More than 3,000 test positive in brucellosis outbreak in China

Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Doctors diagnosed more than 3,000 people in China's Gansu province with a bacterial disease known as brucellosis after a leak at a biopharmaceutical company.

The National Health Commission in Lanzhou said health officials tested nearly 22,000 people in the city for the illness and 3,245 came back positive.

No deaths have been associated with the outbreak.

Brucellosis is a bacterial infection that humans can contract after coming into contact with or drinking the milk of livestock infected with brucella. It's also known as Malta fever or Mediterranean fever and causes headaches, muscle pain, fever, sweating, loss of appetite, and fatigue.

The NHC said it first detected cases of the illness in November after a leak at the Zhongmu Lanzhou factory "caused by contaminated exhaust from a vaccine factory in Lanzhou, due to the use of expired disinfectant from late-July to mid-August last year."

The biological pharmaceutical factory produced a brucella vaccine, though its license to do so has since been revoked.

Among those infected were employees at the Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute, which is located near the location of the leak, and students and faculty members at Lanzhou University.

Nearly 3 million people live in Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu province

 

This Scientist Kept It Real About What Life Looks Like Juggling Parenthood And Doing Her Job

“It's entirely unsustainable. It's just laughably infeasible for parents to be working like this.”

Ade OnibadaBuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on September 17, 2020, 

Gretchen Goldman

A scientist and mom who shared a behind-the-scenes look at life as a parent and as a regular news contributor told BuzzFeed News that her now-viral tweet was inspired by transparency. She also wanted to highlight the long-term implications that the pandemic could have on minority groups.

“I guess I just wanted to be honest about the situation because a lot of people are struggling right now, and I think it's helpful to be reminded that it's not you alone. We all don't have it together," Gretchen Goldman, 36, told BuzzFeed News.

Gretchen Goldman, PhD@GretchenTG

Just so I'm being honest. #SciMomJourneys

08:58 PM - 15 Sep 2020

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After appearing on CNN this week, Goldman shared on Twitter what the CNN interview didn’t capture. She said she had "45 minutes to prepare and that's prepared both in terms of content and appearance."

"And because of expectations on women on camera, a significant part of that time has to also be spent on my physical appearance and then getting the right setup," she added.

As part of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Goldman's job often means that she is regularly called on to give her expert opinion or comment on news developments relating to science.

“Normally, if that happened in the middle of the workday, it wouldn't be as big of a deal, right? I would walk a few blocks to the CNN studio, go record and I wouldn't have to rearrange my house and make sure that children and their things were out of the camera view and out of the sound space,” she said.

From the waist up, Goldman appeared on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on CNN in a canary yellow blazer to discuss the dangers of appointing David Legates to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

From the waist down, she opted for casual black shorts with her laptop perched on a chair and a floor covered in children’s toys.

“We're not near any extended family or anything so we really needed that paid, outside-the-house care to give us that time and space to work," Goldman said. "Normally I would have a lot more freedom and the time and space to have uninterrupted time, and I think that's one of the biggest impacts on professionals now is the lack of uninterrupted time.”

Goldman, who has two sons, ages 2 and 4, highlighted the number of news segments that had been gatecrashed by surprise appearances from children over the pandemic and said how working from home with young children had various challenges.

“I think especially with my very young kids, that's magnified by the micro stressors of every time you hear a sound in the other room, if they are crying or screaming, you have to worry about whether it is, like, a threat to their physical safety because they're young enough that you have to actually watch them and I need to make sure, like, while I was distracted writing this email, did the TV fall on them? Did they choke on a toy? It's very stressful,” she said.

“By the end of the day, parents, employees are just mentally exhausted.”

Her tweet capturing the two very different setups has been liked more than 280,000 times, and the responses have been “overwhelmingly positive” and reassuring.

Gretchen Goldman

“I am amazed at how positive it is given that it's a tweet by a woman that mentioned climate change, and I have a Jewish last name. It's overwhelmingly — like there's not many trolls yet — it's actually impressive," she said.

While Goldman was able to revel in the lighthearted humor her tweet provided, she was also critical of the ongoing dynamic for parents and working professionals as a result of the global pandemic.

“It's entirely unsustainable. It's just laughably infeasible for parents to be working like this,” she said. “There's a lot of threats under COVID, and I do want to acknowledge that it's a privilege to be able to work from home safely with your kids. But at the same time, I am very concerned with how this is going to adversely affect women's careers, especially in science where women are already underrepresented, and people of color are underrepresented, and this is going to exacerbate and dismantle a lot of the progress that we've made on that diversity.”

The mom of two sits on the board for a grassroots organization called 500 Women Scientists and has developed a list of recommendations with the hopes of mitigating the career penalties they believe women could face as a byproduct of their working conditions during the pandemic.

“At the top level, I really wanted to emphasize that this is something that our leaders, institutions, and employers should deal with. It should not be up to parents to hack their way out of this,” said Goldman.

She believes the best thing employers can offer parents right now is flexibility.

"And that has to be balanced at the same time with making sure that that is not causing employers to withhold opportunities for employees that happen to be parents because people need flexibility right now," she said.

