PRIVATE NURSING HOME HORROR
Coronavirus: Searching for truth behind Spain's care home tragedy

By Hugo Bachega BBC News 30 April 2020
Related Topics
Coronavirus pandemic

Monte Hermoso was one of the care homes worst hit by Covid-19 in Spain

To Castillo's frustration, the worker said nothing else and went back inside Monte Hermoso. As she exchanged phone numbers with some relatives, Castillo saw another worker rushing away, covering her mouth with a piece of cloth. They had known each other for a long time but, the woman did not stop to talk, Castillo became suspicious. "At that moment," she told me, "I felt something wasn't right."

Care homes across Western Europe have been ravaged by coronavirus and in Spain alone there have been more than 16,000 deaths, many around the capital Madrid. The true number may never be known, but families are asking why so many of their elderly relatives were lost.

Around lunchtime on 8 March, Rosana Castillo met up with some close friends not far from her house in Lucero, a working-class neighbourhood in west Madrid, and, as they did every year, joined a protest to mark International Women's Day. They gave each other a warm hug, held hands and marched to chants of "Down with the patriarchy" and "Feminism will win".

Spaniards, then, could still venture freely outside and coronavirus, which had already killed several hundred in Italy, felt more like someone else's pain. Castillo, a 60-year-old retired primary school co-ordinator, had seen a few people on the underground wearing surgical masks as a protection, but thought most of them were probably tourists. "We weren't really talking about it here," she said.

But it was preying on her mind. She had visited Carmela, her 86-year-old mother, hours before at Monte Hermoso, the care home near the square where the women had gathered. Arriving at the main gate, Castillo was told she could not come in. A worker said two residents had contracted Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, and visits had been suspended.

Castillo had seen Carmela, who had advanced Alzheimer's, three days earlier, when her mother was discharged from hospital after a week's treatment for breathing difficulties. The doctor told her Carmela was going to be fine, that her case was not related to the virus even though she had not been tested.


It was already widely known, first from China, then Italy, that elderly people with existing health issues were especially vulnerable to the virus. Yet in Spain, where a fifth of the population is above 65, or some 8.9 million people, the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had done little in response.

As Castillo followed news of the outbreak, she wondered if enough was being done to protect her mother or, indeed, anyone else. Unable to visit Carmela, who had lived there for five years, her only source of information came from infrequent, and usually very brief, phone calls from Monte Hermoso. No matter how much Castillo asked, few things were said.

Consuelo Domínguez, a long-time friend, coincidentally, also had her mother living in Monte Hermoso, a red-brick, private centre with large windows and rooms for up to 130 residents. She, too, struggled to get details. Both daughters knew some staff had gone into isolation with coughs and a fever, the most common symptoms of Covid-19, and were pretty sure there was more going on.

Coronavirus was spreading in Spain at an alarming speed and, on 14 March, the prime minister imposed a state of emergency with a nationwide stay-at-home order. No-one was truly safe.

On that afternoon, Domínguez received an unexpected call from Monte Hermoso. The worker was "very tense," she said, "you could feel it." Surreptitiously, Domínguez was told that 70 people had been infected with the virus and at least 10 patients had already died. "I was frightened," she said. Domínguez called her friend. "I couldn't believe it," Castillo recalled. "We weren't being told the truth."

GETTY IMAGES

After the deaths, the Madrid government announced it would intervene in Monte Hermoso

Castillo and Domínguez alerted journalists and, on 17 March, Monte Hermoso became national news. Only then did the Madrid government reportedly become aware of the devastating outbreak. Nineteen people were already dead.

It had been a stressful day. In the evening, Castillo received a call from Monte Hermoso. Her mother, who shared her room with another woman in similarly poor health, had a fever. "It shocked me," Castillo said. She knew Carmela was unlikely to survive.

The relatives created a WhatsApp group, and disturbing messages flowed in. "Staff were very nervous... Some [residents] were even a little bit delirious," said one of a visit two days before they had been halted. Aurora Santos, whose mother was also at Monte Hermoso, recalled seeing residents unwell in the cafeteria around the same time. "We didn't know anything the management had done," she told me, "the protocols they had followed, nothing".

She joined Castillo and Domínguez in gathering information. They believed patients with symptoms had not been separated from those without, before the virus spread rapidly through the home. Staff who had been in isolation after falling ill were reportedly not being replaced, while those who continued to work were having to do longer, exhausting shifts. Lacking adequate protection, workers had to make face masks at home. "We were trying to help, our loved ones were there," Domínguez said. "Why weren't they being honest with us?"

