AMERICA’S INTERNET WASN’T PREPARED FOR ONLINE SCHOOL

Distance learning shows how badly rural America needs broadband

By Monica Chin@mcsquared96 Oct 7, 2020, 11:14am EDT


It’s not uncommon for households in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, to lose internet for a full day. The last time it happened, back in the spring, Christina Rothermel-Branham connected herself (a professor at Northeastern State University, teaching online) and her son (a kindergartener at Heritage Elementary, learning online) to the hotspot on her phone. Luckily, nobody had a Zoom call scheduled that day; worksheets and YouTube videos proceeded as planned.

Rothermel-Branham’s son is now in first grade. He has multiple Zoom sessions per day and takes online classes through Outschool. She doesn’t know what they’ll do the next time their house loses service. She hopes her phone’s hotspot will be able to handle both of their video calls at once — but she’s worried that it won’t.

Rothermel-Branham’s son is one of the millions of students around the US who are currently taking some (or all) of their classes remotely. That’s been the status quo since the spring for many districts, which moved instruction online to limit the spread of COVID-19. The first few weeks of school were difficult for rural families. Teachers struggled to reach disconnected students, using phone calls, social media, and text messages. But they only had to finish the spring, and many hoped that by the start of the new school year in the fall, things would be better.

RURAL DISTRICTS ARE STILL SCRAMBLING

Almost seven months later, rural districts around the country are still scrambling to accommodate all of their pupils. It’s become clear to teachers, administrators, and community members that the digital divide is too big for schools to bridge on their own. The infrastructure needed to teach rural students remotely would require systemic change — it would require government assistance. Months into the pandemic, educators say they still don’t have what they need.

Part of the problem for rural areas is income. Just over half of households with annual incomes under $30,000 use broadband internet, according to Pew Research Center. Poverty rates are much higher in non-metro areas than they are in metro areas across the US — and the largest gap, by far, is in the South. And the COVID-19 pandemic, which demolished 113 straight months of job growth, has overwhelmingly impacted low-income minority communities.

The average cost of internet service is $60 per month in the US. And in areas where cable isn’t available, some families need to turn to satellite service, which is even more expensive at $100 per month on average. That’s a cost not all families can bear, especially during a recession.

But high-speed internet isn’t an option even for some households that could afford the service. The Federal Communication Commission’s broadband standard is a download speed of at least 25 megabits per second and upload speeds of 3 megabits per second (colloquially, “25/3”). Those speeds, considered to be the minimum needed for a single 4K Netflix stream, are unheard of in some rural areas.

“I WAS RUNNING ON THE HIGHEST SPEED, BUT WE WERE HAVING A LAG BECAUSE EVERY SCHOOL DISTRICT WAS ON.”

Just two-thirds of rural Americans have broadband access, per Pew, compared to three-quarters of urban residents and 79 percent of suburban residents. But it’s hard to measure how widespread the service actually is because the FCC’s broadband maps are notoriously terrible and classify a ZIP code as “served” if just one home has access.

Laying cables in areas where very few paying customers live isn’t an attractive investment option for providers. This is compounded by nature — hills, lakes, rivers, forests, and other terrain can both interfere with wireless signals and present challenges to laying infrastructure in the first place. And these regions can be hard hit by power outages. Trees and leaves interfere with power lines during adverse weather, and since crews prioritize restoring power to the largest groups of customers, areas where the fewest people live are often the last to get service back.

Deloitte estimated in 2017 that modernizing rural broadband across the country would require a $130–$150 billion infrastructure investment. Democrats proposed a $1 billion investment earlier this year, but it did not pass.

Even areas where internet is widespread don’t all have the bandwidth to accommodate remote school. Eileen Carter-Campos, a third grade teacher in the Newburgh Enlarged City School District in New York’s Hudson Valley region, often finds her internet unusable in the morning due to the high demand from remote classes. Not only is she constantly kicked out of her Google Meet calls, but she sometimes doesn’t receive emails from students until the day after they’re sent.

In the first week of remote teaching, Carter-Campos says, “There was such an overload that I had to contact Spectrum and was like, ‘Can you check my modem?’ I wanted to make sure I was running on high speed. I was running on the highest speed, but we were having a lag because every school district was on.” Carter-Campos now has to start her classes later in the day, at lower-traffic times

Empty homes in Newburgh, New York. Photo by Don Emmert / AFP via Getty Images

Other areas are realizing now, thanks to virtual education, just how disconnected their district is. Cilla Green is a music teacher for the Caddo Hills school district in southwest Arkansas. Over half of Green’s students don’t have internet that allows them to stream — some have satellite, some have bad cable, and none have a high-speed connection. The district, when planning for a blend of online and in-person instruction, was taken by surprise.

“WE DIDN’T REALIZE HOW MANY OF OUR STUDENTS DID NOT HAVE THAT AVAILABILITY.”

