Experts: Rush to publish makes some COVID-19 research unreliable

Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News

Only about three in 10 COVID-19 studies have been designed with enough rigor to produce valuable evidence about the coronavirus, according to the author of a new study. Photo by jarmoluk/Pixabay

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a massive scientific response to the crisis, with more than 1,500 coronavirus studies kicking off between March and mid-May of this year, a new study reports.

Unfortunately, much of this research has sown only confusion, producing precious little scientific evidence of sufficient quality to dramatically improve any understanding of COVID-19, researchers argue.

Only about three in 10 COVID-19 studies have been designed with enough rigor to produce valuable evidence about the coronavirus, said lead researcher Dr. Mintu Turakhia, director of the Center for Digital Health at Stanford University in California.

"There's been an extraordinary activation of clinical research around COVID, and that's great," Turakhia said. "The problem is, the majority of these studies are not likely to yield really strong evidence."

RELATED Lab-created virus may aid COVID-19 research, scientists say

Only 75 out of 664 clinical trials for COVID-19 -- about 11% -- have all the hallmarks of a scientific study that could be expected to produce solid results, according to the study published online July 27 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Those hallmarks include random assignment of patients to either the COVID-19 treatment being tested or a placebo "blinding" that prevents everyone, including the researchers, from knowing who received which treatment during the trial and the involvement of multiple hospitals with at least more than 100 patients enrolled in the trial.

"If you take this all in totality, what it really tells you is that most of the evidence that's going to be generated is not going to be very strong and move the needle in terms of the science for COVID," Turakhia said.

RELATED Three-quarters of adults with COVID-19 have heart damage after recovery

Clinical trials are the gold standard for research, but observational studies also can provide results that inform knowledge and treatment. Those studies involve researchers tracking health trends among people out in the real world, rather than testing treatments in a lab setting.

Unfortunately, the 640 observational studies that Turakhia's team found regarding COVID-19 also have had weak designs. Only two in five involved more than one hospital, and just 13.6% could be expected to yield strong scientific evidence, the researchers said.

"If you look at the quality of the research that was published in the early days, and this article does a good job of that, you see that it's really hard to actually come up with something that is actionable from a lot of these early studies," said Dr. Tracy Wang, director of health services & outcome research for the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, N.C.

RELATED Moderna begins 3rd stage of trial for potential COVID-19 vaccine

As the COVID-19 crisis grew in the late winter and early spring, scientists across the world sprang into action and started hundreds of studies, Wang and Turakhia said.

But they did so without any real coordination or large-scale organization, and as a result their individual efforts have produced weak evidence that can't even be pooled to create broader analysis, said Wang, who co-wrote an editorial accompanying Turakhia's study.

To pool data from different studies, you need results that come from a series of randomized clinical trials, Wang said. That way, any interpretation of the pooled data will be based on information from the strongest sources possible.

"So far, an overwhelming majority -- 80% to 90% of our studies so far -- are not randomized trials," Wang said, which renders their data "pretty useless" for any larger-scale analysis.

These poorly designed studies tend to frustrate both average citizens as well as health care professionals, because of the conflicting evidence that continues to surface without any way of determining the correct answer, Turakhia said.

"Sometimes these have the potential to influence public opinion, policy, and it confuses the average person and clinician about what to believe," Turakhia said. "The more noise you have, the harder it is to really convey institutional or societal trust in the really well-done studies."

Wang recommends that people become "connoisseurs" of medical research, only taking stock in studies that randomly assign treatment to people and that look at health outcomes that actually matter.

For example, only about one-third of the studies in Turakhia's paper placed an emphasis on tracking mortality, "an endpoint that is really of most importance to a patient and to their caregiver -- did it help my family member live longer?" Wang said.

"Mortality or death rate is something we've been prioritizing," Wang said. "This is one of the key points of this article, is that very, very few of these studies used mortality as an end point."

Turakhia and his colleagues only looked at studies registered with the federal government through May 19. Wang believes that researchers have since dramatically improved their game.

"I can tell you that we've now gotten a lot more organized about this," Wang said. "A lot of these trials are now being designed together in networks in a very collaborative fashion."

We've got funding agencies standing behind these trials to say, hey, let's play together so we can get these trials together faster and more efficiently, and do it in a way where if something doesn't work, we don't toss the baby out with the bathwater," Wang said. "We can still keep what's working and proceed to the next idea."

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught many valuable lessons about how the scientific response to the next major health crisis should unfold, Turakhia said.

"We really have to be better prepared to have a clinical trial network and infrastructure we can activate to do multicenter trials more rapidly in the U.S.," Turakhia said. "The scientific response is going to have to be part of our pandemic response if we go through this again," he added.

"You can't sacrifice well-designed trials just because you're in a public health crisis. You have to do studies with rigor. That's really the take-home point," Turakhia concluded.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about COVID-19.