Monte Hermoso, it turned out, was not alone. In fact, nobody seemed to know the true scale of what was going on. For years, Carmen Flores, head of the Patients' Defenders ombudsman group, had warned about precarious conditions in some of Spain's 5,417 care homes. "The amount of messages we were getting those days was insane," Flores told me. "I was thinking: You can't let these people rot."

ALAMY

"We weren't being told the truth," said Rosana Castillo, whose 86-year-old mother lived in Monte Hermoso

Three in every four homes in Spain are privately run and many patients, like Carmela, have some of their costs publicly funded. José Manuel Ramírez, president of the federation representing social care managers, said fees received by the residences had not changed in the past decade, a result of years of austerity in Spain.

Many companies had to carry out savings somewhere to make a profit, claimed Flores, who also alleged that some lacked equipment even in normal times, while many operated with minimum staff. Workers' unions also say staffing was insufficient, which Ramírez rejected. A worker at one care home where more than 90 patients died told me: "For a long time we had been saying something serious would happen. The conditions were unsustainable. This isn't a surprise at all."

Crowded hospitals were having to turn away patients from care homes and send them back, often to die. Many residences did not have oxygen bottles, crucial in treating a disease known to cause severe respiratory problems, or even a doctor. Monte Hermoso, Castillo said, had one doctor, who most days worked only in the mornings.

The Spanish government had centralised the purchase and distribution of medical material, so the homes asked officials to send tests and protective kits. However, Ramírez alleged they were not given priority, and pictures emerged of carers wearing gowns made of plastic bags. "There was nothing that could be done without support," he said. "It was a catastrophe."

ALAMY

The army was sent to disinfect residences across Spain and Monte Hermoso was one of the first

The army was deployed to disinfect 1,300 care homes and Monte Hermoso was one of the first. Margarita Robles, the defence minister, said patients, in some places, were found abandoned without care, sometimes dead in their beds, the bodies left for funeral services to retrieve. "Un horror," Flores told me.

Almost 6,000 people have now died in nursing homes in Madrid, after showing Covid-19 symptoms. "I think there was a lot of wrongdoing," said Castillo. "These people couldn't shout or say they were unwell. They died in silence and alone."

Public prosecutors are investigating possible crimes including manslaughter for neglect, mistreatment and abandonment. Monte Hermoso has not replied to interview requests by email; when contacted by phone, an employee told me they would not talk to journalists.

Coronavirus: Ecuador sees massive surge in deaths in April

BBC•April 20, 2020

Ecuador's official coronavirus death toll is 403, but new figures from one province suggest thousands have died.

The government said 6,700 people died in Guayas province in the first two weeks of April, far more than the usual 1,000 deaths there in the same period.

Guayas is home to Guayaquil - a key port and the part of the country worst-hit by Covid-19.

Footage obtained by the BBC showed residents forced to store bodies in their homes for up to five days.

Ecuador's coronavirus nightmare in pictures

They said authorities had been unable to keep up with the huge rise in deaths, leaving corpses wrapped in sheets in family homes and even in the streets.

Authorities last week began distributing thousands of cardboard coffins in Guayaquil. A dedicated helpline was also set up for families that needed a corpse removed from their home.
Cardboard coffins have been distributed amid a huge number of deaths

Jorge Wated, the head of a police unit created to tackle the problem, said earlier this week that 771 bodies had been removed from houses in the city.

According to the government's figures, 14,561 people have died in Guayas province since the beginning of March from all causes. The province normally sees 2,000 deaths a month on average.

Ecuador as a whole has had 8,225 confirmed cases of coronavirus to date, according to Johns Hopkins University, though a lack of widespread testing means this is likely a significant undercount.



Analysis box by Katy Watson, South America correspondent

Across Latin America, Covid-19 has been dubbed a rich person's disease. A virus introduced to the region by affluent parts of society who had been travelling abroad.

The case of Ecuador is no different but experts have suggested that the country's deep ties with Spain and transport links between there and Guayaquil, a key port, could be partly responsible for higher numbers. Indeed, the first recorded case was of an Ecuadorean woman returning from Spain.

But the high death toll is also a devastating consequence of the combination of an overburdened healthcare system and a deeply unequal society which means not everybody is able - or willing - to socially distance and stop work.

Authorities argue they were quick to impose strict regulations and people chose to disregard measures but experts argue more could be done - and one thing that could help is testing. While Ecuador is not the worst offender in the region, low testing rates have made it very difficult to understand how the virus has moved through communities, some of which have been devastated by the high death toll.

