Exclusive: U.S., Canada, European nations meet to discuss concern over Mexico energy policy

ALMO IS NOT A LEFTIST HE IS A NEOLIBERAL NATIONALIST

By Dave Graham,Reuters•March 8, 2020

FILE PHOTO: Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks 

during a news conference to announce a plan to strengthen finances of 

state oil firm Pemex, at the National Palace in Mexico City

By Dave Graham

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The United States, the European Union, Canada and six European nations have held joint talks on concerns over Mexico's energy policy, sources told Reuters, as President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pushes for a bigger role for the state in the sector.

The unusually broad diplomatic encounter is a measure of how the leftist (SIC) Lopez Obrador's break with the energy policy of the previous government is worrying economies that have traditionally been some of Mexico's biggest foreign investors.

U.S., Canadian and European officials privately voice concern that Mexico's energy policy is eroding the legal foundations of contracts worth billions of dollars with the previous administration, in what they fear is a creeping squeeze-out of their interests.

Mexico's government denies it is undermining those deals, but says prior contracts were often damaging to the country, and has sought to renegotiate the terms of some.

At Friday's meeting in Mexico City hosted by the U.S. embassy, diplomats from Britain, Canada, the EU, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain discussed their concerns and how best to relay them to Lopez Obrador, said five people familiar with the gathering.

Asked for comment, the U.S. embassy responded to Reuters that it did not discuss its diplomatic conversations. The other foreign embassies did not reply to requests for comment, nor did Lopez Obrador's office.

Details of what happened at the meeting were not immediately clear, although there was discussion about whether to make it public, said one person. All the sources spoke on condition of anonymity, due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Diplomats say foreign government differ in their opinions of how openly to communicate their grievances to Lopez Obrador, lest he feel he is being pushed about and ends up taking a more hardline approach.

Lopez Obrador has committed himself to strengthening the state's role in the energy sector, arguing that past market liberalization and privatization of other industries deepened chronic inequality in Mexico and encouraged corruption.

Broader concerns over Lopez Obrador's economic policies sapped investment in Mexico last year and contributed to a slowdown that pushed the economy into a mild recession.

Companies from around the world pledged to invest billions of dollars in Mexico under constitutional changes to open up the energy market, in particular for oil and gas, made by Lopez Obrador's centrist predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto.

Lopez Obrador has put the brakes on that liberalization process, saying it has not yielded benefits for Mexico.

One particular dispute centers on who has the right to operate a major offshore crude discovery in a reservoir straddling areas held by state oil firm Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and a U.S.-led consortium of private investors.

Last year, Lopez Obrador's government also upset some countries by threatening to tear up about $12 billion in contracts agreed under Pena Nieto for construction of a string of natural gas pipelines, arguing they ripped off taxpayers.

Although that dispute was eventually resolved, fresh conflicts have surfaced.

Government steps to strengthen the state power utility Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE) have reduced incentives for private capital to enter renewable projects, further clouding investor confidence in Mexico.

Some of the money tied up in energy investments in Mexico is linked to pension funds in Europe and North America. Critics of the government's policies worry that diminishing returns on those Mexican energy investments may hit pensioners.




(Reporting by Dave Graham; Additional reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

America’s worst financial adviser

Kudlow, 72, is not an economist, even though he served as “chief economist” at investing firm Bear Stearns in the 1980s. 

I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS ABOUT KUDLOW FOR YEARS


Rick Newman Senior Columnist, Yahoo Finance•March 9, 2020


The Kudlow Portfolio is tanking.

On Feb. 25, Larry Kudlow, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, suggested it was a good time to buy stocks. “The virus story is not going to last forever,” Kudlow said on CNBC around 2:30 p.m. “To me, if you are an investor out there and you have a long-term point of view, I would suggest very seriously taking a look at the market, the stock market, that is a lot cheaper than it was a week or two ago.”

At the time, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) index was around 3,128. Two weeks later it closed at 2,746. If you took Kudlow’s advice, you were the dumb money buying in a selloff. You’d be down more than 12%.

Kudlow hedged his suggestion with the “long term” reference. But it was still a foolish thing to say, and Kudlow’s not the only one saying it. Trump himself is a frequent stock-market commentator (always buy, never sell) who is now dismissing the recent plunge in stocks as a panicky reaction to “fake news”—the coronavirus outbreak. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been another occasional up-talker of stocks. We all know the game: Trump’s minions must say anything to goose stocks and aid Trump’s reelection odds.