Copyright 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
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US Teachers Are Organizing To Protest School Reopenings Before The Coronavirus Is Under Control

Teachers who organized massive protests and strikes in 2018 are planning new activism to protest how their states and school districts are handling the coronavirus.

Ryan Brooks BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on July 27, 2020, at 2:00 p.m. ET

Octavio Jones / Getty Images
A middle school teacher protests in front of the Hillsborough County Schools District Office on July 16 in Tampa, Florida.

Teachers across the country have begun organizing protests to voice concerns about the Trump administration’s push for schools to reopen in the fall despite the coronavirus pandemic and to pressure school districts to delay the start of face-to-face instruction.

Educators who have been organizing independently in cities across the United States told BuzzFeed News they’re frustrated by the Trump administration’s campaign to return to school with no national plan to keep teachers and students from spreading the coronavirus and little to no funding for personal protective equipment.


Organizers from education advocacy movements like Red for Ed, which sparked a national movement for more school funding and better pay for teachers in 2018 and 2019, are focusing on whether and when teachers and students should return to classrooms as coronavirus cases surge.

“It’s one of those things where the teachers have been like, ‘I’ve been taken advantage of for one year, five years, 32 years, and now you’re putting my physical well-being in jeopardy — it’s not worth this, and that’s something that teachers don’t take lightly,” Lisa Ellis, the founder of the South Carolina for Education movement, told BuzzFeed News. “A decision to leave the classroom weighs very heavily on a teacher’s decision. We’ve been told, ‘Well, just do it for the children!’ and the gaslighting that goes along with that, but it’s finally like, ‘Nope! At the end of the day, my life and my health is more important than any of this!’”

In school districts across the country, teachers are organizing motor protests at state capitols, writing letters to governors and state legislators, and pressuring school boards to consider delaying the start of in-school instruction until the coronavirus outbreaks begin to subside in their communities. And in the weeks leading up to the start of the school year, many teachers have begun voicing concerns about their districts’ lack of plans about keeping them safe if they do return to classrooms.

“This is going to tip teachers that were already on the fence about not teaching any longer into the territory of this is certainly not worth it, if they were thinking, Maybe I can hang in a little bit longer,” Ellis said. “The number one concern is the fact that nobody seems to care about the physical risk of teachers going back into the classroom — even with the hybrid models that are being presented, the students may not be there all week, but the teachers have to be there all five, and we have to work with all of the students.”



Ralph Freso / Getty Images
Teachers march through downtown Phoenix on their way to the State Capitol during a rally for the #REDforED movement on April 26, 2018.

In South Carolina, organizers told BuzzFeed News that they’ve heard from multiple teachers who have decided to look for employment in other industries or who have decided to retire early. In one school district in the state, 21 positions have been left vacant since the start of the pandemic.

In Arizona, where teachers voted to walk out during a strike in 2018 in conjunction with the Red for Ed protests, teachers have been frustrated by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s communication and plans around school reopenings. Organizers with Arizona Educators United have been hosting protests in their districts to push them to adopt plans to continue virtual learning or delay the start of the in-person school year until cases are under control.

Last month, Ducey delayed the start of the school year to Aug. 17 as coronavirus cases began to surge in the state, but educators in districts across the state say the decisions on how schools should operate once the school year is in session have largely been left up to the districts in a frustrating cycle that has left some teachers in the dark. Wes Oswald, a third-grade teacher with the Tucson Unified School District and a member of the Arizona Educators United group, told BuzzFeed News that for teachers in Arizona, the school year’s early start date has made the issue more concerning for them.

In June, an Arizona first-grade teacher died after she and two other teachers who had been sharing the same classroom for remote instruction all contracted COVID-19. Teachers have pointed to that case as justification for their concerns over how they will keep themselves and their students safe when they return to their classrooms.

Saani Niri, another board member of the SC for Ed organization, told BuzzFeed News that they’d seen an uptick in messages from teachers who’d decided to take a closer look at how their elected officials have been supporting education in the state. “I think for the first time in a very long time educators are waking up like, ‘Wait a minute! They’re doing what?’ and we’re seeing it across our social media pages,” Niri said.

SC for Ed said that while it's a nonpartisan organization, it has highlighted what politicians have done for education in the state and have provided educators with those records. It said that it is considering another push to have people consider voting around education in the fall, after a summer that has seen public schooling in the spotlight as President Trump has made school reopenings into an electoral issue.

On the national level, Oswald says he’s sat in on town halls that have been planned by education advocacy groups to plan protests and to discuss teacher demands for returning to their classrooms. Online, teachers have been posting about a refuse-to-return movement, which has called for school districts to delay the start of face-to-face instruction until their counties have had 14 days without any new coronavirus cases. Nearly 85,000 people have signed a petition calling for the suggestion to be implemented, even as state officials and the federal government encourage students and teachers to head back to schools.

