Sunday, April 26, 2020

As governments fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Snopes is fighting an “infodemic” of rumors and misinformation, and you can help. Read our coronavirus fact checks. Submit any questionable rumors and “advice” you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.

An increasingly resilient class of coronavirus rumors asserts that SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19, was created in a lab. Most iterations of the rumor claim the virus was accidentally released from a high-level infectious disease research lab in Wuhan, China — the purported origin of the outbreak — and some suggest the virus itself was designed there to be a “bioweapon.” This post addresses the origins of these rumors and exposes the falsehoods and scientific realities that undermine such claims.

Origins

When early reports of what would later become known as COVID-19 spread through the city of Wuhan in late 2019, a shared trait among many of the first patients was that they had been to the Huanan seafood market, a live animal market theorized to be the origin of the COVID-19 outbreak. Wuhan — a city of over 11 million — also has at least two infectious-disease research labs. One, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, is apparently less than a mile from the Huanan market. The other, the State Key Laboratory of Virology (sometimes referred to as the Wuhan Institute of Virology), is a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory certified to handle the world’s most deadly pathogens. This higher security lab is located about 7 miles from the Huanan market.

While the higher security lab in Wuhan has worked with coronaviruses, it does not appear that the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention — the one close to the market — had published any research on the topic prior to the pandemic. Both labs, however, have studied viral samples sourced from bats. Virology research work often involves bats, a proposed source of the novel coronavirus’ transfer from animal to human, because they harbor a uniquely large reservoir of viruses compared to other mammals. Research on coronaviruses is an important focus of China’s scientific efforts ever since the 2002 SARS epidemic, which was also caused by a coronavirus.

The proximity of these labs to the Huanan seafood market and these labs’ history with at least tangentially related infectious disease research are the only factual elements to the “created-in-a-lab” theory that are undisputed, rather than speculative or rooted in false scientific claims. For example, it is factual to state that the Chinese government hid, downplayed, and misrepresented to its citizens and the world the threat posed by the novel coronavirus. It is speculative, however, to assert, as U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton did, that these actions were done to cover up a leak from a lab.

Several evidentiary gaps exist between the observation of virology labs close or somewhat close to a market where early COVID-19 cases were identified and the conclusion that the Chinese government is covering up for the fact that they accidentally released an engineered viral agent from one of these labs. In conspiracy theory circles, these gaps have been filled with extremely flawed or bogus science, the incorrect interpretation of existing science, or both. Not only do these arguments — discussed in detail below — lack merit on their own, factual scientific studies concerning the origin of SARS-CoV-2 actually provide the strongest refutation to date of the claim the virus was “created in a lab.”

Did a ‘Scientific Study’ Conclude the Coronavirus Escaped from a Lab?

A February 2020 document erroneously described by several media outlets as a “scientific study” provides the supposedly science-based evidence of a virus escaping from a lab.

This paper, such as it is, merely highlights the close distance between the seafood market and the labs and falsely claimed to have identified instances in which viral agents had escaped from Wuhan biological laboratories in the past. With those two elements, half of them factual, the authors come to the sweeping conclusion that “somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus,” and “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.” While SARS viruses have escaped from a Beijing lab on at least four occasions, no such event has been documented in Wuhan.

The purported instances of pathogens leaking from Wuhan laboratories, according to this “study,” came from a Chinese news report (that we believe, based on the similarity of the research described and people involved, to be reproduced here) that profiled a Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention researcher named Tian Junhua. In 2012 and 2013, he captured and sampled nearly 10,000 bats in an effort to decode the evolutionary history of the hantavirus. In two instances, this researcher properly self-quarantined either after being bitten or urinated on by a potentially infected bat, he told reporters. These events, according to the 2013 study his research produced, occurred in the field and have nothing to do with either lab’s ability to contain infective agents. The paper also asserts without evidence that infectious waste was merely tossed out of the lab closer to the market as regular trash.

In sum, this paper — which was first posted on and later deleted from the academic social networking website ResearchGate — adds nothing but misinformation to the debate regarding the origins of the novel coronavirus and is not a real scientific study.

Does the Novel Coronavirus Contain HIV-Related Genes?

Another line of pseudoscientific reasoning concerns claims that the virus is just too perfectly built to infect humans to be a virus of natural origin. A big talking point in this space stems from a paper that was later retracted by the authors themselves. On Feb. 2, a team of Indian researchers released a non-peer-reviewed preprint of a paper asserting to have found “uncanny” similarities between amino acid structures in SARS-CoV-2 and HIV. “The finding,” they argued, “is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature,” seemingly implying a level of human engineering behind the virus.

The paper was swiftly retracted by the authors, according to STAT News, with commenters noting the study’s rushed methods and likely coincidental, if not entirely incorrect, conclusion. A Feb. 14 paper, this one peer-reviewed, “demonstrated no evidence that the sequences of these four inserts are HIV-1 specific or the [SARS-CoV-2] viruses obtain these insertions from HIV-1.”

Speaking to Snopes by email, Robert Garry, an infectious disease expert at Tulane University who has published on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, told us by email that “the so-called HIV sequences are very short — nothing more than random chance.”

Such a reality has not stopped pseudoscientific internet personalities from incorporating these already discredited results into misinformed conspiracy theories while pushing vaccine skeptical content.

Is SARS-CoV-2 A ‘Chimera’ Virus Built from HIV, Flu, and SARS?

On March 8, 2020, (and again on March 22) — well after the aforementioned HIV paper was retracted and refuted — Joseph Mercola, an alternative medicine guru behind the website Mercola.com, published an “expert interview” with Francis Boyle, a lawyer with no formal training in virology. This interview managed to merge all of the previously described false scientific claims into one narrative that has been shared widely online. In that interview, Boyle asserted:

The COVID-19 virus is a chimera. It includes SARS, an already weaponized coronavirus, along with HIV genetic material and possibly flu virus.

There is this Biosafety Level 4 facility there in Wuhan. It’s the first in China, and it was specifically set up to deal with the coronavirus and SARS. SARS is basically a weaponized version of the coronavirus.

There have been leaks before of SARS out of this facility, and indeed the only reason for these BSL-4 facilities, based on my experience, is the research, development, testing and stockpiling of offensive biological weapons.

Boyle’s knowledge, he stated explicitly in this interview, does not come from having worked for the U.S. government, from having any sort of security clearance, or from having “access to any type of secret information.” It is unclear, then, what experience he is basing the false claim that “the only reason for these BSL-4 facilities … is the research, development, testing and stockpiling of offensive biological weapons.”

“The purpose of the BSL-4 labs,” Garry told us, “is to design the countermeasures (diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines) to these pathogens.” He added that he knows “many American scientists that collaborate with the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” and that it “does not have any offensive bioweapons development capability.” In response to the weapon stockpile claim, North Carolina State University epidemiology Professor Matt Koci told us “the idea that level 4 labs are only for weaponizing pathogens [and] that people go and find diseases then weaponize them … makes no sense.”

The remaining assertions appear to have their roots in the two previously debunked claims from above: No, Wuhan’s labs do not have documented cases of accidental SARS releases. No, HIV sequences are not a feature of SARS-CoV-2. Garry told us that “SARS-CoV-2 may well prove to be a recombinant virus” — i.e., one that has viral components sourced from viruses originating in multiple animals — “but this occurred in nature, not in the lab.” It is not, as has been suggested, some sort of creation built by mixing the most extreme parts of known human viruses together. “There is no evidence to support that claim,” Koci told us.