Trump Downplayed The Role Of Slavery In American History As He Vowed To Build A Statue Of An Enslaver

In an event at the National Archives, the president delivered a thinly veiled election campaign speech in which he attacked liberal politicians, the media, and Joe Biden.

David MackBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on September 17, 2020, 

Saul Loeb / Getty Images
President Trump speaks during the White House Conference on American History at the National Archives on Thursday.

President Trump offered an archconservative defense of American history on Thursday in a speech in which he shamed educational programs that seek to emphasize the role of slavery in the country’s founding as “toxic propaganda,” instead centering what he said was US virtue and nobility.

He also announced he planned to erect a statue of Caesar Rodney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence from Delaware who enslaved roughly 200 people.

Speaking alongside copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives in Washington, DC, at an event promoted as the first White House Conference on American History, the president delivered a thinly veiled election campaign speech in which he attacked liberal politicians, the media, and Joe Biden.

“We are here today to declare that we will never submit to tyranny,” he said, referring to protesters who demonstrated this summer for a racial reckoning in the US. “We will reclaim our history, and our country, for citizens of every race, color, religion, and creed.”

As he continues to campaign for reelection by stoking racial and cultural fears, Trump vowed to set up what he described as a “national commission to promote patriotic education” in America’s schools, to be called “the 1776 Commission” — a rebuke of the New York Times’ 1619 Project.

That 2019 series of stories from New York Times Magazine, which was subsequently turned into an educational curriculum designed to be taught in schools, sought to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”

Like other Republicans who have attacked the project, Trump decried it as “an ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together.”

“This project rewrites history to teach our children that we were founded on the principle of oppression, not freedom,” he said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

In response, Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the 1619 Project, noted wryly on Twitter, “The White House Conference on American History has not a single Black historian on it. Strange.”


Saul Loeb / Getty Images

The president also said he would order that a monument of Caesar Rodney be erected in the park of statues he decreed in July be built to honor American heroes.

Rodney is known for riding through the night in July 1776 from Dover to Philadelphia to cast a tie-breaking vote among the Delaware colony to declare independence from England. Like many of the Founding Fathers, he also enslaved about 200 Black people on a plantation he owned.


Another statue of Rodney was removed in Wilmington in June amid the wave of monuments that were taken down or vandalized around the world during the racial justice protests that followed the death of George Floyd.

“Joe Biden said nothing as to his home state’s history and to the fact that it was dismantled and dismembered and the Founding Father’s statue was removed,” said Trump, attacking a political rival as he stood in the presence of some of America’s most sacred documents. “Today America will give this Founding Father, this very brave man who was so horribly treated, the place of honor he deserves.”

WILDFIRE PORN

Devastating Photos Show The Aftermath Of The Oregon Wildfires

SEE MORE HERE

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katebubacz/photos-oregon-fires-aftermath

A US Diplomat Is Pleading With Belarus To Release Her Spouse From Jail
WAIT WHAT? WHERE IS POMPEO?!!!
Vitali Shkliarov’s “only offense,” his wife, Heather Shkliarov, said, was writing articles critical of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s administration.

Christopher Miller BuzzFeed News Contributor


Posted on September 15, 2020, at 8:01 a.m. ET

Courtesy Heather Shkliarov
Vitali and Heather Shkliarov.


A dual American Belarusian citizen and political strategist who has worked for presidential candidates in the United States has been languishing in a jail in Minsk, Belarus, for nearly two months. Vitali Shkliarov has been abused and denied medical treatment after showing COVID-19–like symptoms while in custody, according to his wife.

Heather Shkliarov, a US State Department employee, wrote in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News through her lawyer that she is growing concerned about the physical health and psychological well-being of her husband, who was arrested by Belarusian security services in the western city of Grodno on July 29. Vitali stands accused of organizing an illegal campaign rally, a crime punishable by up to three years in prison if convicted.


“Vitali has been subjected to extreme psychological pressure and deprived of basic physical liberties in what he has told his lawyer is an attempt to get him to incriminate himself,” Heather said in her first comments about her husband’s situation. While she has not been allowed to meet or speak directly with Vitali since his arrest, she has learned of his situation through notes the couple has been able to pass each other and through his lawyer, who has access to him in jail.

Heather said her husband’s health is also in immediate danger.

“On September 8, Vitali started feeling extremely ill, and for several days in a row, has reported a fever of over 102 degrees, along with respiratory issues, chills, and muscle pains. The prison authorities have refused to give him a COVID-19 test or to treat him for his fever, which can only be seen as a further attempt to weaken his psychological will in order to extract a false confession,” she said.

It is unusual for an active US diplomat to speak out publicly in this way — that task is typically left for top State Department officials. Speaking with reporters last week, US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun called on Belarusian authorities to release all detained protesters and specifically said, “Vitali Shkliarov must be released.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also mentioned Vitali by name in a Sept. 8 statement denouncing the abduction of Belarusian opposition leaders.


But Pompeo and Biegun said little else on the matter and did not specify what efforts were being made to release him.

Heather did not say she was speaking out now for any reason other than to encourage Belarus to release her husband. “The views expressed in this statement are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of State or the US government,” she wrote. But two US diplomats focused on Europe said her decision was viewed by some within the halls of the State Department as an attempt to spur Pompeo into greater action.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with a reporter, the US diplomats told BuzzFeed News that some State Department employees have expressed frustration over what they have felt to be a lack of action from the secretary of state in Vitali’s case. One of the diplomats called the public statements from Pompeo and and Biegun “run-of-the-mill.”