“Our governor doesn’t have our interests in mind. He just wants the economy to open. He’s got his sights set on elections,” Oswald said. “I don’t expect much of anything positive from him unless we have some major actions or if we’re pushed to go on a strike.”

“I hope that’s not what happens, but we’ve done it before and we’ve got the practice,” he said. “But those kinds of situations are scary for everyone. Especially for the people who are planning them.”

MORE ON SCHOOL REOPENINGS
Trump Made School Reopenings An Election Issue. The Voters He Needs Just Don’t Agree With Him.

Molly Hensley-Clancy · July 24, 2020

Back To School: Teachers Are Ready To Quit Rather Than Put Their Lives At Risk

Caroline O'Donovan · July 16, 2020


Ryan Brooks is a politics reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Former Officials Say The Elite Border Patrol Unit Sent To Confront Portland Protesters Is Like A “Fish Out Of Water”

"This is political theater for an audience of one.”


Last updated on July 24, 2020

Caitlin Ochs / Reuters
Federal law enforcement officers, deployed under the Trump administration's new executive order to protect federal monuments and buildings, face off with protesters against racial inequality and police violence in Portland, Oregon, on July 21.

Before dawn on April 22, 2000, heavily armed federal agents smashed their way into a home in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, wrenching a 6-year-old Cuban boy named Elián González from his relatives.

The raid, captured in an unforgettable image of the terrified child coming face to face with a helmeted agent brandishing an assault rifle, marked the end of a very public custody battle between Cold War adversaries. For most Americans it also provided a first glimpse at the methods employed by the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or BORTAC, which once again finds itself at the center of a national controversy after being deployed to the streets of Portland, Oregon, to confront protesters.


Alan Diaz / AP Images
Armed federal agents seizing Elián González early Saturday morning, April 22, 2000, in Miami.

Local officials and other critics say the tactical unit, which is trained for high-risk missions and usually conducts operations along the border targeting smugglers and criminal organizations, shouldn’t be responding to a matter of civil dissent in a major city far from any national border. Since arriving last week, BORTAC agents have reportedly been apprehending protesters and whisking them away in unmarked vans, sometimes without revealing who they are or providing any legal justification for the detentions. Oregon’s attorney general, in a lawsuit filed Friday against the Department of Homeland Security, identified two cases of alleged “snatch and grab” arrests they suspect were carried out by BORTAC agents.

“The fundamental disconnect here is that these forces are being used against American citizens,” said Doris Meissner, a former Clinton administration official who as head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service oversaw the González operation. “It’s a really serious misuse of federal law enforcement authorities as well as agencies whose missions are important but very different. It’s basically hijacking local law enforcement’s responsibilities and duties that they are equipped to carry out.”

Her criticism echoed the sentiments of other former and current federal officials who believe the tactical unit is being misused by the Trump administration as a reelection ploy. BORTAC is not trained for deescalation, but rather an overwhelming force most often meant to combat-hardened criminals and terrorists, Meissner said.

Footage of BORTAC agents detaining a protester on the streets of Portland and pulling them into an unmarked van earlier this month sparked widespread outrage. Some likened the camouflage agents to the gestapo or stormtroopers of Nazi Germany. The video, shared widely on Twitter, shows two BORTAC agents approaching a protester wearing all black. Off camera, a woman keeps asking the agents what they’re doing and who they are. The agents don't say a word; they walk their captive over to a waiting unmarked van and speed off.

The agents had the word “police” emblazoned on the front of their uniforms, but the other patches are difficult to see. Much of the criticism stems from reports of agents refusing to identify themselves and from the fact that they have been wearing militaristic camouflage uniforms in an urban environment.

Mark Pettibone, a Portland resident who was similarly taken away in an unmarked van, on Monday submitted an affidavit in Oregon’s lawsuit against DHS in which he said the two men in military fatigues approached him without identifying themselves.


"I was detained for up to two hours," Pettibone said in his statement. "No one informed me as to which agency had abducted, detained or questioned me. I am still unaware as to which agency or agencies were involved."

Another video posted to Twitter on Wednesday showed a group of baton-wielding BORTAC agents violently confronting a line of Portland's so-called Wall of Moms. Agents could also be seen throwing canisters emitting smoke at the protesters.


Samuel Corum / Getty Image
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf speaks during a July 21 press conference on the actions taken by Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security agents in Portland in Washington, DC.

Trump administration officials have defended the federal agents’ actions. Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf said during a press conference Tuesday it was not true that BORTAC agents wore no identification. In addition to patches that said “police” in yellow lettering, he said they also wore patches that mark them as being with Border Patrol and its parent agency, Customs and Border Protection, as well as a unique three-letter identifier. Unlike most local law enforcement, BORTAC agents do not have name tags, making individual officers difficult if not impossible to identify.

On Friday, a federal judge denied the Oregon attorney general’s request for an order requiring federal law enforcement officers in Portland to identify themselves when making arrests and place limits on the detention and arrests of protesters.