“We didn’t realize how many of our students did not have that availability,” Green said. “I thought some of our students should be able to stream and most of them were like ‘No, we have internet service through our phones and it’s not very good’ or ‘I have internet service but I can’t do any streaming, it’s only good for email.’”

Amid all of this, teachers are doing everything they can.

Alex Beene teaches adult education and ACT prep classes in western Tennessee. By his estimate, over 70 percent of households in his area don’t have reliable internet access, including around half of Beene’s adult students and 15 to 20 percent of his ACT students. He’s running ACT classes over Zoom, while his adult education classes are blended; students can schedule appointments to come in one at a time, but lessons are mostly online.

“This is just a huge, earth-shattering event for them,” Beene told The Verge. “If you don’t have a high-school diploma, you’re already at a disadvantage in the workplace. And now you have employers who have sent them home, and they say ‘I can finally work on my diploma.’ Well, if you don’t have that internet access, you can’t do that either.”

“And the longer they stay out of that environment without eligible internet ... the more behind they become,” he added.

Throughout the summer, Beene has been printing out study packets. If students can’t pick them up at school, he mails them to their homes. When the students finish their packets, they mail them back for Beene to grade. If they have questions, he’ll call them on the phone with a copy of their assignment in hand. He has to be quick, though — some of his students have prepaid smartphone plans with limited minutes.

For students who are very disconnected, Beene has to get even more creative. “I’ll go over common math strategies in their everyday lives,” he says. “I’ll tell them to go through, as they’re going to the supermarket, to see an item and figure out sales tax on it. If they have monthly payments, figure out how much interest they’re doing. Anything we can do to keep their minds engaged.”

Such workarounds seemed feasible as a temporary solution in March. But as online class stretches on, it’s become clear to Beene and his colleagues that they can’t come close to replacing in-person education.

“ANYTHING WE CAN DO TO KEEP THEIR MINDS ENGAGED.”

“This pandemic has taught us that this [broadband] is not something that families need to be without,” Beene said. “This needs to be just like water in the year 2020. Every home needs to have it. It needs to be running and plentiful. It’s opening our eyes to the fact that we need, for education, to have an infrastructure that allows all of our families to be online.”

Schools in Connecticut’s Region One district, which services a 275-mile area with approximately 13,000 residents, received some state funding to create hotspots in public places throughout its six municipalities — town halls, libraries, school buildings. In a recent survey of the region, almost half of respondents said they were unhappy with their internet service, and two-thirds said they don’t have reliable cell service in their homes.

Students can come to the hotspots, download their assignments, work on those assignments at home, then go back to the hotspots to submit them. They can also participate in live lessons next to the hotspots, from their cars, if necessary.

“This is not desirable,” says Lisa Carter, Region One interim superintendent. “We’re doing our best to make things work.”

That’s a sentiment shared by every professional I spoke to. Since March, the Spring Grove Area School District in Pennsylvania has been distributing hotspots to its distance learning students and publicizing a list of locations where students can access public Wi-Fi. But Chris Enck, Spring Grove’s IT director, hoped it was temporary. He thought the area would have better access by now.

“This is not something that the educational community’s going to solve on its own,” said Enck. “We need support from the government.” Enck has been waiting for that support, but he says it hasn’t come. “I know government doesn’t move fast — it’s been six months. And my question is: Have we made any progress? It’s been six months we’ve been in that situation. I don’t know that we’re any further ahead now than we were back on March 13th.”

Carter agrees that hotspots aren’t enough for the long haul. To keep students engaged, Carter says her district needs the government to step in. It needs guaranteed access.

“Access to broadband should be a public utility. When the telephone first started, it was determined that everyone should have access,” Carter said. “The same was true with television and radio broadcasting.” Carter believes internet access should be no different. “It’s something none of us can live without,” she said. “That’s an essential ingredient of what we need to communicate with each other as 21st-century people.”

Some communities have taken matters into their own hands. A small number of rural areas — around 9 percent — use fiber-optic networks, which are substantially faster than DSL. Northwest ConneCT is an advocacy group committed to bringing such a service to northwest Connecticut — 35 percent of which doesn’t have cable service, by the group’s estimate.

“IF WE WANT ROBUST, RELIABLE INTERNET, WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO DO IT OURSELVES.”

“We’re never going to see wireless communications built out in these areas,” said Wayne Hileman, chairman of Northwest ConneCT. “There’s no economic incentive for any incumbent provider to come in and do this for us. If we want robust, reliable internet service in our corner of Connecticut, we’re going to have to do it ourselves.”

Northwest ConneCT has seen a surge of local attention since classes went online. “For the first time people needed true two-way internet in their homes and they were aghast to find out they didn’t have it,” said Hileman. “They’re saying ‘I thought I was getting this great service,’ and the truth is they’re not.”

