Category Archives: Corona Virus

In an interview with POLITICO, Melinda Gates said the foundation views Europe as key to bringing international players to the table and preventing the wealthiest countries from putting their own needs first.

"That's why you see us focusing with Europe," Gates said. "It's the European leaders, quite honestly, who understand that we need global cooperation." She added: "I think they're doing the very best they can do in this situation."

The pledging event may turn out to be mostly a PR exercise with Commission officials already saying they will count donors' expenditures since January 30 toward their goal. But Gates said that she hopes it also leads to a more cohesive, worldwide approach by governments, pharma and global health groups, especially concerning fair distribution of a vaccine.

"The worst situation would be, if [and] when these tools are available, they go to the highest bidder that would be terrible for the world," she said.

Health care workers around the globe need to be first in line to get a vaccine when it's developed, Gates said.

She also urged individual countries to recognize that just because they "solve" the outbreak within their own borders, they could quickly face a resurgence coming from a less fortunate nation still fighting the disease.

"Covid-19 anywhere is Covid-19 everywhere," she said, "and that's why it's got to take global cooperation."

In the interview, Gates did not call out U.S. President Donald Trump directly, but she defended the World Health Organization against recent criticism, which has come most loudly from the White House.

The couple's foundation is a major funder of the WHO, and Gates said that a time would come to review its handling of the coronavirus outbreak. But she praised the WHO's historic record in helping eradicate infectious diseases and said political leaders right now should focus on overcoming the crisis. "You don't take something down in the middle of a crisis," she said.

"There's no institution that's perfect," Gates added. "Everyone will need to do a post mortem when we're out of this crisis ... but you don't do that during a crisis."

Bill and Melinda Gates have faced plenty of criticism themselves, though. Vaccine skeptics redirecting their conspiratorial views at the coronavirus outbreak have targeted Bill Gates for his global health work, claiming he is using the virus or even created it to generate money for Big Pharma or to put tracking devices in everyone.

"It's confounding when you see that out there," Melinda Gates said, though she added widespread anxiety was fueling some of the negativity.

"When there's more anxiety, and people have more time on their hands, they want to, you know, attack someone," she said. "So OK, we happen to be the ones that [they] are attacking right now. But ... we know who we are. We haven't changed in 20 years.

"The foundation, from the get-go when we started, was about the most vulnerable," she said. "And that's what we're still about, so we just keep doing it."

Gates said the foundation, working with the Commission, aimed to play a coordinating role, helping to funnel money through other partner organizations that would oversee the efforts to develop a vaccine and therapeutics, including the Norway-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, in Geneva; and the Wellcome Trust in London.

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The Gates aren't pinning their coronavirus hopes on the U.S. - Politico

In 2018, I wrote an Op-Ed for this paper under the headline Were All in the Ghetto Now. I criticized Donald Trumps flagrant disregard of constituents and constituencies he didnt like or consider allies.

Back then, I used the ghetto to describe the impact of Mr. Trumps tendency to demonize his perceived enemies and then cast them into a permanent irrelevance that justified his ignoring of their concerns, to put them over there. I was exploring the connections between a white authoritarian politicians dangerous worldview and the most demonized of American spaces, the black ghetto.

When I wrote in 2018, the ghetto was a metaphor. It feels more real all the time.

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, a majority of us are living in a ghetto of Mr. Trumps creation, physically and politically. The ghetto is a large majority of America, confined at home and in neighborhoods that went from being sanctuaries to stagnant, stressful places whose prospects have vanished overnight.

Like generations of black people whove lived in segregation everywhere in country, people of all colors from California to Maine are frustrated, anxious and significantly jobless. They are being ignored and dismissed by top leadership that is indifferent about whether they live or die.

This is life in the ghetto that Mr. Trumps inept and heartless handling of the coronavirus pandemic has created.

The president has said the enemy is the virus, but thats too abstract for him; the real enemy is anyone who acknowledges the seriousness of the coronavirus crisis, which continues to upstage and overshadow him.

This means that people obeying lockdown orders, sheltering at home, demanding tests, getting sick or dying all disturb Mr. Trumps embattled sense of superiority and control. They have all been relegated to the enemy list the ghetto and in his mind deserve not just irrelevance but also contempt.

Of course this was preceded by his ghettoizing of the governors of states who have ordered lockdowns and other measures, like Jay Inslee of Washington, Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California. (The fact that these are blue states made Mr. Trumps dismissal of the well-being of their residents that much easier. You might say that blue is the new black.)

This would all be absurd it were not so tragically real. The more the death toll rises and the clearer it becomes that Mr. Trump is totally unsuited for the moment, the more he rails and divides, taking the conservative phenomenon of blaming the victim to shameless new heights. This time the victims are not just protesters or poor, black urban dwellers; they are all of us living everywhere, because the virus lives everywhere.

At least now we have confirmation of what many of us have known for a long time Trumpism is not a new political philosophy or coherent agenda, but simply him versus us. And in his mind he always wins, even if hes actually losing, as he certainly is now. Yet this bears repeating Mr. Trumps outrageous stance tracks with the American view of ghettos, projecting them as failures deserving indifference at best, even though the failure is all ours. As a country, we have a long and sordid history of not taking responsibility for the most vulnerable among us.

Mr. Trumps relentless ghettoizing confirms something else that has been obvious for a long time, long before he became president: The United States is not united, especially when the chips are down. The most resources-rich country in the world could not find the wherewithal to warn its people about what was coming, and it continues to bumble basic things like administering tests and acquiring enough ventilators. This is because Republicans have been vilifying the federal government, embedded with the ideal of a common good for a common American people, for the past 40 years. The fact that the most conscientious response to this historic crisis is coming from individual governors, not the White House, may be appalling, but its not surprising.