Trump administration officials have said they ordered the agents into Portland to protect federal buildings during weeks of demonstrations against anti-Black racism and police brutality, arguing local authorities aren’t doing enough.

“The smear attacks leveled against our officers is disgusting,” Wolf told reporters Tuesday.

Rep. Jim Clyburn and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to federal agents as “gestapo” and “stormtroopers,” respectively, in discussing footage of officers taking protesters off the streets in unmarked vans. Oregon’s senior senator, Ron Wyden, on Wednesday tweeted at Trump: “get your jackbooted goons out of my city.”

On Thursday, the DHS’s Office of Inspector General informed lawmakers it had opened an investigation into allegations that agency personnel “improperly detained and transported” protesters in Portland. The office will also examine the deployment of DHS law enforcement personnel in the city. The investigation is coordinated with the Department of Justice, which launched its own inquiry on Thursday.


Samuel Corum / Getty Images
A protective vest with identifying markings worn by Border Patrol is seen during a press conference on July 21 in Washington, DC.
Created in 1984 to respond to riots inside immigration detention facilities, BORTAC was trained in a way that mirrors aspects of the US special operations forces’ selection courses, and it has been described by agents as mentally and physically grueling.

The special response team was also deployed to the streets of Los Angeles in 1992 in response to the riots. In 2002, the unit was sent to help secure the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics as the nation feared another terrorist attack less than a year after 9/11.

Wolf said the agents, whose camouflage uniforms he called “completely appropriate” given that they usually work near the US-Mexico border, would only leave Portland when the violence against federal buildings and officers stopped. He also called on local officials to step up and protect their community.

"We will not retreat. … We will continue to take the appropriate action to protect our facilities and our law enforcement officers," Wolf said.

Kris Cline, principal deputy director of the Federal Protective Service, said at the same Tuesday press conference that the man seen in a video being taken away by BORTAC agents in an unmarked van was questioned for less than 20 minutes before being released. The border agents wanted to ask him about protesters pointing lasers at the eyes of federal authorities and took him in the van because they wanted to question him away from the crowd, Cline added.

"Unfortunately, it got spun out of control with the rhetoric about what happened,” he said.

In a statement, CBP said the agents’ names were not displayed due to recent doxing incidents against law enforcement officials and described the crowd approaching them as a “large and violent mob.” But the widely shared video of the demonstrator being detained shows about five people, some questioning the agents and trying to get the protester’s name in order to help get them released. Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum also disputed CBP’s account.

“The video of that unknown person’s detention shows no evidence of a ‘mob’ at all, let alone the agents appearing to note or react to a ‘large and violent mob,’” Rosenblum said in a motion for a temporary restraining order against the federal agents being deployed in Portland.

Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan also defended the use of BORTAC in Portland, saying the officers have been trained in riot control.

But Gil Kerlikowske, a former CBP commissioner who served in the Obama administration, said he questioned whether the agents had the appropriate training to handle the situation unfolding in Portland. Handling a demonstration inside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility or even at an official border crossing is not the same as going into an urban area where residents are engaged in civil disobedience, he said.

Kerlikowske, who has served as Seattle’s police chief, also said he believed deploying camouflage-clad agents who could not readily be identified by name sends the wrong message and fuels tensions.


Nathan Howard / Getty Images
Federal police disperse a crowd of about 1,000 protesters at the Mark O. Hatfield US Courthouse on July 20 in Portland.

BORTAC is a tactical unit more akin to the Marine Forces Special Operations Command or the FBI's hostage rescue team that is used to working in remote, rugged areas along the border, so the team’s like "a fish out of water" when it comes to guarding federal buildings in an urban area and dealing with crowds of protesters, he added.

"This is political theater for an audience of one," Kerlikowske said, referring to Trump, who he said wants to demonstrate his facade of “toughness.” He also noted that the homeland security secretary, the CBP commissioner, and the ICE director were all appointed to their jobs in a temporary capacity, without confirmation by the Senate. “They're one tweet away from being fired, so who are they going to attempt to please?" he asked.

John Sandweg, a former lead DHS official in the Obama administration, noted that because border agents are used to operating near the border where the agency exercises authority to conduct stops, seizures, and detentions without a warrant, their deployment to a city with a population of nearly 700,000 was bound to lead to problems. That at-will power is one most Americans don’t know about and has long been decried by advocates who maintain the agency doesn’t legally have those additional powers.

“To put them in the middle of a city — they don’t receive training to operate in that environment,” Sandweg said. “This was a real mistake.”


Nathan Howard / Getty Images
A federal officer points a "less-lethal" weapon toward a crowd of a few hundred protesters in front of the Mark O. Hatfield US Courthouse on July 23 in Portland.

Last week, the New York Times reported that an internal memo addressed to Wolf said federal agents deployed by DHS were not specifically trained in riot control or mass demonstrations. Wolf told reporters he never saw the memo.