But building that sort of infrastructure at a community level is no easy task. Northwest ConneCT has been at it for over five years. The group initially developed a plan in which communities would contract for construction and ownership of trunk wiring on poles. Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA), with pressure from cable companies, ruled in May 2018 that an old state statute that granted municipalities free access to utility poles didn’t apply to commercial broadband. Northwest ConneCT sued PURA and won in late 2019 after a multiyear court dispute.

The fight is still far from over. Northwest ConneCT is now battling other regulatory hiccups, including one that would bar towns from modifying poles until their owners have deemed them “ready,” allowing them to slow-walk and delay the process. Northwest ConneCT is currently working on a bill. It’s tried others in the past but hasn’t yet gotten one to a vote.

The saga underscores the hurdles involved in expanding high-speed internet access without private sector or larger government support. “Solutions tend to be very expensive, and that’s why it requires a lot of work between a lot of players,” said Peter Hajdu, CEO of Dura-Line, which designs conduits that help deploy fiber-optic cables in rural areas. “We have to invest more altogether, the private participants, the private corporations like ours, the big service providers, as well as the federal government.”

Hajdu added, “It’s a really hard job.”

Climate change has a cow and worm problem

Scientists spotted a troubling feedback loop 

By Justine Calma@justcalma Oct 7, 2020

Cattle graze on a dry meadow at a livestock farm, on August 5, 2020, in northwestern France as a heatwave is forecast for the coming days. Photo by JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER/AFP via Getty Images

Cows with tummy troubles could be a big problem for the climate, a new study finds. That’s because cattle and other livestock with worms and other parasites produce more of the super potent greenhouse gas, methane, than healthy animals. Methane is 28 to 36 times more powerful than carbon dioxide when it comes to heating up the planet.

The amount of methane coming from cattle and other livestock was estimated to grow 20 percent from 2017 to 2050 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. But when parasitic worm infections are taken into consideration, the increase in methane could jump as high as 82 percent, according to a new paper published today in Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

A DANGEROUS FEEDBACK LOOP

That’s a large discrepancy, especially given how much domesticated livestock is already contributing to climate change. Livestock make up 60 percent of all the mammal biomass on Earth, and livestock industries are responsible for more than 14 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. (For comparison, aviation only accounts for about two percent of global emissions.)

What’s even more worrying is that there could be a dangerous feedback loop between climate change, parasitic diseases, and higher methane emissions: Animals infected with parasitic worms and bacteria push out more methane over the course of their lives, which accelerates climate change. Parasites that infect livestock can thrive in warmer temperatures, infecting even more animals, and then the vicious cycle continues.

“That could be a really interesting phenomenon, or an important one that we’re not really considering,” says Vanessa Ezenwa, lead author of the paper and professor of ecology at the University of Georgia.

Infected or not, cows and other hoofed herbivores, called ruminants, are at the top of the methane-emitting heap. Other animals (including people) emit methane, too, but ruminants burp out more of the gas because of their four-chambered stomachs. They have an entire chamber for fermenting food, where microbes that help them digest tough foods pump out a lot of planet-heating gasses. “It’s magnified for them, compared to us,” Ezenwa says.

Parasitic infections can lead to a number of changes that could increase methane emissions from livestock. The animals grow more slowly, which leads to more lifetime emissions since it takes longer for them to develop enough to slaughter for meat. An infection can also reduce milk production, making dairy farming less efficient. Ranchers might decide to cull and replace their cattle more frequently, and evidence suggests that this usually leads to more animals (and more emissions) rather than less.

IF EVERY ANIMAL CAUGHT WORMS, METHANE EMISSIONS FROM LIVESTOCK WOULD RISE BY 52 PERCENT GLOBALLY

At the extreme end of the scenarios offered in the paper, if every animal got sick, methane emissions from livestock would rise by 52 percent globally, according to the study authors. To calculate this, Ezenwa and her colleagues reviewed existing research on the effects of parasitic infections on methane production in specific animals. They used those findings to figure out what the potential global impact is on methane emissions. Data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization served as a baseline.

There are some limitations to the study, which provides estimates rather than hard figures. The researchers used a sliding scale of potential infection prevalence since they didn’t have an actual global rate for parasitic infections. The real-world numbers can vary dramatically from region to region and there are gaps in data.

The results of the new study aren’t necessarily surprising, according to Ermias Kebreab, director of the World Food Center at the University of California, Davis. Kebreab was not involved in the study. “It is common sense,” he says.

“COMMON SENSE”

The research might be most helpful in low to middle-income countries where parasitic infections are more common, Kebraeb points out. North America and Europe have boosted the productivity of livestock by better controlling pathogens, he says.

“This is a good article to help us remember that there’s a compounding issue,” Kebraeb says.

Parasitic worms that cause problems for cows develop outside before infecting a host. Some of these worms need warmer temperatures to thrive, according to Ezenwa. As climate change makes winters milder and summers longer in some regions, these parasites have more time to develop and infect livestock, she says.

