The affluent are in denial about their class privilege, research says

To maintain their sense of self-worth, elites tend to exaggerate their own hardships, studies show

MATTHEW ROZSA
JULY 13, 2020 

Income is correlated with right-wing politics, meaning wealthier people tend to be slightly more conservative. While there is no singular reason for this, both history and observational anecdotes suggest that those with wealth and privilege tend to distort the reason they were so successful, chalking up their success to right-wing ideological canards like "hard work" — rather than admit they were helped by other social factors. (President Trump is a great case study, as he exaggerates the degree to which his father helped him build his empire: during the first 2016 presidential debate, Trump bragged that his father gave him "a very small loan in 1975," which he built "into a company that's worth many, many billions of dollars." That "small loan" was actually $60.7 million.)

Now, a new social psychology study has uncovered the extent to which this tendency appears to be pathological among the moneyed elite. Titled "I ain't no fortunate one: On the motivated denial of class privilege," the new study, which was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that those who were posed questions about their class privilege responded by "increasing their claims of personal hardships and hard work, to cover [their] privilege in a veneer of meritocracy." 

"Flying in the face of meritocratic prescriptions, evidence of privilege threatens recipients' self-regard by calling into question whether they deserve their successes." Dr. L. Taylor Phillips, a professor of management and organizations at New York University Business School, and co-author Dr. Brian S. Lowery, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University, wrote in their study. "Evidence of class privilege demonstrates that many life outcomes are determined by factors not attributable to individuals' efforts alone, but are caused in part by systemic inequities that privilege some over others."

The authors emphasized that, in the United States, people are conditioned to believe that we live in a meritocracy and to attribute success or failure primarily to one's talent and hard work. When members of the upper-middle or upper class are confronted with evidence that class privilege plays a major role in determining socioeconomic status, their self-regard is challenged. To maintain their sense of self-worth, they will exaggerate their own hardships or focus on the amount of work they do — even though class privilege does not preclude the reality of non-class related hardships and many people work very hard without achieving socioeconomic mobility.

The authors arrived at these conclusions after conducting a series of experiments. They asked hundreds of adult American citizens with upper-middle or upper class incomes from an elite West Coast university to read statements on general inequity or class privilege and how those are connected to opportunities in education. Others were asked to read about the more general advantages that accrue from people with high incomes. In an expansion on the original study, participants were exposed to information about personal hardships and class privilege. All of the studies found that, when participants who came from class privilege were confronted with that fact, they tended to focus on their personal hardships and work ethic in order to protect their self-regard from facing the reality that much of what they owned was given to them through luck and systems of oppression rather than individual merit.


"The main takeaway is really that people who are benefiting from inequity — that's how we define privilege — people who are benefiting from inequity do a lot of psychological work to cover up that benefit," Dr. Phillips told Salon. "They do things like claim that their lives has been harder overall as compared to when the privileges not been exposed and no one's really aware of it, but once we make it exposed, they start saying life has been harder."

She said that the individuals studied will specifically claim that they work harder at their jobs and will point to struggles from their lives to make the claim, "'Oh, you say I have this privilege and that's unfair, but actually look at these other things in my life, they kind of counteract or they kind of balance it out. It's all a wash.'"

Dr. Phillips also connected this mindset to a tendency toward classist and racist beliefs.

"It certainly supports the likelihood — or kind of creates a likelihood — that people start claiming racist, classist, and other inherently different sort of beliefs," Dr. Phillips explained, summarizing the mentality as arguing that "'I'm here in this position, someone else's in this different position. Rather than because the system is unfair or because I've benefited from something unfair, which would then threaten my self regard, instead it's easier for me to claim that there's actually some sort of difference between us that makes this all fair. . . . It's actually because this group is worse in some way, or this individual person is worse in some way.'"

In the study, Phillips and Lowery emphasize the importance of the meritocracy myth in creating these delusions.

