What makes one person more likely than another to believe #fakenews and conspiracy theories about COVID-19?

Myths and misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic serve to politicize a global public health emergency and distract from potentially life-saving measures, health professionals say

Published: Aug. 5, 2020 Quentin Fottrell

U.S. news has shifted to opinion-based content that appeals to emotion, while social media have become a primary source for millions of people. 

MARKETWATCH PHOTO ILLUSTRATION/GETTY IMAGES, ISTOCKPHOTO

Think before you click.

People who get their news from social-media platforms like Facebook FB, 0.35% and Twitter TWTR, 2.41% are more likely to have misperceptions about COVID-19, according to new study led by researchers at McGill University in Montreal. “Those that consume more traditional news media have fewer misperceptions and are more likely to follow public health recommendations like social distancing,” the paper published in the latest issue of Misinformation Review concluded.

The likes of Twitter and Facebook have increasingly in recent years become the primary sources of news, and misinformation, for people around the world, the study said. “In the context of a crisis like COVID-19, however, there is good reason to be concerned about the role that the consumption of social media is playing in boosting misperceptions,” says co-author Aengus Bridgman, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at McGill University 

There is good reason to be concerned about the role that the consumption of social media is playing in boosting misperceptions.— Aengus Bridgman, McGill University

Even after adjusting for demographics such as scientific literacy and socioeconomic differences, those who regularly consume social media rather than traditional media were less likely to observe social distancing and to perceive COVID-19 as a threat. “There is growing evidence that misinformation circulating on social media poses public health risks,” says co-author Taylor Owen, an associate professor at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University.

The researchers looked at the behavioral effects of exposure to fake news by combining social-media news analysis and survey research. They combed through millions of tweets, thousands of news articles and a nationally representative survey of Canadians to answer: “How prevalent is COVID-19 misinformation on social media and in traditional news media? Does it contribute to misperceptions about COVID-19? And does it affect behavior?”

The social-media platforms have been criticized for their failures to stop the spread of misinformation, especially concerning elections and the coronavirus pandemic, despite a number of new policies enacted since Russia used the platforms to interfere in the 2016 elections. In May, Twitter marked tweets by President Donald Trump with a fact-check warning label for the first time, after the president falsely claimed mail-in ballots are “substantially fraudulent.” (He has continued to make such claims on social media and elsewhere.)

Last week, social-media sites attempted to quash a video pushing misleading information about hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment — which led to Twitter’s partially suspending Donald Trump Jr.’s account. The video featured doctors calling hydroxychloroquine — a drug used to treat malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis for decades — “a cure for COVID,” despite a growing body of scientific evidence that has not shown this to be true.

Some outlandish and unsubstantiated rumors about COVID-19 persist. To adherents of such beliefs, it’s a dastardly bioweapon designed to wreak economic armageddon on the West; a left-wing conspiracy to damage the re-election prospects of Trump; a virus that leaked from a Wuhan, China, laboratory, perhaps with intent. Paranoia politicizes a global public-health emergency and distract from potentially life-saving measures to contain and/or slow the spread of coronavirus, health professionals say.

In April, the president floated the idea of using ultraviolet light inside the body or a disinfectant by “injection” as a treatment for coronavirus — “I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?” — a suggestion doctors called “dangerous.” (The next day, Trump claimed he was not being serious: “I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen.”)

As of Wednesday, COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2, had infected at least 18.5 million people globally and 4.8 million in the U.S. It had killed over 701,085 people worldwide and at least 156,839 in the U.S. The disease is experiencing a resurgence in southern and western states. Cases in California hit 526,982 and deaths reached 9,708 as it reported 6,275 new cases Tuesday and 201 new deaths. New York has the most fatalities (32,725) followed by New Jersey (15,857).

The stock market has been on a wild ride in recent months. The Dow Jones Industrial Index DJIA, +1.12%, the S&P 500 SPX, 0.58% and Nasdaq Composite COMP, 0.41% closed higher Tuesday, as investors tracked round two of the potential fiscal stimulus. The Nasdaq logged its 30th record of 2020 and the S&P 500 ended above 3,300 in a choppy session, as large-cap tech stocks took a breather. Disney DIS, 8.05% reported a depressing financial performance Tuesday that included a quarterly loss of nearly $5 billion due to COVID-19.

Related:‘Wrong!’ Trump and Fauci clash over surge in coronavirus cases, handling of economic shutdown — and hydroxychloroquine

Big challenges remain for 21st-century journalism, too. Traditional journalism, according to a study released last year, has been shedding objectivity. Researchers found a major shift occurred between 1989 and 2017 as journalism expanded beyond traditional media, such as newspapers and broadcast networks, to newer media, including 24-hour cable news channels and digital outlets. “Notably, these measurable changes vary in extent and nature,” they concluded.