We know now that Kudlow issued his buy recommendation in the early stages of a worsening downturn that might end the bull-market rally that stretches all the way back to 2009. The coronavirus has unnerved investors because nobody can gauge the severity and duration of an epidemic forcing closures, cancellations and lost business worldwide. On top of that, a spat between oil producers Russia and Saudi Arabia led to a crash in oil prices and new worries about energy firms going bust.

White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow adjusts his tie before speaking with reporters about the impact of the Coronavirus on markets in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, Friday, Feb. 28, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)More

Kudlow couldn’t have known all this, right? Shouldn’t he get a pass for an innocent mistake? How about no. Kudlow’s recommendation came with stocks down 7.6% from their peak, which might sound like a nice dip-buying opportunity in normal times. But this was at a time when the coronavirus death toll in Italy hit double digits, the mayor of San Francisco declared a state of emergency and public health experts were warning of an exponential spike in infections. The volatility index (^VIX) which measures uncertainty in financial markets, had doubled in a week and was well into the range often associated with market turmoil.

Kudlow, 72, is not an economist, even though he served as “chief economist” at investing firm Bear Stearns in the 1980s. Kudlow was a successful Wall Street salesman who capitalized on an upbeat personality to land a job as a commentator and show host at CNBC, starting in 2002, which made him famous. He’s a fervent supply-sider favoring tax cuts and laissez-faire policies as the best path to a strong economy, one reason Trump tapped him to replace Gary Cohn at the White House in 2018.

Kudlow has produced some famously bad predictions, however. “Larry Kudlow is usually wrong and frequently absurd,” housing analyst Bill McBride, who pens the Calculated Risk blog, wrote in 2016. In 2005, for instance, Kudlow, argued that “bubbleheads” predicting real estate crashes in Las Vegas and Florida were “dead wrong.” Kudlow turned out to be dead wrong. An epic housing bust began right around that time, with gigantic losses in Las Vegas and Florida. In 2007, Kudlow wrote, “there is no recession.” In reality, a terrible recession began that very month.

Kudlow was one of several Trump officials who predicted the 2017 Republican tax cuts would produce a surge of economic growth, perhaps hitting 4% for the first time since 2003. It hasn’t happened. Growth under Trump peaked at 3.3% in the second quarter of 2018 and drifted down to 2.3% by the end of last year. Most economists think the economy was growing at around 2% before the coronavirus crisis, which will undoubtedly slow the economy.

Kudlow might be able to argue that he’s simply a sunny analyst eager to see the bright side. But he has a giant conflict of interest when commenting on financial markets, because it’s in his interest and Trump’s that markets do well this year, to help Trump with reelection. If everybody loses their shirts the day after the election, who cares.

What about Obama? It’s a fair question. On March 3, 2009, when markets were reeling from the Great Recession, President Obama said, “What you’re now seeing is profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal, if you’ve got a long-term perspective on it.” That was a buy recommendation, just like Kudlow’s. Obama should have kept his mouth closed and let the market sort itself it, but history has treated him kindly. Stocks bottomed out six days later—down a nauseating 56%—triggering a bull market that continues to this day.

Yahoo Finance reached out to the White House to ask if Kudlow still recommends buying stocks, or has any regrets about his Feb. 25 buy recommendation. We got no response. That sounds about right.

Rick Newman is the author of four books, including “Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success.” Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.


In coronavirus crisis, Trump's stock market advice keeps looking worse

David Knowles Editor, Yahoo News•March 9, 2020

Almost forgotten in the rush of doom-and-gloom headlines about the spread of coronavirus and Monday’s record-breaking stock market sell-off is President Trump’s two-week-old advice to would-be investors to buy stocks.

Though the first market jitters over the economic impact of coronavirus had already led to consecutive triple-digit losses, Trump posted an optimistic appraisal of the investment landscape on Feb. 24.

The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 24, 2020

Hours after Trump’s tweet was published, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 28,992, down 227 points.

A day later Larry Kudlow, Trump’s director of the National Economic Council, made a second appeal on behalf of the beleaguered stock market.

“The virus story is not going to last forever,” Kudlow said in an interview. “I would suggest very seriously taking a look at the market, the stock market, that is a lot cheaper than it was a week or two ago.”

President Trump and Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council.