With those bogus scientific claims stripped away, we are left with the same circumstantial evidence present at the top of the story: A virology lab (which does not appear to have worked on coronaviruses) exists in close proximity to the proposed origin of the outbreak, and another, higher-security lab that has worked on coronaviruses is located miles away from the market.

Could science, alternatively, help to rule out the possibility SARS-CoV-2 was created in a lab? Indeed, the actual peer-reviewed research on the deadly adaptations present in the virus are also the strongest argument yet against the notion that it has been engineered.

Scientific Reality: Genomic Data Undercut Claims of an Engineered Virus

Viruses, in general, are tiny fragments of DNA or RNA coated with protein that insert themselves into an organism’s cells. Once there, the virus consumes a cell’s resources and makes copies of itself. The cell dies and the newly created viral material is free to infect other cells. Though viruses do evolve via natural selection like living organisms, their inability to create their own energy through metabolism generally precludes them from being considered alive.

Coronaviruses are a class of “enveloped” RNA viruses. They protect themselves with an outer envelope of lipid material. Coronaviruses, in particular, have spikes that point out of this envelope of protection, a feature that can aid in the infection of cells.

Until the early 2000s, there was limited scientific interest in human coronaviruses, as they only seemed capable of creating mild cold symptoms. The 2002 SARS epidemic, caused by a coronavirus, flipped that conventional wisdom on its head. This particular coronavirus had a new adaptation: the ability for those pointy spikes to bind to a chemical in human blood called Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2). This adaptation, scientists argue, is what allowed the SARS coronavirus to jump from an animal to a human and cause disease.

The new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, also contains this adaptation, but an even stronger variant of it. As described by Ed Yong in The Atlantic, “the exact contours of SARS-CoV-2’s spikes allow it to stick far more strongly to ACE2 than SARS-classic did.” The novel coronavirus also has another adaptation that makes it good at infecting humans. Spike proteins are composed of two halves and activate only when a chemical “bridge” is broken. In SARS-CoV-2, Yong wrote, “the bridge that connects the two halves can be easily cut by an enzyme called furin, which is made by human cells and — crucially — is found across many tissues.” Not only do these spikes bind strongly to human cells, in other words, but the chemical required to initially activate those spikes happen to be prevalent throughout the human body.

These two adaptations are the features of the coronavirus that cause speculation about it being engineered to kill. The problem, according to a team of researchers who analyzed the genome of SARS-CoV-2 for a March 2020 paper in Nature Medicine, is that if someone wanted to design a virus using methods currently available to science, scientists would not have solved the problem the way nature apparently did, because scientists wouldn’t have predicted it to be a viable solution in the first place.

Over a decade of research following the first SARS outbreak has allowed scientists to develop computer models that predict, among other things, what human chemicals a theoretical coronavirus could bind to and how strong that bond would be. When researchers plug the new coronavirus into these models, they correctly predict it binds to ACE2, but incorrectly conclude it to be a weaker bond than SARS-1. In other words, if scientists wanted to create a deadly coronavirus as a weapon, the tools available to them would have suggested the SARS-CoV-2 model would be a waste of time. This, the study’s authors argue, is evidence that the spike adaptation is “most likely the result of natural selection.”

To that point, while the most similar known animal virus to SARS-CoV-2 is currently found in bats, similar coronaviruses also have been found in pangolins — a kind of anteater. While less similar as a whole, these pangolin viruses have similar spike genetics to the novel human coronavirus. This, they say, is further evidence of natural selection. “The pangolin viruses were sequenced after the COVID pandemic started,” explains Tulane’s Garry, who was an author on the Nature Medicine paper. “So yeah — this is a natural thing that no one in a lab would have or could [have] designed.” Such a reality undercuts claims of “chimera” viruses intentionally spliced together by humans, since humans didn’t know these specific spikes existed until after the pandemic began.

As for the second notable SARS-CoV-2 adaptation — the one that allows a chemical in human blood to activate the coronavirus spikes — this specific modification has not yet been found in nature. However, the authors noted, genetic “mutations, insertions, and deletions” do naturally occur in the portion of RNA that would create it. This, they argue, demonstrates that such an adaptation could, theoretically, “arise by a natural evolutionary process.”

In a commentary piece about this study, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins wrote “this study leaves little room to refute a natural origin for COVID-19.” Though researchers do not yet have a clear idea of the exact origin or evolutionary history of SARS-CoV-2, the authors of the Nature Medicine paper provide two potential scenarios, described here by Collins:

In the first scenario, as the new coronavirus evolved in its natural hosts, possibly bats or pangolins, its spike proteins mutated to bind to molecules similar in structure to the human ACE2 protein, thereby enabling it to infect human cells. This scenario seems to fit other recent outbreaks of coronavirus-caused disease in humans, such as SARS, which arose from cat-like civets; and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which arose from camels.

The second scenario is that the new coronavirus crossed from animals into humans before it became capable of causing human disease. Then, as a result of gradual evolutionary changes over years or perhaps decades, the virus eventually gained the ability to spread from human-to-human and cause serious, often life-threatening disease.

Researchers do not yet know enough about the new coronavirus to determine which of those two scenarios is more likely, but scientists do know enough to conclude it to be extremely unlikely to have been engineered in a lab for any purpose, including bioweaponry.

The Bottom Line

The theory that SARS-CoV-2 was manufactured in, and escaped from, a lab in Wuhan is based solely on the proximity of infectious-disease labs near a potential source of the COVID-19 outbreak. Several “scientific” claims have been made or manufactured to further bolster the notion that something nefarious is going on with COVID-19 and these labs, but this information comes from non-peer-reviewed papers misconstrued to be actual additions to the scientific record, or from disreputable websites like Mercola.com. The actual scientific facts known about the novel coronavirus leave little room for it to be a virus of human creation, however.

We have little reason to doubt nature is capable of producing a virus like this. After all: “Nature has already created more than enough pandemic threats,” Garry told us.

COVID-19 Is a Serious Threat … But So Are Memes Claiming It’s NOT
The story of a Texas woman who reportedly shared a Facebook post claiming the coronavirus outbreak was a hoax — and later reportedly died from the virus — reminds us of the dangerous potential of misinformation.

DAN EVON PUBLISHED 7 APRIL 2020

Image via John Nacion/NurPhoto via Getty Images

As governments fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Snopes is fighting an “infodemic” of rumors and misinformation, and you can help. Read our coronavirus fact checks. Submit any questionable rumors and “advice” you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.

As a new strain of coronavirus spread around the globe in 2020, a steady stream of misinformation spread on the internet. While we’ve encountered a number of far-fetched conspiracy theories, ranging from the idea that this virus was a “man-made bioweapon” (false) to the claim that this disease was being spread by 5G cellular towers (also false), the most dangerous piece of misinformation was far more simple: that COVID-19 was no more dangerous than the flu and this “pandemic” was being overhyped by the media.

No single source exists for this dangerous and untrue rumor. While one could point the finger at any number of parties for downplaying the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fact remains that a large portion of Americans didn’t see our current situation as much of a threat in the first few months of 2020. A Pew Research poll taken between March 19 and March 24 found that only 36% of Americans (41% of Democrats, 30% of Republicans) determined the pandemic to be a major threat to their personal health.

At the same time this poll was being taken, New York declared a statewide shelter-in-place order, the 2020 Olympics were officially delayed, non-medical companies started to manufacture ventilators and masks, and the United States confirmed its 50,000th reported case of COVID-19. Despite these society-changing events, the vast majority of Americans did not see this disease as a threat to their personal health.