“Our research provides quantitative evidence for what we all can see in the media landscape,” said Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior political scientist at RAND, a nonpartisan think tank in Santa Monica, Calif., and lead author of the report on “Truth Decay,” on the declining role of facts and analysis in civil discourse. “Journalism in the U.S. has become more subjective and consists less of the detailed event- or context-based reporting that used to characterize news coverage.”


‘Journalism in the U.S. has become more subjective and consists less of the detailed event- or context-based reporting that used to characterize news coverage.’— —‘Truth Decay,’ RAND

The analysis — carried out by a RAND text-analytics tool previously used to identify support for and opposition to Islamic terrorists on social media — scanned millions of lines of text in print, broadcast and online journalism from 1989 (the first year such data were available via Lexis Nexis) to 2017 to identify usage patterns in words and phrases. Researchers were then able to measure these changes and compare them across all digital, media and print platforms.

Researchers analyzed content from 15 outlets representing print, television and digital journalism. The sample included the New York Times, Washington Post and St. Louis Post-Dispatch, CBS US:CBS, ABC DIS, 8.05%, CNN T, -0.63%, Fox News FOX, -6.25% FOXA, -6.30%, MSNBC CMCSA, -1.74%, Politico, the Blaze, Breitbart, Buzzfeed Politics, the Daily Caller and the Huffington Post. They found a “gradual and subtle shift” between old and new media toward a more subjective form of journalism.

Before 2000, broadcast-news segments were more likely to include relatively complex academic and precise language, as well as complex reasoning, the researchers said. After 2000, however, broadcast news became more focused on on-air personalities and talking heads debating the news. (The year 2000 is significant as ratings of all three major cable networks in the U.S. began to increase dramatically.)

Traditional newspapers made the least dramatic shift over time, the study observed. “Our analysis illustrates that news sources are not interchangeable, but each provides mostly unique content, even when reporting on related issues,’’ said Bill Marcellino, a behavioral and social scientist with RAND and co-author of the report. “Given our findings that different types of media present news in different ways, it makes sense that people turn to multiple platforms.”

It’s not the only report to find a shift toward opinion and subjectivity in news. “Tumultuous news cycles have made an impact on global opinions regarding media,” according to the 2019 U.S. News & World Report’s 2019 countries ranking. Some 63% of people say that there are no longer any objective news sources they can trust. What’s more, more than 50% agree that political and social issues around the world have gotten worse over the past year.

That survey drew on answers from 20,301 people around the world. Republican baby boomers were found to be more likely to share fake news on Facebook in the study. Why? One theory puts the emphasis on this group’s age: As they didn’t grow up with technology, they may be more susceptible to being fooled in an online environment. (Case in point: the variety of scams that have had success with older Americans by preying on their lack of familiarity with how computers and technology work.)

Key Words: Political-communication scholar has a catchy new name for fake news: V.D.

Here’s that chart:

MEDIABIASCHART.COM

About the Author
Quentin Fottrell  is MarketWatch's personal-finance editor and The Moneyist columnist for MarketWatch. You can follow him on Twitter @quantanamo.

The man who warned in 2018 that America was unprepared for a pandemic says: ‘The U.S. squandered every possible opportunity to control the coronavirus’

Published: Aug. 5, 2020 at 7:45 a.m. ET
By Quentin Fottrell

On the anniversary of the 1918 flu, Ed Yong warned of another pandemic. He says the U.S. must learn the lessons from the past seven months, adding, ‘COVID-19 is merely a harbinger of worse plagues to come’


Health officials recommend keeping at least six feet between you and the next person in a public space, and avoiding bars and crowded places to stop the spread of COVID-19. 

MARKETWATCH PHOTO ILLUSTRATION/ISTOCKPHOTO

The man who sounded an alarm that the U.S. was facing a pandemic, and was grossly unprepared to deal with it, has some harsh words for the government’s efforts thus far.

“Despite ample warning, the U.S. squandered every possible opportunity to control the coronavirus. And despite its considerable advantages — immense resources, biomedical might, scientific expertise — it floundered,” Ed Yong, who warned in 2018 of another pandemic, writes in September issue of The Atlantic. “While countries as different as South Korea, Thailand, Iceland, Slovakia, and Australia acted decisively to bend the curve of infections downward, the U.S. achieved merely a plateau in the spring, which changed to an appalling upward slope in the summer.”

Yong said he has spoken to over 100 health experts since the pandemic began and sums up the U.S. mistakes thus: “A sluggish response by a government denuded of expertise allowed the coronavirus to gain a foothold. Chronic underfunding of public health neutered the nation’s ability to prevent the pathogen’s spread. A bloated, inefficient health-care system left hospitals ill-prepared for the ensuing wave of sickness. Racist policies that have endured since the days of colonization and slavery left Indigenous and Black Americans especially vulnerable to COVID‑19.”