It was inevitable that the group suffering the highest fatality rate from the virus would be black. Instead of putting that statistic over there, per usual, other Americans have to see themselves within it, because they are at risk, too.

Can we save ourselves? I would like to think so, but the fact that traditional ghettos have not been able to do so it has been structurally impossible does not bode well for our future. I have occasionally been heartened to see all the messages and images of people heroically coming together in very tough times. Americans are good, almost instinctual, at campaigns like this.

But the campaigns are not enough. They are a reaction to the forces of separation, alienation and devaluation that Mr. Trump did not create but that he expands at will, with little pushback. He puts us in ghettos whenever and however he feels like it. The question is when, and how, we will break out of them.

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Life in Trumps Coronavirus Ghetto - The New York Times

Virus slams black Americans, exposes inequities

Data on coronavirus deaths in the US shows a disturbing trend: The virus is killing black Americans at a higher rate. Activists working to level out racial disparities in healthcare, food access and safety are urging systemic change. (April 10)

AP

CHICAGO Train tracks run above the intersection of Kinzie Streetand Ashland Avenue, two major streets that meeton Chicago's West Side. On one corner of the intersection, there's a trampoline park and new brewery. On the opposite corner,empty buildings for lease.

In one direction, a ZIP code relatively unscathed by thecoronavirus outbreak. In the other, a community decimated by the disease. One mostly white, with six-figure incomes the norm. One mostly minority and earningmuch slimmer paychecks.

Darnell Shields, executive director of the Chicago community group Austin Coming Together, said COVID-19's disparate impacts arise from food and housing instability, shaky neighborhood economies andlimited access to quality education andhealth care.

"It creates a fertile ground for something like a virus to come in," Shields said.

As the U.S. surpassed a milestone of one million known cases of COVID-19 this week, ZIP code data show the virus has run rampant through some neighborhoods while leaving residents in adjoining areas much less impaired.

Coronavirus impact: Black people dying at much higher rates in cities across US

USA TODAY took an exclusive look at how the pandemic hasbeen felt in neighborhoods across the nation by collecting the ZIP code-level data from health departments in 12 states:Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Texas.

COVID-19 case report summaries were assembled for more than 3,200 ZIP codes about 10% of the nearly 33,000 U.S. ZIPs. Case data were matched with U.S. census demographic data to show how infection rates differed in ZIPs byrace, income and housing characteristics.

The results paint a grim picture of COVID's devastation in places just miles orblocks from communities experiencing far less harm.

In the poorest neighborhoods, where median household income is less than $35,000, the COVID-19 infection rate was twice as high as in the nations wealthiest ZIPs, with income more than $75,000.

Infection rates were five times higher in majority-minority ZIP codes than in ZIPs with less than 10% nonwhite population.

Of the top 10 ZIPs with 10 or more cases one in Florida, one in Michigan, the other eight in New York City nine are areas where at least two-thirds of the residents are nonwhite. Five are areas where household income is below the national median of $60,293.

Local health officials say not allneighborhooddifferences ininfection ratesare driven by race and income. Somearise from limited access to testing sitesor a lack of interest among some residentsin being tested. Areas with more nursing homes may also show higher rates of infection.

But the USA TODAY analysis shows socio-economic factors have played important roles.

ackling poverty in a coronavirus-induced economic downturn:Is it too risky or the right thing to do?

The intersection of Kinzie and Ashland in Chicago marks the boundary between ZIP code 60642, which centers on theNoble Square neighborhood, and ZIP code 60612, which covers much of the East Garfield Park neighborhood.

In Noble Square, the virus infection rate last week was about 20 per 10,000 residents. In neighboring East Garfield, the confirmed case rate was more than four times as high about 86 per 10,000 residents.The testing rate was also higher in East Garfield Park, but that difference doesn't come close to explaining its much higher caseload.

Touched less severely by the coronavirus, Noble Squareis a hub of young professionals bustling with a restaurant and nightlife scene.Around 60% of the population is white, and the median household income is about $101,900.

Attorney Jane Kwak, 32, was out for a walk with her boyfriend andgolden doodle Thursdaydespite the cold, overcast weather. Joggers cruised by without masks. Some walked dogs. Many restaurants were open for takeout.

"I dont know anyone personally whos had it," Kwak said of the coronavirus."I feel like around here it's still a bit normal. People are acting normal. Our neighbors will still chat and arent super fearful."

Noble Square resident Jane Kwak, 32, walks her golden doodle, Mozzarella, in Chicago, Ill. on April 30, 2020.Grace Hauck

Hard-hit East Garfield, meanwhile, is a family neighborhoodlocated between a conservatory and an industrial corridor. More than 78% of the population is non-white, and the median household income is $41,300.

Kwak, the Noble Square attorney,took a 15% pay cut and is working from home. She considers herself lucky. But in East Garfield, janitorJimmy Walkerlost his job. So did his wifeRachel, a child care worker.

The Walkers find themselvesbehind on rent. Theydont have face masks or gloves, even though the Illinois stay-at-home order going into effect Friday requires masks for those going out in public.

"Man, we need a lot of help down here,"Rachel Walker said. "It's been rough."

"There used to be people outside all day," Jimmy Walker said. "Now its like a ghost town."

East Garfield Park residents Jimmy and Rachel Walker head home from the market in Chicago, Ill. on April 30, 2020.Grace Hauck

Pastor Walter McCray, who lives in his childhood home in East Garfield,said his neighbor down the street contracted the virus and that several of his associate pastors had lost family members and longtime members of their churches.

Bill Curry, who runsprograms focused on youth and families in the neighborhood, said the community was hurting. "The demand for food has significantly increased," Curry said. "Not only people who have been regulars, but a bunch of people, this is their first time going to a food pantry."