Why? It may have to do with viral misinformation that repeatedly told them there was nothing to worry about. For instance, on March 13, a few days before this poll was taken and, coincidentally, the same day U.S. President Donald Trump declared a national emergency, a chain message started to circulate on Facebook that insisted the pandemic was nothing more than a media creation:

There’s nothing particularly unique about the above-displayed Facebook message. Since the COVID-19 outbreak began, we’ve covered dozens of Facebook posts making similar claims. While these posts made a wide range of assertions (from bogus health cures to accusations of bio-terrorism), they all flirted with the idea that this disease was a hoax and that health officials and the media were not telling people the truth.

This particular piece of misinformation received extra attention, however, because it was shared on the Facebook page of a woman who reportedly died from complications related to COVID-19.

In April 2020, screenshots showing this post on Karen Kolb Sehlke’s Facebook page, as well as screenshots showing a GoFundMe page set up for Sehlke and her family after she entered the hospital, went viral on social media:

March 14th: *posted COVID-19 hoax, anti-socialism rant on FB*April 2nd: *died of COVID-19, family asking for GoFundMe donations*I post this not to mock Karen Kolb Sehlke's death, but to underscore the tragic risk one takes when taking this pandemic for granted. #RIP #StaySafe pic.twitter.com/MAKYAYVyGx— Sunn m'Cheaux (@sunnmcheaux) April 4, 2020

While Twitter user Sunn m’Cheaux wrote that he posted those screenshots “not to mock Karen Kolb Sehlke’s death, but to underscore the tragic risk one takes when taking this pandemic for granted,” other social media users weren’t so reserved. Sehlke’s Facebook page, as well as her husband’s, were bombarded with less-than-sympathetic messages that more or less claimed Sehlke got what she deserved.

When family members removed these posts, a new conspiracy sprung up holding that this woman never existed, and that this story was just Russian disinformation. The GoFundMe page was also edited to remove mentions of the coronavirus, which cast even more doubt on this incident.

But Sehlke was a real person. We found messages from her friends and family mourning her loss shortly after she passed away. While we can’t say for certain that her death was related to COVID-19, an early update to her GoFundMe page did claim she had tested positive for the disease. In addition to multiple screenshots of this comment, we captured a cached version of this update via Google.

We also know for certain that Sehlke did not write the viral piece of misinformation posted to her Facebook page and displayed at the beginning of this article. While we don’t yet know who penned the missive, the post is the earliest version we could find and was shared more than 20,000 times. And the text was online at least a day before it appeared on Sehlke’s Facebook page.

At the time of this writing, the U.S. had more than 375,000 cases of COVID-19, resulting in more than 11,000 deaths, and nearly 10 million people have filed for unemployment as a result of shelter-in-place orders aimed at slowing the spread of the disease. In other words, this disease is not a hoax and this disease does not care about your political affiliation.

As the United States and the rest of the world continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, it is more important than ever to turn to trusted sources for information about the disease. Readers can get more information about COVID-19 from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If you have a question about the coronavirus (or if you’ve encountered a piece of misinformation that you’d like to see debunked), please let us know. You can also see all of the COVID-19 related rumors that we’ve addressed here.

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Was a ‘Sacrifice the Weak’ Sign Shown at a COVID-19 ‘ReOpen Tennessee’ Rally?

A person reportedly was seen holding up such a sign.

DAN EVON PUBLISHED 24 APRIL 2020 SNOPES

Image via Screenshot

Claim
A picture shows a person holding a "Sacrifice the Weak" sign at a rally urging the state of Tennessee to re-start its economy amid COVID-19 lockdown orders.

Rating

True About this rating

Origin

In April 2020, an image supposedly showing a person holding a “Sacrifice the Weak” sign at an anti-COVID-19-lockdown rally in Tennessee went viral on social media:

This is a genuine screenshot of a news broadcast from the anti-lockdown protest in Tennessee on April 20, 2020. The “Sacrifice the Weak” sign is real, although we can’t say for certain whether this protester was holding this sign in earnest, or displaying it ironically as a way to mock these protests.

This screenshot comes from a WKRN broadcast featuring reporter Elizabeth Lane. Here’s the full video of Lane’s report. The “Sacrifice the Weak” sign can be seen around the 1:40 mark:

Our coverage of an anti-shutdown rally in Tennessee is getting a lot of attention. Here’s my full report below ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/50lnAahuPL
— Elizabeth Lane WKRN (@elizabethlanetv) April 22, 2020

Lane said that she didn’t notice the sign while reporting on the “ReOpen Rally” in Tennessee and only noticed the sign after it was brought to her attention on social media. Lane said that some people had asked if the protest sign was “satire” but said she did not have an answer:

This is the protestor drawing the most attention. I’m getting lots of questions — we did not speak with her & did not see her sign until this screenshot was taken. Many people have emailed asking if this was satire, perhaps. To those questions, I do not have answers. pic.twitter.com/GkPKboTVQQ
— Elizabeth Lane WKRN (@elizabethlanetv) April 22, 2020

This “Sacrifice the Weak” sign can also be seen in a broadcast from ABC News Channel 9.

TENNESSEE IN PROTEST: Even with the announcement to start re-opening the state's economy on May 1, Governor Bill Lee has been facing some sharp criticism for not starting the process immediately. https://t.co/Pn3jY7k85S

— WTVC NewsChannel 9 (@newschannelnine) April 21, 2020

Coronavirus: Conspiracy Theories and Fake Videos Fuel Rise in Islamophobia

Stereotypes fueled by conspiracy theories, memes and fake videos create the perfect climate for the demonization of Muslims.

THE CONVERSATION PUBLISHED 24 APRIL 2020

COVID-19 HAS LEVELED THE PLAYING FIELD WE ARE ALL
WEARING FACE COVERINGS JUST AS SOME MUSLIMS DO

This article is republished here with permission from The Conversation.

Communities coming together to help those in need has been a strong theme of the COVID-19 pandemic. But at the same time that many people are seemingly appreciating those around them, our new research has found that COVID-19 has led to a rise in online Islamophobic hate speech.

My colleague, Roxana Khan-Williams, and I have examined the impacts of COVID-19 on social media. We’ve found that COVID-19 has been used by the far-right to peddle Islamophobic hate.

Our study provides a snapshot of the type of language used online about Muslims and COVID-19. And what we’ve found is that stereotypes fuelled by conspiracy theories, memes and fake videos create the perfect climate for the demonisation of Muslims.

One video, for example, shared on the Tommy Robinson News channel on the messaging app Telegram, alleges to show a group of Muslim men leaving a secret mosque in Birmingham to pray. Despite the fact the video is fake and West Midlands Police have confirmed the mosque is closed, it has been watched over 14,000 times.
At risk of attacks

As someone who has spent their academic career researching Islamophobia, I am not surprised or shocked to see this level of vitriolic hate. But it does demonstrate how quickly the internet can act as an echo chamber – and how easily such narratives become normalised.

Even more worrying, is that this type of Islamophobic bigotry found on social media reinforces the “them versus us narrative” by using issues such as deprivation, poverty, social cohesion and social mobility as a Muslim problem. Indeed, many of the online posts we analysed targeted Muslims because of social and economic issues. All of which leaves Muslims more at risk of Islamophobic attacks when lockdown lifts.

The tweet below, for example, specifically labels Muslims as “muzrats”, a word used to describe Muslims as vermin and a disease.