Although CBP has provided very little information about what BORTAC agents have done in Portland, some information about their actions has come out in court documents filed as part of criminal charges against demonstrations.

In a complaint against Giovanni Bondurant, who was charged Wednesday with felony assault of a federal officer, a BORTAC agent, identified only as “agent victim 1,” said he confronted two protesters who were throwing rocks and bottles at law enforcement agents. The agent, assigned to the BORTAC delta squad, said he identified himself as a Border Patrol agent and ordered them to stop and drop their shields. When one of the protesters tried to run away, the BORTAC agent said, he grabbed the man’s arm and started to remove his shield. That’s when the agent said he was struck by another protester from behind.

“This rioter pulled me to the ground and began striking my chest and head,” the agent said in a written statement referenced in the complaint. “I gained control of the rioter’s hand and arm. I then restrained the rioter and applied flexible restraints to his hands.”

Vicki Gaubeca, director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, which brings together 60 organizations across the southwest border, said that in light of the George Floyd protests, CBP should be reevaluating its tactics and focus on how to deescalate civil unrest “instead of doing the opposite.”

"These actions are setting a precedent that is going to be hard to roll back if we don't nip it in the bud," she said. ●


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Zoe Tillman · July 23, 2020

Hamed Aleaziz is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.

Adolfo Flores is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in McAllen, Texas..

Kendall Taggart is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York. 

Trump administration petitions FCC to regulate social media companies

The Commerce Department on Monday sent a petition for rulemaking to the FCC asking the agency to reinterpret Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo


July 27 (UPI) -- The Trump administration on Monday formally asked the Federal Communications Commission to develop plans to regulate social media platforms.

The Commerce Department sent a petition for rulemaking to the FCC on Monday asking the agency to reinterpret Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which provides online companies immunity from legal liability for the actions of their users.

"Unfortunately, large online platforms appear to engage in selective censorship that is harming our national discourse," the petition states. "The FCC should determine how Section 230 can best serve its goals of promoting Internet diversity and a free flow of ideas, as well as holding dominant platforms accountable for their editorial decisions, in new market conditions and technologies that have emerged since the 1990s."

The petition also calls for the FCC to clarify to what degree Section 230 protects social media's content moderation decisions, the conditions under which content moderation and editorial decisions shape content to a degree that the law no longer protects them and what obligations social media companies have to disclose their moderation practices.

RELATED FCC designates Huawei, ZTE as national security threats

WHAT ABOUT ERICSON, NOKIA ETC THEY ARE FOREIGN

AND IN CANADA CAN WE BAN US COMPANIES BECAUSE OF 

THEIR TIES TO THE NSA AND CIA.


President Donald Trump in May signed an executive order directing the Commerce Department to ask the FCC to reinterpret the law, saying social media companies have "unchecked power" after Twitter flagged a pair of his tweets on mail-in voting as potentially misleading.

"President Trump is committed to protecting the rights of all Americans to express their views and not face unjustified restrictions or selective censorship form a handful of powerful companies," Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said in a statement Monday. THE TEN THOUSAND YEAR OLD MAN

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr welcomed the petition, saying that the rules Congress put in place to regulate Internet companies in the 1990s are now outdated.

RELATED Facebook proposes $650M settlement for facial recognition suit

"Flash forward 20 years and the content moderation practices employed by the Internet giants of today bear little resemblance to the activities Congress had in mind when it passed Section 230," said Carr.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, however, said the agency should not "take this bait" from the Whtie House.

"While social media can be frustrating, turning this agency into the president's speech police is not the answer," said Rosenworcel. "If we honor the Constitution, we will reject this petition immediately."

Tedros: COVID-19 pandemic 'most severe' health emergency in WHO history

NOT MERELY ISOLATIONISM, TRUMP ATTACKS WHO

BASED ON THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY ANTI UN IDEOLOGY ATTACKING THE POST WAR LIBERAL AGENDA AS WAIT FOR IT, THE NEW WORLD ORDER.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO, said Monday countries that have followed strict virus-suppressing measures have seen cases go down while those who haven't have seen infections climb. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
GEE WHO COULD THAT BE?


July 27 (UPI) -- The coronavirus pandemic is "easily the most severe" health emergency the World Health Organization has ever faced and it is continuing to accelerate, the U.N. body's head said Monday.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO, said during a media briefing on COVID-19 that Thursday will mark six months since he declared the coronavirus pandemic a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, the highest level of alarm he can issue under international law.
When he made the announcement on Jan. 30, there were fewer than 100 cases outside of China, where the virus first emerged in early December, but the virus has since spread across the globe infecting more than 16 million people of whom some 650,000 have died, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

Tedros said that in the past six weeks, the number of infections has roughly doubled.

"This is the sixth time a global health emergency has been declared under the International Health Regulations, but it is easily the most severe," he said.

To suppress the virus governments need to find, isolate, test and care for cases and trace and quarantine their contacts while the public needs to clean their hands, avoid crowded and enclosed areas and wear a mask.