Coronavirus in Chicago: How the mayor of the nation's 3rd-largest city is waging her biggest fight

Across the city of Chicago, a similar pattern emerges: Coronavirus case rates are higher in majority-minority, low income areas. Many of these neighborhoods are food desserts where residents lack access to broadband. Last week, the mayor launched aRacial Equity Rapid Response Team to address the disproportionate impact of the outbreak.

"This virus is really exposing a lot of the disparities that have historically been part of these communities,even before COVID," said Shields, whose group is part of the task force.

Consider ZIP code 60621, which includes the South Side Englewood neighborhood, where the case rate is 70 per 10,000. Nearly 99% of the population is nonwhite, and median household income is $20,000.

Resident Tammy Smith, 51, a home care aide, said a friend shed known since she was a teenager recentlydied after contracting the coronavirus."Shes gone on," Smith said while riding the bus to work."It has affected me, and not just me only, but family and other ones."

Per protocol, Smith boarded the bus through the rear doors, wrenching them open by pulling on the rubber lining. A handful of other people mostly African American and wearing protective masks were sat spread out throughout the bus.

Poor, essential and on the bus:Coronavirus is putting public transportation riders at risk

Adjacent ZIP code 60620, which includes Auburn Gresham, hasthe same rate of infections.

"Our community is besieged. We are losing lives," said Carlos Nelson, CEOof the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation, who called USA TODAY from his cell phone because phone and internet was down in the neighborhood.

The trend is not unique to Chicago.

Detroit, the epicenter of the outbreak in Michigan, reported1,000 deaths and almost 9,000 casesas of Wednesday. The surge promptedatransformation of convention centers into field hospitals.

Ira Carroll was standing on a milk crate to reach the top shelf of the freezerto restock the ice cream section at Saturn Super Foods on Joy Road in Detroits 48228 zip code, where the coronavirus case rate is among the city's highestat 92per 10,000 residents.

Saturn Super Foods is situated on an avenue lined with shopping plazas of independent businesses, including a barbershop, a diner and an auto repair place. Beyond the avenue is a quiet residential area that makes up a large part of 48228.

"Its a quiet, peaceful neighborhood,"Carroll said, describing the place hes called home for over a decade.

Ira Carroll restocks the ice cream in the frozen section of Saturn Super Foods, in Detroit's 48228 zip code, where he has worked for 22 years.Miriam Marini

Detroits 48228 is where people come to stay. Families establish roots in the neighborhood, often staying in the area for generations. Its the type of place where your childhood friend sticks around well past childhood.Median household income is $26,000, and 84% of the population is nonwhite.

Damien Lake, 23, has lived in the 48228 area for almost his entire life. He suspects this unrelenting sense of community may be a contributing factor to the areas COVID-19 rates. "A lot of people in this area know each other, and have for years,"Lake said. "So, they want to be around each other, they want to socialize."

Just next door to this community is Redford Township, zip code 48239, with about twice the median income andonly one-eighth theinfection rate from COVID-19.

Denise Martin, whos lived in 48239 for 12 years, said Redford also has a strong sense of community. On sunny afternoons, like in many metro Detroit suburbs, its typical to find young moms walking with strollers or families taking their dog out for a bit of fresh air.

Martin lives on a quiet block where she knows each of her neighbors, which she said is expected of her as block captain for the Far West Detroit Civic Association.

Although her community hasn't been hit as hard, the impact is still felt here. Martin suspected she had coronavirus in February. With her severe asthma, doctors put her on a CPAP machine to aid her breathing and she was able to recover in time for a drive-by birthday celebration for her granddaughter on April 1.

"Nobody has come to my house since the order,"Martin said from behind a mask and homemade face shield. "I have a 1-year-old granddaughter Im looking forward to seeing. This has been the best year of my life so far with her. I want to live to see my grandbaby."

'Something has to change': Latinos disproportionately dying, losing jobs because of the virus

Some ZIP codes defied the demographic trends, potentially reflectingarbitrary decisions abouthow coronavirus cases get recorded.

In Jacksonville, Florida,the San Marco neighborhood, which makes up the heart of 32207, is one of the city's most walkable. Storefronts that line wide sidewalks are usually packed. But ever since the coronavirus outbreak has shut down much of the city, the neighborhood has followed suit.

As the Florida Department of Health has updated its COVID-19 case data, 32207 has stuck out. Itaccounted for less than 4%of the countys population but 18% of cases.

Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Currys spokeswoman, Nikki Kimbleton, said the aberration is because of the number of hospitals in the area. While state officials saythey try to attribute cases to where someone lives, if they don't know the patient'saddress,they mark downthe address for a health care provider or testing lab.

San Marco is home to Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville, the citys primary testing partner, so its likely patients from elsewhere are assigned there. Baptist didnt return requests for comment.

The other COVID-19 risk factors: How race, income, ZIP code can influence life and death

Just next door, in 32216, which is home to the St. Vincents Southside hospital and Memorial Hospital, the rate of confirmed coronavirus cases is a quarter of San Marcos.

Both neighborhoods have roughly the same population, racial makeup, median household income and housing stock. However, there are differences between the two communities.

Restaurants inSan Marco, with the higher case rate, are home to walk-up retailand seem to have adapted to walk-up takeout. Restaurants in 32216, home to industrial parks and much of the citys Arabic, Latin American and Southeast Asian shopping, say they have seen a steeper drop in foot traffic.

City Councilman Matt Carlucci, a lifelong native of San Marco, has taken to social medialike Nextdoorto reassure residents thatthe big numbers theyre seeing in ZIP code maps of COVID-19 infections dont reflect reality.

If there really were an outbreak in the neighborhood, he said, hed know about it. "I know San Marco as well as anybody in San Marco," Carlucci said. "Ive lived here all 64 years of my life."

Contributing:Miriam Marini, Detroit Free Press;Andrew Pantazi, Jacksonville.com

Grace Hauck is based in Chicago. Follow her at@grace_hauck.