Ecuador's vice president, Otto Sonnenholzer, apologised to the nation earlier this month for the government's slow response to the pandemic.

"We have seen images that should never have happened, and as your public servant I apologise," Mr Sonnenholzer said.

Guayaquil is densely populated and has high levels of poverty, with many residents living in close proximity.

THE FATHER OF RIGHT WING LIBERTARIANISM (BAR*)
The Complicated Legacy of Herbert Spencer, the Man Who Coined ‘Survival of the Fittest’
Spencer’s ideas laid the groundwork for social Darwinism, but scholars say there was much more to the Victorian Age thinker than that

Herbert Spencer introduced the phrase "survival of the fittest" in his 1864 book, Principles of Biology. (Photo illustration by Meilan Solly / Photos via Getty Images and public domain)

By Dan Falk

SMITHSONIANMAG.COM

APRIL 29, 2020

Victorian England had its fair share of great minds. Some, like Charles Darwin, changed the way we think about the world, while many more have faded into obscurity—along with their ideas. Teetering on the boundary is Herbert Spencer, born 200 years ago this week.

Spencer’s first writings on evolution came in 1851, eight years before the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. And it was Spencer, not Darwin, who gave us the phrase “survival of the fittest,” though Darwin would later use it in his writing. Spencer introduced the phrase in his 1864 book, Principles of Biology, where he saw parallels between his conservative ideas about economics and what Darwin had written about the natural world: “This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called ‘natural selection’, or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life.”


“For a brief period, for a couple of decades at the end of the 19th century, he was world-famous,” says Bernard Lightman, a historian of science at York University in Toronto.

Like his more famous contemporary, Spencer was enamored with the idea of evolution. But where Darwin focused on biology, Spencer imagined that evolutionary thinking could be applied much more broadly. In his mind, it governed entire societies. Today, when Spencer is remembered at all, it is usually for inspiring the ideology known as “social Darwinism”: roughly, the idea that the successful deserve their success while those who fail deserve their failure.

Modern scholars, and the public at large, understandably view this idea with disdain. Philosopher Daniel Dennett has described social Darwinism as “an odious misapplication of Darwinian thinking in defense of political doctrines that range from callous to heinous,” while the journalist Robert Wright said that social Darwinism “now lies in the dustbin of intellectual history.” Today, few read Spencer’s dense and ponderous books, and his ideas are rarely taught. Gregory Claeys, a historian at the University of London, writes that of all the great Victorian thinkers, it is Spencer whose “reputation has now indisputably fallen the farthest.”

Yet some scholars and historians dispute this characterization of Spencer’s work. Yes, Spencer misunderstood Darwin’s theory in important ways, and his attempt to anchor an entire philosophy on it was ill-fated. But, they argue, Spencer doesn’t deserve to be so closely linked to social Darwinism and the noxious ideas that grew out of it (and which occasionally surface today). He may have been misguided, but those who utter “survival of the fittest” to justify callous, mean-spirited or even racist ends may be doing the man who coined the phrase a disservice.

Herbert Spencer as a young man (Engraving by Geo. E. Perine)
Born in Derby in central England, Spencer was largely self-taught. He worked as a railway engineer and a journalist before making a name for himself with his philosophical writings, which were published in Britain’s leading intellectual journals and later in a series of wildly ambitious books. Eventually, he supported himself solely through writing. He settled in London and became a regular at the city’s exclusive gentlemen’s clubs, where he rubbed shoulders with great intellectuals of the day.

Beginning in 1860, Spencer focused his energy on his “System of Synthetic Philosophy,” which was to be a multi-volume work covering biology, psychology, sociology, ethics and metaphysics. Nine of these volumes appeared between 1862 and 1893. Like Darwin, Spencer was struck by evolution’s explanatory power, but he took the idea much further than his countryman.

“Spencer goes on to ask: What are the implications of the theory of evolution for our understanding of human society, politics, religion, the human mind?” Lightman says. “Evolution is the glue that holds this ‘synthetic philosophy’ together. It’s a comprehensive worldview.”

In Spencer’s view of evolution, nature is seen as a force for good, guiding the development of individuals and societies, with the power of competition allowing the strong to flourish while eliminating the weak. In his first book, 1851’s Social Statics, he argues that suffering, although it harms the individual, benefits society at large; it is all part of nature’s “plan,” and leads to improvement over time. Spencer wrote:


“The poverty of the incapable, the distress that comes upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many ‘in shallows and in miseries,’ are the decrees of a large, farseeing benevolence.”