Ultimately, the new study shows the need for more research to inform efforts to tackle the climate crisis. That could have a string of benefits: healthier animals and a healthier world for all of us to live in.

Hurricane Delta is the latest disaster in a vicious season

Delta is likely to be a historic storm in many ways

By Justine Calma@justcalma Oct 9, 2020

Local volunteers help board up a business ahead of Hurricane Delta on October 8th, 2020, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Residents along the Gulf Coast are bracing for the arrival of Delta, which is expected to make landfall in Louisiana on October 9th. Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images

Hurricane Delta is the latest storm to threaten the US during a hurricane season that’s smashed records and mangled Gulf Coast communities time and again. The Atlantic hurricane season has lived up to early forecasts of an unusually busy year, and there’s still enough of 2020 left to set new records.

THERE HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE THAN NINE NAMED STORMS TO MAKE LANDFALL

Since modern record-keeping, there have never been more than nine named storms to make landfall in the continental US. That’s forecast to change when Delta hits later today. If it does, it will be the first time since 2005 that five hurricanes have battered the mainland US within a single season.

This is the 25th named storm in a season that’s been so prodigious that the World Meteorological Association ran out of storm names three weeks ago. (In a typical season, only about a dozen tropical depressions gain enough strength to be given a storm name.) Meteorologists resorted to using the Greek alphabet for just the second time in history. The first time this happened was in 2005, and this year’s season is burning through names faster. (In 2005, Hurricane Delta didn’t form until late November.)

Back in August, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center predicted that up to 25 named storms would form this year. Hurricane season ends on November 30th, leaving plenty of time for more.

Delta became the strongest Atlantic hurricane with a Greek name on October 6th after it rapidly intensified into a Category 4 storm with 130 mph winds, according to Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. Delta grew from a tropical depression to a Category 4 hurricane faster than any other storm in the Atlantic in modern records, according to meteorologists Sam Lillo and Tomer Burg. Storms that quickly intensify are becoming more frequent as the climate heats up.

Delta weakened before striking Mexico just south of Cancun earlier this week, pummeling tourist spots and cutting power to about a third of households and businesses — 266,000 customers — on the Yucatan peninsula.

Now, Delta is expected to bring a “life-threatening” storm surge to parts of the Gulf Coast, including areas recently battered by Hurricane Laura. Homes and buildings are still boarded up and covered with tarps in Louisiana after Laura tore through in late August. Laura was another hurricane that intensified with surprising speed. Now, Delta threatens to pick up piles of debris left in Laura’s aftermath and turn them into blunt weapons with its hurricane-force winds.

Back in Lake Charles this morning ahead of Hurricane Delta. Area has barely recovered from Hurricane Laura: Debris still everywhere, roofs patched with tarps, folks doing whatever they can to shore places up before the next storm hits tonight. pic.twitter.com/16gDpYzYqt— Bryn Stole (@brynstole) October 9, 2020

Laura’s 150-mph winds wrecked the radar station in Lake Charles, Louisiana, leaving the area without a way to gather data on conditions in the lower atmosphere. A mobile Doppler radar unit was brought in yesterday by the National Weather Service and the University of Oklahoma, The Washington Post reported. Without it, officials would have been left without a tool to monitor potential tornadoes and flash flooding.

As the Gulf Coast braces for more damage, much of the nation is reeling from a year with more billion-dollar disasters than nearly any other. 2020 has already tied the record with 2011 and 2017 for the total number of weather and climate disasters causing at least $1 billion in losses. Sixteen billion-dollar catastrophes — not including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic — have taken place this year. That includes hurricanes Laura and Sally and unprecedented wildfires across the West Coast.

“WE’RE NOT RULING OUT ANYTHING YET.”

With hurricane season and fire season still raging, 2020 could still set a new record with a 17th disaster. Hurricane Delta, currently a dangerous Category 2 storm as it makes its way across the Gulf of Mexico, could deal that blow.

It’s rare for hurricanes to make landfall in the US past October, according to Klotzbach. “But certainly given what’s happened so far this year, we’re not ruling out anything yet,” he tells The Verge. “It remains to be seen what the final post mortem on the season will be.”

Menthol cigarettes ban urged over long-term consequences of minty flavor
Brittany A. Roston - Oct 9, 2020   

The United States has seen a major decrease in cigarette smoking over the past decade, but the majority of those who stopped smoking reported quitting traditional tobacco cigarettes, not menthol-flavored cigarettes. Menthol is the flavor that managed to escape the FDA’s 2009 ban on flavored cigarettes, which covered things like cherry, chocolate, and other options that appealed to young smokers. Now experts are returning attention to the issue of menthol.

The exclusion of menthol cigarettes from the 2009 flavored cigarette ban was heavily criticized, with many experts pointing out that menthol flavor helps reduce the harshness of burnt tobacco, making it easier for new smokers to pick up the habit. Likewise, menthol cigarettes are heavily marketed in black communities, raising social justice concerns.