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Coronavirus spares one neighborhood but ravages the next. Race and class spell the difference. - USA TODAY

Its official: The coronavirus quarantine may have well and truly made the concept of a meme obsolete. For proof, look no further than This Meme Does Not Exist, a meme-creation tool created by meme-template website Imgflip.

At a glance, it looks like your average random assortment of meme templates. But these memes arent actually real. Theyre being created on the spot by a neural network, an artificial intelligence (AI) that predicts what it thinks a meme might look like. You can let the network generate a random meme for you, or you can preselect your meme from one of many popular templates, from Mocking SpongeBob to the Gatsby toast.

The tool is not to be confused with other meme generators, which merely curate existing popular memes. No, this generator uses its data about memes that do exist to conjure up memes that dont exist. If youre not familiar with a neural network, its basically a computer that uses an algorithmic technique known as deep learning. The computer gorges itself on a lot of data and then teaches itself, through lots of repetition, how to predict what that data should look like. Neural networks have made great strides in recent years, giving us everything from fake movies to fake articles and, of course, fake porn.

Basically, Imgflips neural network processed a lot of memes and then tried to predict what memes should look like. The results are often hilarious, and they certainly feel like real memes. For instance, heres the first thing the AI generated when I asked it to show me an example of the Is This a Pigeon? meme:

Not bad, right? They get better. Some of the other memes being generated seem eerily appropriate for the current moment were in:

And take this iteration of the Distracted Boyfriend meme. Its honestly hard for me to believe that a computer artificially generated this, not a frustrated kid stuck at home with their well-meaning but stifling mother for much longer than nature would normally allow:

In fact, some of the memes which identify themselves as AI-generated with a tiny watermark at the bottom, in case you get confused are jaw-droppingly on point:

Other memes, however, wildly miss the mark and make little to no sense. But hilariously, that also makes them feel memetic because after all, many memes draw upon their nigh-nonsensical Dadaist leanings to gain new meaning from their new contexts. So a meme like this one, generated by the neural network, still seems like a real meme:

Its hardly surprising, then, that between the novelty of a fake-meme generator, its eerie ability to capture our moods, and our current collective boredom, the meme generator itself has gone viral. Over the last week, posts collecting some of the funniest AI-generated memes have made the rounds on social media:

The AI generators new fans have frequently emphasized the way in which the tool aligns with our persistent feelings of isolation during quarantine, while simultaneously helping us alleviate our anxiety with a lot of humor.

But a big part of the appeal is the aforementioned hilarious randomness whenever the AI skews slightly off-kilter from a normal meme.

As with all other attempts to virtually approximate reality, the result of this AI is often an uncanny valley between a real meme and a fake one. But the truth is probably somewhere in between or somewhere on a toilet and thats also meaningful in terms of telling us what a meme even is.

When most of us have abruptly transferred most of our activities online, our shared thoughts, frustrations, and internet tools we use to connect to one another can also become memetic. So memes in the time of quarantine, to me at least, feel much more nebulous, fluid, and tougher to single out than memes of yore.

Maybe this is because social media spreads ideas, themes, and moods nearly instantaneously. When were all using social media to stay connected for instance, Twitter usage is currently at an all-time high things can feel memetic before theyve had time to take shape in a traditional meme format. Even if, for instance, a quarantine joke or a Covid-19 catchphrase doesnt get passed around in a single repeat iteration with variants as does a traditional meme it can still become a memetic part of the zeitgeist. After weeks and weeks of coronavirus memes and quarantine memes, everything has sort of started to feel like a meme.

In an environment where everything is kind of already a meme, we could be primed for a fake meme that uses the framework of memes themselves to bend reality a little.

Of course, there are still some glitches in this new virtual matrix. When you visit the site, it currently informs you that the prefix text feature, which allows users to generate memes using keywords of their choice, is temporarily disabled due to high volume. Neural networks are extremely expensive to run. I guess not even an AI can bend reality that far.

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Coronavirus memes: These AI-generated memes are better than ones created by humans - Vox.com

Sweden has persisted with the strategy of coronavirus mitigation that the UK government eventually abandoned in March. The policy is widely supported by the public, even though the Swedish Covid-19 mortality rate is among the 10 highest in the world, at 240 per million population and steadily rising, and many of the nursing homes in Stockholm are now affected.

The typical explanation for this continued public support is that Swedes are trusting and unflappable. The countrys chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, the public face of the Swedish response to the pandemic, is after all a dry scientist-turned-bureaucrat, not some populist politician trying to whip up nationalist go-it-alone emotion.

But beneath the surface, Sweden is anything but calm. The public debate is inflamed with a sense of wounded national pride. As a believer in the kind of liberal nationalism that encourages self-critical national attachment, this pains me. But as a scholar of nationalism, I recognise the pattern. This is what Isaiah Berlin called the nationalism of the bent twig, which lashes out against anyone who steps on it.

It began with a self-conceit that seemed more comical than harmful. Why, one columnist asked, could we not just let Sweden be Sweden? Others suggested we brand ourselves smart Sweden or kind Sweden, the country immune to the hysteria of southern Europe.

The next step was the ridicule and delegitimisation of opponents. A group of 22 scientists wrote a joint opinion column arguing for a drastic change of strategy. But within a few hours no one was paying attention to the substance of their arguments. Instead the debate came to revolve entirely around the fact that they used Covid-19 death numbers that made Sweden look worse than the more cautious estimates of the public health agency. This was certainly clumsy, but did not undermine their main conclusion. Nor does the fact that Sweden does indeed now have close to six times more deaths per capita than neighbouring Norway or Finland.

