ferguson gets a sixth chance.

Ferguson was taken to a medical facility in Jacksonville after the fight, per MMA Fighting, and it might be awhile before he can return to the Octagon.

It was a rough night for Tony Ferguson. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

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Jerry West isnt just The Logo, isnt only one of the greatest front office minds the game has ever seen, hes also got a Hall of Fame resume as a player that is as good as it gets: 12-time All-NBA, 14-time All-Star, NBA Champion, 1970 scoring champion, five-time All-Defensive team, and hes the only player ever to win Finals MVP on a losing team. West who has a statue outside Staples Center with other Laker legends was an elite athlete who was blindingly quick with the ball, and he carried with him a Jordan/Kobe level of competitiveness.

All of that led SLAM magazine to ask on Twitter how many points a game West would average in todays NBA. LeBron James had Wests back.

West averaged 27 points a game for his career in an era without the three-point shot (which he would have developed, there just wasnt a point back then).

If you want to know more about West, one of the most interesting people ever around the NBA, read Roland Lazenbys Jerry West biography, its simply a fantastic portrait.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese authorities reported on Sunday what could be the beginning of a new wave of coronavirus cases in northeast China, with one city in Jilin province being reclassified as high-risk, the top of a three-tier zoning system.

Jilin officials raised the risk level of the city of Shulan to high from medium, having hoisted it to medium from low just the day before after one woman tested positive on May 7.

Eleven new cases in Shulan were confirmed on May 9, all of them members of her family or people who came into contact with her or family members.

Shulan has increased virus-control measures, including a lockdown of residential compounds, a ban on non-essential transportation and school closures, the Jilin government said.

The new cases pushed the overall number of new confirmed cases in mainland China on May 9 to 14, according to the National Health Commission on Sunday, the highest number since April 28.

Among them was the first case for more than a month in the city of Wuhan in central Hubei province where the outbreak was first detected late last year.

While China had officially designated all areas of the country as low-risk last Thursday, the 14 new cases represent a jump from the single case reported for the day before.

Apart from the cluster case in Jilin, Harbin, capital of the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, confirmed one new case.

The 70-year-old patient had been quarantined in a hospital since April 9 and had tested negative seven times before results turned positive on May 9, the Heilongjiang health commission said on Sunday.

Shenyang, capital of neighbouring Liaoning province, also confirmed on Sunday one new case, a 23-year-old who travelled to Shenyang on May 5 from Jilin.

ASYMPTOMATIC CARRIERS

Equally worrying in China is the unknown number of asymptomatic virus carriers who show no clinical signs of infection such as a fever or a cough.

Asymptomatic carriers are mostly detected through contact tracing or health checks.

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The new Wuhan case, the first reported in the epicentre of China's outbreak since April 3, was previously asymptomatic, according to the Hubei provincial health commission.

The 89-year-old man had not left his residential compound in Dongxihu district since the Lunar New Year in late January. His wife also tested positive, though she showed no symptoms, the Wuhan municipal health commission said.

The residential compound has had 20 confirmed cases, and experts say the new infection was mainly due to previous community infections.

After the case was confirmed, medical officials have carried out nucleic acid tests on residents of the compound and found five asymptomatic infections.

The infections highlight the continued potential for new clusters of infections due to carriers who do not look ill or have a fever.

On Sunday, the risk level of Dongxihu district was raised to medium from low.

The National Health Commission said the number of new asymptomatic cases stood at 20 on May 9, the highest since May 1 and up from 15 a day earlier.

China does not include asymptomatic cases in its official tally of confirmed infections.

The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in mainland China reached 82,901 as of May 9, while the total death toll from the virus stood at 4,633, according to the commission.

(Reporting by Judy Hua, Yew Lun Tian and Ryan Woo; Editing by Chris Reese, Kenneth Maxwell and Gareth Jones)

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Northeast China hit by coronavirus infections, Wuhan reports new case - Yahoo News

Congress has passed $3.6 trillion in stimulus spending so far, and it will take a lot more to stabilize an economy reeling from the coronavirus pandemic. But Democrats and Republicans in Congress increasingly have different priorities about what should be in the next round of aid.