 (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: AP)

Despite Kudlow’s optimism, the Dow fell another 1,031 points that day, to close at 27,912.

In fact, that week turned out to be the worst for the stock market since the 2007 financial crisis, with the Dow losing 3,500 points and wiping out $3 trillion in value.

On Feb. 27, three days after offering his stock market tip, Trump announced he was appointing Vice President Mike Pence to head up his coronavirus task force, which also included Kudlow. During a White House press conference, Trump assured assured the country that the number of Americans infected with the virus “was going very substantially down, not up,” and that “within a couple of days” the tally would be “down close to zero.”

Perhaps buoyed by that infectious confidence, Trump’s son, Eric, jumped on the “buy the dip” bandwagon.

In my opinion, it’s a great time to buy stocks or into your 401K. I would be all in... let’s see if I’m right...
— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) February 28, 2020

But just as the number of cases did not go down as Trump had foreseen (the number has risen from 60 confirmed cases at the time of Trump’s press conference to over 600 as of Monday), the stock market proved an equally bad bet.

On Monday, it fell 2,014 points, the largest single-day point loss in history, and closed at 23,851. For those keeping score at home, that’s more than 5,000 points lower than when Trump proclaimed the markets were starting to look good.

Of course, Trump isn’t the first president to encourage Americans to invest in the stock market. On March 3, 2009, then-President Barack Obama saw an opportunity to buy following a nearly 300-point dip in the Dow, which at that time had fallen to 6,726 points in the wake of the Great Recession.

“What you’re now seeing is profit-and-earnings rations are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you’ve got a long-term perspective on it.”

From the time he said that through the end of his presidency, the S&P 500 rose by nearly 225 percent.

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JOE BIDEN ZZZZZ MEME

CAPITALIST CRISIS: COVID-19



WE DON'T NEED PAYROLL TAX BREAKS 

WE NEED EMPLOYMENT INSURANCE TO PAY FOR TWO WEEKS TO A MONTH'S LEAVE FOR OURSELVES AND INCLUDING FOR HAVING TO STAY HOME BECAUSE OF CHILDREN AWAY FROM SCHOOL.

MORTGAGE AND UTILITIES FORGIVENESS FOR A MONTH

Open Windows. Don't Share Food. Here's the Government's Coronavirus Advice. 

CORONAVIRUS.GOV NOT EVEN THE CORRECT NAME; COVID-19

Noah Weiland, The New York Times•March 10, 2020


WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Monday night issued several pages of tips for navigating the coronavirus, organizing a set of recommendations for schools, businesses, homes and offices into a document that resembles easy-on-the-eye restaurant food-safety charts.

The simple behaviors recommended in the guidelines — like washing hands, managing air flow, protecting food and carving out private space in a home — show how federal health officials believe the virus could influence everyday life.

“These are really simple, low-tech things,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key member of the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force, said at a White House news briefing. “There’s nothing in there that’s complicated. But it’s just stated in a way that’s clear, that people can understand.”

After the briefing, Vice President Mike Pence posted images of the guidelines on Twitter. They are expected to also be published on Coronavirus.gov, a federal hub of virus information where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already posted similar advice

Here is what the guidelines recommend.

How to navigate the office
Stay home if you or family members who live with you are sick. Several top health officials have repeatedly urged Americans to not risk going to work if they come down with symptoms that might indicate an infection.

Use the usual electronic means of work life, like email, to remind yourself to wash your hands. Devise ways to remember to not touch your face. And avoid shaking hands — “noncontact methods of greeting” are preferable.

Instead of in-person meetings, the guidelines suggest teleconferencing. If meetings are held in person, they should be in open, well-ventilated rooms. Open windows will help.

The World Health Organization warns that “poorly ventilated buildings affect air quality and can contribute to the spread of disease,” and that in health facilities with a high concentration of infectious patients, poor ventilation worsens the risk of transmission.

How to divide a home

Divvy up your home to account for the elderly or those with underlying conditions that make them particularly susceptible to infection. Make a “protected space” for those at risk, and give the sick their own rooms, where the door should be kept closed. Only one person should care for the ill.

Healthy people in your home should act as if they could be a risk to the vulnerable, washing their hands frequently before interacting with them.

How to keep a school safe

Schools should avoid mixing ages and consider adjusting or postponing in-school and extracurricular gatherings that intermingle classes and grades. Classes should be held outdoors, if possible, or anywhere well ventilated. 