Vitali, who holds a US diplomatic passport, worked on the presidential campaigns of Sen. Bernie Sanders and former president Barack Obama in 2016 and 2012, respectively. That work, his Belarusian heritage, and his US citizenship may have made him a target of Lukashenko’s security forces.

Belarusian authorities have detained thousands of protesters who have spilled into the streets of cities across the country to challenge what they believe was a government-rigged election to extend dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s 26-year rule. Amid the crackdown, stories emerged from dozens of protesters about abuse and torture by Lukashenko’s feared riot police and KGB security service agents.


The 66-year-old Lukashenko has called Belarusians protesting against him “rats” and has been seen stomping around his presidential palace wearing riot gear and carrying an assault rifle. Without evidence, he has tried to paint the uprising as a Western-backed coup attempt, with people coming from abroad to help with organizing. On Monday, he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, where the two discussed closer integration and Lukashenko claimed he was facing a military threat from the West.

Vitali told BuzzFeed News in a letter passed by his lawyer on Aug. 7 that he had been crammed into an overcrowded cell inside a damp basement with mold and cockroaches. In a follow-up letter shared with BuzzFeed News last month, he likened being in a Belarusian jail to the Soviet Union’s gulag, where political prisoners were sent. “They try to break me using all means,” he said.

But, with her sttement, Heather painted the grimmest picture yet of what life has been like for her husband inside the Belarusian detention center over the course of nearly seven weeks.

“He is moved constantly from cell to cell to avoid having a sense of stability. The lights are never turned off in his cell, and loud music is blared all night so he is not ever able to sleep properly. He is only allowed to bathe with a bucket of warm water on Wednesdays. He has been subjected to extreme strip searches, forced to stand naked in a cell for hours at a time, and never allowed even to sit down on his bed during the day. He has a badly broken toe, caused by an incident he is too afraid to describe even to his own lawyer, and which the prison refuses to treat,” she said.

Heather said she has been unable to speak directly with Vitali since his arrest.

“At first we were allowed to pass notes in Russian through his attorney, but they accused him of trying to smuggle notes to me in English and stopped allowing him to write to me,” she said. “I am allowed to pass notes to him through the consular officer in Minsk, who was recently allowed to start visiting Vitali weekly in prison.”


Heather said her husband was charged with organizing an illegal campaign rally on May 29 in Grodno for jailed opposition leader Sergei Tikhanovsky, despite the fact that he has never been to Grodno, has never met Tikhanovsky, and was with her at home in Arlington, Virginia, on that date. “His only offense was that, in his role as a political analyst and Harvard fellow, he had written articles that publicly criticized the administration of President Lukashenko,” she said.

Tikhanovsky is a popular Belarusian vlogger who was barred by authorities from running in the Aug. 9 election. His wife, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, registered for the election in his place and has since gone from being a self-described “housewife” with no political ambitions to becoming a hero of the protests shaking Belarus and Lukashenko’s grip on power.

Last week, Tikhanovskaya told BuzzFeed News in an interview from Vilnius, Lithuania, where she is living in exile have being forced to flee her home country, that she is the “national, chosen president” of Belarus, despite Lukashenko’s assertion that he won reelection with more than 80% of the votes versus her 10%. While the US has stopped short of recognizing her as the winner of the election, it has said the election was not free and fair.

In his call with reporters last week, Biegun said Lukashenko had been “clearly rejected by his own people” and was now using his notoriously abusive security forces to prop himself up, with some support from Russia. Biegun said the US was coordinating with its allies in the EU and discussing possible sanctions against Lukashenko’s regime.


According to Heather, Vitali traveled to Belarus on July 9, along with the couple’s 8-year-old son, simply to visit his mother, who has advanced cancer, and to celebrate his birthday on July 11 with his family and friends. She said she stayed behind with her daughter to pack up the family’s house in preparation for their move to Kyiv.

After his arrival in Belarus, Vitali was obligated to do a two-week quarantine at his parents’ house. “He did not leave the house during this time. Shortly after his quarantine was over and he was allowed to go outside, he was detained by Belarusian security services on July 29,” Heather said. “He was not arrested at a rally or a public protest, but rather at a market in his hometown of Gomel, where he had gone to buy a watermelon for his mother, wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops.”

She said he was grabbed off the street, thrown into a van, and driven 186 miles northwest to a detention center in Minsk, while their son was left with his grandmother.

“To this day, he has bravely refused to admit to crimes that he did not commit, and so he remains in jail,” she added. “He should be released immediately and cleared of the baseless charges that have been brought against him.”

People Are Being Arrested For Arson, But No, They're Not Antifa

As authorities on the West Coast battle ferocious wildfires, they're also having to contend with unfounded conspiracy theories tying the blazes not to climate change, but left-wing agitators.

Julia ReinsteinBuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on September 15, 2020

Rob Schumacher / Getty Images



The melted sign of the Oak Park Motel destroyed by flames in Gates, east of Salem, Oregon, on Sept. 13.