Ben Koltun of Beacon Policy Advisers recently joined the Yahoo Finance Electionomics podcast to discuss how a phase 4 or CARES II bill, as its known inside the Beltway, is likely to take shape. Four things to look for:

Lots of aid to states and cities. This is Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosis priority. State and municipal budgets are getting crushed by an unprecedented surge of unemployment claims and a massive dropoff in tax revenue, as businesses shut down and furlough workers. Pelosi wants $1 trillion worth of aid, a figure Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doesnt agree with. He favors a sum closer to $150 billion and says no federal aid can be used to help fund pension obligations in states like Illinois that are deeply underwater.

The U.S. has over 1.2 million cases of coronavirus. (Graphic: David Foster/Yahoo Finance)

A liability shield for businesses. This is McConnells priority. He wants a new law that would prevent lawsuits against businesses that reopen but could be the source of coronavirus infections for workers or customers. Pelosi favors workers over business owners and is pushing back against a liability shield.

Both are very likely to be included in the Phase 4 deal, Koltun says. Pelosi wants to think big and McConnell wants to think small and keep it narrow, but once the dam is broken and theyre trading one idea for another, this could certainly add up.

The liability shield is touchy for Democrats because theres already been criticism that earlier stimulus bills helped big businesses too much when they were means to help smaller firms. So a liability shield might be tailored explicitly to help small businesses. It could also be temporary, so it applies only during the reopening phase of the coronavirus crisis. And it might have explicit carve-outs for instances of gross negligence, so businesses cant ignore workers and customer safety under blanket protection from lawsuits.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., adjusts her face mask to protect against the spread of the new coronavirus as she attends a news conference to announce members of the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 29, 2020. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

More aid for small businesses. Nearly $700 billion in aid to businesses under the Paycheck Protection Program apparently isnt enough. The second tranche of this money, which Congress passed in late April, could be gone by mid-May, prompting a third round of funding. We're already seeing Republicans like Marco Rubio and John Barrasso saying this will be a high priority, especially if the money is about to run out, Kulton says. Maybe it'll be $300 billion or so. Democrats are suggesting this should become an open-ended automatic stabilizer program that provides money as businesses qualify, with no need for Congress to continually reauthorize it. That may be a stretch for the next bill, however.

More money for coronavirus testing. Congress has already provided $25 billion to help states, cities and health systems scale testing fo the coronavirus, widely viewed as a prerequisite for reopening more businesses. But many public health experts say that remains woefully short. One group of prominent public health experts has called for a $46 billion program of additional testing and contact tracing to identify everybody exposed to the virus. Nobel-winning economist Paul Romer thinks it will take $100 billion.

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As some states in the U.S. begin to reopen parts of their economies, scientists are anticipating a growth in coronavirus cases in those areas over the next few weeks.

The University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Director Christopher Murray told CBS' Margaret Brennan on Sunday that his model, which the White House has favored during the pandemic, anticipates a jump in cases in states where his team noticed a large increase in mobility among the population in recent days.

Dr. Jeffrey Shaman, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University who has also created a pandemic model, similarly expects loosening restrictions to lead to an increase in transmission, though he thinks the data won't really show up until later in the month.

Shaman did include some caveats, however, noting that models aren't really making predictions themselves. Instead, they're testing out a range of outcomes. There's really no telling, he said, how exactly rolling back lockdown measures will affect people's actual behavior, so there's a chance the worst case scenario won't come to fruition.

More stories from theweek.comThe dark decade aheadWhite House reportedly rejected 'ludicrous' coronavirus relief plan that would have curbed retirement benefits5 brutally funny cartoons about Trump's coronavirus strategy

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Rare sea creatures, sometimes known as blue dragons, have been found washing ashore.

The peculiar animals washed up on the Padre Island National Seashore in Texas and were spotted by a seven-year-old boy, Hunter Lane, who was vacationing with his family from Arizona.