(OK IF YOU ARE IN HAWAII BUT NOT MINNESOTA OR NORTH DAKOTA)

Students should limit sharing food, and cafeteria workers should practice strict hygiene. Schools should screen cafeteria workers and those they come in contact with.

WHERE ARE THE CLEANING INSTRUCTIONS? FOR CUSTODIAL STAFF

WHAT DOES STRICT HYGIENE MEAN?

How to protect a business

Businesses should limit attendance at large gatherings and use online transactions for events, avoiding the kind of close contact that occurs at box offices. The advice follows news of several large event cancellations, including the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, a major professional tennis tournament in California and a health conference where President Donald Trump was scheduled to speak.

Businesses should promote “tap and pay” machines that cut down on the use of cash, a notorious germ-carrying material.

Drivers for ride-sharing services and taxis should keep their windows open and regularly disinfect surfaces. Uber has said it will offer drivers two weeks of paid sick leave if they are infected with the coronavirus or are quarantined.
(PATHETIC, AMATEURISH AND CHILDISH 

OH RIGHT, IT WAS WRITTEN FOR TRUMP)

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

What’s so scary about the inclusion of ‘God’ in the Russian constitution?

By Katherine Kelaidis, Religion Dispatches - Commentary on March 6, 2020
This article was paid for by reader donations to Raw Story Investigates
Last Friday, the House’s Tom Lantos Commission on Human Rights heard testimony that Russia’s human rights record, including its record on religious freedom, is worsening. There were few surprises in Elizabeth Cassidy’s testimony—particularly for those who’ve been paying even the most passing attention to the Putin regime’s power grab both at home and abroad. Cassidy, the director of research and policy at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, told the Congressional commission, “The Russian government maintains, frequently updates and enforces an array of laws that restrict religious freedom…

 These violations are escalating, spreading through the country and even across its borders.”

Indeed, USCIRF has “been calling for the designation of Russia as a [Country of Particular Concern] since 2017… given the Russian government’s repressive activities both in Russia and abroad,” reads an USCIRF statement from December. Trump’s State Department has thus far refused to do so. And the reality is that the worst might be yet to come.


Earlier this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he would seek major changes to the Russian Constitution. Most of the media coverage rightly focused on what such reforms would mean for Putin’s future at the country’s helm (there’s little doubt that the primary motivation for these reforms was to allow Putin to remain in power beyond the 2022 expiration of his presidential term). However, the opening of Russia’s first democratic constitution to significant structural overhaul poses other dangers as well. There have been more than three hundred proposed changes to the constitution, many of which have serious implications for human rights and religious freedom in the country.
In his February 2nd column for the Russian-language service of the German newspaper Deutsche Welle, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and a man considered by most to be an ally of Putin, called for “God” to be mentioned in the new preamble. On the surface, this isn’t a particularly alarming request. While Ukraine is, to date, alone among post-Soviet states in including a reference to God in its constitution, many more liberal states absolutely do, including Germany, Canada, Ireland, Sweden, and Switzerland. In these instances, the constitutional reference to God is frequently a nod to a country’s shared religious heritage and does little to undermine the principles of secularism and pluralism upon which modern liberal democracy is built. Arguably, such references in fact enforce these values, by offering the seal of divine imprimatur to the legal foundations of the nation. In the case of Russia, however, this is a suggestion that takes on a much more sinister tone.


The Russian Orthodox Church has, to say the least, a bad track record on issues of political liberty and civil rights. Patriarch Kirill himself rather infamously declared in 2016 that “some human rights are heresy.” The Russian Orthodox Church, including close deputies of the Patriarch, were intimately involved in the 2017 law that decriminalized domestic violence in Russia, as well as the 2013 “gay propaganda” law that’s been a major force for the state persecution of LGBTQ people in Russia. Furthermore, Patriarch Kirill and the Russian Orthodox Church he leads have worked hard to develop close alliances with illiberal forces around the world, including Franklin Graham, Steve Bannon, and the World Congress of Families.


In fact, it would not be going too far to say that the arch-conservative positions of Kirill’s Russian Orthodox Church operate as an instrument of Russian soft-power, drafting reactionary forces around the world onto the Russian side. It is, for instance, difficult not to see the Patriarch’s ongoing ecclesiastical conflict with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, focused on hotspots such as Ukraine and Western Europe, through the lens of Russia’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy and its desire to not only cause chaos in Western democracies, but to undermine the fundamental trust in liberalism and pluralism that underlie their success.