(Arguably, some echo of this sentiment was on display in the past few weeks, as protesters voiced their disapproval of mandatory lockdowns in the fight against COVID-19. In Nashville, at least one protester held up a sign saying “Sacrifice the weak / Re-open Tennessee.”)

Spencer’s view, though mostly anathema now, appealed to influential conservatives and laissez-faire capitalists—among them, the industrialist Andrew Carnegie—just as it angered the socialists of the time. “Spencer hated socialism because he thought socialism was all about protecting the weak,” Lightman says. “To him, that was intervening in the natural unfolding of the evolutionary process.”

Spencer imagined a better, more moral society, and believed the best way to achieve that goal was “to let the market loose,” says David Weinstein, a political scientist at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Weinstein says Spencer advocated the idea that “those who survive the struggle are by definition not only the fittest but also morally the best. So it’s defining ‘good’ as ‘survival.’ Whatever survives is by definition good.”


Later thinkers, especially in the early years of the 20th century, took a hatchet to Spencer’s logic. Critics accused him of committing what has come to be known as the “naturalistic fallacy”—roughly, the mistake of trying to derive morality and ethics from nature. The term was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book Principia Ethica, which was highly skeptical of Spencer. “The attack by Moore really served to discredit Spencer among serious philosophers,” Weinstein says (though Moore, too, has largely disappeared from history).

More recently, however, a few scholars have sought to salvage Spencer’s reputation. In 2014, a collection of essays titled Herbert Spencer: Legacies, edited by Mark Francis and Michael Taylor, explored Spencer’s far-reaching influence and the diversity of his ideas. For example, while Spencer’s ideas were used to justify imperialism and conquest, Francis notes that Spencer himself was committed to pacifism, including his vocal opposition to Britain’s participation in the Boer War. While Spencer felt that war might have been a necessary part of humanity’s past, he also believed that a progressive society would be a peaceful one. Violence, in Spencer’s view, was on its way to becoming a relic of the past.

Wright, in his book The Moral Animal, says that Spencer is not “as heartless as he is now remembered,” pointing to Spencer’s emphasis on altruism, sympathy and pacifism. Pamela Lyon at the University of Adelaide goes even further, arguing that Spencer used the phrase “survival of the fittest” to mock it. Rather than seeing nature as cruel, he saw it as beneficent; nature was a progressive affair. (This view, she notes, became harder to maintain as Darwin’s more scientific approach to evolution—one driven by chance and not “guided” in any way—took hold.)

Meanwhile, Gowan Dawson of the University of Leicester has argued that both the ideological left and the right embraced Spencer’s ideas, especially that of social evolution. Weinstein also notes that Spencer’s writings “have been adopted and appropriated by socialists as much as by libertarians,” and asserts that his ideas have shaped modern liberalism. And a few scholars, including Dawson, argue that prominent contemporary thinkers like Steven Pinker and E.O. Wilson, who have written on the power of evolution to shape culture, may be more indebted to Spencer than they realize. In Legacies, sociologist Jonathan Turner writes that many of Spencer’s ideas have endured to the present day, though “most people do not know that they came from Spencer, so ingrained is the avoidance of anything Spencerian.”


Spencer, by the standards of the day, also held a progressive view of gender, arguing that women were as intellectually capable as men and advocating for full political and legal rights for women. Claeys even describes him as a feminist.

That label is open to debate. Ruth Barton, a historian at the University of Auckland, points to Spencer’s treatment of the women in his life, especially the novelist Mary Ann Evans, who wrote under the pen name George Eliot. “She really fell in love with Spencer,” Barton says. “They went to the theatre together, they went to Kew Gardens together, they went everywhere together for a year; people thought they were engaged.” Then Spencer broke off the relationship. “Spencer told her that he enjoyed her company, he liked her mind, but she wasn’t beautiful enough for him to marry. He wanted a prettier, more feminine sort of person,” Barton says. “I wouldn’t label him a feminist.”

Spencer never married, and he appears to have been isolated and lonely in his final years. He spent nearly two decades writing and rewriting his two-volume autobiography. He struggled to control his public image, even going so far as asking to have his letters returned to him and then destroying those that he felt might damage his reputation.

All the while, English politics were drifting to the left. “The political climate was changing,” says Barton. “His antagonism toward socialism of any kind was less and less acceptable. Anything that had any scent of government regulation about it, he associated with socialism.”


Science and philosophy had moved on as well. “Already in the 1890s, he’s saying ‘Everyone’s forgotten me; I gave my whole life for this,’” Lightman says. “So he becomes a very tragic figure.” Today, Spencer’s tomb can be found in London’s Highgate Cemetery, just about opposite that of Karl Marx, whose ideas he despised (and who ended up with a far more elaborate monument).