"Where these measures are followed, cases go down. Where they're not cases go up," he said. "The bottom line is that one of the most fundamental ingredients for stopping this virus is determination, and the willingness to make hard choices to keep ourselves and each other safe."


Nearly half of all infections worldwide are located in three countries: the United States with more than 4.3 million cases, Brazil with nearly 2.5 million cases and India with 1.4 million infections.

Countries that have followed the WHO's advice have either prevented large-scale outbreaks, such as New Zealand and Rwanda, or have brought large outbreaks under control as are the cases of Canada, Germany, China and South Korea, he said.

Concerning travel bans, WHO Emergencies Programme Executive Director Mike Ryan said it is unsustainable for countries to keep their borders close due to stagnating economies, but that this preventative measure is not effective unless accompanied by others.

The virus is everywhere, he said, so countries need to reopen in a way that allows them to reengage in global commerce while minimizing the risks of virus transmission, though the WHO does believe international travel is possible.

"It is difficult to have a one size fits all [policy]," he said, adding that "continuing to keep international borders sealed is not necessarily a sustainable strategy for the world's economy, for the world's poor or for anyone else."

Tedros said he will reconvene the Emergency Committee later this week to re-evaluate the pandemic and to advise him on how the organization should move forward.

"We are not prisoners of the pandemic," he said. "Every single one of us can make a difference. The future is in our hands."

On This Day: Thousands protest racial violence in Silent Parade
On July 28, 1917, thousands of Black Americans marched down New York City's Fifth Avenue as part of the so-called Silent Parade to protest racial violence.
By UPI Staff


Thousands of Black Americans march down New York City's Fifth Avenue in the so-called Silent Parade on July 28, 1917. The demonstrators were marching to promote civil rights. File Photo courtesy of the New York Public Library

BILLY BARR'S BULLY BOYS

22 arrested in Portland protest; activists accuse feds of exceeding power
July 28 (UPI) -- Federal officers arrested 22 people over the weekend during protests at a Portland courthouse, Oregon prosecutors said as pro-democracy groups filed a lawsuit arguing federal law enforcement officers have exceeded the limits of their authority.

U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams announced the arrests in a news release Monday, stating the nearly two dozen suspects face federal charges related to protests from Thursday to Monday morning at Portland's Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse.

Since May 26, the courthouse has been a focal point for protests against police brutality and racial inequality as demonstrators were spurred to the streets following the Memorial Day police-involved killing of George Floyd.

Williams' release said that since the protests began, the courthouse has been the target of vandalism, sustaining extensive damage.

RELATED Voices: Lawsuits challenge Trump's federal agents in Portland

President Donald Trump has sent federal agents to the city despite pushback from local politicians under a late June executive order he signed to protect statues, monuments and other federal property amid the protests that ignited nationwide after Floyd, an unarmed Black man, died after being pinned to the ground for more than eight minutes by the knee of a White police officer in Minneapolis.

Agents with the U.S. Marshals Service, Federal Protective Service, Homeland Security Investigations and U.S. Customs and Border Protection stationed to protect the courthouse have been threatened and assaulted during the protests, the U.S. Attorneys' Office for the District of Oregon said.

The Department of Homeland Security has said several officers have been injured during the protests, with Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the agency, stating on Twitter Monday that at least 20 agents had been injured over the weekend.

RELATED National Guard official to testify about 'unprovoked escalation' against protesters

"This isn't a myth," DHS said via Twitter. "These are actual injuries suffered by actual federal officers."

Of the nearly two dozen people arrested over the weekend, six were charted over Thursday night and into Friday morning, three for assaulting federal officers and three others for failing to obey lawful orders.

On Friday, agents with Homeland Security Investigations and Border Protection arrested Canadian citizen Ronald Bernard Hickey, 44, for harassing and stalking federal employees of the Federal Protective Service by allegedly releasing their personal information through his Twitter account.

Over Saturday and into Sunday, eight people were arrested, seven of whom were charged with assaulting federal officers and one for operating a drone in restricted airspace.

And seven people were charged over Sunday and into Monday morning with assaulting federal officers.

The charges were announced as Protect Democracy, along with several law firms, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Don't Shoot Portland activist organization and the Wall of Moms group against DHS, its leaders and several other federal agencies, accusing their agents of exceeding their authority to protect federal buildings.

According to the complaint, the groups accuse federal agents dressed in military fatigues of tear-gassing, unlawfully arresting and injuring peaceful protesters in violation of their constitutional rights, including their freedom of speech and assembly, among others.

"They have been shot at over and over -- with rubber bullets, bean bags, pepper spray and a range of other projectiles fired at close range and with brutal effect," the complaint states. "They have had flash-bang devices detonated right in front of them. They have been forced to speak and assemble in fear of not just bodily harm but the possibility of sudden arrest without probable cause."