THIRD WORLD USA
In New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S., was a case study in how some Americans fared better than others. Black and Latino people were hospitalized at twice the rate of Caucasians during the peak of the crisis, data released in May by the City of New York showed. Black New Yorkers were hospitalized at a rate of 632 per 100,000 people, while Caucasians were hospitalized at a rate of 284 per 100,000 people. Black and Hispanic residents were dying at a rate of 21.3 per 100,000, while non-white races were dying at a rate of 40.2 per 100,000, it added.

‘Chronic underfunding of public health neutered the nation’s ability to prevent the pathogen’s spread. A bloated, inefficient health-care system left hospitals ill-prepared for the ensuing wave of sickness.’— Ed Yong, who in 2018 warned of another pandemic and said the U.S. was not prepared to deal with it, says COVID-19 is a test run for future pandemics.

So what can be done? Flattening the curve of new cases through social distancing, testing and contact tracing will help to avoid overwhelming the health-care system during any possible second wave, health professionals say. The U.S. has about 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people, according to industry website STAT News, which reports on public health and science issues. “With a population of 330 million, this is about 1 million hospital beds. At any given time, about 68% of them are occupied. That leaves about 300,000 beds available nationwide,” it said.

Experts say the U.S. must also stock up on medical-grade N95 surgical masks and other personal protective equipment after health authorities in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic told the American public NOT to wear face masks; authorities were concerned it would disrupt the supply of masks to medical professionals working on the front lines. Kay, a nurse at The Brooklyn Hospital who was wearing a garbage bag as protective clothing, told CBS in April. “It’s like something out of the Twilight Zone. I don’t think any of us going through it will ever be the same.”

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for three decades, acknowledged to MarketWatch in an extensive interview that health authorities in the U.S. did not act swiftly enough with previous pandemics such as HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, and underestimated the seriousness of COVID-19, despite those lessons of the past: “It was felt to be just a virus that jumps species from an animal to a human, and we found out that was not the case, that it spread very easily from human to human. It rapidly exploded into a major global pandemic.”

However, President Donald Trump disagrees, and hit back at Fauci on Twitter TWTR, 2.49% last weekend. Replying to a post by CBS News VIAC, -1.71% of Fauci’s testimony that the U.S. should improve its testing abilitie, the president wrote: “Wrong! We have more cases because we have tested far more than any other country, 60,000,000. If we tested less, there would be less cases. How did Italy, France & Spain do? Now Europe sadly has flare ups. Most of our governors worked hard & smart. We will come back STRONG!”

‘It was felt to be just a virus that jumps species from an animal to a human, and we found out that was not the case, that it spread very easily from human to human.’— Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaking in an interview with MarketWatch last month.

Nearly 53 million people have been tested for coronavirus in the U.S. to date, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with more than 5 million or 10% of those testing positive for the virus. Wait times of more than 10 days have become the norm for many Americans. There are, however, stories of people who have had to wait 26 days to get their results. Waiting 10 days for a test defeats the purpose of getting tested as they’re less likely to quarantine if they don’t believe or don’t know they have the virus, health professionals say.

Approximately half of the tests being performed daily are conducted by commercial labs such as Quest Diagnostics DGX, -1.27% and LabCorp. “Only one state has an average turnaround time of greater than five days,” said Admiral Brett Giroir, a member of the White House coronavirus task force.” And yet the Trump administration is trying to block $25 billion for states to conduct testing and contact tracing in the next coronavirus relief bill, people involved in the talks told the Washington Post this month. Democratic lawmakers, in negotiations over a new stimulus bill, have demanded $25 billion for the testing and contact-tracing, over three times what the GOP have suggested.

As of Wednesday, COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2, had infected at least 18.5 million people globally and 4.8 million in the U.S. It had killed over 701,085 people worldwide and at least 156,839 in the U.S. The disease is experiencing a resurgence in southern and western states. Cases in California hit 526,982 and deaths reached 9,708 as it reported 6,275 new cases Tuesday and 201 new deaths. New York has the most fatalities (32,725) followed by New Jersey (15,857).

The stock market has been on a wild ride in recent months. The Dow Jones Industrial Index DJIA, 1.11%, the S&P 500 SPX, 0.56% and Nasdaq Composite COMP, 0.39% closed higher Tuesday, as investors tracked round two of the potential fiscal stimulus. The Nasdaq logged its 30th record of 2020 and the S&P 500 ended above 3,300 in a choppy session, as large-cap tech stocks took a breather. Disney DIS, 8.12% reported a depressing financial performance Tuesday that included a quarterly loss of nearly $5 billion due to COVID-19.

How COVID-19 is transmitted

Social media reacts to Trump’s ‘shocking’ Axios interview with Jonathan Swan on HBO

Published: Aug. 5, 2020 By Shawn Langlois

Trump speaks with Jonathan Swan of Axios on the publication’s HBO program. AXIOS

Last week, Axios political reporter Jonathan Swan teased his HBO interview with President Trump as “one of the most shocking exchanges” he’s ever had with him.

Now, with the whole thing having aired, what had been the signal “shock” moment — Trump’s claiming the intelligence that Russia was funding Taliban targeting of U.S. troops in Afghanistan never reached his desk — just seems to blend in with all the other stuff.