Hunters father, Trey, told CNN he had been visiting Padre Island for more than 30 years and he had never seen the blue dragons before.

The 'Blue Dragon' was found on a an island off the coast of Texas. Source: Facebook/Padre Island National Seashore

Hunter loves sea creatures and thought he had found a blue button jellyfish," Mr Lane said.

"After they picked it up in a beach toy he proclaimed to me that he had discovered a new species!"

Sadly for Hunter, the blue dragon or Blue Glaucus, is not a new species.

According to Oceana, the Blue Glaucus is a type of sea slug, or nudibranch, and they grow to be around three centimetres long.

Blue dragons are very small, generally only 3cm, but don't let their size fool you, they have a defence worthy of the name dragon, Padre Island National Seashore wrote on Facebook after the Lane family shared the photos.

Here there be dragons!

The Blue Glaucus is a type of sea slug and it preys on the Portuguese Man O War. Source: Facebook/Padre Island National Seashore

While sea slugs may not be the most interesting of creatures in the ocean, the Blue Glaucus do prey on a particularly large jellyfish, like the blue button jelly and Portuguese man o war.

Oceana explains Blue Glaucus prefer to feast on Portuguese man o wars, which have long, venomous tentacles, and while feeding the minuscule sea slugs will store the stinging nematocysts created by their preys tentacles.

The stinging cells are stored and concentrated for the future, so when the blue dragon is threatened or touched, it can release these stinging cells to deliver a far more potent sting than the Portuguese man o' war can alone, Oceana says.

Due to their painful sting, people are warned to keep their distance.

Blue Dragon, or Blue Glaucus can be found around the world in warmer areas. Source: Getty

The colouring of the sea creatures act as a camouflage, as they drift along the waters surface, upside down, with an air bubble in the stomach to keep afloat.

Blue dragons can be found in warmer waters and have been observed in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.

In the comments of the post Padre Island National Seashore shared, some people were shocked and said they had never heard of the strange slugs, while others said they had spotted them in the area in the past.

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WASHINGTON Wednesday was National Nurses Day, which is why that afternoon President Trump found himself surrounded by men and women who have been on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic.

True American heroes, he called them.

But Sophia Thomas, president of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, was interested in using the moment to highlight a need her members were facing. Personal protective equipment of the kind needed to keep hospital employees safe was sporadic, she told the president.

Looking annoyed, Trump was quick to disagree. Sporadic for you, but not sporadic for a lot of other people, he said, claiming that he heard the opposite about the availability of respirators, gowns and other protective equipment. That equipment is especially critical in hospitals, where doctors, nurses and others face a higher viral load than others. Many nurses and doctors have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in the United States (the exact number is unknown).

The president continued to insist all was well. Ive heard we have tremendous supply to almost all places, he told Thomas. Tremendous supply.

Later that same evening, a young Texas doctor named Pritesh Gandhi posted a video that served as a vivid rejoinder to Trump. Standing in a hallway of the Austin, Texas, clinic where he works, Dr. Gandhi can be seen pressing his face into a plastic food container, of the kind that might otherwise be used to store uneaten spaghetti. He then gingerly lifts off the straps of his N95 mask, pulling them around the outside of the container, so that the mask is stretched tightly over its top.

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Instead of touching the N95 youre touching the Tupperware container, Gandhi explained to Yahoo News. The greatest risk to frontline health care workers is actually self-contamination, he added, and using a plastic container to remove and store the mask ensures that it wont be contaminated.

Gandhi did not invent the method, but he also did not expect to use it. As the associate chief medical officer at the Peoples Community Clinic in East Austin the poorer, less white part of town, away from its famed music venues and restaurants he may have expected to equip his doctors and nurses with necessary protective equipment. But logistical mishaps have prevented masks and gowns from getting speedily to many hospitals and clinics.

And so Gandhi and his colleagues have had to cycle through a supply of three masks each. While one is in use, the other two sit stretched across their respective plastic containers. After two to three days, viral particles those masks may have accumulated while in use would have diminished, although some studies do demonstrate detectable levels as long as a week after a mask is used.