Still, as remote as Spencer and his ideas seem today, he was a vital figure in his own time, Barton says. “He seemed to know everything, which made him impressive,” she says. “He was full of confidence; he had this really ambitious vision of the universe.” Above all, he appeared to be one of the few philosophers who fully embraced science— at least, his interpretation of science.

“Science seemed to be the way of the modern world,” Barton says. “And Spencer seemed to be a philosopher who understood science.”



*(BEFORE AYN RAND)

Researchers Uncover New Evidence That Warrior Women Inspired Legend of Mulan

Nearly 2,000 years ago, women who rode horseback and practiced archery may have roamed the steppes of Mongolia

An 18th-century ink rendering of Hua Mulan on silk (Public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

By Katherine J. Wu SMITHSONIANMAG.COM APRIL 29, 2020

Mulan, a woman warrior who disguised herself as a man to fight in her father’s stead, has found most of her fame through fiction, perhaps most notably in the 1998 animated Disney film of the same name. But the legend of this Chinese heroine is likely rooted in truth: Hints of her existence—or at least the existence of women like her—are scattered throughout history. And now, a team of researchers may have homed in on a crucial cache of clues.

As Colin Barras reports for New Scientist, scientists have found physical evidence that female warriors once rode across the steppes of what is now Mongolia, wielding bows, arrows and other weapons that left traces of physical exertion on their bones.

So far, the remains appear to be rare, and they don’t point specifically to a person who bore Mulan’s name. But their chronological placement in history—around the fourth or fifth century A.D.—fits the bill for her story and, according to California State University, Los Angeles, anthropologists Christine Lee and Yahaira Gonzalez, may have served as inspiration for the legend that has lasted the millennia since.

The first historical mention of Mulan dates back to at least 1,500 years ago, when a folk song called The Ballad of Mulan was popularized during China’s North Wei Dynasty, according to Ancient Origins. Its heroine, a young woman named Hua Mulan, steps in for her old, ailing father, taking on the identity of his son by donning the traditional clothes of men and joining the emperor’s army. Though variations on the tale splinter in their endings, Mulan achieves success on the battlefield in just about all of them, becoming a leader among men who, in several iterations, never discover her true gender, write Gisela Sommer and Teresa Shen for the Epoch Times.

Though this story has been written, recorded, remixed and even Disneyfied many times over, scientists have struggled to pin down archaeological evidence that Mulan was real. Some suspected that the character had been fashioned as a fictional paragon of ancient women warriors—perhaps belonging to the Xianbei, an ancient nomadic people who conquered and controlled northern China from 386 to 534 A.D. But if these individuals existed, many reasoned, they would have been few and far between.

Hua Mulan, as depicted in the album Gathering Gems of Beauty(Public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

That’s why Lee and Gonzalez were surprised when they stumbled across two female Xianbei skeletons unearthed in modern-day Mongolia. Both bore familiar marks on their bones—ones traditionally attributed to strenuous activities like horseback riding and archery. The findings stem from a re-analysis of previously discovered remains found at 29 ancient burial sites, and may have been missed by colleagues in the anthropologists’ male-dominated field of study, Lee tells Jennifer Ouellette of Ars Technica.

Three groups were represented among the skeletons: the Xiongnu, who dominated the region 2,200 years ago; the Xianbei, who displaced the Xiongnu around 1,850 years ago; and the Turkic people, who successively occupied the Mongolian steppes beginning around 1,470 years ago.

Markings on the three female Xiongnu skeletons hint that these women may have occasionally practiced archery or ridden horses, while their Turkic counterparts dabbled only infrequently in the latter activity. Two of the three Xianbei women in the mix, on the other hand, stood out as seasoned riders and possibly skilled fighters, suggesting to Lee that they may have been more battle-ready than some of their peers.

“Perhaps everybody was needed to defend the country” at a time of great sociopolitical turmoil, Lee tells New Scientist. If these women truly were Xianbei, they would have lived through the tumultuous and violent era following the end of the Han dynasty in 220 A.D.

Lee and Gonzalez have yet to publish their work in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, they had planned to present their analysis at a now-canceled meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, according to New Scientist.

Still, finding even hints of these warrior women is encouraging, Lee tells Ars Technica.

“It’s a small sample size, only 29 burials, and there are two women who fit the bill,” she says. “That’s actually a lot. I didn’t expect to find any.”