"The ideology of meritocracy is woven deeply into the cultural fabric of American society," the authors write. "The very 'American dream' that attracts and attaches so many to America suggests that if one works hard enough, they can succeed, no matter their class or background. As a result, systemic inequity is a tricky subject for American psyches: while most Americans subscribe to meritocratic ideologies that abhor such inequity, many also benefit from inequities. To resolve this tension, we find that the class privileged specifically claim hardship and effort because these are symbols of merit: they help cover privilege in a cloak of meritocracy."



MATTHEW ROZSA
 is a staff writer for Salon. He holds an MA in History from Rutgers University-Newark and is ABD in his PhD program in History at Lehigh University. His work has appeared in Mic, Quartz and MSNBC.

Contracts show Trump giving Big Pharma free rein to price gouge taxpayer-funded coronavirus drugs

"The amount of money the government is throwing at companies is unprecedented."


JAKE JOHNSON
JULY 5, 2020 5:30PM
This article originally appeared at Common Dreams. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

Government contracts obtained by consumer advocacy group Knowledge Ecology International show that the Trump administration is giving pharmaceutical companies a green light to charge exorbitant prices for potential coronavirus treatments developed with taxpayer money by refusing to exercise federal authority to constrain costs.

Through the Freedom of Information Act, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) last week got hold of a number of heavily redacted agreements between the Trump administration and major pharmaceutical companies like Johnson & Johnson, Regeneron, and Genentech.

Five of the seven documents reviewed by KEI are classified as "other transaction agreements," which allow federal agencies to loosen regulations designed to protect the public in order to help companies streamline the product development process.

In the case of four contracts for potential Covid-19 treatments or vaccines with Johnson & Johnson, Genentech, Regeneron, and Roche issued by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the Pentagon, the Trump administration omitted a standard condition requiring that products developed with taxpayer money be made available to the public "on reasonable terms."

"This means that the government has limited its ability to intervene if the pharmaceutical companies (which are party to the agreements and are receiving hundreds of millions of dollars to conduct the research) charge unreasonable prices for the resulting Covid-19 vaccines or treatments," KEI noted in a press release.

KEI also found that federal contracts with Genentech and Regeneron for coronavirus treatments contain passages restricting the government's ability to "have generic manufacturers make and distribute through pharmacies and other commercial outlets an effective diagnostic test, drug, or vaccine for Covid-19."

The details of the contracts come just days after the Trump administration faced backlash from consumer groups for refusing to require Gilead to charge a reasonable price for its Covid-19 treatment remdesivir. On Monday, as Common Dreams reported, Gilead announced it will charge U.S. hospitals around $3,120 per privately insured patient for a treatment course of remdesivir, which was developed with the help of at least $70.5 million in taxpayer funding.

"Allowing Gilead to set the terms during a pandemic represents a colossal failure of leadership by the Trump administration," Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines Program, said in a statement Monday. "The U.S. government has authority and a responsibility to steward the technology it helped develop."
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As the Washington Post reported Wednesday, "[Johnson & Johnson] has a $456 million contract with BARDA to develop a coronavirus vaccine and a $152 million contract to conduct screening of drug compounds that could be Covid-19 treatments."

"Regeneron has contracts worth up to $130 million to develop two therapies for the disease," the Post noted. "Roche's Genentech subsidiary has contracts worth $47 million to develop a pair of therapies."
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James Love, the director of KEI, told the Post that "the amount of money the government is throwing at companies is unprecedented."

"Normally when you write bigger checks," Love said, "you should have more leverage, not less leverage."

Don't be fooled by the "cancel culture" wars: Corporate power is the real force behind racism

Elite infighting about "free speech" and "diversity" won't end racism — or challenge corporate capitalism

Social media restricted speech and cancel culture censorship concept (Getty Images)
CHRIS HEDGES
JULY 13, 2020
This article was originally published by Scheerpost. Used by permission.