The plaintiffs said that Operation Diligent Valor, which saw the federal agents sent to Portland on July 4, exceeds the bounds of what the law authorizes -- to protect federal property.

They also accuse Wolf of illegally being in his role of acting secretary of Homeland Security as he has yet to be confirmed by the Senate.

The lawsuit follows the American Civil Liberties Union filing a suit last week accusing local and federal law enforcement agencies of targeting and attacking volunteer street medics in the Portland protests. Earlier this month, the ACLU was awarded a court order prohibiting local law enforcement from attacking journalists and legal observers.


upi.com/7024769

Gallup: 65% in U.S. support protests after George Floyd's death

July 28 (UPI) -- About two-thirds of Americans say they support the nationwide protests that came after the death of George Floyd in May and half say they feel connected to the cause, a Gallup survey said Tuesday.

According to the poll, 65% of U.S. adults said they support the demonstrations. Twenty-seven percent said they feel "somewhat" connected to the cause of racial injustice and 23% said they feel "very" connected.

Black Americans, young adults and Democrats are the most likely groups to support and feel connection to the issue, the survey said.

Republicans were the only group that polled below 50% on the issue. Twenty-two percent said they support the activists.

"Republicans are also least likely to report feeling connected to the protests, with 14% saying they feel very or somewhat connected to the cause," Gallup wrote. "While small majorities of White Americans and adults aged 50 and older support the protests, fewer in these groups report feeling connected to them."

The poll also found that one in five adults said the protests have changed their view about racial injustice. Thirty-one percent of Blacks, 26% of Asian Americans, 24% of Hispanics and 18% of Whites said their view changed "a lot."

Regarding the impact of the protests, 53% said the demonstrations will help, rather than hurt, public support for addressing racial injustice. Thirty-nine percent of Whites said the protests will hurt the cause.


Gallup polled more than 36,400 U.S. adults for the survey, which has a margin of error of between 1.4 and 8.8 points.

FDA expands list of potentially dangerous hand sanitizers


The FDA first issued a warning last month detailing potential dangers in some sanitizers that contain methanol. File Photo by Alex Wong/UPI | License Photo

July 28 (UPI) -- Federal regulators have expanded their list of potentially dangerous hand sanitizers.

The Food and Drug Administration updated its list warning of sanitizers that include methanol, which can be toxic if absorbed through the skin.IT IS IMMEDIATELY ABSORBED ONCE IT IS ON YOUR SKIN! YOU KNOW IT

AS LOCK DE-ICER.
The FDA issued its first alert in June and on Monday expanded it with a ban of nearly 90 sanitizers.

"The FDA is proactively working with manufacturers to recall products and is encouraging retailers to remove products from store shelves and online marketplaces," the agency said in a statement.

The FDA warned that adverse effects of using products containing methanol could lead to blindness, cardiac effects, effects on the central nervous system, hospitalizations and death.

Three people died in New Mexico last month and one was blinded after drinking tainted hand sanitizers with methanol, health officials said. Three were in critical condition.

"Practicing good hand hygiene, which includes using alcohol-based hand sanitizer if soap and water are not readily available, is an important public health tool for all Americans to employ," FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn said in a statement.

"Consumers must also be vigilant about which hand sanitizers they use, and for their health and safety we urge consumers to immediately stop using all hand sanitizers on the FDA's list of dangerous hand sanitizer products. We remain extremely concerned about the potential serious risks of alcohol-based hand sanitizers containing methanol."

Visit the FDA website to see the agency's updated list.

upi.com/7024807

Faith in protest as young people find fervor on the street
By LUIS ANDRES HENA

Kianna Ruff, left, and Erin Hancock, right, two activists who met in seminary, protest against racial injustice and police brutality July 26, 2020, in Manhattan, New York. Many involved in the demonstrations that erupted after George Floyd's killing say they deepen spiritual connections and embody familiar elements of traditional faith. (AP Photo/Emily Leshner)
“I can’t breathe!’” the crowd chanted, invoking the dying words spoken by George Floyd as a white police officer pressed a knee into his neck.

Kianna Ruff yelled it over and over along with hundreds of fellow protesters as they marched for hours through New York City, a kind of collective mantra that touched someplace deep inside those present.

“I just started choking and I broke down,” the 28-year-old activist and minister said. “And I do feel like that that was also a spiritual experience that I’ve never experienced before.”

The demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism that have raged in the wake of Floyd’s killing are often led by young people who find a sense of purpose, ritual and community on the streets. Many involved say the protests deepen spiritual connections and embody familiar elements of traditional faith.

The demonstrators kneel. They observe mournful moments of silence. They break into call-and-response: “What do we want?” and “Justice!” From Los Angeles to New York, Milwaukee to Minneapolis, they stand shoulder-to-shoulder and find common cause in their shared fervor.

“I can say this is liturgy in the street,” said the Rev. Jacqueline Lewis, pastor of the Middle Collegiate Church in New York’s East Village. “This is church in the street, it is song in the street, it is lament in the street. The tears are in the street.”