As massive blazes continue to burn across Oregon and other parts of the West Coast, police in Portland arrested a man early Monday for allegedly lighting at least seven small fires in the city.


Authorities said Domingo Lopez Jr., 45, lit a series of small brush fires next to a freeway by using, at least in one instance, a plastic bottle with a wick attached, described by police as a Molotov cocktail. He was arrested Sunday afternoon for lighting one fire and then released, only to be arrested again hours later after he allegedly lit six more, police said in a statement. Firefighters extinguished three of the blazes, while good Samaritans put out the other three. Lopez was taken to a hospital for a mental health evaluation.


That might have been the end of it, except that news of Lopez’s arrest went viral on Twitter, with many sharing the police's post in a bid to falsely tie all the West Coast fires to agitators instead of climate change — part of a trend of right-wing misinformation about the blazes that has become a giant, politically charged distraction for local authorities who are already overmatched by the most ferocious fire season in history.

Arson arrests during fire season are nothing new. Some involve people with mental illness or pyromaniac compulsions, others are people being careless, say, at a gender reveal. But with the US election firmly underway, incidents like the one involving Lopez have been swept up in a wave of right-wing online conspiracy theories designed at discrediting climate change scientists and playing into President Trump’s message about a breakdown of law and order in Democratic-leaning states.

Most notably, people have falsely claimed some of the fires were arson attacks committed by antifa, a loosely defined group of left-wing, anti-fascist activists that Trump has called a "terrorist organization." This fear-mongering — particularly in Oregon, which has been the site of deadly clashes between right- and left-wing demonstrators in recent months — has even led some residents to vow to defy evacuation orders and remain in their burning towns in order to "defend" them from the purported arsonists. The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office has even had to remove checkpoints set up by residents who had been forcing cars to stop. Photographers and journalists have been accused of being arsonists and looters, and have been threatened and even held at gunpoint as a result.

Amid the swirling falsehoods, the FBI has had to intervene, releasing a statement on Friday making clear that reports of "extremists" being behind the fires had been investigated and were found to be untrue. "Conspiracy theories and misinformation take valuable resources away [from] local fire and police agencies working around the clock to bring these fires under control," the FBI's Portland division said.



Matthew McFarland / Unified Fire Authority via AP



Fire crews prepare to fight wildfires near Butte Falls in Southern Oregon on Saturday.


The misinformation appears to be part of a global trend in which climate change deniers have scapegoated arsonists — and not a warming planet — as the cause of blazes from Oregon to Australia. During the fires across large swaths of eastern Australia in January, prominent right-wing social media figures elevated the false claim that nearly 200 people had been arrested for intentionally starting the blazes. Some conspiracy theories have even gone as far as to baselessly accuse climate change activists of igniting the flames as a sort of false flag. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro blamed Leonardo DiCaprio and environmental NGOs for starting fires in the Amazon last year.

To be sure, arsonists do exist, driven by criminal intention, compulsion, or both. In 2017, there were more than 40,000 arson cases reported in the US, according to the FBI, and 256 arson-related arrests were made in Oregon in 2018 — but these cover all types of arson. Outside fires being lit by people, intentionally or not, are nonetheless still common across the US. The National Fire Protection Association has estimated there were almost 200,000 fires lit outside (i.e., not in structures or vehicles) between 2010 and 2014.


But while wildfires are common this time of year on the West Coast, arson is not a leading cause of these massive blazes, according to Erica Fleishman, an Oregon State University professor and director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute. These fires are instead caused by a number of combined factors, Fleishman told BuzzFeed News, particularly climate change, weather, and an increase in human settlements near areas at risk of wildfires.

"There is virtually no evidence that 'antifa' caused the wildfires currently burning in Oregon," Fleishman said. "The FBI has referenced these rumors as 'untrue.' Local law enforcement offices throughout Oregon are stating that the rumors are false. Even in the cases of fires in which arson is suspected, there are no credible links to antifa or other extremist groups."

There are a few main reasons people commit arson, Robert Schaal, a fire investigator and past president of the International Association of Arson Investigators, told BuzzFeed News. "The number one reason is financial motive," Schaal said. "A lot of people are in financial distress, and it's an easy way out to get the insurance proceeds. Another primary motive is spite or revenge — somebody is angry at a competitor, an individual, a spited lover."

Political reasons, however, are not a typical cause of wildfires, he said. "You do see arson as a tool in civil unrest, but that's not a routine occurrence," Schaal added. Intentional fires have been set during some recent protests in urban areas, he noted, but those have been aimed at businesses and institutions, such as the burning of a Nashville courthouse during a Black Lives Matter protest in May.



Matthew McFarland / Unified Fire Authority via AP



A fire crew member on the scene working to protect the town of Butte Falls in southern Oregon on Sunday.


The arson charge in Portland early Monday morning was one of at least five arrests for arson in recent days to catch the attention of right-wing conspiracy theorists. But in all the cases, authorities have not said the individuals were affiliated with "antifa" or that they had any political motives.