It’s in this light that the seemingly innocuous request of a bishop that “God” be included in the preamble of his nation’s constitution takes on a significantly more sinister tone. And it should, for any honest observer, raise serious concerns about the failure of liberalism to have taken root in post-Soviet Russia and the country’s slide even more deeply into totalitarianism.



Moreover, given Russia’s aggressive foreign posture, one that’s not just military or political, but also distinctly cultural, it ought to worry those invested in the larger project of global democracy. One of the cornerstones of contemporary Russian foreign policy is to undermine the faith of those living in liberal, pluralist societies in the effectiveness, stability, and frankly goodness of their values and institutions. This is an objective that has been all too appealing to the Russian Orthodox Church, and particularly its current leader. If Russia ceases to be simply an authoritarian state and becomes increasingly theocratic in its authoritarianism there could be greater trouble ahead for us all.
Russia has never been a country synonymous with liberty. Authoritarianism is as native to her as her birch forests. But there is evidence that things are getting worse, and that the Russian Orthodox Church is renewing its ancient role as the handmaiden of Russian state power. And that is something that should concern anyone worried about the future of liberalism. Particularly in places where it has historically been much more successful than Russia.

White House Considers Providing Federal Aid to Oil Companies in Face of Financial Crisis

SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH AND WELL CONNECTED 

Tobias Hoonhout,National Review•March 10, 2020


Sources are signaling that President Trump could push for federal funds to assist oil and natural gas producers affected by a steep decline in global oil prices, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Shale companies were hammered on Monday as the price for oil suffered the sharpest one-day drop in almost 30 years. The White House is worried that with credit drying up, the industry could enter a serious decline without assistance, and is gauging whether to offer government loans to slow the bleeding.

Harold Hamm, a Trump supporter and founder of Continental Resources, lost $2 billion dollars on Monday as the stock market fell over seven percent, its worst day since the 2008 financial crisis. He told the Post in an interview that he had reached out to the White House, but did not make “direct” contact.
“I don’t want to prescribe what the president would or shouldn’t do. He’s very capable of handling this situation,” he said, adding that he was worried “how this could jeopardize those jobs and the economies in producing states and communities across America from Pennsylvania to California and Texas to North Dakota.”

Trump said Monday in a press conference that the administration would be helping seriously affected parts of the economy, and was meeting with Republicans Tuesday to discuss efforts.

“This was something that we were thrown into and we’re going to handle it, and we have been handling it,” he said.

Some Republicans have been getting nervous over the White House’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, with White House officials have privately expressing their concerns that Trump’s initial comments on the virus were spreading panic.

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Republican congressman threatens Joe Biden and Beto O'Rourke in sinister gun video

Mr Buck told the Washington Post in a 2015 interview that his weapon is legal and he always keeps the rifle unloaded and had the bolt carrier assembly removed prior to placing it in his office.

"YOU CAN TAKE MY FAKE GUN FROM MY WET CLAMMY HANDS"
Graig Graziosi, The Independent•March 6, 2020

Congressman Ken Buck Twitter

Colorado Congressman Ken Buck posted a video to Twitter Friday challenging former US Representative Beto O’Rourke and former vice president Joe Biden to come to his office and take his AR-15.

It is obvious that the underlying message is a threat to the men that if they did try to take his gun, he would shoot them.

“I have a message for Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke, if you want to take everyone’s AR-15s in America, why don’t you swing by my office in Washington, D.C. and start with this one,” Mr Buck said. “Come and take it.”

Mr Buck grabbed the rifle off his wall as he delivered the message.


“Come and take it” is a common refrain among far-right gun rights enthusiasts, though the phrase is often delivered as “Molon labe,” referencing the supposed response of King Leonidas of the Spartans to Persian King Xerxes I when he demanded the Greeks surrender their weapons.

The Oath Keepers, which is classified by the SPLC as a far-right extremist group, produced a documentary called “Molon Labe” in 2013.

Mr O’Rourke responded to the video on Twitter.

“This guy makes the case for both an assault weapons ban and a mandatory buyback program better than I ever could. These are weapons of war that have no place in our communities, in our politics or in our public discourse,” Mr O’Rourke tweeted.