We also found that levels of Islamophobia increase around certain events. Ramadan, for example, seems to have led to a wave of conspiracy theories around Muslims – with claims the virus is likely to spread around this time.

We also found the depiction of British Muslims on social media was synonymous with “deviance” and being a “problem-group”. And that a number of fake news stories featured claims that Muslims are flouting social distancing measures to attend mosque. One picture, for example, taken outside a Leeds mosque appears to show Muslims breaking the rules of lockdown, despite this having been taken two weeks before the official lockdown began.

In another example of fake news, a Twitter user claimed to have spoken to his local mosque in Shrewsbury. The user claimed to be “horrified” to find out this mosque was still open, adding that people inside could be “super spreaders” of the virus, and urged the police to act. The police have confirmed, however, that there is no mosque in Shrewsbury.

Similarly, a picture emerged on Twitter that seemed to show Muslims praying on the streets of central London and not adhering to social distancing rules. Again, the story was debunked as the picture had been taken several weeks ago.
‘Muslims are the enemy’

The problem with such disinformation is that it can lead to wider retribution against Muslims. On one Facebook post, for example, messages from users indicated they wanted Muslims “off the streets!!”, another added that Muslims are “praying in groups then driving taxis afterwards”.

We also found evidence of users focusing on grooming events in Rotherham to call British Muslims “deviant”. Another user stated that “all over the world these ignorant religious idiots are responsible for spreading this further”. This led to wider dehumanising language around wanting British Muslims to go “back home”.
THANKS TO COVID-19 FACE COVERINGS ARE NOW THE NORM

EVEN IN QUEBEC!!!

Evidence suggests that BAME people seem to be the most impacted by COVID-19. Figures show that 35% of almost 2000 patients in intensive care units are from a BAME background, compared to 14% of the UK population. And the sad truth is that, as we fight the pandemic offline, a pandemic is also spreading online.

Social media companies must do more to tackle this and remove posts that are clearly using dehumanising language. If not, the risk is that this could escalate to attacks and incidents when restrictions on movement are lifted.

Imran Awan, Professor of Criminology, Birmingham City University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

#TyphoidMary – Now a Hashtag – Was a Maligned Immigrant Who Became a Scapegoat

The popular – and mistaken – beliefs about Mary Mallon came primarily from media accounts published during her lifetime.

THE CONVERSATION PUBLISHED 24 APRIL 2020

Image via Getty Images

This article by Katherine A. Foss is republished here with permission from The Conversation.

The country’s most notable healthy carrier of a deadly disease, Mary Mallon, is back – not in person, but as a hashtag: #TyphoidMary.

In the current pandemic, people may unknowingly harbor and spread the coronavirus before they feel sick, largely because it has an incubation period of between two and 14 days. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says that one in four people could be asymptomatic carriers, never showing symptoms even as they infect others.

But there are also those who, knowing they could be carriers, refuse to cover their mouths or practice social distancing. They include the spring breakers who crowded Florida beaches and the protesters gathering in some state capitals.

Mary Mallon, known as Typhoid Mary, was until now the most prominent example in the U.S. of the unknowing disease carrier. She spread typhoid fever to at least 53 people, causing three deaths between 1900 and 1915.
But Mallon has long been unfairly characterized as knowingly spreading the deadly disease she carried. Her memory has been resurrected recently, largely on Twitter, as a shorthand description of those who intentionally infect others with the coronavirus, #TyphoidMary.

As the author of “Constructing the Outbreak: Epidemics in Media and Collective Memory,” I can attest to the media’s past and continuing distortion of the Mary Mallon case. It’s unfair to Mallon to attach her name to such consciously bad behavior.

Mary Mallon, the healthy carrier

Story from The Evening World, April 1, 1907, which used an alias for Mallon’s last name.
Library of Congress

Contrary to popular belief, Mallon never perceived herself to be contagious. During her famous trial of 1909, newspapers quoted her saying, “I was cook for Mr. Stebbins’ family and other families, and nobody fell sick while I was there.”

Like many people in her era, Mallon could not fathom that a healthy-looking person could transmit disease. Throughout her life, she swore her innocence, claiming that she had never had the disease.

The popular – and mistaken – beliefs about Mallon came primarily from media accounts during her life. But the mischaracterization of Mallon continued long after.

HAD SHE ONLY BEEN A COOK FOR A POOR FAMILY NO ONE WOULD HAVE KNOWN OR CARED

Mallon unknowingly spread typhoid fever through the dishes she prepared, mostly for wealthy families in New York. In the summer of 1906, she cooked for the Warren family at their rental house at Long Island’s Oyster Bay. From Aug. 26 through Sept. 3, typhoid fever struck six out of 11 members of the household.

The homeowners hired George Soper, a self-proclaimed “sanitary engineer,” to investigate. He eventually traced the Oyster Bay outbreak to the new cook, along with typhoid at six of her other places of employment.

Soper’s discovery prompted the New York City Health Inspector Dr. Josephine Baker and the police department to take Mallon by force to a nearby hospital.

Against her will, she underwent multiple physical examinations that included stool samples, which revealed the Salmonella typhi bacteria. Mallon was then quarantined at North Brother Island, a refuge for those ill with tuberculosis and other contagious diseases, for two years without a charge or trial.

Mallon hired attorney George O’Neill, who petitioned for her release on June 28, 1909. Before a judge, she testified that she was healthy and had never made others ill. The judge denied her request on the grounds that she was a threat to public health and ordered her to continue living isolated at North Brother Island.

Illustration from the New York American of Mary Mallon, known pejoratively as Typhoid Mary, breaking skulls into a frying pan. New York Public Library

Becoming ‘Typhoid Mary’

Approximately 400 other healthy carriers had also been identified in New York at the time of Mallon’s trial. Unlike Mallon, they were not arrested, tried and imprisoned for years.

It was Mallon’s status as a poor, Irish immigrant woman that made her susceptible to becoming the city’s scapegoat. Soper himself initially described her as “an Irish woman about 40 years of age, tall, heavy, single.” Newspapers treated Mallon as either a “germ receptacle” or as a wild animal to be contained. “Woman ‘Typhoid Factory’ Held As a Prisoner,” stated one headline. “Witch In N.Y.” read a Tacoma Times headline. The story included this description of Mallon: “Legendary witches of old used to build red fires…and brew deadly potions…But poor ‘Typhoid Mary’… requires no cauldron. She manufactures WITHIN HERSELF the evil potions which she spreads about.”

Facts about the case came from Soper and public health authorities to medical journals and newspapers, mentioning her ethnicity, appearance and marital status. Such characteristics were not identified in stories of other healthy carriers. Mallon was never interviewed and therefore did not get to give her perspective, other than in reprinted segments of a single letter to her attorney, in which she declared her innocence.

Government officials and the media justified Mallon’s loss of civil liberties by framing her as a particular danger to public health, more than other healthy carriers.

Her infamous nickname, coined at a 1908 medical conference and then repeated in an edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, shifted Mallon’s public persona from human incubator to villain – an image introduced in the New York American newspaper on June 20, 1909.

The headline “‘Typhoid Mary’: The Extraordinary Predicament of Mary Mallon, a Prisoner on New York’s Quarantine Hospital Island,” extended over a full-page drawing of a cook sautéing a cluster of skulls in her cast-iron skillet. This introduction forever cemented the misconception that Mallon’s disease transmission was murderously intentional.

From that point, news stories compared “Typhoid Sally,” “Diphtheria Mildred” and other healthy carriers to “Typhoid Mary.” While some were briefly detained at hospitals after unintentionally causing outbreaks, no one was treated as poorly as Mallon.