The exchange that gained the most traction on social media, where the chat went viral overnight, finds Trump talking about how his administration has done an “incredible” job of navigating the pandemic and how the outbreak is “under control” despite surging infection numbers.

Swan kicked off the interview by asking whether Trump was employing “wishful thinking” when it comes to a public health crisis that has left more than 155,000 in the U.S. dead.

“I think you have to have a positive outlook — otherwise you would have nothing,” Trump said, pointing again to the travel restrictions he says saved perhaps millions of lives. “Those people that really understand it, that really understand it, they said it’s incredible the job that we’ve done.”

Swan asked how Trump could claim that the outbreak is “under control” when the average daily number of deaths is again more than 1,000.

“They are dying — that’s true. And it is what it is,” Trump said. “But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control, as much as you can control it.”

This moment, in particular, was splashed across Twitter TWTR, 2.62% :

Later, the topic shifted to the legacy of late civil-rights hero John Lewis, and Trump wouldn’t budge when it came to joining those across the political spectrum praising Lewis’s impact.

“I don’t know. I don’t know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration,” Trump said after being asked how he thought Lewis would be remembered. “I never met John Lewis, actually.”

Key Words (January 2017):House veteran John Lewis says Trump won’t be a legitimate president

Swan pushed ahead, asking if Trump found Lewis, who rose to prominence in the civil-rights movement in his early 20s and went on to represent his Atlanta-area district in Congress for more than three decades, to be an impressive figure.

“I can’t say one way or the other. I find a lot of people impressive. I find many people not impressive, but, no, he didn’t come to my inauguration,” Trump said, adding that he’s done more for Black Americans than another other president. “He should’ve come. I think he made a big mistake.”

And when given the chance to perhaps adjust his earlier well-wishes for Ghislaine Maxwell, the former confidante of Jeffrey Epstein who has been charged with trafficking underage girls, Trump maintained his show of support and stoked the flames of a conspiracy theory.

“Her boyfriend died in jail, and people are still trying to figure out how did it happen, was it suicide, was he killed?” he said. “I do wish her well. I’m not looking for anything bad for her.”

Watch the full interview:

TRUMP; ASYMPTOMATIC SUPER SPREADER
Asymptomatic coronavirus transmission appears worse than SARS or influenza — a runner can leave a ‘slipstream’ of 30 feetPublished: Aug. 5, 2020 By Quentin Fottrel

Asymptomatic transmission ‘is the Achilles’ heel of COVID-19 pandemic control,’ one study says

The WHO currently estimates that 16% of people are asymptomatic and can transmit the novel coronavirus, while other data show that 40% of coronavirus transmission is due to carriers not displaying symptoms of the illness. MARKETWATCH PHOTO ILLUSTRATION/GETTY IMAGES, ISTOCKPHOTO

How worried should you be about asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19?


‘This virus has very peculiar immunological secrets wrapped up inside it.’
— Gregory Poland, who studies the immunogenetics of vaccine response in adults and children at the Mayo Clinic

The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 16% of people with COVID-19 are asymptomatic and can transmit the coronavirus, while other data show that 40% of coronavirus transmission is due to carriers not displaying symptoms of the illness.

Public-health officials have advised people to keep a distance of six feet from one another. Face masks are designed to prevent the wearer, who may be infected with COVID-19 but have very mild or no symptoms, from spreading invisible droplets to another person and thereby infecting them too.

But “there’s nothing magic about six feet,” said Gregory Poland, who studies the immunogenetics of vaccine response in adults and children at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and is an expert with the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

“The virus can’t measure,” he told MarketWatch. “For example, the viral cloud while speaking will extend 27 feet and linger in the air for about 30 minutes. This is more like influenza in the sense that people transmit the virus prior to experiencing any symptoms and some people, of course, will not get sick.”


Asymptomatic transmission “is the Achilles’ heel of COVID-19 pandemic control through the public-health strategies we have currently deployed,” according to a May 28 editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine.


The editorial, by researchers Monica Gandhi, Deborah Yokoe and Diane Havlir at the University of California, San Francisco, referred to recent study of a coronavirus outbreak at a skilled nursing facility, which concluded that epidemiologic evaluations of COVID-19 outbreaks within skilled nursing facilities “strongly demonstrate that our current approaches are inadequate.”

Asymptomatic transmission ‘is the Achilles’ heel of Covid-19 pandemic control.’
— Monica Gandhi, Deborah Yokoe and Diane Havlir, scientists at the University of California, San Francisco

Symptom-based case detection and subsequent testing to determine isolation and quarantine procedures were justified by the many similarities between SARS-CoV-1 (the virus that caused SARS) and SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), they wrote.

Gandhi, Yokoe and Havlir said those symptoms include high genetic relatedness, transmission primarily through respiratory droplets, and the frequency of lower respiratory symptoms (fever, cough, and shortness of breath), with both infections developing a median of five days after exposure.