Written records of warrior women pepper history—and though they’ve often been passed over, Lee thinks it’s high time someone went looking for more physical evidence. If someone like Mulan existed, she almost certainly wasn't alone.

“If there are all these stories, then why hasn’t anyone ever found these women?” Lee tells Ars Technica. “It’s only because nobody was looking. I thought it was time to look.”

Katherine J. Wu is a Boston-based science journalist and Story Collider senior producer whose work has appeared in National Geographic, Undark magazine, Popular Science and more. She holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunobiology from Harvard University, and was Smithsonian magazine's 2018 AAAS Mass Media Fellow.

Why it’ll still be a long time before we get a coronavirus vaccine
Trials of experimental coronavirus vaccines are already under way, but it’s still likely to be years before one is ready and vaccination may not even be possible

ANALYSIS 29 April 2020 By Carrie Arnold 

A lab in Singapore is one of many working on coronavirus vaccines Reuters/Joseph Campbell
MANY UK newspapers recently celebrated the first volunteer to receive an injection as part of a safety trial of an experimental coronavirus vaccine. But while there are claims that it could be possible for a vaccine to be ready within a year, the chances of this happening remain slim.

The UK trial, led by the University of Oxford, will ultimately involve 1100 adults, half of whom will receive the experimental vaccine. The other half will get a meningitis vaccine as a control. The team behind the trial hopes to move on to tests to gauge how effective the vaccine is against the coronavirus as early as August, raising hopes that a vaccine could be ready before the end of the year, and that this could be the answer to the difficult question of how the country gets out of strict social distancing measures.

Unfortunately, these hopes are probably misplaced. Vaccine design expert Maria Bottazzi of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, calls the schedule “unrealistic”. Even if everything goes according to plan in the first phase of trials, Bottazzi points out that researchers will still need time to determine how well the vaccine protects people from covid-19 and whether it provokes any side effects when a vaccinated person is subsequently exposed to the virus

It is far from guaranteed that the vaccine will be safe and effective. 2013 study calculated that, before entering clinical trials, the average experimental vaccine has a 6 per cent chance of ultimately reaching the market. Of those that make it into trials, a 2019 analysis suggests the probability of success is 33.4 per cent.

But even if the Oxford vaccine succeeds, there will then be the issue of scaling up manufacturing to make hundreds of millions of doses. According to Bottazzi, this is the real bottleneck. Under the best of circumstances, the world is still looking at 12 to 18 months before a vaccine could be widely available, she says.

That in itself would be a remarkable achievement. The 2013 study found that between 1998 and 2009, the average time taken to develop a vaccine was 10.7 years. It is possible to speed this up to some extent – since then, an Ebola vaccine has become the fastest-developed vaccine ever, being produced in just five years.

But to lower this to just 18 months would require the next steps of the development process to be begun before the previous ones were completed, Bottazzi says. This increases the risk of significant loss of investment should the vaccine fail to pan out, as well as raising questions about safety. An expedited path from early trials to scaled-up manufacturing would mean that researchers won’t have as much time to study the long-term effects of a vaccine in trial participants before it is given to the public, for example.

“Between 1998 and 2009, the average time taken to develop a vaccine was 10.7 years”

To try to speed things up, on 21 April, UK health minister Matt Hancock said that the government will put money into manufacturing capability, in the hope that either the Oxford vaccine, or another vaccine being tested by Imperial College London, will prove successful. Similar measures are being taken elsewhere. US philanthropist Bill Gates has announced he is helping to build manufacturing capability for seven candidate vaccines – a strategy he said will lose billions of dollars but save time.

More than 100 vaccines for the coronavirus are currently in various early stages of development. The more that are tested, the higher the chances of finding something that is both safe and effective.

Yet there is no guarantee that it is even possible to vaccinate against the coronavirus. There is a lot we don’t know yet about how our immune systems respond to the virus, and whether it is possible to induce long-lasting immunity to it.

Hancock also said that the government is “throwing everything” at developing a coronavirus vaccine. But given the time it will take to get one – if it even proves possible to do so – it is clear that countries can’t wait for a vaccine to get them out of their current crises. As epidemiologist Mark Woolhouse at the University of Edinburgh, UK, told New Scientist in early April: “I do not think waiting for a vaccine should be dignified with the word ‘strategy’. It’s not a strategy, it’s a hope.”

We need to be realistic about the hopes of a vaccine, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying. Like annual flu vaccines, an effective coronavirus vaccine could help us protect those most at risk from the virus. As with childhood vaccines for measles and other diseases, it may also enable us to protect future generations from covid-19.