Perpetuating ‘Typhoid Mary’
Mallon was finally released in 1910. With a lack of options (and without an understanding of healthy carriers), Mallon began cooking again, this time at restaurants, hotels and, lastly, the Sloane Hospital for Women. When more than 20 cases of typhoid erupted at the hospital, authorities identified Mallon as the source.

On March 26, 1915, the New York City Department of Public Health escorted Mallon back to North Brother Island. She lived and worked at the hospital there until she died in 1938. There is no record of typhoid outbreaks during her stay.

Even after her final detention and death, newspapers and popular culture perpetuated the misconception that Mallon infected people intentionally, channeling her natural poison (typhoid) through the food she cooked. Books like “Terrible Typhoid Mary: A True Story of the Deadliest Cook in America,” television references and the eponymous comic book character have preserved this image of a villainous Mallon.

Across media platforms, “Typhoid Mary” is still casually applied to contemporary menaces of public health, ignoring the ethically dubious practice of blaming healthy carriers and Mary Mallon’s persecution as a poor immigrant at the turn of the 20th century.

Katherine A. Foss, Professor of Media Studies, Middle Tennessee State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

El Salvador student takes to treetops to pick up signal for online classes

Nelson Renteria

ATIQUIZAYA, El Salvador (Reuters) - When Alexander Contreras and his father planted a guava tree next to their house in rural El Salvador six years ago, he never dreamed that beyond providing shade and food, it would become key to his college education.

Alexander Contreras sits on a tree to receive a university class on his cellphone because it is the only place where he has signal during a quarantine throughout the country, as the government undertakes steadily stricter measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Atiquizaya, El Salvador April 17, 2020. Picture taken April 17, 2020. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas

But since the government of President Nayib Bukele suspended in-person classes a little over a month ago to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, 20-year-old Contreras has been climbing to the top of the tree to get the signal he needs to connect to his online university classes.

Unable to log on from the humble, dirt-floor home he shares with his parents and five other relatives, Contreras said he was frustrated because he knew the clock was ticking and thought he might have to drop a class or even miss the whole school year.

“I told myself I had to find a solution, and thank God I did. I saw the tree and I thought if I climb to the top the signal will probably reach me,” the communications student said.

Scaling the tree was enough to pick up a weak signal in the poor Atiquizaya municipality, about 84 kilometers (52 miles) west of capital city San Salvador.

So Monday through Thursday Contreras has been climbing the tree with a cellphone and headphones in hand, mask on face, perching between two branches for up to four hours at a time to take classes in design, journalism and marketing.

Last week, Bukele shared photos on social media of Contreras studying in the tree and ordered Innovation Secretary Vladimir Handal to contact the young man.

“Connect a device to get him a free and good broadband signal. Tell him I say congratulations,” Bukele wrote in a Twitter post that has garnered over 56,000 likes.

Now, Contreras can take classes from his living room after Bukele’s government sent him a WiFi device, a laptop and a new cellphone.

Others sent Contreras gifts after seeing his photo: a desk, chair, lamp, and a fan to help ease the scorching heat.

“Being up there is very uncomfortable. Sitting for so long... the sun, the heat. I’m going to be a little more comfortable now,” said Contreras.

NO FRIEND OF PUTIN
Ex-Georgian president Saakashvili poised for another political comeback in Ukraine

Ilya Zhegulev

KIEV (Reuters) - The former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, said on Wednesday he had been invited to become deputy prime minister of Ukraine in charge of driving reforms, in what would mark another comeback for the maverick politician.

FILE PHOTO: Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili arrives in Kiev as his supporter shows the decree of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, which restores Saakashvili's citizenship, at Boryspil International Airport outside Kiev, Ukraine May 29, 2019. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

One of the most recognizable leaders in the post-Soviet world, Saakashvili was brought in to run the southern Odessa region of Ukraine in 2015 but fell out with the president at the time, Petro Poroshenko.

Saakashvili said he had been invited to join the government of the current president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose candidacy he backed in last year’s election.

He will join at a time when Ukraine faces a recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and the government is trying to secure an $8 billion loan package from the International Monetary Fund that is contingent on Kiev’s reform performance.

“It is a great honour for me to receive from President Zelenskiy an offer to become deputy prime minister of the Ukrainian government for reform,” Saakashvili wrote on Facebook.

“We have a very difficult period ahead ... we now have more than ever to be courageous in our decisions and reforms.”

David Arakhamia, the head of Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People faction, told Reuters that parliament could vote on Saakashvili’s appointment on Friday.

Arakhamia said Saakashvili was suited to a broad-ranging role in fighting corruption and that his abilities had not been properly used in Ukraine before.

Zelenskiy’s office said the president had met Saakashvili to discuss Saakashvili’s vision of how he might help Ukraine’s development.

“Mikheil Saakashvili is well known in the international arena and has already demonstrated experience of the successful implementation of reforms,” his office said.

Saakashvili had been hired to run Odessa five years ago based on his track record of fighting corruption as president of Georgia after the 2003 Rose Revolution.

He resigned as governor in 2016 and accused Poroshenko of corruption, which Poroshenko denied.

The Ukrainian authorities stripped Saakashvili of his citizenship when he was abroad, but he barged his way through a checkpoint at the Polish border to get back into Ukraine in September 2017. He was deported five months later.

Saakashvili returned to Ukraine last year after Zelenskiy restored his citizenship in one of his first official acts as president.

Alexander Rodnyansky, an economist at Britain’s Cambridge University and former adviser to the Ukrainian government, told Reuters Saakashvili’s arrival would be positive for reforms.

“I have always respected Georgia’s experience and the reforms that it has carried out, and I hope that this will not break any political balances,” he said.

One in three UK households expects to need state help to weather coronavirus: survey

Cyclists are seen wearing protective face masks in Battersea Park during the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London, Britain April 21, 2020. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

LONDON (Reuters) - One third of British households said they were likely to need government support within the next three months to weather the coronavirus outbreak, according to a survey that reveals growing pessimism about job security and the health of the economy.

Research firm Kantar said 44% of those working believed their job was less safe than it was 12 months ago, the highest recorded measure since it began the survey in August 2011.

Confidence in the health of the British economy had also slumped since the country was put into effective lockdown in March, with 65% of people stating the economy was doing worse than 12 months ago, Kantar said on Wednesday.

Britain’s budget forecaster has said economic output could plunge by 35% in the April-June period and 2 million people could lose their jobs due to the impact of the virus.

The government has launched an economic rescue package totalling more than half a trillion dollars that includes paying up to 80% of salary costs to minimise redundancies and guaranteeing up to 80% of bank loans to small businesses.

The public widely supported intervention, the survey found, with 84% of people either agreeing or strongly agreeing that the government should help people and business affected by coronavirus, whatever the cost.

Six in 10 people said the government was handling the coronavirus crisis fairly or very well, helping boost support for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives to 54%, up 4 percentage points since March, while three in 10 said it was handling it fairly or very poorly.

Craig Watkins, UK chief executive of Kantar’s Public division, said: “These findings show that there is a growing majority who believe the government is handling the crisis well and a strong public belief that supporting people and business during this time should be a priority, no matter the cost.”

Kantar interviewed 1,118 adults online between April 16 and April 20 for the survey.