“Despite the deployment of similar control interventions, the trajectories of the two epidemics have veered in dramatically different directions,” they added. “Within 8 months, SARS was controlled after SARS-CoV-1 had infected approximately 8,100 persons in limited geographic areas.”

As of Wednesday, COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2, had infected at least 18.5 million people globally and 4.8 million in the U.S. It had killed over 701,085 people worldwide and at least 156,839 in the U.S.

The disease is experiencing a resurgence in southern and western states. Cases in California hit 526,982 and deaths reached 9,708 as it reported 6,275 new cases Tuesday and 201 new deaths. New York has the most fatalities (32,725) followed by New Jersey (15,857).

The stock market has been on a wild ride in recent months. The Dow Jones Industrial Index DJIA, 1.14%, the S&P 500 SPX, 0.55% and Nasdaq Composite COMP, 0.29% closed higher Tuesday, as investors tracked round two of the potential fiscal stimulus.

he Nasdaq logged its 30th record of 2020 and the S&P 500 ended above 3,300 in a choppy session, as large-cap tech stocks took a breather. Disney DIS, 9.52% reported a depressing financial performance Tuesday that included a quarterly loss of nearly $5 billion due to COVID-19.



The American public has been confused about the number of asymptomatic people and how contagious they are. MARKETWATCH PHOTO ILLUSTRATION/ISTOCKPHOTO


Here are five reasons to care about asymptomatic transmission:

1. COVID-19 has high viral loads in the upper respiratory tract
The University of California, San Francisco study said there’s a high viral load of SARS-CoV-2 shedding in the upper respiratory tract, even among pre-symptomatic patients, “which distinguishes it from SARS-CoV-1, where replication occurs mainly in the lower respiratory tract.”

“Viral loads with SARS-CoV-1, which are associated with symptom onset, peak a median of 5 days later than viral loads with SARS-CoV-2, which makes symptom-based detection of infection more effective in the case of SARS CoV-1,” the researchers wrote.

With influenza, they added, “persons with asymptomatic disease generally have lower quantitative viral loads in secretions from the upper respiratory tract than from the lower respiratory tract and a shorter duration of viral shedding than persons with symptoms.”

2. Outdoor joggers could create a viral ‘slipstream’ of 30 feet

The controversy over asymptomatic transmission wasn’t the first time authorities left the public mystified about best practices. In April, after weeks of obfuscation over the efficacy of face masks, the Trump administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Americans should wear them. Some studies suggest transmission is more likely without a mask.

The controversy over asymptomatic transmission isn’t the first time authorities gave conflicting signals.

“A runner who doesn’t yet know he’s sick running in front of you is likely to infect you with the slipstream behind him by around 30 feet,” Poland said. “At six feet, the largest respiratory droplets have settled out onto the ground.”

“WHO told us that mask wearing was unnecessary and then it was necessary,” he added. “If you’ve only had a few people sick in a hospital room, you can still culture the virus off doorknobs and light bulbs. It may also be that the risk of transmission is higher with people coughing and sneezing.”

3. Some experts say masks are so-so in their effectiveness

“Unless you’re wearing a PAPR, a self-enclosed breathing unit, there’s no such thing as safe,” Poland said. “They’re so-called space suits. The only thing you can be is safer. You can’t be 100% safe with social distancing and face masks.”

“All of these things together form a web of interventions to protect you. You wouldn’t get into a car without seat belts, brakes, tires, air bags. You would not be happy with any one of those things. So too with the so-called non-pharmaceutical interventions.”

Poland added, “I’m worried that people who have the antibodies or get the vaccine will have a get-out-of-jail free card. This virus has very peculiar immunological secrets wrapped up inside it. We’re still learning about influenza and we’ve been working on that since the 1940s.”

Dispatches from a pandemic:

Letter from New York: ‘When I hear an ambulance, I wonder if there’s a coronavirus patient inside’

4. A comprehensive system of contact tracing is critical

“Asymptomatic transmission enhances the need to scale up the capacity for widespread testing and thorough contact tracing to detect asymptomatic infections, interrupt undetected transmission chains, and further bend the curve downward,” the CDC says in its guidelines.

If the novel coronavirus pandemic is found to be driven by asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections, it added, “new innovations in disease detection and prevention beyond exhaustive contact tracing, mass testing, and isolation of asymptomatic contacts may be needed.”

The agency said more needs to be known, in particular whether full or partial immunity develops in these people, how long protective immunity lasts, and if it is possible to be immune from reinfection but still transmit COVID-19 to another person while remaining asymptomatic.

5. Asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic are a bad combination

Depending on the sample group, anywhere between 10% and 43% of people infected with COVID-19 had no symptoms, according to a body of research reviewed by William Petri, a professor of medicine and microbiology at the University of Virginia who specializes in infectious diseases.

“Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection appears to be common, and will continue to complicate efforts to get the pandemic under control,” Petri wrote in The Conversation. To put those figures in context: Asymptomatic carriers also ranged anywhere from 5% to 25% for influenza.