But it could be years before we have a vaccine. Until then, we will need to deal with multiple waves of infection with measures such as extensive testing, contact tracing and quarantining.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24632804-000-why-itll-still-be-a-long-time-before-we-get-a-coronavirus-vaccine/#ixzz6L8OldQV0

Tiger survival threatened by mass road-building 

in precious habitats

ENVIRONMENT 29 April 2020

By Alice Klein

Tiger-friendly crossings allow the animals to traverse roads between forests

Sanjayda/Alamy

More than half the world’s dwindling wild tiger population are threatened by roads built dangerously close to their habitats, and giant infrastructure projects planned across Asia could put tigers at even greater risk.

Tigers habitats have shrunk by 40 per cent since 2006, leaving fewer than 4000 of the animals in the wild. Those living near roads are particularly vulnerable because they are at risk of being hit by vehicles, have more difficulties finding food, and are easier for poachers to find.

Using a global dataset, Neil Carter at the University of Michigan and his colleagues calculated that the tiger’s current range, which mostly spans south and south-east Asia, contains 134,000 kilometres of roads. Based on average tiger density, they estimated that 57 per cent of tigers live within 5 kilometres of these roads, which is considered dangerously close.

This proximity to roads could be decreasing the world’s tiger population by more than 20 per cent, the researchers’ modelling suggests. Nearly 24,000 kilometres of new roads are planned for construction within the tiger’s range by 2050, which will make it even harder for the animals to avoid these hazards.

Read more: Biodiversity in crisis: Earth’s giant construction projects mapped out

For example, Nepal is planning a large road network that will connect all of its villages. This project, along with China’s Belt and Road Initiative – which is the world’s largest ever infrastructure project – will create new routes through the forests of south and south-east Asia.

These projects could be disastrous if care is not taken to minimise their impacts on local tiger populations, says Carter. “Once roads are built they have lasting effects that cannot be undone,” he says.

News roads could be made more tiger-friendly by building them away from key tiger populations, banning overnight traffic, installing road signs to alert drivers to the presence of tigers, and building tiger-friendly crossings that allow a passageway for wildlife to safely cross between forests flanking the road, says Carter. These have been built on roads and highways in Malaysia.

In 2010, all 13 countries with wild tiger populations committed to a plan to double the tiger population by 2022. By 2016, research suggested that the global wild tiger population stopped declining and had increased. Building tiger-friendly roads will be crucial to reaching this goal, says Carter.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2242107-tiger-survival-threatened-by-mass-road-building-in-precious-habitats/#ixzz6L8MaNvx4

CAPITALISM IN SPACE
Three companies move forward in bid to bring astronauts to the Moon

Miriam Kramer AXIOS APRIL 30,2020

Artist's illustration of astronauts on the Moon. Photo: NASA


NASA today announced three companies — Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, Dynetics and Elon Musk's SpaceX — will continue developing their lunar landers designed to bring astronauts to the Moon.

Why it matters: In spite of the coronavirus pandemic, NASA is moving forward with its plans to send humans back to the surface of the Moon by 2024 as part of its Artemis program.

The big picture: These kinds of government contracts are key for space companies hoping to make it through the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Those types of funds could help them stay afloat as other means of financing dry up.

Details: Blue Origin's system also brings together Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper Labs — powerhouses in the space industry — to develop the key components to take astronauts down to the lunar surface.

SpaceX will use Starship — a craft currently in development that the company hopes to one day use to send people to places like Mars — to bring crew and cargo from orbit around the Moon to its surface.

Dynetics' design hinges on a structure that can both land on and ascend from the surface of the Moon.

NASA is awarding a combined total of $967 million to these companies.
“This is the first time since the Apollo era that NASA has direct funding for a human landing system, and now we have companies on contract to do the work for the Artemis program."— NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement

What's next: The companies will now continue to study and develop their plans over the coming months before NASA starts to make decisions about which landing systems will continue on in the process.

"We've got all the pieces we need," NASA's head of human spaceflight Doug Loverro, said during a press call Thursday.

Amazon calls Trump blacklisting a "personal vendetta"
TRUMP HAS BILLIONAIRE ENVY

Mike Allen AXIOS APRIL 30, 2020

Photos: Elif Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images; Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Amazon blasted an unusual accusation in an annual report by saying President Trump's trade office as a "purely political act" that's part of a "personal vendetta."

What happened: U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer's office put five of Amazon’s overseas domains (Canada, France, Germany, India and the U.K.) on a list of "notorious markets” where pirated goods are sold, AP reports.

Why it matters: Trump has clashed repeatedly with Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post.