On Friday, the Jackson County Sheriff's Office announced an arrest had been made for a fire intentionally set in Phoenix, Oregon. Michael Jarrod Bakkela, 41, was described as a "local transient," and was booked into jail for violating his probation, which he was on for a previous methamphetamine possession conviction. He has been charged with 15 counts of criminal mischief and 14 counts of reckless endangerment. Bakkela is accused of starting one of two fires that merged to become the Almeda fire, Oregon State Fire Marshal’s Office spokesperson Rich Tyler told the Oregonian.

A day before Bakkela's arrest was made, the Jackson County Sheriff's Office issued a warning about unfounded rumors about the fires and urged people to stop spreading "misinformation based on some unverified random post or meme" and stick to official sources for information.


"We are inundated with questions about things that are FAKE stories," the sheriff's office said in a Facebook post. "One example is a story circulating that varies about what group is involved as to setting fires and arrests being made. THIS IS NOT TRUE!"

Anita Esquivel, 37, was also arrested for starting fires in Salinas, California, on Sept. 7, jail records show. The Monterey County District Attorney’s Office told KION there was no indication that she has any ties to “antifa.”

In Oregon's Clackamas County, two individuals were arrested Friday on arson charges. According to the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office, 37-year-old Ignat Shchetinin confessed to lighting clothes on fire at a local Fred Meyer store using a lighter, saying he did it "to get the attention of a person who wouldn’t speak with him." Shchetinin allegedly had methamphetamine on him at the time of his arrest and was booked into jail.

Sammy Piatt, 53, was arrested by the Oregon City Police Department for allegedly lighting a pile of leaves on fire near a local social services building. Piatt is homeless, police said, and was arrested for both arson and a probation violation. The fire was quickly extinguished and did not cause damage, police said.

Officials in Clackamas County have also had to push back on antifa rumors not just from the public, but also from their own law enforcement officers.

On Saturday, a deputy in the sheriff's office was placed on administrative leave after a video went viral in which he gave credence to the conspiracy theories and said "we need the public's help on this." The deputy was aware he was being filmed at the time.


"Antifa motherfuckers are out causing hell and there's a lot of lives at stake and there’s a lot of people’s property at stake because these guys got some vendetta," said the deputy.

Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts said the deputy was placed on leave as soon as Roberts became aware of the video.

"The Sheriff's Office mission is to provide calm and safety especially during unprecedented times such as these," Roberts said. "I expect nothing less of our deputies, and apologize to all in our community.”

Two Pharma Companies Released Their Coronavirus Vaccine Blueprints In A Bid To Regain Public Trust

The disclosures from the two frontrunners, Pfizer and Moderna, come as public trust in a coronavirus vaccine is declining.


ALL CURRENT VACCINE CANDIDATES REQUIRE TWO SHOTS, THAT MAKES IT EVEN MORE UNLIKELY THAT AMERICANS WOULD GET VACCINATED. 

Posted on September 17, 2020,


Chandan Khanna / Getty Images
Moderna protocol files for COVID-19 vaccinations at a research site in Florida.


In a scramble to restore fading public trust in the coronavirus vaccine pipeline, two leading pharmaceutical companies released their trial plans for the first time on Thursday.

Those details — first published by Moderna, then by Pfizer — provide some clarity about a process that many scientists and Democrats fear is being rushed by the Trump administration ahead of the November election.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump challenged CDC Director Robert Redfield’s estimate that a vaccine rollout could happen by summer 2021, calling that timeline a “mistake.” Trump said a shot could be available as early as October.

The documents from Moderna and Pfizer reveal that that projection is far too optimistic. They suggest that the trials may need to run through at least the end of the year to determine whether their vaccines are safe and effective.


Prior to Thursday, none of the nine companies in late-stage trials had released the blueprints for their studies. Another high-profile trial, led by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, was put on hold last week after a serious safety concern was raised; it was then restarted in the UK, South Africa, and Brazil, but not the US, with little explanation about either decision. (An AstraZeneca spokesperson said Thursday afternoon that the company planned to publish its protocol soon.)

Polls indicate that the public’s willingness to take an eventual vaccine is waning, and scientists have called on manufacturers to disclose more about their processes. In releasing its blueprints, Pfizer, which is developing its vaccine with the German company BioNTech, said it “recognizes that the COVID-19 pandemic is a unique circumstance and the need for transparency is clear.”


“Today is a momentous day, as it turns out, for transparency in the vaccine trials,” Eric Topol, a clinical trial expert at the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told BuzzFeed News. “If anything deviates from this, that’s when you get particularly worried.”

But Topol is already worried that Moderna’s — and especially Pfizer’s — main criteria for judging whether the vaccine works are too lenient. For example, Pfizer plans to include mild COVID-19 cases, which it defines as having one symptom, such as a sore throat or a cough. Topol said evidence of the vaccine’s efficacy would be more compelling if the threshold were raised to more severe cases, such as hospitalizations.

If the vaccine is being compared to a lot of cases where people are not that sick, “that doesn’t tell you if the vaccine is really doing its job,” Topol said. “The whole intention here is to block people from getting really sick.”


Mandel Ngan / Getty Images
Trump and White House science adviser Scott Atlas hold a press conference on coronavirus vaccines on Wednesday.