Researchers with Rutgers University have published three new studies highlighting the issues surrounding menthol cigarettes, including that the smoking of this flavor remains a big issue in the US. Experts are renewing calls for the FDA to ban these cigarettes, expressing concerns that they are particularly damaging to minority communities and that they are making it easier for new generations of kids to start smoking.

On its website, the FDA notes that the US has nearly 20 million menthol cigarette smokers and that of those, more than 85-percent are black, followed by 46-percent Hispanic and 39-percent Asian. Only around 29-percent of menthol cigarette smokers are white.

In a recently published interview, Rutgers University’s Center for Tobacco Studies director Cristine Delnevo said:

Our research has also found that local bans at the city level are likely insufficient to reduce menthol cigarette availability. That isn’t to say local bans are a bad idea. They aren’t. A local movement can grow to a statewide campaign, just like it did in California. But ideally, we should be addressing this at a national level. The Senate should step up and pass HR 2339, also known as the “Reversing the Youth Tobacco Epidemic Act of 2019”–which would ban menthol cigarettes nationwide and be an important step in protecting public health and achieve health equity in the U.S.

Story Timeline
Surgeon General tells Americans to stop smoking cigarettes in new report
E-cigarette study links metal exposure from vaping to DNA damage
FDA will make cigarette packages more gruesome to scare smokers

DIABETICS BE WARNED
Metformin recalled again over cancer risk: Key details to know
Brittany A. Roston - Oct 9, 2020  

An existing recall of popular diabetes medication metformin has been expanded over the presence of an impurity that may increase cancer risk. The expanded recall comes from Marksans Pharma Ltd. and covers the brand name Time-Cap Labs. Two different strengths of the drug have been recalled, but the company notes that patients shouldn’t immediately stop taking the recalled medication.

The latest recall notice covers a huge number of metformin HCL extended-release tablets with expiration dates ranging from October 2020 to April 2022. The products were sold in bottles with between 90 and 1,000 tablets in 500mg and 750mg strengths. The FDA provides a list of all of the newly recalled metformin products, including their UPC codes and other identifying details.


The reason for the expanded recall is one we’ve heard before — the tablets may have excessively high levels of an impurity called N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), which has been identified as a potential carcinogen in humans. The recall covers a total of 76 unexpired lots of the drug, building upon the initial recall announced in early June.

Because NDMA is found in water and food, it is impossible to entirely avoid it; however, its classification as a probable carcinogen means there’s a limit on how much can be present in one’s daily medication, with that limit currently sitting at 96ng per day. A number of past medication recalls have been initiated over potentially high levels of this impurity.

As with previous metformin recalls, patients currently taking one of these recalled products are warned to continue taking the drugs while waiting for their doctor or pharmacist to provide a replacement — the risk of uncontrolled blood sugar is greater than the risk of possible exposure to the probable carcinogen. Customers are advised to return the recalled medication to the store from which it was purchased.

Popular diabetes drug recalled months after FDA issued cancer risk warning

NASA scientists outline interesting facts about asteroid Bennu
Shane McGlaun - Oct 9, 2020

NASA spacecraft OSIRIS-REx is currently gearing up to begin its sample return mission. Recently, scientists on the mission presented new findings on asteroid Bennu’s surface material, geological characteristics, and dynamic history. Researchers have noted they suspect the sample delivered back to earth from the asteroid could be unlike anything we have in the meteorite collection on Earth

The discoveries the scientists are talking about have completed the mission pre-sample collection science requirements and provide insights into the asteroid that will be studied for generations to come. One paper led by Amy Simon from the Goddard Space Flight Center showed carbon-bearing, organic material is widespread on the asteroid’s surface, including the primary mission landing site. The landing site is where OSIRIS-REx will perform its first sample collection attempt on October 20. Findings from that study show that hydrated minerals and organic material are expected to be present at the landing site. Researchers hope the study of the organic molecules could help answer questions about the origins of water and life on Earth.

Scientists are optimistic that the abundance of carbon-bearing material means the spacecraft will sample that material and return it to Earth. The team also found that many boulders and rocks on the surface of the asteroid have bright veins in them that appear to be carbonate. Some of those rocks are located near Nightingale crater, indicating there is a chance carbonates could be present in the returned samples.

The presence of carbonates leads the team to believe that the parent asteroid of Bennu likely had an extensive hydrothermal system where water interacted with and altered the rock on the parent body. The veins in some of the boulders on the asteroid are up to a few feet long and several inches thick, which scientists say validates and asteroid-scale hydrothermal system of water on the parent body.