Amazon's Jodi Seth said in a statement: "This purely political act is another example of the administration using the U.S. government to advance a personal vendetta against Amazon."
"Amazon makes significant investments in proactive technologies and processes to detect and stop bad actors and potentially counterfeit products from being sold in our stores."
"We are an active, engaged stakeholder in the fight against counterfeit."

Lighthizer's office didn't respond to a request for comment on Amazon's blast.

Employers split from health care industry over coronavirus demands

Bob Herman AXIOS APRIL 30, 2020

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Several large employer groups this week refused to sign on to funding requests they consider a "handout" for hospitals and insurers, according to three people close to the process.

The big picture: Coronavirus spending bills are sharpening tensions between the employers that fund a significant portion of the country's health care system and the hospitals, doctors and insurers that operate it.

Driving the news: The industry's most recent request — written primarily by the large hospital and health insurance lobbying groups — focused on a few items for the next coronavirus legislation.



Providing subsidies to maintain employer-sponsored insurance, which already receives a large tax break, as well as providing subsidies for COBRA for people who have lost their jobs. Some analysts predict 12 million to 35 million people will get thrown off their job-based coverage due to the pandemic.

Increasing subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans and creating a special ACA enrollment window.

Opposing the use of the industry's bailout funds to pay for uninsured COVID-19 patients at Medicare rates.

Between the lines: Employers know they get charged a lot more for health care services compared with public insurers, but many weren't keen about urging Congress to "set up a government program to pay commercial reimbursements," said an executive at a trade group that represents large corporations.

The demands "make perfect sense for hospitals who are trying to maximize their reimbursement and for insurance companies who are getting a cut when someone is in private insurance," said another employer group lobbyist. The sources asked not to be named to speak candidly.

Many employer groups still have a bad taste in their mouth after the industry torpedoed a fix to surprise medical bills last year.

The other side: Several health care groups that signed the letter dismissed the idea of any disagreement with employers.

"As far as I know, everyone is rowing in the same direction," said Chip Kahn, head of the Federation of American Hospitals, which lobbies on behalf of for-profit hospitals and is a prominent voice in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The coronavirus is exposing the holes in employer health insurance
Bob Herman AXIOS MARCH 30, 2020

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios


A record 3.3 million people filed for unemployment in one week, in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, but people didn't just lose their jobs. Many also lost the health insurance that came with the job.

Why it matters: U.S. workers, even those who feel relatively secure in their health benefits, are a pandemic away from falling into the ranks of the uninsured.

Many of the people losing their jobs right now may not have had coverage to begin with — which would make the coronavirus-related disruption smaller, but still highlights the very large holes in this system. Industries like retail, restaurants and hospitality, as well as small businesses, are less likely to offer coverage

The concern: People who get the virus but don't have insurance are susceptible to high medical bills, or even death if they avoid or are denied treatment.

The big picture: People who lose their jobs have some options.

COBRA: This option allows people to keep their employer coverage for up to 18 months, which is good for those who are getting treatment and don't want to switch doctors. 

However, people have to pay the full insurance premium — an average of $1,700 a month for a family plan — which will be unaffordable for most of the newly unemployed.

Medicaid: State Medicaid agencies determine eligibility on current income, so this may be the easiest, lowest-cost way for people to get health coverage.

Affordable Care Act plans: The health care law created marketplaces for coverage, and people who lose their jobs can sign up outside the standard enrollment window. People may be able to get subsidies, depending on income.

Short-term plans: These stopgap plans, promoted by the Trump administration, provide some coverage but often don't cover major hospitalizations.

Yes, but: All of these options have their own administrative hurdles.

The bottom line: "The ACA made health insurance more recession-resistant, but ... there's still significant disruption when you lose your job," said Cynthia Cox, a health insurance expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

USA Another 3.8 million Americans filed for unemployment last week

Courtenay Brown AXIOS APRIL  30, 2020

Data: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios


3.8 million people filed for unemployment last week, the Labor Department announced Thursday.

Why it matters: While the pace of unemployment filings has slowed since its peak in late March, the number of workers who have lost their jobs in recent weeks — as efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic slammed the labor market — tops 30 million.





Between the lines: State labor departments have been overwhelmed by the rush of people seeking unemployment benefits.

Economists warn that some jobless workers have been unable to apply for benefits, so the number of unemployed could be higher than the weekly figures suggest.

The bottom line: A staggering number of Americans are still losing jobs at historic rates.

TRUMPS HOOVERS DEPRESSION UNEMPLOYMENT NUMBERS