Exclusive: Trial of Gilead's potential coronavirus treatment running ahead of schedule, researcher says

GILEAD WAS ALREADY TESTING THIS DRUG FOR OTHER PURPOSES

ITS EFFICACY IS STILL IN DOUBT DUE TO LACK OF TESTING

GILEAD IS PROFITEERING

Deena Beasley

(Reuters) - A key U.S. government trial of Gilead Sciences Inc’s experimental coronavirus treatment may yield results as early as mid-May, according to the study’s lead investigator, after doctors clamored to enroll their patients in the study.

FILE PHOTO: An ampule of Ebola drug remdesivir is pictured during a news conference at the University Hospital Eppendorf (UKE) in Hamburg, Germany, April 8, 2020, as the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues. Ulrich Perrey/File Photo

Preliminary findings from the randomized trial of the antiviral drug remdesivir, begun in February by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), could come even sooner, lead researcher Dr. Andre Kalil told Reuters in an interview. There are currently no approved treatments or vaccines for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the new virus that has killed over 190,000 people globally, according to a Reuters tally.

Remdesivir has drawn tremendous attention as a therapy with the potential to alter the course of the disease, based on anecdotal reports that it may have helped some patients.
Those hopes were dampened somewhat on Thursday, when details from a Chinese remdesivir trial in patients with severe COVID-19 inadvertently released by the World Health Organization suggested it provided no benefit.

Gilead pushed back on that interpretation saying the study, which was stopped early due to low patient enrollment, cannot provide meaningful conclusions.

Other reports have provided reason for optimism.

Doctors at Houston Methodist Hospital told Reuters that since March 23, they have treated 41 mostly severely ill COVID-19 patients with the drug. None have died and half are back home. But they and other doctors contacted by Reuters said they need much more information than the few details available from the Chinese trial and anecdotal reports on its emergency use in the United States to form a view on remdesivir.

They emphasized a need to see how patients on remdesivir fare compared to those who do not receive the therapy in a rigorous clinical trial at different stages of illness to know whether and under what circumstances it may provide benefit.

The NIAID trial “has all the necessary scientific standards that are really going to help us define if this drug works or not,” said Dr. Kalil, a professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. It is a randomized, double-blind study in which half the patients were given the drug and the other half a placebo. Enrollment in the trial closed on Sunday, but has far exceeded initial goals of 400 to 500 patients, he said. The investigator would not disclose total enrollment, but the latest public update says trial size may exceed 800 patients. The NIAID trial is designed to show whether remdesivir, when given to patients with a range of disease severity, improves outcomes such as length of hospitalization, need for mechanical ventilation and survival. Dr. Kalil declined to comment on precisely how much of an improvement on those metrics is needed to deem the trial a success and the drug a viable treatment. “We are looking for not only a statistical difference, but also for a meaningful clinical improvement,” he said. “We expect to have results sometime from mid- to late May.”

Gilead on Thursday said it expected results from the NIAID trial in late May. The company’s shares, up more than 20% so far this year due largely to remdesivir prospects, were 1.7% higher at $79.10 on Friday.

A lack of hard evidence has given U.S. medical associations, as well as the National Institutes of Health, pause. They have not recommended remdesivir to treat COVID-19.

The Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA), which represents more than 12,000 U.S. specialists, said it will make a formal recommendation once the entire body of evidence for remdesivir is available.

Dr. Rajesh Gandhi, an infectious disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who helped draft the IDSA guidelines, explained that most patients with COVID-19 will recover with little or no medical care. He is awaiting more clinical trial data before remdesivir can be deemed a useful therapy.

EARLY INTERVENTION?

In general, doctors say they would expect remdesivir to work better if given early in the course of the disease. The drug, which previously failed as a treatment for Ebola, is designed to keep a virus from replicating in the body and overwhelming a patient’s immune system.

“You can put out a campfire, but once it becomes a wildfire it’s hard to control,” said Dr. Kevin Grimes, an infectious disease specialist at Houston Methodist, which is participating in Gilead studies.

Gilead is leading its own trials of remdesivir, which is given to hospitalized patients as an intravenous infusion: One in patients with severe disease and the other in patients with more moderate symptoms.

The company expanded the number of patients it would enroll in the severe disease trial to 6,000 from 2,400, and expects results at the end of April. But that study does not compare remdesivir to another treatment or placebo.

The medical news website STAT last week reported that nearly all participants in Gilead-sponsored studies at a University of Chicago hospital saw rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms, and many were discharged in less than a week. The New England Journal of Medicine previously published an analysis showing that two-thirds of a small group of severely ill COVID-19 patients improved after treatment with remdesivir.

But it is impossible to know whether those outcomes can be attributed to the drug in the absence of a control group that did not far as well, since so much is still unknown about this new virus.

Still, these reports provide reason for hope given the desperate need as the virus rampages around the globe.

“We were asked to participate in this trial and we jumped at it,” said Grimes. “We see people that are getting sicker and then they get better.”

---30---

In four U.S. state prisons, nearly 3,300 inmates test positive for coronavirus -- 96% without symptomsLinda So, Grant Smith

(Reuters) - When the first cases of the new coronavirus surfaced in Ohio’s prisons, the director in charge felt like she was fighting a ghost.

“We weren’t always able to pinpoint where all the cases were coming from,” said Annette Chambers-Smith, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. As the virus spread, they began mass testing.

They started with the Marion Correctional Institution, which houses 2,500 prisoners in north central Ohio, many of them older with pre-existing health conditions. After testing 2,300 inmates for the coronavirus, they were shocked. Of the 2,028 who tested positive, close to 95% had no symptoms.

“It was very surprising,” said Chambers-Smith, who oversees the state’s 28 correctional facilities.

As mass coronavirus testing expands in prisons, large numbers of inmates are showing no symptoms. In four state prison systems — Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia — 96% of 3,277 inmates who tested positive for the coronavirus were asymptomatic, according to interviews with officials and records reviewed by Reuters. That’s out of 4,693 tests that included results on symptoms.

The numbers are the latest evidence to suggest that people who are asymptomatic — contagious but not physically sick — may be driving the spread of the virus, not only in state prisons that house 1.3 million inmates across the country, but also in communities across the globe. The figures also reinforce questions over whether testing of just people suspected of being infected is actually capturing the spread of the virus.

“It adds to the understanding that we have a severe undercount of cases in the U.S.,” said Dr. Leana Wen, adjunct associate professor of emergency medicine at George Washington University, said of the Reuters findings. “The case count is likely much, much higher than we currently know because of the lack of testing and surveillance.”

Some people diagnosed as asymptomatic when tested for the coronavirus, however, may go on to develop symptoms later, according to researchers.

The United States has more people behind bars than any other nation, a total incarcerated population of nearly 2.3 million as of 2017 — nearly half of which is in state prisons. Smaller numbers are locked in federal prisons and local jails, which typically hold people for relatively short periods as they await trial.

State prison systems in Michigan, Tennessee and California have also begun mass testing — checking for coronavirus infections in large numbers of inmates even if they show no sign of illness — but have not provided specific counts of asymptomatic prisoners.

Tennessee said a majority of its positive cases didn’t show symptoms. In Michigan, state authorities said “a good number” of the 620 prisoners who tested positive for the coronavirus were asymptomatic. California’s state prison system would not release counts of asymptomatic prisoners.

Each state manages multiple prison facilities. Ohio, for instance, has 49,000 prisoners in 28 facilities. A total 3,837 inmates tested positive for the coronavirus in 15 of those facilities. But the state has not yet provided results on symptoms for 1,809 of them and did not identify the total number of tests conducted across the prison system.

Arkansas and Tennessee have also taken a targeted approach by conducting mass testing in several of their facilities. Michigan, North Carolina, California and Virginia have started with one facility each.