Science teams also found the regolith at the Nightingale landing site has only been exposed to the harsh space environment. That means that Bennu will collect and return some of the most pristine material on the asteroid. Another of the papers distinguished two main types of boulders on the asteroid’s surface – dark and rough and bright and smooth. They believe the two different types of rock may have formed at different depths of the parent asteroid. The dark and rough porous rock would be destroyed on entry to the Earth’s atmosphere and may have never been seen in samples collected on Earth.

Cannabis ETFs Surge on Kamala Harris' Decriminalizing Marijuana Pledge

CONTRIBUTOR
Sweta Jaiswal, FRM Zacks
PUBLISHED OCT 9, 2020 

The cannabis industry has come under the spotlight since Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ favorable comment during a debate with her Republican counterpart Mike Pence. She said that a Biden administration would decriminalize cannabis at a federal level in the United States. Commenting on the cannabis space she stated, "We will decriminalize marijuana and we will expunge the records of those who have been convicted of marijuana," per a Bloomberg article.

Notably, Harris always supported cannabis decriminalization. She is also the lead sponsor of the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act of 2019, which sought to end federal prohibition of cannabis, per a Reuters article. According to a Bloomberg article, Harris’ stand on the issue also appears to be the strongest that any major-party candidate running for the important posts of president or vice president has taken on cannabis to date. Notably, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden also spoke about the marijuana industry previously. In this regard, he said that no person will go to jail for "smoking marijuana”, per a Bloomberg article.

Driven by the news, shares of cannabis companies witnessed a significant rally on Oct 8. The U.S.-listed shares of Aurora Cannabis Inc. (ACB) rose 10.6%, Aphria Inc. (APHA) shot up 10.30% and Canopy Growth Corporation (CGC) jumped 13.5% along with an 18.3% spike in Tilray, Inc. (TLRY). Moving on, The Cannabis ETF (THCX) closed at a three-week high of $9.32 after climbing 7.4% on the same day.


It is also worth noting that following the first of the three presidential debates in Cleveland, things seem to be in favor of Mr. Joe Biden. According to a fresh poll of registered voters brought out on Oct 4 by The Wall Street Journal/NBC News, Biden leads the presidential race by 53% to 39%, as quoted on Yahoo Finance.

In a separate development, Vermont’s Governor Phil Scott (R) announced on Oct 7 that he’ll allow a marijuana sales legalization bill, passed by the legislature, to take effect, per a Vox article. Going by the same report, the latest bill will build a commercialized, tax-and-regulate system, similar to other legalization states. Notably, Vermont stood as the 11th state in the United States to legalize marijuana sales for recreational purposes.

Importance of the Pledge for Marijuana Space

Per sources, the decriminalization of cannabis at the federal level will help the cannabis companies get an improved access to banks and other traditional financial institutions. Notably, the players in the marijuana space were denied financial assistance by the service providers in spite of many U.S. states having legalized the marijuana use, per a Reuters article.

In this regard, Keith Cich, co-founder of cannabis-related products manufacturer Sunderstorm Inc said that “access to safe banking will transform the industry, freeing up capital markets for investment and reducing the risk of operating a cannabis business,” according to a Reuters article.

Moreover, it is found that these companies faced cash crunch due to regulatory issues while having to deal with the lack of profitability due to high costs, according to a Reuters article. Commenting on the same, Sam Armenia, vice president at producer C21 Investments Inc, said as quoted by the same article that "from a business perspective, (decriminalization) will level the playing field by allowing companies to expense normal operational costs instead of being taxed on gross profit".

Cannabis ETFs That Gained on the News

According to a report published by Fortune Business Insights, the global cannabis market is projected to reach $97.35 billion by the end of 2026 from $10.6 billion in 2018, seeing a CAGR of 32.92%. Per Statista, the global legal cannabis revenues are set to more than triple from $20.1 billion in 2018 to $63 billion by 2024 end. Against this bullish backdrop, let’s look at the ETFs that are benefiting from the news:

ETFMG Alternative Harvest ETF MJ — up 5.4% on Oct 8

This is the first and the world’s largest ETF focusing on the global cannabis/marijuana industry. It tracks the Prime Alternative Harvest Index, designed to measure the performance of companies within the cannabis ecosystem gaining from global medicinal and recreational cannabis legalization initiatives. The ETF has an AUM of $495.2 million. It charges 75 basis points (bps) in annual fees (read: The Hottest Stock ETFs of 2020).

AdvisorShares Pure Cannabis ETF YOLO — up 5.6%

YOLO is the first actively managed ETF with a dedicated cannabis investment mandate domiciled in the United States. It seeks long-term capital appreciation by investing in both domestic and foreign cannabis equity securities. It has gathered $57 million in its asset base. The ETF charges 74 bps in annual fees (read: Top ETF Stories of Coronavirus-Induced Q2).

The Cannabis ETF THCX — up 7.4%

This ETF offers investors exposure to a basket of stocks that are expected to benefit from growth in the hemp and legal marijuana industries. The fund amassed about $19.4 million in AUM and charges 70 bps in annual fees.