As many states open up again, Carlos de Rio, a professor of global health and epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, told MarketWatch that it’s best to avoid prolonged exposure to others for now. “Working in an office with somebody is what concerns me,” he said.


Also see:Yes, America needs to brace itself for a second wave of coronavirus

More from MarketWatch
This is how long coronavirus survives airborne — and on cardboard, plastic and steel, according to peer-reviewed study 

Still hearing people say coronavirus is just like the flu? They’re wrong — and here’s why 

‘Replace the term social distancing with spatial distancing.’ A behavioral economist on the psychological toll of endless waiting during the coronavirus pandemic


About the Author
Quentin Fottrell is MarketWatch's personal-finance editor and The Moneyist columnist for MarketWatch. You can follow him on Twitter @quantanamo.

UPDATE

Here’s why the massive explosion in Beirut will deepen Lebanon’s financial nightmare

Published: Aug. 5, 2020 By Pierre Briançon

Buildings lie ruined near Beirut's port, devastated by an explosion on August 4, 2020. GETTY IMAGES

The destruction of the port of Beirut by a massive explosion on Tuesday will throw Lebanon deeper into the protracted financial crisis it has faced in recent months, which forced the country to default on a $1.2 billion eurobond in March.

At least 100 people died in the blast, and 4,000 others were injured after thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate stored by the government in a warehouse ignited. The explosion destroyed the port area of the Lebanese city, a vital trade hub for the small country’s struggling economy.

The government of Prime Minister Hassan Diab has been talking for months with the International Monetary Fund about a multibillion-dollar rescue package. The Lebanese pound has lost 80% of its value on the black market since October and the nearly-bankrupt banking system is only allowing limited cash withdrawals by depositors.

The IMF said it wouldn’t seriously consider a bailout until the country’s warring political movements unite behind a government turnaround plan and get serious about fighting corruption. But IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva warned in June that there was “no reason to say there is a breakthrough” in the talks.

The IMF is also asking Lebanese authorities to credibly assess the massive losses (more than $80 billon by some estimates) suffered by the country’s financial system as commercial banks lent massively to the central bank to allow it to finance the government’s expenses. Lebanon’s deficit topped 12% of gross domestic product last year, the public debt-to-GDP ratio stood at around 150%, and the current-account deficit amounted to about 25% of GDP.

Lebanon’s economy will sink deeper, adding to the effects of both its financial problems and the coronavirus impact. But the Hezbollah-backed government of the country once known as “the Switzerland of the Middle East” may encounter little capital of sympathy when it turns to western creditors for a financial lifeline that would go much beyond the humanitarian aid already pledged by several western countries.

Read:Beirut explosion: Cache of ammonium nitrate blamed for blast

Aerial footage shows the full scale of Beirut's devastating explosion, which killed 100 and reduced buildings into rubble
Bill Bostock

An aerial image broadcast by Sky News showing the port in Beirut after the explosion on Tuesday. Sky News

Aerial footage broadcast by Sky News show the full scale of the explosion that rocked Beirut on Tuesday.

The latest reports suggests that thousands were injured and at least 100 were killed.
The government said the blast was caused by a stockpile of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been kept at the port for years.

Numerous hospitals were damaged in the explosion, meaning they could not treat many of those injured who needed medical care.

The blast comes as Lebanon struggles under the weight of an economic crisis made many times worse by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Scroll down to see the full fly-over video of the scene.
—SkyNews (@SkyNews) August 5, 2020

Read more:
'I have never seen a tragedy so huge': 2 people in Beirut describe being caught up in the massive explosion that devastated the city

Lebanon's devastating blast came in the middle of an unprecedented economic crisis, 

frequent power outages, and hospitals struggling to contain the coronavirus

What the unbelievable destruction looks like for people on the ground

Hospitals in Beirut were so badly damaged by the explosion that many can't admit patients

Top House  Democrats announce probe into Kodak's $765 million government loan

Published: Aug. 5, 2020 By Victor Reklaitis

Democratic lawmakers who chair key House panels on Wednesday said they're investigating how Eastman Kodak Co. 

KODK, 4.79% recently received a $765 million government loan to help it make drug ingredients at U.S. factories. 

Reps. Maxine Waters, Eliot Engel, Jim Clyburn, Carolyn Maloney and Al Green asked the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to provide all communications with private sector entities regarding financing under the Defense Production Act loan program. 

The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation into the trading in Kodak's stock before and after the news of the loan broke.

PICKING WINNERS & LOSERS SOMETHING REPUBLICANS OPPOSE UNTIL THEY DON'T

Kodak shareholders were not the only beneficiaries of the sudden stock surge — holders of convertible bonds also saw tidy gains

Published: Aug. 5, 2020 By Ciara Linnane, Tomi Kilgore,MarketWatch an Joy Wiltermut

Convertible bonds were worth almost $900 million on July 29

The sharp rally in Eastman Kodak Co.’s share price after news last week of a $765 million government loan to help it make drug ingredients at U.S. factories has offered shareholders and executives with stock options a tidy windfall.