Most state prisons did not provide the age or other demographic details of those who tested positive for the coronavirus, which has killed more than 200,000 people globally, including more than 53,000 in the United States.

VAST UNDERCOUNT
Reuters surveyed all 50 state prison systems. Of the 30 that responded, most are only testing inmates who show symptoms, suggesting they could be vastly undercounting the number infected by the coronavirus.

Florida and Texas, whose inmate populations are bigger than Ohio’s, report a combined total of just 931 cases — far fewer than the 3,837 inmates who tested positive in Ohio. New York, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, has reported 269 positive cases among 51,000 inmates. All three states are testing only symptomatic prisoners.

“Prison agencies are almost certainly vastly undercounting the number of COVID cases among incarcerated persons,” said Michele Deitch, a corrections specialist and senior lecturer at the University of Texas. “Just as the experts are telling us in our free-world communities, the only way to get ahead of this outbreak is through mass testing.”

Prison officials in Florida and Texas said they were following guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention along with state health officials when testing only inmates showing symptoms of the virus. New York’s Department of Corrections said its policy of only testing prisoners who show symptoms was “reflective of testing procedures in the general public.”

Tennessee took an aggressive approach after a dozen inmates tested positive at the Bledsoe County Correctional Complex in the city of Pikeville last week. The state’s Department of Correction has tested 3,503 prisoners at Bledsoe, the Northwest Correctional Complex and the Turney Center Industrial Complex.

As of Friday, 651 were positive, and most of them were asymptomatic, the department said.

“It’s what makes the pandemic more difficult to manage,” said Marc Stern, former medical director for the Washington State Department of Corrections and a faculty member at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health. “There are a whole lot of people who are asymptomatic.”

FILE PHOTO: The exterior of the Marion Correctional Institution where there have been positive cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Marion, Ohio, U.S., April 22, 2020. REUTERS/Dane Rhys

After a recent spike in cases at the Neuse Correctional Institution in Goldsboro, North Carolina, state correctional officials tested all 723 prisoners last week. Of the 444 who were infected by the virus, 98% were asymptomatic, the state’s department of public safety said. One inmate has died at the prison.

Similarly, mass testing at two Arkansas prisons — the Cummins Unit in the city of Grady and the Community Correction Center in the state capital Little Rock — found 751 infected inmates, almost all of them asymptomatic, the state corrections department said. It did not provide the total number of inmates who were tested.

Arkansas’ prisons have faced contagious disease outbreaks before, such as scabies and chickenpox, but those episodes were easier to manage because inmates showed overt symptoms, said Arkansas Department of Corrections spokeswoman Dina Tyler. “But with this virus, you have no idea because so many are asymptomatic. It makes it very challenging to contain,” she said.
‘24-HOUR TURNAROUND IS CRUCIAL’

Michigan’s Lakeland Correctional Facility houses some of the state’s oldest and most medically frail prisoners. When coronavirus cases surged, the prison saw a spike in infections and deaths. As of April 23, nine Lakeland inmates had died from COVID-19, accounting for a third of the deaths across Michigan’s 29 state prisons.

Nearly half of Lakeland’s 1,400 prisoners suffer from chronic underlying health conditions, according to state data. Many are in wheelchairs, and the minimum-security facility in southern Michigan has its own geriatric unit for its large elderly population.

On Tuesday, the prison tested all 400 inmates in the geriatric ward and plans to test the rest of the facility by the end of the week. Of the 971 tested so far, 642, or about 66%, were positive. A state official declined to disclose how many were asymptomatic.

“We know mass testing is going to make our numbers spike and might make us look bad,” said Chris Gautz, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections. “But I don’t think there’s another prison system in the country that doesn’t have large numbers. They just might not be testing as rigorously as we are.”

All tested inmates are quarantined in their rooms or units pending the test results, which usually come back in a day, he said. “The 24-hour turnaround is crucial” because once an inmate tests negative, they can return to the general population, he said.

In the seven state prison systems conducting mass tests, 49 inmates have died.

As the coronavirus spreads behind bars, rights groups and public defenders say they fear more will succumb, and have pressed for the release of nonviolent older and medically high-risk inmates. While thousands have been let out, crowded, often unsanitary conditions have raised concerns that jails and prisons could become vectors for the disease.

“They’re worse than landlocked cruise ships,” Stern, the corrections expert, said, referring to stranded cruise ships that have been overwhelmed by coronavirus infections.

Linda So reported from Washington and Grant Smith from New York. Additional reporting by Brad Heath. Editing by Jason Szep

'I do feel afraid': Indian workers disinfect coronavirus hotspots
DALITS AKA THE UNTOUCHABLES SUBJECTED TO HAVING TO DO THIS WORK BECAUSE OF HINDU FASCISM, CASTISM AND RACISM

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - One recent morning in his two-room New Delhi home, sanitation worker Dev Dutt Sharma drank tea before putting on an orange jacket and bidding goodbye to his two sons, wife, and elderly mother.

He rode his motorbike to government offices in South Delhi, where he suited up in protective gear and strapped a container full of disinfectant on his back.

Then he ventured out to disinfect some of Delhi’s crowded slums and neighborhoods deemed at risk from the coronavirus, which has infected more than 20,000 people and killed 652 in India.

“I do feel afraid, because I have a family,” said Sharma, 38, who is one of more than 3,500 workers usually tasked with combating malaria for the South Delhi Municipal Corporation.

“But then I think that, along with my own family, I will also save other families.”

The plight of India’s under-protected medical workers has drawn widespread attention, but workers disinfecting cities are also at risk as they venture into designated containment zones.

“Wherever we get more than three or four cases from a single locality, we are taking special measures in those areas,” said N.R. Tuli, a doctor in charge of disinfections in a South Delhi area.

Such measures boost sanitation and strengthen awareness of government actions, said virologist Shahid Jameel.

“The latter increases the level of trust that is so important for people to follow instructions,” added Jameel, the chief executive of health charity the Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance.

India’s population of 1.3 billion has been subjected to one of the world’s toughest lockdowns, confining people to their homes except for trips to buy food and medicine until May 3.

To help rein in the virus, Sharma disinfects as many as 80 homes a day. But when the work ends, anxiety returns to haunt him.

“When I come back home, I also feel, ‘What if this virus is inside me and might get transmitted to my children?’,” he said. “But we are helpless, we have to perform our duty.”

On the margins of Paris, the food bank queues grow longer

Yonathan Van der Voort

CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, France (Reuters) - The queue for the food bank snaked for hundreds of metres, out of the shuttered marketplace bordered by tower blocks and down the side of a four-lane highway on the outskirts of one of Europe’s wealthiest cities.

Residents line up during a food distribution by volunteers from ACLEFEU association in Clichy-sous-Bois near Paris during a lockdown imposed to slow the rate of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in France, April 22, 2020. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

In Paris’s depressed suburbs, the number of people relying on food handouts is soaring as a strict coronavirus lockdown plunges France into its deepest recession since World War Two.

Many worked in the grey economy before the outbreak, and now receive little protection from France’s generous welfare state.

“There were lots of women who worked looking after children... There was a whole economy based on getting by,” said Bachir Ghouinem, volunteering at the food bank in Clichy-sous-Bois, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the city centre.

“So as everything stopped what did people find themselves with? Nothing.”

He and other volunteers would end up handing out sugar, pasta, cheese, milk and fresh fruit and vegetables - most donated by local stores rather than large retail chains - to around 1,600 families during the day, twice the number expected.