This guy makes the case for both an assault weapons ban and a mandatory buyback program better than I ever could. These are weapons of war that have no place in our communities, in our politics or in our public discourse. https://t.co/ce5PvaxqMk
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) March 6, 2020

The bizarre video was likely prompted by a statement Mr Biden made suggesting that - should he win the Democratic nomination and the presidency - he would bring Mr O’Rourke into his administration to oversee gun control reforms.

During a Democratic debate in the waning days of Mr O’Rourke's primary ambitions, he inspired the ire of gun enthusiasts when he said “hell yes we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”

Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was killed in the Parkland, Florida school shooting, responded to the video as well.

“@RepKenBuck, had I seen this yesterday when in DC I gladly would have. My daughter died from a single AR 15 bullet. You may find joy in that, I don’t. I will gladly come back to DC to discuss your AR 15 and removing it for safe storage. Do not make threats of AR 15 violence,” he wrote.

Mr Guttenberg was removed from the State of the Union address after shouting at President Donald Trump when he was talking about protecting gun rights.

Mr Buck’s AR-15 - which is decorated in an American flag gun wrap - does have a trigger lock, though it appears to simply be hanging on a pair of nails jutting from the congressman’s wall. The NRA recommends that gun owners ensure their weapons are not stored in the open where individuals other than the owner could access them. Mr Buck’s improper storage wasn’t the only gun safety basic that he violated.

One of Mr Buck’s fellow Congressmen, Representative Ruben Gallego of Arizona, pointed out that the senator broke a basic rule of proper gun handling; he pointed it at someone he didn’t intend to shoot.

“You literally flagged the cameraman. First rule of weapons handling, treat every weapon as if it were loaded,” he wrote. “Second rule, never point the weapon at anything you don’t intend to shoot.”

Mr Gallego served as a Marine in Iraq.

Mr Buck told the Washington Post in a 2015 interview that his weapon is legal and he always keeps the rifle unloaded and had the bolt carrier assembly removed prior to placing it in his office.

That information would suggest that Mr Biden and Mr O’Rourke could, in fact, take his AR-15, as it is apparently unloaded and incapable of being fired. Perhaps Mr Buck intended to use it as a bludgeon.

Opinion: Why this epidemiologist is more worried about coronavirus than he was a month ago

Americans need to prepare themselves that the next 12 months are going to look very different.

March 9, 2020 By Maciej F. Boni The Conversation

Passengers get off a New York City subway on March 7. 

AFP/Getty Images

The Harvard historian Jill Lepore recounted recently in The New Yorker magazine that when democracies sink into crisis, the question “where are we going?” leaps to everyone’s mind, as if we were waiting for a weather forecast to tell us how healthy our democracy was going to be tomorrow. Quoting Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce, Lepore writes that “political problems are not external forces beyond our control; they are forces within our control. We need solely to make up our own minds and to act.”

And so it is with the coronavirus epidemic. How big will this epidemic be? How many people will it infect? How many Americans will die? The answers to these questions are not written in stone. They are partially within our control, assuming we are willing to take the responsibility to act with commitment, urgency and solidarity.

I am an epidemiologist with eight years of field experience, including time on the front lines of the isolation and quarantine efforts during the 2009 swine flu pandemic. One month ago, I was under the impression that the death reports due to COVID-19 circulation in China were giving us an unfair picture of its mortality rate. I wrote a piece saying that the death rate of an emerging disease always looks bad in the early stages of an outbreak, but is likely to drop once better data become available. After waiting for eight weeks, I am now worried that these new data — data indicating that the virus has a low fatality rate — may not arrive.
Case fatality rate and infection fatality rate

By Jan. 31, China had reported a total of 11,821 cases of COVID-19 and 259 deaths; that’s about a 2% case fatality rate. Two weeks later, the tally had risen to more than 50,000 cases and 1,524 deaths, corresponding to about 3% case fatality (the rise in the case fatality is expected as deaths always get counted later than cases). For an easily transmissible disease, a 2% or 3% fatality rate is extremely dangerous.

However, case fatality rates are computed using the officially reported numbers of 11,821 cases or 50,000 cases, which only include individuals who (a) experience symptoms; (b) decide that their symptoms are bad enough to merit a hospital visit; and (c) choose a hospital or clinic that is able to test and report cases of coronavirus.

Surely, there must have been hundreds of thousands cases, maybe a million cases, that had simply gone uncounted.