Images of nurses wearing garbage bags and resorting to makeshift methods like Gandhis have proliferated, as has an attendant outrage. Im furious that @realDonaldTrump insulted a nurse practitioner b/c he had to face the truth, read part of his accompanying Twitter message.

The issue isnt just medical for Gandhi. The 37-year-old doctor and Texas native is now running to replace Michael McCaul, a pro-Trump conservative, as the U.S. representative for the 10th Congressional District in Texas. He is one of several doctors who had already been running for Congress, seeking to protect the Affordable Care Act, the Obama-era health law that provided health coverage to millions of Americans. (President Trump and congressional Republicans have continued to vow that they will repeal the law, despite having already failed to do so.)

The coronavirus has given medical candidates like Gandhi a new rationale, not to mention a new visibility. In the last several months, doctors and nurses have been praised as heroes, celebrated as frontline soldiers in a war. And just like previous veterans, they are now seeking to bring what they have learned to Washington.

We as a country are recognizing the important role physicians can have in driving the conversation and being a part of policy, says Robbie Goldstein, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital who is running for a Boston-area congressional seat. He is seeking to replace Stephen Lynch, one of exceptionally few Democrats still in the House of Representatives to have voted against passage of the Affordable Care Act a decade ago.

Having declared for the Democratic primary last November, Goldstein did not anticipate treating COVID-19 patients or meeting prospective voters via Zoom. Now he is doing both. At the same time, he says the underlying rationale for his candidacy remains what it has always been.

The message is the same, and the goal is the same, Goldstein told Yahoo News. We as a country are recognizing the importance of health care.

Gandhi offers a similar assessment. It hasnt changed what were fighting for, he told Yahoo News of his coronavirus campaign. He is running on a progressive platform that includes addressing climate change and expanding health care coverage. But because the coronavirus has proved especially devastating to people of color, and because its economic effects have hit people of lower income, he believes that more Americans are aware of the very issues he has been seeking to highlight.

The virus, he says, magnified the preexisting inequities in American society. Those inequities are now the stuff of nightly news reports and social media posts. You cant unsee the trauma and the suffering, he says.

Not all the doctors running for Congress are necessarily Democrats. In fact, up the road (quite a bit up the road, this being Texas) from Austin, in the states northern panhandle, former White House physician Ronny Jackson is running in the Republican primary for the 13th Congressional District (the seat will be vacated by Rep. Mac Thornberry, who is retiring).

Dr. Jackson (a now retired Navy rear admiral who had been picked by Trump to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, only to have the nomination pulled over allegations of improper behavior) has been a regular in conservative media in recent weeks, touting his military and medical expertise. In one radio interview, for example, he discussed the need for the United States to reclaim some of its pharmaceutical supply lines from China.

Should any of these doctors make it to Capitol Hill, they will find plenty of medical practitioners to keep them company. These include Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., who is a dentist; Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., who is a veterinarian; and Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Wash., a pediatrician who entered politics to protect the Affordable Care Act.

And in the Senate, there is Rand Paul, a physician who contracted the coronavirus himself in March. The disease did not seem to affect him, and by April he was doing what he had been trained to do, volunteering at a hospital in Bowling Green, Ky.

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Click here for the latest coronavirus news and updates. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please refer to the CDCs and WHOs resource guides.

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Enormous pressure is being mounted to use our current crisis as an excuse to transform how we vote in elections.

Coronavirus gives us an opportunity to revamp our electoral system, Obamas former attorney general, Eric Holder, recently told Time magazine. These are changes that we should make permanent because it will enhance our democracy.

The ideas Holder and others are proposing include requiring that a mail-in ballot be automatically sent to every voter, which would allow people to both register and vote on Election Day. It would also permit ballot harvesting, whereby political operatives go door-to-door collecting ballots that they then deliver to election officials. All of these would dramatically reduce safeguards protecting election integrity.