Moderna’s protocol, as first reported by the New York Times, suggests that analysis of the vaccine data would not begin until December at earliest, with more solid conclusions projected by spring 2021. Pfizer’s blueprint suggests a six-month timeline to complete its trial, but the first of four interim assessments to see whether its vaccine is at least 30% effective — or a failure — would happen after its first 32 volunteers test positive for COVID-19. Under the protocol’s assumption that 1.3% of volunteers in the placebo group will get sick, that would take about five weeks from the time the last volunteer is enrolled. The FDA is requiring that coronavirus vaccines be at least 50% effective.

Last weekend, Pfizer announced it planned to enroll a total of 44,000 volunteers and hoped to finish enrolling its first 30,000 this week, and that conclusive data may be available as early as October. But the protocol suggests that estimate is optimistic. Even if enrollment finishes this month, the earliest time for its first patient assessment would happen in late November, given the time needed between its two shots, and another week that is needed to develop antibodies to the virus.

The company has previously said it hopes to manufacture and distribute 1.2 billion doses of the vaccine by the end of 2021.

Topol expressed concern about Pfizer’s four planned interim assessments, which he said was unheard of in clinical trials. (A more typical number is two, which is the number that Moderna plans to do.) Building in so many opportunities to potentially end the trial midway through, rather than waiting until the end, increases the risk that the vaccine’s apparent effect at whatever given moment is a fluke.

“Rule number one in clinical trials is don’t stop them midstream,” Topol said. “You interrupt an experiment, you’re very likely to get a false reading of efficacy.”

Operation Warp Speed — a Trump administration partnership between the Department of Health and Human Services, the Defense Department, and vaccine makers — has invested around $10 billion to fast-track the development and distribution of coronavirus vaccines. The head of the effort, Moncef Slaoui, told Science magazine this month that he would step down from his position in the event of political pressure to rush out a vaccine.

And last week, nine pharmaceutical executives, including the CEOs of Moderna and Pfizer, signed a pledge to abide by “high ethical standards” and “only submit for approval or emergency use authorization after demonstrating safety and efficacy through a Phase 3 clinical study.”

Regardless, a Pew Research Center poll this week found that the number of Americans who said they would not get a coronavirus vaccine has increased from 27% in May to 49% in September.

“I’m worried that we could lose a very promising COVID-19 vaccine for reasons that have nothing to do with the science, or whether or not the vaccine works or is safe, but because of perception,” said Peter Hotez, a virologist at Baylor College of Medicine, in an interview before Moderna and Pfizer posted their plans. “Operation Warp Speed urgently needs to get ahead of this. So far they’re not doing it.”

Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines rely on genetic material called RNA injected into patients to stimulate an immune response to the “spike” protein unique to SARS-CoV-2, a novel approach that promises more rapid production than traditional vaccines. 

AstraZeneca’s vaccine relies on a weakened version of a common cold virus equipped with this same spike genetic material to alert the immune system to the virus that causes COVID-19. Neither approach has yet led to an approved vaccine.




Stephanie M. Lee is a science reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.

Dan Vergano is a science reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.





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Joe Biden Is Seeking Latino Votes In Florida With A New Plan To Rebuild Puerto Rico

Biden’s visit to Florida this week came with a new plan for Puerto Rico and policies aimed directly at one of the state's most crucial groups.

Nidhi Prakash BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on September 16, 2020


Drew Angerer / Getty Images
Joe Biden participates in a roundtable event at Hillsborough Community College on Sept. 15 in Tampa, Florida.


Joe Biden is bulking up his policy commitments to Puerto Rican voters in Florida, as he tries to build support among Latinos in one of the most competitive states in the presidential race.

In a plan released before his Tuesday visit to Kissimmee, Biden detailed a recovery plan for Puerto Rico, which has struggled to rebuild after a major economic crisis, hurricanes Irma and Maria, and widespread earthquakes earlier this year. The majority of Hurricane Maria evacuees who left the island have settled in Central Florida.

Biden's plan, and comments he made in Kissimmee, went further than he'd gone to that point: He laid out a proposal to end federally imposed austerity measures in Puerto Rico and forgive some of the island’s debt, and he said he personally supports statehood for the island, though he prefers to leave the question up to Puerto Ricans.

Biden’s visit to Florida came as polls find him ahead of Trump among Latinos in the state, but trailing Hillary Clinton at the same stage of the 2016 election. Trump ultimately won the state by a margin of just 1.2% in 2016. Florida is home to nearly one million people of Puerto Rican descent, including hundreds of thousands who moved to the state after Hurricane Maria tore through the island. According to a 2018 paper from the Pew Research Center, the state has seen a 6.2% increase in Latino voter registrations since 2016, bringing the total to 2.1 million. Puerto Ricans accounted for around 31% of potential Latino voters in the state, whether or not they’re registered — the same as the number of potential Cuban voters, according to the researchers.

Biden was joined Tuesday by Puerto Rican musical icons Luis Fonsi and Ricky Martin, along with actor Eva Longoria, a founder of the Latino political advocacy group Latino Victory.

“Donald Trump doesn’t seem to grasp that the people of Puerto Rico are American citizens already and they deserve to have leadership in government that understands that in America there is no room for the idea of second-class citizens,” Biden said at the Hispanic Heritage Month event at Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee.