But they’re not the only ones to reap a reward from the increasing value of their holdings. On Monday, Kodak KODK, -3.61% disclosed that the holders of its 5.00% convertible notes due in 2021, which were issued in May 2019, had converted notes valued at a total of $95 million into 29.9 million shares of Kodak common stock on July 29.

Those notes were issued with a strike price of $3.175 per converted share. The stock closed at $33.20 on July 29, meaning the notes were worth just under $900 million. The stock has fallen 60% since then.

The notes were originally sold to funds managed by Southeastern Asset Management Inc., an employee-owned investment firm based in Memphis, Tenn. That company is Kodak’s biggest shareholder, with an 11.3% stake, equal to 4.96 million shares, according to FactSet data.

The notes were held by Southeastern’s Longleaf Partners Small-Cap Fund; C2W Partners Master Fund Limited, which is operated by Additive Advisory and Capital LLC; and Deseret Mutual Pension Trust, according to a regulatory filing.

See:Kodak’s stock triples as company announces pandemic plan to start making pharmaceutical ingredients

Southeastern Asset Management and Kodak did not respond to requests for information on the bonds. The SEC declined to comment on the movement in Kodak’s share price.

But the SEC has launched an investigation of the trading in Kodak’s shares before and after the news of the loan broke, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The loan news caused Kodak’s shares to climb to as high as $60 at their peak last week, before falling back to $15 on Monday, in massive trading volume that far exceeded the stock’s longer-term average daily turnover.
See also: Kodak’s stock surge turned executive options into huge potential payday

The stock had already moved 25% the day before the news was officially disclosed. Executives with stock options, including some awarded just a day before the loan became public, were sitting on big paper gains.
Kodak had shared information on the loan with a few media outlets before the public announcement, according to media reports. Some had published that information before they were asked to delete it and respect an agreed-upon news embargo.

Kodak’s shares had mostly languished since the pioneering photography company emerged from bankruptcy in 2012. The company, a member of the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average as recently as 2004, has made several efforts to reinvent itself and enjoyed a brief stock rally in 2018 after announcing plans to get in on the blockchain and cryptocurrency craze.

News of the SEC probe came after Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, wrote an open letter to SEC Chairman Jay Clayton urging his agency to investigate “potential incidents of insider trading prior to the July 28, 2020, public announcement of the Trump administration’s $765 million loan to Eastman Kodak Co. (Kodak) to support the production of generic drug ingredients in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.”
Kodak shares fell nearly 4% on Tuesday but are up nearly 210% in 2020, while the S&P SPX, +0.36% has gained 2.3% in the year to date. The Dow industrials DJIA, +0.61% are down 6% this year as of Tuesday’s closing bell.

THE BEST MEDICINE MONEY CAN BUY

CVS Health’s Insurance Profits Offset a Retail Slowdown

Published: Aug. 5, 2020 

By 

Bill Alpert

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Referenced Symbols

CVS
-1.23% 
SPX
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CINDY ORD/GETTY IMAGES

The benefits of CVS Health’s merger with Aetna were on full display as the enterprise reported its June-quarter results on Wednesday. While its retail sales were slowed by Covid-19 lockdowns, its health-insurance profits widened as patients made fewer doctor visits. The company raised its earnings guidance for the year.

“These are certainly unprecedented times for all,” said Chief Financial Officer Eva Boratto on the Wednesday morning conference call. “Our ability to deliver results in this dynamic environment is evidence of the strength of our diversified model.”

In recent trading, CVS stock (ticker: CVS) was down 1.1%, at $64.28. The S&P 500 was up 0.7%.

Revenue in the company’s second quarter was up 3%, to $65.3 billion, while earnings rose 50% to $2.26 a share. Excluding noncash charges and restructuring expenses, adjusted earnings were $2.64 a share.

As people sheltered at home, CVS drugstores lost “front of the store” traffic in the quarter. Profits in the company’s retail segment fell by about a third. But at the same time, there were fewer claims for doctor visits, so dollar profits more than doubled at the company’s health-care benefits segment. Operating profit margins in the health-insurance segment widened from 8% to 19%. In all, this boosted second-quarter earnings at CVS by about 75 cents.

Covid-19 brought other gains and losses. The company’s commercial insurance membership declined as people lost jobs, but Medicaid membership grew 5% from the March quarter.

Since people emerged from their homes, insurance claims are rising, but so are new prescriptions and retail sales. The company increased its 2020 year guidance for adjusted earnings from a midpoint of $7.10 a share to $7.20. Most of the boost came from changes in CVS' expected tax rate, said CFO Boratto. That dreary reason may account for the stock’s Wednesday selloff.