Global X Cannabis ETF POTX — up 8.9%

This ETF seeks to invest in companies across the cannabis industry and tracks the Cannabis Index. The product has accumulated $12.7 million in its asset base. Expense ratio comes in at 0.50% (read: Top & Flop ETF Zones of First Nine Months of 2020).
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ETFMG Alternative Harvest ETF (MJ): ETF Research Reports

AdvisorShares Pure Cannabis ETF (YOLO): ETF Research Reports

The Cannabis ETF (THCX): ETF Research Reports

Global X Cannabis ETF (POTX): ETF Research Reports

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Fauci says the White House had a superspreader event: 'The data speak for themselves'

Aylin Woodward, Business Insider•October 9, 2020
 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in Washington, DC, on September 23. Alex Edelman / AFP via Getty Images


Someone infected with the coronavirus is thought to infect about two other people on average, but sometimes a person passes the virus to far more people in a "superspreader event."


Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday said the Supreme Court nomination ceremony for Judge Amy Coney Barrett in the White House's Rose Garden on September 26 was a superspreader event.


These events — which may account for a majority of total coronavirus infections — are similar, involving an infected person attending a gathering with lots of people.


At least 34 White House staff members, GOP officials, journalists, and other people in President Donald Trump's orbit have tested positive for COVID-19 since that gathering.


More than 150 people gathered in the White House's Rose Garden on September 26 to see President Donald Trump officially nominate Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Most of them were maskless. Many hugged or shook hands as they mingled in close proximity.

Some attendees even celebrated inside the White House, without masks.

According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the nomination ceremony was a coronavirus superspreader event. The term refers to a circumstance in which one person infects a disproportionately large number of others, often during a large gathering.

"The data speak for themselves," Fauci told CBS News in a radio interview on Friday.
—Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) October 9, 2020


Within five days of the event, both the president and the first lady, Melania Trump, were diagnosed with COVID-19. The outbreak has hit at least 34 people in the president's orbit, including White House staffers, bodyguards, and family members, as well as pastors, journalists, GOP senators, and advisors.

The identity of the person or people who were first infected, however, is unknown.
Defining a superspreader

Judge Amy Coney Barrett speaks in the White House's Rose Garden on September 26 after President Donald Trump nominated her to the Supreme Court. Chip Somodevilla/Getty

The term superspreader refers to an infected person who transmits the virus to more people than the average patient does. For the coronavirus, that average number, known as R0 (pronounced "R-naught"), has seemed to hover between 2 and 2.5. So anyone who passes the virus to three people or more could be considered a superspreader.

A superspreader event, then, is a set of circumstances that facilitates excessive transmission. In one well-known example, a person transmitted the virus to 52 others during a choir practice in March in Mount Vernon, Washington.

A superspreader event in Arkansas that month involved a pastor and his wife who attended church events a few days before they developed symptoms. Of the 92 people there, 35 got sick. Seven had to be hospitalized, and three died.

In that sense, it's not so much that individual people are innate superspreaders — it's the type of activity that enables a person to pass the virus to lots of people.

Those activities generally involve large gatherings — often indoors — in which lots of people from different households come into close, extended contact, such as religious services or parties.

"You can't have a superspreading event unless there are a lot of people around, so you have to be very careful still about gatherings of people of any size," William Schaffner, an infectious-disease expert at Vanderbilt University, previously told Business Insider.

Attorney General William Barr, right, says goodbye to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at the Rose Garden event on September 26. Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Rachel Graham, an assistant epidemiology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said most Rose Garden ceremony attendees weren't doing anything to mitigate virus transmission.

"They're doing pretty much everything wrong," she told Business Insider, adding: "I'm looking at pictures of the ceremony right now. They're seated far too close together. Like 20% of people are wearing masks. I see handshakes, indoor meetings greater than 10 people."

All those activities go against the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's guidelines for containing the spread of COVID-19.

Being outside might not have prevented superspreading at the Rose Garden ceremony

Even though the ceremony was outdoors and most attendees didn't go inside the White House, that doesn't mean it wasn't high-risk.

"If you're still crowding a bunch of people into one place, it almost doesn't matter if it's outdoors — you're still producing a large cloud of respiration that can be easily transferred to the person sitting next to you," Graham said.

"So it really is if you're not wearing a mask, if you're not protecting yourself from droplet transmission, you are becoming part of the potential chain of transmission," she added.
  

Trump and Fauci at a press conference on May 15. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The White House hasn't mandated social distancing or masks, instead relying on rapid testing to try to keep event attendees and staff members coronavirus-free.

But a growing body of research has found that face masks prevent coronavirus transmission. And in the case of this superspreader event, Fauci said the lack of mask-wearing might have made all the difference.