Drew Angerer / Getty Images
Ricky Martin speaks during a Hispanic heritage event with Joe Biden at Osceola Heritage Park on Sept. 15 in Kissimmee, Florida.


The former vice president may have an edge among Puerto Rican voters in Florida partly because of Trump’s flippant response to various crises in Puerto Rico, including the number of people who died as a result of Hurricane Maria and the inadequate federal response. An August poll by Democratic pollster EquisLabs found that among 1,081 Latinos polled in Florida, 61% of those who identified as Puerto Ricans preferred Biden, compared to 28% who back Trump.

Both parties attempted to attract new Puerto Rican voters in Florida during the 2018 midterms — Latino turnout overall in the state did increase between the 2014 and 2018 midterms and between the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. But, the Orlando Sentinel reported, early voter data in 2018 suggested that evacuees turned out in lower numbers than other Latino voters, perhaps in part because they had immediate concerns, especially finding secure housing, to consider in the aftermath of the hurricanes.

“I think he has a lot of work to do with folks in Florida,” said Julio López Varona, co-director of community dignity campaigns for the progressive Center for Popular Democracy, adding that the new recovery plan is “a step in the right direction.


“Florida has 1 million Puerto Ricans, and these Puerto Ricans have more of a bootstrap-minded mentality and tend to be a little bit more conservative. How does he improve people's lives in Kissimmee? And I think there has to be a case made for Puerto Ricans who want to come back and what can be done about that,” he said.

For one Latino activist who has been working with the Puerto Rican diaspora in Central Florida, Biden’s visit and newly released plan was welcome but should have come sooner, especially as COVID has worsened an already dicey situation for Puerto Rican families in recent months. She added, though, that the Trump campaign doesn’t even have a specific plan for Puerto Rico, and that his administration let Puerto Ricans down by not having a plan for them after the hurricane, either.

“This generation of Puerto Ricans have been struggling,” said Maria Revelles, Florida state director for Vamos4PR, a coalition of community groups advocating for Puerto Ricans. “This was not a planned move, they lost everything on the island.”

She said she thinks it’s going to be a challenge to get people out to vote amid health concerns over the ongoing pandemic, but that Puerto Ricans on the island are used to a culture of being very engaged with voting.

“I think that people have to understand Puerto Ricans come from a very high voting culture. On the island everybody votes, 99% of people vote. Right now you read stories about people in line to register to vote,” she said.


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Puerto Ricans who move to the mainland aren’t automatically affiliated with either Democrats or Republicans, she said, because the party system is entirely different on the island, with the issue of statehood for Puerto Rico being one of the main issues that divides the two major parties there. To that end, she said, it was wise for Biden to emphasize that he supports self-determination for the people of Puerto Rico.


“The Puerto Ricans that are here in Orlando, besides the Puerto Rico issues, their issues are like every other working group. They want affordable housing, they want fair wages, they want healthcare, that none of those things are traditionally in the GOP platform either,” she said.

Revelles added that she appreciated that the Biden campaign didn’t pick just any Latino celebrities for Tuesday night’s event, but Ricky Martin in particular, who Puerto Ricans have seen taking action to help communities on the island after the hurricane and to support the protests that ousted former governor Ricardo Rosselló last year.

PROMESA, the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, was signed into law by then-president Barack Obama in 2016 and established a federally appointed fiscal control board (the Fiscal Oversight Management Board) to approve Puerto Rico’s state budgets, and with the power to put in place austerity measures.

The conditions imposed by the fiscal control board have led to major cuts in public education, infrastructure spending, and pensions on Puerto Rico, and residents say it’s made recovering from the series of disasters even harder.

Jim Watson / Getty Images
Joe Biden arrives at the Hispanic Heritage Month event at the Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee, Florida, Sept. 15.


López Varona, of the Center for Popular Democracy, said the Biden team had been in touch with them as they formulated the recovery plan, and though it doesn’t abolish PROMESA as the group had wanted, the Biden team took many of their other requests on board — particularly the call to end austerity measures.

“It shows that he’s really listening,” said López Varona. “There’s also protection of pension holders in Puerto Rico and then there’s accountability for the FOMB and a clear stance against austerity. If there’s a beating drum, that's the thing we’ve been saying for the past four years. Generally, we think it's a step in the right direction.”

Biden’s plan would go a long way toward fulfilling some important measures Puerto Rican activists have been calling for since 2016, particularly an audit of Puerto Rico’s $72 billion debt, much of which activists argue was issued by predatory lenders who knew the island authorities could not pay it back, and some of which was issued in violation of debt limits in the Puerto Rico Constitution.

“I’m running to be president of all Americans, including 3 million Americans in Puerto Rico … I’m not going to suggest that we sell or trade, as was mentioned earlier, Puerto Rico. I'm not going to throw paper towels at people whose lives have just been devastated by a hurricane. That was mortifying. The world saw that,” Biden said at the event on Tuesday.

The proposal includes measures to increase funding for Puerto Rico’s food stamps program, which has come close to running out of funding multiple times in recent years, increased federal funding for public education, and moves to put funding for Puerto Rico’s Medicare and Medicaid programs on par with the rest of the US.