But liberals see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sweep away the current system. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted that a mandatory national vote-by-mail option be forced on states in the first Coronavirus aid bill. She retreated only when she was ridiculed for shamelessly using the bill to push a political agenda. But Pelosi has promised her Democratic caucus that she will press again to overhaul election laws in the next aid bill.

If liberals cant mandate vote-by-mail nationally, they will demand that states take the lead. Last Friday, Californias governor, Gavin Newsom, signed an executive order requiring that every registered voter including those listed as inactive be mailed a ballot this November.

This could be a disaster waiting to happen. Los Angeles County (population 10 million) has a registration rate of 112 percent of its adult citizen population. More than one out of every five L.A. County registrations probably belongs to a voter who has moved, or who is deceased or otherwise ineligible.

Just last January, the public-interest law firm Judicial Watch reached a settlement agreement with the State of California and L.A. County officials to begin removing as many as 1.5 million inactive voters whose registrations may be invalid. Neither state nor county officials in California have been removing inactive voters from the rolls for 20 years, even though the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed last year, in Husted v. Randolph Institute, a case about Ohios voter-registration laws, that federal law makes this removal mandatory.

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Experts have long cautioned against wholesale use of mail ballots, which are cast outside the scrutiny of election officials. Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud, was the conclusion of the bipartisan 2005 Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former president Jimmy Carter and former secretary of state James Baker.

That remains true today. In 2012, a MiamiDade County Grand Jury issued a public report recommending that Florida change its law to prohibit ballot harvesting unless the ballots are those of the voter and members of the voters immediate family. Once that ballot is out of the hands of the elector, we have no idea what happens to it, they pointed out. The possibilities are numerous and scary.

Indeed. In 2018, a political consultant named Leslie McCrae Dowless and seven others were indicted on charges of scheming to illegally collect, fill in, forge and submit mail-in ballots to benefit Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris, the Washington Post reported. The fraud was extensive enough that Harriss 900-vote victory was invalidated by the courts and the race was rerun.

Texas has a long history of intimidation and coercion involving absentee ballots. The abuse of elderly voters is so pervasive that Omar Escobar, the Democratic district attorney of Starr County, Texas, says, The time has come to consider an alternative to mail-in voting. Escobar says it needs to be replaced with something that cant be hijacked.

Even assuming that the coronavirus remains a serious health issue in November, there is no reason to abandon in-person voting. A new Heritage Foundation report by Hans von Spakovsky and Christian Adams notes that in 2014, the African nation of Liberia successfully held an election in the middle of the Ebola epidemic. International observers worked with local officials to identify 40 points in the election process that constituted an Ebola transmission risk. Turnout was high, and the United Nations congratulated Liberia on organizing a successful election under challenging circumstances, particularly in the midst of difficulties posed by the Ebola crisis.

In Wisconsin recently, officials held that states April primary election in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis. Voters who did not want to vote in-person, including the elderly, could vote by absentee ballot. But hundreds of thousands of people cast ballots at in-person locations, and overall turnout was high. Officials speculated that a few virus cases may have been related to Election Day, but, as AP reported, they couldnt confirm that the patients definitely got [COVID-19] at the polls.

In California, the previous loosening of absentee ballot laws have sent disturbing signals. In 2016, a San Pedro couple found more than 80 unused ballots on top of their apartment-building mailbox. All had different names but were addressed to an 89-year-old neighbor who lives alone in their building. The couple suspected that someone was planning to pick up the ballots, but the couple had intercepted them first. In the same election, a Gardena woman told the Torrance Daily Breeze that her husband, an illegal alien, had gotten a mail-in ballot even though he had never registered.

I think its a huge deal, she said. Something is definitely wrong with the system.

The Los Angeles Times agrees. In a 2018 editorial it blasted the states overly-permissive ballot collection law as being written without sufficient safeguards. The Times concluded that the law passed in 2106 does open the door to coercion and fraud and should be fixed or repealed. It hasnt been.