“When the kids say, ‘Black Lives Matter!’” Lewis continued, “that’s a prayer.”

Americans are becoming less religious in the formal, traditional sense, and the trend is more marked among young adults, according to Pew Research Center surveys from recent years. Young people, who make up a core part of the protesters, are less likely to pray daily, attend religious services or believe in God.

Still, surveys show younger Americans are just as spiritual as their older counterparts, and many have found other expressions of faith outside formal religion.

In its “How We Gather” study, Harvard Divinity School researchers documented wide-ranging spiritual communities for the young ranging from Afro Flow Yoga and dinner churches to public meditation groups.

Fears about the future have also led many to activism. Tens of thousands walked out of schools in 2018 to demand action on gun violence in one of the biggest student protests since the Vietnam era. Inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, hundreds of thousands marched worldwide in 2019 demanding urgent action on climate change.

This year that has manifested in the struggle against police brutality and racism.

Activist and minister Kianna Ruff stand with hundreds of other demonstrators in Cadman Park Plaza ahead of a protest against police brutality and systemic racism July 26, 2020, in Brooklyn, New York. The demonstrations that have raged in the wake of George Floyd's killing are often led by young people who find a sense of purpose, ritual, and community on the streets. (AP Photo/Emily Leshner)

“All of these issues intersect because they all disproportionately impact Black people,” said 19-year-old Aalayah Eastmond, who survived the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, became a gun-control activist and is now organizing protests against racial injustice with the group Concerned Citizens of D.C.

Her group begins demonstrations with a collective prayer that’s inclusive even of nonbelievers, she said — the point is closeness and togetherness.

“We stand in a circle and one person just prays for us to one, be safe in the middle of these protests, because they can get very violent. ... And for folks to really feel empowered and moved while they’re protesting,” Eastmond said.



Activist and minister Kianna Ruff chooses a placard to carry ahead of a protest against police brutality and systemic racism on July 26, 2020, in Brooklyn, New York. Demonstrations that have raged in the wake of George Floyd's killing are often led by young people who find a sense of purpose, ritual, and community on the streets. (AP Photo/Emily Leshner)
Nationwide, the demonstrations have tended to be diverse in terms of markers like generation, ethnicity and gender, but Ruff, a graduate of the divinity school at Union Theological Seminary in New York, said community thrives despite such differences.

It’s about “being in those groups and feeling that energy, you know, that God wants you there,” Ruff said.

“And there’s so many people,” she added. “Whether they believe what you believe or not, that’s not what’s important. What’s important is the common goal.”

During a recent “Buddhists For Black Lives Matter” march in Los Angeles, Tahil Sharma walked with others in a slow, wordless procession whose silence had a similarly powerful effect as the ritual chanting of other demonstrations.

“That march was so different. ... The emotional swelling that we felt of every second passing as we were breathing and praying was a reminder of the seconds of air that George Floyd was gasping for,” said Sharma, a 28-year-old interfaith activist born to a Hindu father and a Sikh mother.

Many demonstrations have seen protesters honoring the dead by reciting their names in a sort of litany.

Another common element is the creation of spaces explicitly or implicitly spiritual in nature and symbolism: In Minneapolis, protesters set up a floral altar memorial at the site where Floyd died, while in Houston, a newly painted mural depicts him with an angelic halo and wings.

“People bring in pictures, flowers, they’re burning candles, incense, making music and really kind of creating a physical space where they’re holding the spirit of a loved one,” said Casper ter Kuile, author of “The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities Into Soulful Practices.”

“There’s a really interesting kind of lived religion, as sociologists would call it, on the streets within these protests,” ter Kuile said.



Activist and minister Kianna Ruff raises a megaphone as she and hundreds of others cross the Brooklyn Bridge to protest police brutality and systemic racism on July 26, 2020, in New York. Many involved in the demonstrations that erupted after George Floyd's killing say they deepen spiritual connections and embody familiar elements of traditional faith. (AP Photo/Emily Leshner)

In Milwaukee, a Muslims artists’ collective recently spent hours painting a mural depicting a family on a sofa under the words: “Our Kids Will Not Be Next,” as passing drivers honked horns in solidarity.

“Art is a perfect middle ground for people to unite,” said Amal Azzam, the 27-year-old co-founder of Fanana Banana, which organized the event. “Milwaukee is a very segregated city. ... These are the things that help connect the communities.”

That’s a sentiment shared by Sharma, in Los Angeles, who became involved in interfaith literacy and social justice following the 2012 deadly shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.

“When I see that entire world marching with me to fight for the rights of others, I feel I am in prayer,” he said. “When we shut down systems of oppression together, acknowledging our differences for a common cause, that’s when I know my prayers are being answered.”

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Associated Press journalists Emily Leshner and Mariam Fam contributed to this report.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.