Then came contempt for emotions, mixed with misogyny. Lena Einhorn, one of the 22 critics, was interviewed via videolink from her home. She broached research reports and numbers, but influential columnists focused on making fun of her hair or curtains. Her hysterical voice when describing the suffering of Covid-19 patients was also widely mocked. The detached response to her by chief epidemiologist Tegnell was hailed as evidence of his credibility. It is true that he speaks clinically about death in terms of statistical curves. But it is equally true that he did not offer much rebuttal of the research reports she quoted.

From this trope of Sweden being alone in doing it right, we seem now to have shifted to denying that Sweden is doing anything exceptional at all. An opinion piece by a political scientist suggested that the Guardian had blacklisted Sweden, and that its reporting had described Sweden as free from restrictions. Who would have thought Trumps fake news would one day turn out to be somewhat real? he concluded.

But these claims are themselves untrue. The Guardian among others rightly reported the comparatively mild restrictions in Sweden. Nor was it fake news when Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported that Swedish doctors could soon be denying respirators to patients over the age of 80, and even those as young as 60 with underlying health conditions. In fact, this is now taking place.

The public veneration for Tegnell has gone far beyond trust. He has become an icon, his face appearing on tattoos and baby garments. Writers otherwise known to cringe at any sign of nationalism describe him as the incarnation of Swedens soul. He should be named Swede of the year, says the former minister of public health. Serious newspapers run hagiographic stories on Tegnell and the general director of the public health agency, Johan Carlson. Pictures of their head offices flooded with flowers sent by private citizens are included.

Some failures of the Swedish model have been acknowledged. But they are often linked to the lack of compliance of immigrants. Former chief epidemiologist Johan Giesecke explains the failure to protect the elderly in nursing homes with reference to asylum seekers and refugees on the staff, who may not always be understanding the information. This has met with silence, if not approval. It may already have been picked up by the Sweden Democrats, Swedens anti-immigration party, who now claim the health of elderly people has been put at risk for the sake of integrating uneducated immigrants.

Defenders of the governments strategy keep repeating that it is too early to evaluate it. But carrying that argument through to its logical conclusion suggests that veneration should also be postponed until the pandemic has passed. Any successful strategy should be transparent and welcome public scrutiny. My fear is that in our vehement defence of the Swedish approach, we have released forces we cannot control. As is clear for anyone who has followed Brexit, a nationalism unable to handle criticism can easily tear a society apart.

Gina Gustavsson is an associate professor at the Department of Government, Uppsala University, and an associate member of Nuffield College, University of Oxford. With David Miller she is the co-editor of Liberal Nationalism and Its Critics: Normative and Empirical Questions

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Has Sweden's coronavirus strategy played into the hands of nationalists? - The Guardian

Georgias health infrastructure makes Kemps choice particularly dangerous. Girtz worries about the states hospitals. His county has two, but because of rural hospital closures, he says theyre expected to provide services not just for residents of Athens-Clarke County, but for the entire 17-county region around them, home to some 700,000 people. A town like Elberton, 35 miles from us, or Commerce, just 25 miles up the roadthose were places where, a generation ago, you could have a baby, he said. Thats no longer true, and its also true they dont have the ICU beds there.

Few people in Georgia are eager to be a case study in pandemic exceptionalism, but many wont have a choice. Jillian Yeskel, the stylist in Roswell, whose Trump-supporting parents voted for Kemp, said shed had conversations with them in the past week that she couldnt have dreamed of a few months ago. Id assumed theyd support anything Kemp had to say, she told me. I talk to my mom every day, and were both just so upset with him. Theres no polling available on how Georgians feel about social-distancing measures in general, but Yeskels experience with her parents follows national trends: A poll conducted in mid-April by Morning Consult and Politico found that even most respondents who said they view Trump very favorably or voted for Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections wanted to continue social distancing for as long as necessary.

All Georgians can do now is try to protect themselves as best they can. If social distancing decreases because lots of businesses reopen, another deluge of COVID-19 cases could be inevitable. Because of how infections tend to progress, it may be two or three weeks before hospitals see a new wave of people whose lungs look like theyre studded with ground glass in X-rays. By then, theres no telling how many more people could be carrying the disease into nail salons or tattoo parlors, going about their daily lives because they were told they could do so safely.

In the meantime, local leaders whose municipal shutdowns have been overruled by state law are relying on other methods to keep their communities safe: disseminating information about testing, finding funds for food banks, creating grant programs to get a little bit of money to local businesses in need. For some, that includes duties both official and unofficial. On his walk home from city hall last week, Girtz said, he encountered his neighbors, a group of student roommates, enjoying the warm spring day. Hes lived in Athens a long time, and was worried that in a town known for revelry, a few people partying outside could turn into a lot of people partying outside. They were drinking beer on the curb, he recalled. I just had to say, Yall, enjoy your time to the degree that you can, but at least go up on the damn porch.

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Why Georgia Is Reopening Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic - The Atlantic

Covid-19 has forced influencers to swap portraits of themselves in front of waterfalls in Bali with shots taken on the couch in their living room, and quirky coffee shops and upmarket gyms have morphed into homemade latte art and living room workouts.

But beyond the change in content is an even more significant shift. The marketing model that makes up most of an influencers income is falling apart, with brands pulling out of lucrative sponsorship deals and advertising revenue plummeting. As we face a new economic era, it is unclear whether the aspirational lifestyle lauded by influencers can emerge unscathed. Could coronavirus provoke a reconfiguration of the influencer age?

Over the past decade, influencer culture has reshaped how brands reach consumers the influencer marketing industry was worth around $6.5bn in 2019, and almost half of marketers spent more than 20% of their budget on influencer posts. The combination of accessible celebrity and trusted endorsement allowed companies to target their customers in a more tailored way.

Payment for posts reflected this businesses pay influencers with more than a million followers $10,000 or more for a one-off post endorsing their product.