John Lieberman, a Democrat living in East Los Angeles, wrote in the Los Angeles Daily News that he was troubled by how much pressure a door-to-door canvasser put on him to fill out a ballot for candidate Wendy Carrillo. What I experienced from her campaign sends chills down my spine, he said.

What should also spook voters who want an honest election is a report from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. It found that, in 2016, more mail ballots were misdirected to wrong addresses or unaccounted for than the number of votes separating Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. She led by 2.9 million votes, yet 6.5 million ballots were misdirected or unaccounted for by the states.

It would be the height of folly for other states to follow Californias lead. In the Golden State, it already takes over a month to resolve close elections as mail-in ballots trickle in days and weeks after Election Day. Putting what may be a supremely close presidential election into the hands of a U.S. Postal Service known for making mistakes sounds like a recipe for endless litigation and greatly increased distrust in our democracy.

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A day after the arrests of father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, the head of a state law-enforcement agency said a neighbor who recorded a video of the shooting is also being investigated.

Arbery, who would have turned 26 on Friday, was shot to death on Feb. 23 in Brunswick, a coastal city about midway between Savannah and Jacksonville, Florida, after being chased by Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis, 34, in their pickup truck.

Arbery's family says he was out jogging, while the McMichaels have claimed they thought he was a burglar, according to the Glynn County police report. The McMichaels armed themselves because they believed Arbery might have a gun, the police report said.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced the McMichaels were arrested on Thursday on charges of felony murder and aggravated assault.

The agency's director, Vic Reynolds, said at a news conference Friday that the neighbor, William Bryan, is also being investigated.

"We're going to go wherever the evidence takes us," Reynolds said. "Let's say, hypothetically, if we believe tomorrow or in a week or three weeks there's probable cause for an arrest, then we'll do it. If we don't believe there is, then we won't."

He added that the video is a "very important piece of evidence."

Asked about the possibility that the McMichaels could be prosecuted for a hate crime, Reynolds noted that Georgia is one of few states without a hate-crime law. South Carolina, Arkansas and Wyoming also have no such laws, according to a U.S. Justice Department website.

Arbery is black, and the McMichaels are white. It's not immediately clear if the McMichaels have obtained attorneys.

In the video of the shooting released by Lee Merritt, an attorney for Arbery's family, Arbery is seen running down a road as a white pickup truck is stopped in front of him. Arbery runs around the vehicle, and a shot is fired. The video then shows Arbery and another man appearing to tussle as two more shots are fired.

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NBC News does not know what occurred before the events shown in the video.

Gregory McMichael armed himself with a .357 Magnum and his son grabbed a shotgun after Gregory saw Arbery "hauling ass" down the street, the police report said. The older McMichael told police that he thought Arbery was a burglar who had been recently targeting the neighborhood.

The two McMichaels jumped into their pickup truck and, along with Bryan, chased after Arbery.

The GBI said in a press release that Travis McMichael shot and killed Arbery.

The police report did not specifically say whether Arbery was armed, but Merritt has said the victim did not have a weapon.

George Barnhill, one of the prosecutors who first handled the case, defended the actions of the McMichaels and Bryan. In a letter to the Glynn County Police Department, Barnhill said that the three had "solid first hand probable cause" to chase Arbery, a "burglary suspect," and stop him.

"It appears their intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived," he wrote.

Barnhill also noted that he watched the video of the shooting and said Travis McMichael "was allowed to use deadly force to protect himself" under state law because Arbery had initiated the fight and grabbed the shotgun.

The Georgia NAACP is calling for Barnhill's resignation.

"Theres no justification for why hes dead," the state chapter's president, James Woodall, said of Arbery at a news conference on Friday. "Theres no justification for the district attorney not to immediately issue an arrest."

The case was eventually handed over to District Attorney Thomas Durden in Liberty County after Barnhill and another prosecutor recused themselves because of potential conflicts of interest. Gregory McMichael is a retired investigator for the local prosecutor in Brunswick.

After taking the case, Durden asked that the GBI begin an inquiry Tuesday, and the bureau's Kingsland office started an investigation Wednesday.

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