"It was in a situation where people were crowded together and were not wearing masks," he told CBS News.
Superspreading events account for most coronavirus transmission

Trump and Barrett. OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images

Research has suggested that superspreader events are the primary way the coronavirus spreads.

In a September study of coronavirus cases in Hong Kong from late January to late April, researchers estimated that just 19% of cases led to 80% of all coronavirus transmission.

The researchers also found that 70% of the people with COVID-19 didn't pass the virus to anyone else.

"If we could stop the superspreading from happening, we'd benefit the most people," Ben Cowling, one of the study's authors, previously told Business Insider.

Susie Neilson and Aria Bendix contributed reporting to this story.

BREAKING NEWS: Final remdesivir results published after 139 days of waiting
October 8, 2020

By Joshua Niforatos, MD, MTS
Research Section Editor

The preliminary results of the Adaptive Covid-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT-1) randomized trial were published May 22 in The New England Journal of Medicine and covered by Brief19. ACTT-1 was a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of the antiviral drug remdesivir, given to patients intravenously within 72 hours of laboratory-confirmed diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2, among hospitalized patients.

The primary outcome of the preliminary report was time to recovery from covid-19, which was broadly defined as either being released from the hospital or remaining in the hospital for infection-control purposes only. In the preliminary report, the average time to recovery in the remdesivir group was 11 days versus 15 days in the placebo group. No other results were statistically significant, including mortality or the percent of patients receiving oxygen therapy. Missing from the preliminary report was approximately one-third of patients who were enrolled in the study but had not reached day 29 of follow-up.

139 days later, the final report of the ACTT-1 trial has been published in The New England Journal of Medicine with the remainder of the participants included. Patients receiving remdesivir had a median recovery time of 10 days compared to 15 days in the placebo group. The authors also report that patients receiving remdesivir had non-statistically significant differences in mortality at both day 15 and day 29; by day 15, mortality rates were 6.7 percent (remdesivir) and 11.9 percent (placebo); by day 29, mortality rates were 11.4 percent (remdesivir) vs 15.2 percent (placebo). While these results were not statistically significant, the overall confidence intervals of the hazard ratio suggests there may be a mortality benefit though the trial itself did not include enough test subjects to detect either a net survival benefit or harm. Any mortality difference would be important, but not "game changing," in contrast to initial hype. The survival curves suggest that the patients most likely to benefit are those on nasal supplemental oxygen only. Furthermore, it seems that those ages 18 to 40 years and those with an onset of symptoms fewer than 10 days before treatment began are the most likely to benefit from remdesivir.

Similar to the preliminary report, the rate of serious adverse events was actually less in the remdesivir group (24.6 percent) compared to those in the placebo group (31.6 percent). One worrying finding emerged when assessing the time it took until recovery, divided into certain subgroups. While is important to remember that unless subgroups analyses are pre-planned and adequately planned for (statistically), any resulting data should be considered "hypothesis-generating" only. That said, Black, Asian, and Hipsanic/Latinx people did not benefit from remdesivir while white patients did. It is uncertain why this is the case and whether this represents ethnic / racial disparities, such as when the medication was given, how severe the cases were, or other potential factors. We hope the authors or other experts will address this issue soon.


Overall, the final report does not change the preliminary conclusions. Based on the research to-date, for critically ill covid-19 patients, remdesivir is unlikely to change survival or the need for mechanical ventilation. The only drug to-date that has shown to improve mortality remains dexamethasone, a generic and inexpensive drug.

The Biden campaign sold 35,000 fly swatters in a matter of hours after a fly's infamous landing on Mike Pence's head during the VP debate
Evan Sully
9 hours ago



 

A fly is seen on the head of US Vice President Mike Pence as he takes part in the 2020 vice presidential debate with the Democratic vice presidential nominee and U.S. Senator Kamala Harris (not pictured) on the campus of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, October 7, 2020. Justin Sullivan/Reuters

The Biden campaign sold 35,000 fly swatters for $10 each within hours this week.
The fly swatters carried the slogan "Truth Over Flies" in reference to a fly that landed on Vice President Mike Pence's head for two minutes during a nationally televised debate Wednesday evening.

The Biden campaign sold 35,000 fly swatters within hours this week, after moving swiftly to capitalize on one of the most bizarre moments of the vice presidential debate, Bloomberg reported.

The swatters, which sold for $10 each, carried the slogan "Truth Over Flies" in a play on the Biden campaign's slogan, "Truth Over Lies."

The swatters' slogan was a reference to a fly that landed on Vice President Mike Pence's head for two minutes during the debate on Wednesday evening. The fly immediately became a social media sensation and was trending for hours after the debate.

Later that night, Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, tweeted a picture of himself holding a fly swatter that was originally posted on his Facebook page in October 2019.
—Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 8, 2020


Biden continues to maintain a lead in polls nationally just ahead of the November 3 election.

President Donald Trump now finds himself trailing in several battleground states that helped him win the White House in 2016, including Florida, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.