Yet despite creating an innovative new model that defined a digital era, the influencer industry was not without its issues. A saturation of social media marketing recently led to backlash, with many stars being forced to refocus their brand to appear more authentic after fears that they were alienating their fans with heavily posed and paid-for posts. High-profile scandals also rocked the industry, such as the Gabriel Grossman and Marissa Casey Fuchs surprise social-media proposal, which the Atlantic uncovered as having been pitched to brands, heavily staged and sponsored, and the now infamous Fyre festival which saw influencers being paid thousands of dollars to promote an event that had barely been organized and left attendees stranded on a beach in the Bahamas.

2020 should have been the year for influencers to get back to their followers desire for realness. Instead, because of Covid-19, many influencers are being forced to focus on simply surviving 2020s economic downturn rather than taking the chance to grow their businesses.

Due to the disruption in business operations a lot of companies are facing financial challenges, explains Shane Barker, a digital strategist who offers consultancy services for companies using social media to boost their brand, and influencers hoping to reach the right brands and monetize their follower count. In light of that, they are cutting down on all unnecessary expenses. Some are barely able to pay their employees, let alone hire influencers.

One of Shanes clients, Chris Ruden, is a bodybuilder and amputee who uses his platform to share content on overcoming adversity. As one of many influencers who relies on speaking engagements and events to make up some of his income, Ruden has already experienced disruption as a result of coronavirus measures.

I had 28 events scheduled for the year; 95% of them had been postponed, he says. It has made me hit the drawing board to find different ways to give me value that are pandemic proof. Ive resorted to funny content and eased up on motivational content after all, you cant inspire someone and fire them up just to watch Netflix.

While some popular influencers have attracted death threats after sharing images of glamorous trips despite social distancing measures, Barker believes that more sensitive content is crucial in order for influencers to future-proof their brand.

Influencers should create content that resonates with the current situation that people are in, he says. This does not mean that influencers from all industries should just start writing and talking about the pandemic. What I mean is that they should create content relevant to their niche, but keeping in mind what people are going through.

People want to see home content right now as its relatable and we are all in the same boat

Although 69% of brands expect to decrease their advertising spend this year, the amount of time that we are all spending on our devices also means that social media engagement has increased. In a time of crisis, people are also looking online to feel less alone. Lifestyle influencer Em Sheldon recognizes that and has tailored her content accordingly.

Ive always loved sharing workouts and healthy recipes, so for me its been more of an adaption, she says. People want to see home content right now as its relatable and we are all in the same boat. With more eyes now online, people are scrolling more than ever, so actually, as long as its fitting, authentic and tasteful, now is a great time to work with influencers.

Some even believe that this renewed awareness of authentic versus paid posts and the shift away from brand promotion is a good thing.

Biased product reviews were threatening to poison the well as people started to become disenchanted with self-serving influencers who had lost their objectivity, says Michael Solomon, marketing professor and author of Social Media Marketing. Where possible, influencers need to revert to a more altruistic message and find ways to help get through the crisis with constructive suggestions. In times of instability, people look to trusted sources and those that deliver will be remembered after the crisis is over.

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The pandemic and the influencer: will the lifestyle survive coronavirus? - The Guardian

Pfizer says it will begin testing the experimental vaccine in the United States as early as next week, and says a vaccine could be ready for emergency use in the fall, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

Mainz-based BioNTech reported that the first cohort of participants had been given doses of the potential vaccine, BNT162, in a Phase 1/2 clinical study in Germany.

"Twelve study participants have been vaccinated with the vaccine candidate BNT162 in Germany since the start of the study on April 23, 2020," the company said in a statement.

No information on the results is currently available. BioNTech said around 200 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 55 years old would be given doses ranging from 1g (microgram) to 100g to find the optimal dose for further studies.

"In addition, the safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine will be investigated," added the biotech company.

Pfizer and BioNTech plan to initiate trials for BNT162 in the US on regulatory approval, expected shortly, the statement said.

The German Federal Institute for Vaccines and Biomedical Drugs approved the trial -- the country's first clinical trial for a vaccine against Covid 19 -- on April 22.

"The two companies plan to jointly conduct clinical trials for the COVID-19 vaccine candidates initially in Europe and the U.S., across multiple research sites," Pfizer announced in its first quarter report, published online Tuesday.

"The companies estimate that there is potential to supply millions of vaccine doses by the end of 2020, subject to technical success of the development program and approval by regulatory authorities, and the potential to rapidly scale up the capacity to produce hundreds of millions of doses in 2021."

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Potential coronavirus vaccine being tested in Germany could 'supply millions' by end of year - CNN

Health Secretary Matt Hancock asserted on Friday that it had met a headline-grabbing aim of conducting 100,000 daily Covid-19 tests by the end of April. The figure was 122,347, he said -- although officials conceded that 40,369 of those were sent to people's homes or to satellite testing centers, and had not necessarily been processed by labs.

The government argued, with some justification, that the huge expansion in testing capacity -- up from 10,000 a day at the beginning of April -- was a huge achievement.

But the fact that the target was needed at all, critics say, only served to illustrate the inadequacies of Britain's testing regime in the first place.

"This is an unprecedented global pandemic and we have taken the right steps at the right time to combat it, guided by the best scientific advice," a government spokesperson told CNN, in response to a request to address the criticisms raised in this article. Ministers and officials have been "working day and night to battle coronavirus, delivering a strategy designed to protect our NHS and save lives," the spokesperson said. "We have provided the NHS with all the support it needs, [and] made sure everyone requiring treatment has received it."

But could more have been done to prevent the scale of loss of life? Should ministers have acted sooner? And could there be more transparency in the overall strategy?

A crucial date

Historians might look back on March 12 as the most significant date in Britain's coronavirus response. This was the day the UK formally abandoned the "contain" phase -- an attempt to stop the virus in its tracks by tracking every outbreak and tracing its origins; and moved to the "delay" phase -- an effort to "flatten the curve" and prevent the health service from being overloaded.