The island’s electrical grid, which was decimated during Hurricane Maria, remains fragile and incomplete nearly three years later, and is frequently knocked out by passing storms. Biden’s plan includes “a full recovery and infrastructure reconstruction to modern standards.”

The electrical grid failing again is a constant fear for people who lived for months without power, said Revelles, and Biden addressing it directly in his plan is significant for her. Beyond that, she said, she appreciates the campaign’s plan to address climate change and rejoin the Paris Agreement.

“Puerto Ricans know we are at the will of climate change,” she said. “Some of the survivors of Hurricane Maria who moved here do Identify themselves as climate change refugees.”


MORE ON PUERTO RICO
People In Puerto Rico Are Demanding Answers After A Warehouse Full Of Unused Emergency Supplies Was Discovered

Brianna Sacks · Jan. 19, 2020

“We Are Your Citizens”: Trump Keeps Repeating Lies About Puerto Rico 

Nidhi Prakash · April 3, 2019

Puerto Rico Is Burning Its Dead, And We May Never Know How Many People The Hurricane Really Killed

Nidhi Prakash · Oct. 27, 2017


Nidhi Prakash is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

Banksy loses trademark case on 'Flower Thrower' cards

The street artist's anonymity hurt their case in the ruling. A greeting card company will be able to use Banksy's "Flower Thrower" piece on their products.


Street artist Banksy lost a two-year trademark battle with a greeting card company on Thursday over the renowned "Flower Thrower" graffiti work.

The European Union's intellectual property office (EUIPO) said that it could not be protected as the artist's anonymity meant they could not be identified as the owner of the work, which depicts a protester in crosshairs winding up to hurl a bouquet of flowers.

"The predicament of Banksy's right to the work 'Flower Thrower' is clear. To protect the right under copyright law would require him to lose his anonymity, which would undermine his persona," read the EUIPO's ruling.

"He cannot be identified as the unquestionable owner of such works as his identity is hidden."

The artist created the work in Bethlehem in 2005 and successfully obtained an EU trademark on the image in 2014. But British greeting card company Full Colour Black claimed the trademark should be canceled as he never intended to use it on any goods.

Banksy, whose true identity is unknown, opened a pop-up shop in London last year to address issues in the legal dispute. The shop, named "Gross Domestic Product," was a bid to demonstrate the trademarks being used. But the EUIPO said the shop went against his case.

"It further cannot be established without question that the artist holds any copyrights to a graffiti. The contested [trademark] was filed in order for Banksy to have legal rights over the sign as he could not rely on copyright rights, but that its not a function of a trademark," read the statement.

Banksy's work began spray-painting buildings in Bristol, England, soon becoming one of the world's best-known artists both because of politically charged imaginative work and continued preservation of anonymity. The artist has continued to work during the pandemic, including working on a migrant rescue ship in the Mediterranean Sea.

The EUIPO ordered Banksy and his or her legal representative to pay for the costs and fees incurred by Full Colour Black. If Banksy plans to appeal the decision, the deadline to appeal is within two months.

kbd/msh (AFP, AP)

German states push for police racism probe

Several Social Democrat-led regional governments in Germany are insisting their own studies into racism among police forces if Interior Minister Horst Seehofer does not initiate a nationwide study.



Leaders of German states governed by the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) told German media Friday they are ready to carry out independent studies on police right-wing extremism if the federal government does not take action.

On Wednesday, 30 police officers Germany's most-populous state, North Rhein-Westphalia (NRW), were suspended after private WhatsApp chat groups were uncovered containing right-wing extremist content.

Read more: Opinion: Germany speaks volumes with silence on racist cops

Images in five chat groups included photos of Adolf Hitler and a fictional depiction of a refugee in a gas chamber.

"It is unbearable that these kinds of networks exist," said Thuringia Interior Minister Georg Maier, who is also the chairman of Germany's standing conference of interior ministers.

"We need to take uncompromising and consequential action against this right now," he told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland newspaper group, adding this includes exhausting all legal and disciplinary options.

Maier added that SPD state's interior ministers are united and ready to go it alone on a study "if necessary."

Read more: Racism in Germany 'an issue for society as a whole'

Why has there not been a nationwide probe?

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer refused to call for a nationwide investigation into police racism following the NRW revelations.

Seehofer told the Süddeutsche Zeitung Friday that although the NRW police racism scandal "hurts," the "overwhelming majority" of German police officers reject these kinds of "machinations" and stand "without doubt for our free and democratic order."

Read more: Police in Germany under the pall of right-wing extremists

A report looking racism in German public service institutions will be released by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution at the end of September, Seehöfer said.

This report, however, has been long in the making and was planned independently of the recent developments in NRW.

Seehofer also rejected calls for a police racism study in Germany over the summer, as the Black Lives Matter movement in the USA began to draw international support.
The police need 'support' against racisim

SPD co-leader Saskia Esken told the Rheinische Post newspaper Friday the police forces in Germany needed "support" to "strictly reject right-wing extremism in their ranks."

Esken added that this will require a comprehensive "overview of racism and misanthropy" among German police forces.

"The sheer number of individual cases is slowly becoming too much," said Esken's SPD colleague Maier.

• https://p.dw.com/p/3ifP9

wmr/rt (AFP, epd, dpa)