CEO Larry Merlo told conference-call listeners that the drug chain hoped to play a big role in Covid testing and vaccination. He said the company has administered about 2 million tests, with turnaround times averaging three days up until July, when a demand surge slowed turnarounds nationwide. After clinical labs increased their capacity, the delays have improved, Merlo said.

As a nation, some 17 million people a month are getting Covid tests. The government is aiming to increase that monthly rate to about 27 million in the fall. Merlo says CVS will play a part.

CVS also aims to give up to 18 million flu vaccines this fall, Merlo said, and the company is talking to the federal government about giving Covid vaccinations, just as it did when the H1N1 flu was pandemic.

The number of Americans skipping mortgage payments is falling — except among these borrowers

Published: Aug. 5, 2020 By Jacob Passy

Forbearance plans allow mortgage borrowers to make reduced payments or skip monthly payments

Black homeowners are more likely to be facing financial difficulty because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

NOT BECAUSE OF THE COVID VIRUS BUT THE VIRUS OF SYSTEMIC RACISM 

For nearly two months now, the share of mortgage borrowers who has received approval to skip their monthly loan payments has fallen precipitously.

But a new trend has begun to develop, which indicates that some homeowners are facing more financial pressure as the coronavirus pandemic continues.

The percentage of Ginnie Mae loans in forbearance increased one basis point to 10.28%, according to the most recent data released Monday by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

It was the second straight week in which the share of Ginnie Mae loans in forbearance increased by this month — prior to that the percentage had decreased for multiple weeks.

Forbearance plans allow mortgage borrowers to make reduced payments or skip monthly payments. Under the CARES Act, any borrower with a federally-backed mortgage was allowed to request forbearance from their loan servicer.

That included Ginnie Mae loans. Ginnie Mae functions similarly to Fannie Mae FNMA, +2.56% and Freddie Mac FMCC, +3.35%, and securitizes loans made through government programs including Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) loans and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) loans.

“The Ginnie Mae segment tends to have more lower-income families and communities of color than the conventional market,” said Ed Demarco, president of the Housing Policy Council, a trade organization. “And these groups have been disproportionately harmed financially by the pandemic and its related shutdowns.”

Government programs typically have less stringent requirements for prospective borrowers than Fannie and Freddie do, including lower credit scores and higher loan-to-value ratios. As a result, these loan programs are especially popular with first-time home buyers.

‘The Ginnie Mae segment tends to have more lower-income families and communities of color than the conventional market.’— Ed Demarco, president of the Housing Policy Council

The rise of the forbearance rate in this segment therefore suggests that people who were first-time home buyers are more sensitive to the fluctuations in the economy right now.

“The job market has cooled somewhat over the past few weeks, with layoffs increasing and other indications that the economic rebound may be losing some steam because of the rising COVID-19 cases throughout the country,” Mike Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, wrote in the report. “It is therefore not surprising to see this situation first impact the Ginnie Mae segment of the market.”

Additionally, the $600 expanded unemployment insurance benefits ended last week, and lawmakers have yet to approve a replacement. As a result, those who were laid off because of the pandemic will likely face even more financial pressure in the coming weeks.

How much of that pressure will be exerted on homeowners isn’t clear though. “The job loss so far has been disproportionately skewed to renters rather than homeowners — it’s hard to extrapolate how many homeowners have been helped by the expanded unemployment benefits,” said Rick Sharga, executive vice president at RealtyTrac, a foreclosure listings and search portal.

Additionally, many homeowners requested forbearance but continued to make their monthly payments as usual. These people likely viewed forbearance as a safety net if they lost their jobs and the bottom fell out.

The number of Americans doing this, though, could soon drop because of the expiration of the expanded unemployment, said Karan Kaul, senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. That would be a negative development for the mortgage industry that wouldn’t be reflected as an uptick in the forbearance rate, since those Americans are already counted as being in forbearance.

‘If you’re a borrower and can’t make a payment at the end of forbearance, you have the option of just selling your home and buying a less expensive home or renting.’— Karan Kaul, senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center

Whether continued weakness in the economy will result in many of these mortgage borrowers going into default or foreclosure once their forbearance period ends remains to be seen. The CARES Act stipulated that Americans could receive forbearance for up to one year.

As a result, the U.S. won’t likely see the number of people in default or foreclosure increase notably until at least the third or fourth quarter of next year, Kaul said. But there’s ample reason to believe that the coronavirus pandemic won’t lead to a repeat of the foreclosure crisis that triggered to the Great Recession.

Homeowners will have a wide array of options to modify their home loans if forbearance ends and they’re still in financial trouble — many of these options didn’t exist prior to the foreclosure crisis.

Plus, homeowners today have more equity built into their homes, unlike in 2008 when many people owed more than their home was worth due to falling property prices and the ability to take out piggyback loans.

“If you’re a borrower and can’t make a payment at the end of forbearance, you have the option of just selling your home and buying a less expensive home or renting,” Kaul said.

About the Author
Jacob Passy is a personal-finance reporter for MarketWatch and is based in New York.