As he spoke, tens of thousands of people gathered at the Cheltenham racecourse for its annual festival, an early fixture in England's social calendar. Was that wise, he was asked? "It is very important that we're guided by the science," Johnson said, using a phrase that was to become a favorite of government ministers. "There is very little epidemiological or medical reason at the moment to ban such events."

Johnson's chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, admitted that even people with "really quite mild symptoms" could be contagious. Despite this, the chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, agreed with Johnson that canceling large events was "not a major way to tackle this epidemic."

Indeed, the next day, Vallance told BBC Radio 4's flagship morning news program, in a now-infamous interview, that a "key" aim would be to "build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission." Government sources have told CNN that herd immunity was never official policy.

Three key questions

Critics are zeroing in on three key areas as they seek to find out what went wrong in the UK.

First, there was the abandonment of mass testing.

At the start of the outbreak in the UK, public health officials tracked and traced every known case. Ministers have never offered a clear reason for why that policy was abandoned. Was it because the testing capacity had been reached? Was it because the system could not cope with the expected upturn in demand? Was it structural, since the public health system in England has, over the years, gradually been centralized?

"Abandoning testing gave the virus the green light to spread uncontrollably," says the Royal Society of Medicine's Gabriel Scally. "If you don't have access to testing, you won't know that you have an outbreak until a lot of people are ill."

Some in the scientific community say an obsession with central control led officials to set up the testing regime initially in just a few labs, rather than allowing local hospitals to do it themselves.

"Sadly, it seems likely to me that once the government models showed how bad the crisis would be, our testing capacity wouldn't be anywhere near able to cope with the coming surge," a leading microbiologist told CNN on condition of anonymity to describe confidential discussions. "God only knows what their thinking was not telling hospitals to get ready. It was a mistake." Downing Street declined to provide an on-the-record explanation to CNN on this issue.

The second crucial question is whether the government failed to order a lockdown early enough.

Even though the government did not know by that March 12 briefing just how many people were infected, Whitty said it was still too early to lock down because "if people go too early, they become very fatigued." If tough restrictions came too early, the theory went, the British public would begin to tire of it just as they were starting to become effective, and demands for them to be lifted would become impossible to resist.

Government sources defended that course of action to CNN, pointing out that some mitigation measures were put in place between March 12 and the full lockdown on March 23, like advising vulnerable groups to stay at home and requiring people with certain symptoms to self-quarantine.

The third big question is the pursuit of so-called "herd immunity."

"It's not possible to stop everybody getting it," said Vallance at the March 12 briefing. However, the experience of countries like South Korea and Germany, where testing and tracking systems have been significantly more rigorous, and in New Zealand, where lockdown measures were taken at a much earlier stage, suggest that it has been possible to stop quite a large number of people from getting it.

Medical experts both inside and outside the government's circle of trusted advisers have admitted to CNN that they believe the government waited too long to enter lockdown. "Many of the decisions the government has made ignore basic public health science," says Dr. Bharat Pankhania, senior clinical lecturer at University of Exeter. "From abandoning track and trace, to the timing of the lockdown, to providing the correct protective equipment, ignoring basic public health science may have led to more deaths than necessary."

Pankhania believes that despite government claims it has been guided by science at every step, the decision to delay lockdown was likely "governed by economic consideration, rather than public health science."

This conflict between the government's claim that it has followed the science from day one, and some in the scientific community's skepticism as to how good that evidence is, has become a key battlefield between those inside and outside the UK government.

Following the science

This secrecy has led to speculation from prominent members of the public health community about the quality and breadth of evidence that is reaching the top levels of government. "The government's decisions show no characteristics of public health input. I wouldn't be surprised if the public health voice was marginalized both within SAGE and in government," says Scally, of the Royal Society of Medicine.

It's "driving the public health guys mad," said another scientist who has contributed to the UK's National Risk Register, an overview of the potential threats facing the UK.

Another criticism of the process has been that the government has at times even sidestepped the normal groups of scientific advisers. "Things are moving so fast that they're rather going direct to the modelers," said Openshaw. "The epidemiological modelers have got a very direct line into government."

However trivial it might seem, disagreements between public health experts and scientific modelers are a significant part of the story. "We're seeing a struggle that has been going on for about 20 years between modelers and epidemiologists," a scientist who advises SAGE told CNN on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential government business.

It's no secret that Dominic Cummings, Johnson's top adviser, has a personal interest in scientific modeling. So it's little surprise that public health experts were enraged when the government was forced to admit last week that Cummings had attended SAGE meetings, which are supposed to be independent advisory forums. The government said he attended in order to understand the scientific debate around the virus and its behavior.

Multiple members of SAGE and groups that advise it defended their impartiality to CNN. "The debate is robust, and everyone sets out their case clearly and articulately," said one member, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. "There are lots of people criticizing from the sidelines, but I think it's possible those people are angry they have been left on the sidelines."

A source who advises SAGE said: "Frankly, I find it hard to see that the presence of Cummings makes much difference. We're not talking about shrinking violets."

However, the source went on to express concern at how scientific evidence is being presented. "Science is not homogenous... The best SAGE can do is present imperfect material. The government has been able to take advantage of the public view of science as a voice of certainty, and present some of its decisions as being taken with more concrete certainty than they have."

This has prompted fears that at some time in the future, the government might try hiding behind the science for decisions they've taken -- or worse, throw members of SAGE under a convenient bus. "It certainly does seem to be an anxiety of some of my colleagues, but I am less worried. Many politicians are not exceptional thinkers. Should a public inquiry come, I would be surprised if it's the scientists who do a bad job of making their case," said a member of SAGE.