Clichy-sous-Bois is part of the Paris banlieues, the low-income districts that encircle the city. Unemployment among its largely immigrant population was already well above the national average before the epidemic struck.

Queueing for food, Nathalie Barlagne, 46, said she had lost her job as a creche assistant before the crisis.

She had never before needed to rely on charity to support her family but could no longer afford her food bill after local markets closed. “Now we have to shop in supermarkets and it’s very expensive,” she said.
“WE’RE ALL HERE FOR THE SAME REASON”

As the queue lengthened, Mohamed Mechmach, founder of local charity ACLEFEU, urged those in line to respect social distancing rules.

“Otherwise we won’t be able to keep doing what we’re doing,” he told the crowd. “The prefect will just say ‘Stop everything’. That would be a shame. We’re all here for the same reason.”

In the banlieues, the strict curbs ordered by President Emmanuel Macron to try to contain the epidemic have exacerbated deep-seated social tensions.

Slideshow (11 Images)

Cramped social housing, workers with frontline jobs and a restless younger generation have turned some into hotspots of infection and unrest. Violence hit several neighbourhood for five straight nights over the past week.

Due west of Clichy-sous-Bois in another suburb, Argenteuil, Kante Sakho’s charity was delivering food parcels to households. He says he is shifting 600 a week, and is barely able to keep up with demand.

Some recipients were illiterate and unable to fill out the mandatory government forms justifying movement outside the home. Others were families struggling to feed their children three meals a day after schools shut down.

“Since the coronavirus outbreak, there’s a lot more poverty,” Sakho said.

Reporting by Yonathan Van der Voort; Writing by Richard Lough; editing by John Stonestreet

ICRC donates vital medical equipment to Gaza in coronavirus crisis

Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Thursday donated vital intensive care equipment to Gaza hospitals but said they remain underequipped for any wider outbreak of the new coronavirus in the territory.

Palestinian workers check medical equipment donated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) amid concerns about the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at Kerem Shalom crossing in the southern Gaza Strip April 21, 2020. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

With passage through Gaza’s borders tightly controlled by neighbouring Israel and Egypt, only 17 people have tested positive in the Palestinian territory for the novel coronavirus.

But health authorities are concerned about the risk of widespread infection among a population of two million living in close quarters in the small coastal enclave.

“The prospect of an outbreak of COVID-19 in Gaza is frightening, given the weakness of the health infrastructure and the dense population of the Gaza Strip,” said Daniel Duvillard, head of the ICRC Delegation in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

The ICRC aid included a ventilator, monitors, defibrillators and suction devices and pumps.

“This equipment will help, but much more is needed, and we urge the international community to recognise the seriousness of the risk here,” Duvillard said.

The ICRC said there were only 93 ventilators in Gaza, or one for every 21,505 persons in the territory, where quarantine facilities have been set up by local health authorities for Palestinians who enter via Egypt or Israel.

Health officials in Gaza said they were in immediate need of 100 ventilators, 140 intensive care unit beds and $23 million for their anti-coronavirus emergency plan.

“Gaza is facing this COVID-19 pandemic with its fragile and over-stretched health system, due to long years of closure and siege and poverty and shortages of many resources,” said Abdullatif Alhaj of Gaza’s health ministry.

Palestinians say 13 years of economic sanctions by Israel and its border blockade have crippled their economy and undermined the development of medical facilities, weakening their ability to face a pandemic.

Israel has promised to ensure medical aid reaches Gaza to combat the coronavirus crisis. It has said its long-standing blockade helps prevent money and weapons from reaching the Islamist group Hamas, which has run the enclave since 2007.

Gaza is not yet under full lockdown, but as the holy fasting month of Ramadan starts people are extremely cautious about visiting each other and spending savings.

Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Alexandra Hudson

REWILDING
Emboldened by closures, foxes prowl an ancient port city in Israel

ASHKELON, Israel (Reuters) - Red foxes have been making appearances in the Israeli city of Ashkelon, drawn out from the seclusion of the desert dunes by the coronavirus lockdown that has kept people off the streets.

The animals, usually a rare sight in busy urban areas, have a biblical resonance. In the Book of Lamentations, the Jewish temple site in Jerusalem is described as so desolate that “foxes prowl upon it”.

In Ashkelon, an ancient Mediterranean seaport and now one of Israel’s main southern cities, a family of foxes has become a regular feature - nosing through discarded food, and playing sometimes unfriendly hide-and-seek with dogs in a local park.

Lisbon zoo animals feel keepers' love while public away

Catarina Demony

LISBON (Reuters) - Wearing a mask and other protective gear, a zookeeper at Portugal’s biggest zoo feeds a mob of energetic meerkats, including a few newborns - but the usual excited onlookers are nowhere to be seen.

Zookeeper Estefania gives food to the bongos at the Lisbon Zoo as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Lisbon, Portugal April 23, 2020. REUTERS/Rafael Marchante

Though the meerkats and other 2,000 animals at the Lisbon zoo are missing the normal attention from crowds of visitors now stuck at home due to the coronavirus lockdown, keepers are doing their best to provide company and nurture.

“The work we do now the zoo is closed is exactly the same as what we used to do when the zoo was open,” zoo curator Jose Dias Ferreira told Reuters as a group of gorillas played behind him.

“We closed doors to the public but animal care, cleaning and feeding is the same.”

The zoo closed when Portugal declared a lockdown on March 18, shutting all non-essential services, from restaurants to cultural spaces. But the contingency plan at Lisbon zoo was put together way before.

Ferreira said the zoo had to stock up on animal food in case increased demand during the pandemic caused a shortage. For now food supply remains plentiful, but the future is uncertain.

No visitors means no ticket sales, leaving Lisbon zoo and others in a tight spot - especially as high maintenance costs are not going away.

“KEEP OUR ANIMALS SAFE”

Even if the lockdown ends soon and the zoo is able to reopen, it might be a while until people start visiting again given social distancing norms, anxiety among the public and a drop in foreign tourists.

“At the moment we have no problems but I cannot guess the future,” Ferreira said. “The only thing missing now is the visitors but animals can rapidly adapt to the situation.”

Portugal has so far reported 22,353 coronavirus cases and 820 deaths, a relatively low toll, especially compared to hard-hit neighbouring Spain.

Around the world, animals are being affected too.

Earlier this month, a tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York City tested positive for the coronavirus, the first known case of a human infecting an animal and making it sick.

Ferreira said it was unclear if some animals were more at risk than others so the zoo’s preventive measures were applied to all.

To reduce risk, there are more disinfections, the use of masks and gloves was made compulsory, especially when near animals, and zookeepers were split into two rotating teams.

“The top priority is to keep our animals (...) and the people who work with them safe,” Ferreira said.

Reporting by Catarina Demony, Miguel Pereira and Rafael Marchante; Editing by Andrei Khalip and Andrew Cawthorne

DR. BRIX NEEDS TO RESIGN!

SHE IS ENABLING TRUMP

h'When He Gets New Information, He Likes To Talk That Through Out Loud,' Dr. Birx Says of Trump's Comments on Ultraviolet Light, Disinfectants as COVID-19 Treatments

“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute,” Trump continued. “And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that.”

Ingesting bleach or disinfectants is dangerous and experts strongly warn against it. Disinfectant-related poisonings have risen since the coronavirus crisis began, as Americans have tried to disinfect more surfaces and sometimes even their food (which is dangerous and unnecessary.)

BUT DR BIRX NEVER EVER MENTIONED THIS ON TV