First, some definitions from Steven Riley at Imperial College. The infection fatality rate (IFR) gives the probability of dying for an infected person. The case fatality rate (CFR) gives the probability of dying for an infected person who is sick enough to report to a hospital or clinic. CFR is larger than IFR, because individuals who report to hospitals are typically more severely ill.

If China’s mid-February statistic of 1,524 deaths had occurred from 1 million infections of COVID-19 (counting all symptomatic and asymptomatic infections), this would mean that the virus had an infection fatality rate of 0.15%, about three times higher than seasonal influenza virus; this is a concern but not a crisis.

After waiting for eight weeks, I am now worried that data indicating the virus has a low fatality rate may not arrive.

The IFR is much more difficult to estimate than the CFR. The reason is that it is hard to count people who are mildly ill or who show no symptoms at all. If you are able to count and test everybody — for example, on a cruise ship, or in a small community — then you may be able to paint a picture of what fraction of infections are asymptomatic, mild, symptomatic and severe.

Scientists working at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Imperial College London and the Institute for Disease Modeling have used these approaches to estimate the infection fatality rate. Currently, these estimates range from 0.5% to 0.94% indicating that COVID-19 is about 10 to 20 times as deadly as seasonal influenza. Evidence coming in from genomics and large-scale testing of fevers is consistent with these conclusions. The only potentially good news is that the epidemic in Korea may ultimately show a lower CFR than the epidemic in China.

Impact of the epidemic in the U.S.

Now that new COVID-19 cases are being detected in the U.S. every day, it is too late to stop the initial wave of infections. The epidemic is likely to spread across the U.S. The virus appears to be about as contagious as influenza. But this comparison is difficult to make since we have no immunity to the new coronavirus.

On balance, it is reasonable to guess that COVID-19 will infect as many Americans over the next year as influenza does in a typical winter — somewhere between 25 million and 115 million. Maybe a bit more if the virus turns out to be more contagious than we thought. Maybe a bit less if we put restrictions in place that minimize our travel and our social and professional contacts.

The bad news is, of course, that these infection numbers translate to 350,000 to 660,000 people dying in the U.S., with an uncertainty range that goes from 50,000 deaths to 5 million deaths. The good news is that this is not a weather forecast. The size of the epidemic, i.e., the total number of infections, is something we can reduce if we decrease our contact patterns and improve our hygiene. If the total number of infections decreases, the total number of deaths will also decrease.

What science cannot tell us right now is exactly which measures will be most effective at slowing down the epidemic and reducing its impact. If I stop shaking hands, will that cut my probability of infection by a half? A third? Nobody knows. If I work from home two days a week, will this reduce my probability of infection by 40%? Maybe. But we don’t even know the answer to that.

What we should prepare for now is reducing our exposures — i.e., our chances of coming into contact with infected people or infected surfaces — any way that we can. For some people this will mean staying home more. For others it will mean adopting more stringent hygiene practices. An extreme version of this exposure reduction — including mandatory quarantine, rapid diagnosis and isolation, and closing of workplaces and schools — seems to have worked in Hubei province in China, where the epidemic spread appears to have slowed down.

For now, Americans need to prepare themselves that the next 12 months are going to look very different. Vacations may have to be canceled. Social interactions will look different. And risk management is something we’re going to have to think about every morning when we wake up. The coronavirus epidemic is not going to extinguish itself. It is not in another country. It is not just the cold and flu. And it is not going away.

Maciej F. Boni is as associate professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University in State College, Pa. This was first published on The Conversation — “How big will the coronavirus epidemic be? An epidemiologist updates his concerns”

New York's solution to hand sanitizer shortage: Prison labor, hourly wages below $1

LIBERTARIANS, LABOUR AND THE LEFT AGREE 

THAT PRISON LABOUR  IS SLAVE LABOUR

THE DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT IS NO DIFFERENT THAN THE REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT 

Jon Campbell, New York State Team, USA TODAY•March 10, 2020

New York's solution to hand sanitizer shortage: Prison labor, hourly wages below $1

ALBANY, N.Y. – What do you do when fear over the new coronavirus leads to a shortage of hand sanitizer?

If you're the state of New York, you make it yourself. Or you have prisoners do it.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday the state had begun producing its own line of hand sanitizer, known as NYS Clean. The state will distribute the products to schools, local governments, prisons and other public entities free of charge.