That public inquiry seems inevitable, once the worst of the crisis is over.

And when it comes, the government will stick to its line that the decision to prioritize the protection of the NHS was the right course of action, and that it succeeded. While it's true the NHS didn't fall over during what look like the worst weeks of the crisis, a cynic might claim that focusing on hospitals ignored what was happening in the wider community.

"People might well reply that it protected the NHS at the expense of shifting deaths elsewhere. Not to mention the physical and mental suffering experienced across the country," said one of the scientists advising SAGE.

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Where did it go wrong for the UK on coronavirus? - CNN

Tripoli, Lebanon (CNN) -- A large bag of the thistly gundelia plant arrives at Um Ahmad's door as it does nearly every day. Wearing a double layered headscarf, she settles into a blue armchair. She has until the afternoon to trim the spines off the wild plant for her customers to cook.

"We work on the akoub (gundelia) so that we can live," says Um Ahmad, using a pseudonym.

When visitors walk into her dark, cavernous room to meet her, she doesn't even look up. A drama series blasts from an old TV.

"The akoub doesn't even come every day," says Um Ahmad, never meeting her guests' eyes.

Um Ahmad lives beneath a centuries-old souk (or marketplace) in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli.

Outside, the city roils with violent demonstrations, known as the "hunger protest." These started just as Lebanon was loosening its coronavirus lockdown, and beginning to contend with poor living conditions exacerbated by the near shutdown of the economy.

Nightly confrontations between demonstrators and the Lebanese army have rocked Tripoli over the last week, turning it into the epicenter of the country's renewed uprising against its political elite.

Tripoli is the poorest city in Lebanon, despite being home to some of its most high-profile billionaires. A slum stretches across the banks of the city's Abu Ali river, just minutes from pockets of extravagant wealth. The income disparity was always stark, but these days, Tripoli's locals say it is unbearable.

"No one has trust in the banks. No one has trust in the state. There's injustice, there's shame and there's oppression," says Ahmad Aich, who runs a shoe stand.

Aich's voice rises to a crescendo. As with many Tripoli natives, the conversation begins with the soft tones of a city folk known for their kindness to strangers, but quickly turns into a tirade about living conditions.

"The solution is for the army chief to round up all the politicians who robbed this country and to put them in jail," says Aich. "They pillaged the country and killed it and killed its people."

Calls for the army to deliver justice echo across Tripoli even as demonstrators hurl stones, fireworks and Molotov cocktails at the armed forces. The military has responded with brute force. It has fired tear gas and rubber bullets, and, in some instances, live fire, at protesters, killing one on Monday and wounding dozens over the last week.

"The army are our brothers. What we want is for them to join us, take the politicians from their houses, and throw them in the garbage dump," says protester Ghassan, a 24-year-old handyman and a father-to-be who asked not to disclose his full name for security reasons.

"If your child is hungry, you will eat your rulers to feed your children," he adds.

Rising poverty

It is a dramatic drop in living standards for a country which in 2018 had the highest GDP per capita among the Arab world's non-oil producing nations.

In recent weeks, the Lebanese lira lost over half its value, hurting both merchants and consumers. Small shop owners are struggling to secure supplies, and the country's growing legions of poor people can't afford to buy them.

In Tripoli, many people say that most staple goods have at least doubled in price, making the working class increasingly reliant on aid from charities.

Amer El-Deek, 30, used to own a shoe stand and made ends meet with a daily income of $10. Now, he says, all he can do is beg and rely on food packages from an Islamic charity.

"We don't know how we're even alive," says Deek, the father of a six-year-old. "I now go to sleep and think: God, I hope I don't wake up. I hope I die tomorrow."

'Hunger protests'

When the "hunger protests" kicked off last week, few were surprised. "I see that a revolution of the hungry is coming," Hezbollah-backed MP and former intelligence chief Jamil El-Sayyed tweeted in December.

The uprising's largely peaceful protests turned violent after a nearly two-month respite due to coronavirus. In Tripoli, protesters staged large demonstrations outside politicians' homes vowing to avenge their alleged corruption. Nearly every bank branch in the city has been damaged by the protests, with demonstrators voicing their fury at the banking sector's discretionary capital controls.

On any given work day, long queues of people begging to withdraw their cash can be seen outside bank branches. Lebanese authorities have resisted calls to formalize capital controls, raising suspicions that the economic elite in Lebanon have been exercising their influence to remove their funds from the country, while small depositors are largely denied access to their life savings.

Young and old head to Tripoli's protest sites after Ramadan's Taraweeh prayers, which are performed after the fast is broken during the holy month.

They arrive on mopeds, gather in crowds and yell protest chants. Most do not wear face masks, and no one is observing government-mandated social distancing rules. That's because most of the people on Tripoli's streets believe that coronavirus doesn't exist here.

The lockdown has stoked resentment, fueled rumors of a government conspiracy to further impoverish the poor and ultimately ignited the protests.

"We don't have coronavirus here in Tripoli. Coronavirus is a heresy. (The politicians) made it up," says one city native, Marwan el-Zahed.

"What do I care about coronavirus," says another Tripolitan, Ahmad Abou Abdallah. "(The politicians) are worse than coronavirus. They are dirtier than coronavirus. They are making people hungry. Doesn't that make them worse than the virus?"

Fourteen cases of the coronavirus have been reported so far in Tripoli. In total, Lebanon has had 740 confirmed cases of the virus and 24 deaths. It has received some credit for a largely successful bid to contain the virus.

Underground, Um Ahmad is too busy working on her gundelia to talk politics. She has also lapsed into disillusionment.

"My situation is just as you see it," she says, gesturing to her home's conditions. "Sometimes I empty the pulp of zucchini for people. But also that doesn't come every day."

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'If your child is hungry, you will eat your rulers to feed your children' - CNN