The low price of making the sanitizer in house – $6.10 a gallon – will allow the state and local governments to save big, particularly when a coronavirus-fueled run on the product has led to rising prices if you're even able to find it at all.
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But it's the way the state is containing its costs that has some lawmakers and advocacy groups alarmed: By paying prisoners as little as 16 cents an hour to make it.

"There is price gouging happening across the state and we are in a public-health crisis, so I do applaud the governor for acting very quickly," said State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, D-Brooklyn. "But I am incredibly concerned that we're using a company that pays its workers sweat-shop wages."

New York is using prison labor to produce its own line of hand sanitizer -- NYS Clean -- amid a coronavirus-fueled shortage, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday, March 9, 2020.

NYS Clean made by division of state prison systemNYS Clean is being produced by Corcraft, a division of the state prison system that uses inmate labor to manufacture products to sell primarily to state and local government agencies.

At 13 prisons across New York, Corcraft produces a wide range of products, from metal products at Albion to mattresses and pillows at Eastern to textiles at Clinton and Coxsackie.

The program generates tens of millions of dollars in sales, in part because it is considered a "preferred source" provider, meaning state agencies can purchase goods from Corcraft without putting out a contract for bid.

Corcraft employees – all inmates in state prison – are paid a starting wage of 16 cents per hour and a maximum wage of 65 cents per hour, according to the Department of Corrections and Community Service.

We’re hearing from local governments that acquiring hand sanitizer has been a real problem.

NYS will immediately begin producing hand sanitizer ourselves — 100,000 gallons per week. We'll provide it to government agencies, schools, the MTA, prisons, & others. #COVID19
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) March 9, 2020

They can also earn a bonus of up to $1.30 a day for productivity.

The hand sanitizer is being produced at the Great Meadow Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Comstack, Washington County. It will only be distributed for free to public entities and coronavirus hot spots; It will not be offered for sale, according to Cuomo's office.

Already, inmates at Great Meadow were making various cleaning solutions for janitors and chemicals for vehicle maintenance. Making hand sanitizer at a time of public-health concern was a natural step, Cuomo said Monday.

Corcraft will be able to make 100,000 gallons of hand sanitizer a week, according to Cuomo.

"Corcraft makes glass cleaner, floor cleaners, degreasers, laundry detergent, vehicle fluids, hand cleaner, and now they make hand sanitizer with alcohol," he said.

In this 2018 file photo, Gov. Andrew M.Cuomo tours the Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, Washington County. In March 2020, the prison's inmates began producing hand sanitizer there amid a coronavirus outbreak.

Reform advocates critical: 'Last vestige of slavery'

New York's prison-labor system has long been criticized by reform advocates, who note the hourly wage hasn't risen for state inmates since Cuomo's father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo, was in office in the early 1990s.

Last year, Myrie and New York Assemblyman Nick Perry, D-Brooklyn, sponsored a bill that would have given working inmates a significant raise, setting a minimum wage of at least $3 an hour.

Inmates are working to produce hand sanitizer to protect against the spread of COVID-19. Some of these workers get paid as low as $0.16 per hour! Now is the time to end this last vestige of slavery. It’s time to pass the Prison Minimum Wage Act. https://t.co/arT7kgxugZ
— N Nick Perry (@NNickPerry) March 9, 2020

The bill was never put to a vote, though Myrie said he's hopeful the renewed attention being paid to the prison-labor program could get it over the finish line this year.

"If you are asking the incarcerated to save the public from this health crisis, give them the dignity of paying a fair wage," he said.

In a tweet, Perry called the prison-labor system a "last vestige of slavery."

Inmates at the Great Meadow Correctional Facility who work for Corcraft make cleaning solutions and vehicle maintenance chemicals.

Cuomo pledged support for an inmate pay raise last August, which came as his administration faced criticism for a since-scrapped plan to force New York drivers with aging license plates to pay for new ones.

License plates are made by Corcraft employees at the Auburn Correctional Facility.

Rich Azzopardi, a Cuomo spokesman and senior adviser, defended the state's decision to use Corcraft to produce hand sanitizer.

“A central part of prison rehabilitation is job training and skill development, and this is part of that existing program that’s existed for years," he said in a statement.

In a joint statement, Tina Luongo and Adriene Holder – top attorneys for The Legal Aid Society, a New York City-based organization that provides legal representation to the indigent – called on the state to pass a bill requiring prisoners to be paid the minimum wage.

"This is nothing less than slave labor and it must end," they said.

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