The "cancel culture" — the phenomenon of removing or canceling people, brands or shows from the public domain because of offensive statements or ideologies — is not a threat to the ruling class. Hundreds of corporations, nearly all in the hands of white executives and white board members, enthusiastically pumped out messages on social media condemning racism and demanding justice after George Floyd was choked to death by police in Minneapolis. Police, which along with the prison system are one of the primary instruments of social control over the poor, have taken the knee, along with Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of the serially criminal JPMorgan Chase, where only 4 percent of the top executives are Black. Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world whose corporation, Amazon, paid no federal income taxes last year and who fires workers that attempt to unionize and tracks warehouse laborers as if they were prisoners, put a "Black Lives Matter" banner on Amazon's home page.

The rush by the ruling elites to profess solidarity with the protesters and denounce racist rhetoric and racist symbols, supporting the toppling of Confederate statues and banning the Confederate flag, are symbolic assaults on white supremacy. Alone, these gestures will do nothing to reverse the institutional racism that is baked into the DNA of American society. The elites will discuss race. They will not discuss class.
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We must be wary of allowing those wielding the toxic charge of racism, no matter how well intentioned their motives, to decide who has a voice and who does not. Public shaming and denunciation, as any student of the Russian, French or Chinese revolutions knows, is one that leads to absurdism and finally despotism. Virulent racists, such as Richard Spencer, exist. They are dangerous. But racism will not end until we dismantle a class system that was created to empower oligarchic oppression and white supremacy. Racism will not end until we defund the police and abolish the world's largest system of mass incarceration. Racism will not end until we invest in people rather than systems of control. This means reparations for African Americans, the unionization of workers, massive government jobs programs, breaking up and nationalizing the big banks along with the for-profit health services, transportation sector, the internet, privatized utilities and the fossil fuel industry, as well as a Green New Deal and the slashing of our war expenditures by 75 percent.

The politically correct speech and symbols of inclusiveness, without a concerted assault on corporate power, will do nothing to change a system that by design casts the poor and working poor, often people of color, aside — Karl Marx called them "surplus labor" — and forces them into a life of misery and a brutal criminal caste system.

The cancel culture, with its public shaming on social media, is the boutique activism of the liberal elites. It allows faux student radicals to hound and attack those deemed to be racist or transphobic, before these "radicals" graduate to work for corporations such as Goldman Sachs, which last year paid $9 million in fines to settle federal allegations of racial and gender pay bias. Self-styled Marxists in the academy have been pushed out of economic departments and been reborn as irrelevant cultural and literary critics, employing jargon so obscure as to be unreadable. These "radical" theorists invest their energy in linguistic acrobatics and multiculturalism, with branches such as feminism studies, queer studies and African-American studies. The inclusion of voices often left out of the traditional academic canon certainly enriches the university. But multiculturalism, moral absolutism and the public denunciations of apostates, by themselves, too often offer escape routes from critiquing and attacking the class structures and systems of economic oppression that exclude and impoverish the poor and the marginal.

The hedge fund managers, oligarchs and corporate CEOs on college trustee boards don't care about Marxist critiques of Joseph Conrad. They do care if students are being taught to dissect the lies of the neoliberal ideology used as a cover to orchestrate the largest transference of wealth upwards in American history.

The cancel culture, shorn of class politics, is the parlor game of the overeducated. If we do not examine, as Theodor Adorno wrote, the "societal play of forces that operate beneath the surface of political forms," we will be continually cursed with a more ruthless and sophisticated form of corporate control, albeit one that is linguistically sensitive and politically correct.

"Stripped of a radical idiom, robbed of a utopian hope, liberals and leftists retreat in the name of progress to celebrate diversity," historian Russell Jacoby writes. "With few ideas on how a future should be shaped, they embrace all ideas. Pluralism becomes a catchall, the alpha and omega of political thinking. Dressed up as multicultural, it has become the opium of disillusioned intellectuals, the ideology of an era without an ideology."
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The cudgel of racism, as I have experienced, is an effective tool to shut down debate. Students for Justice in Palestine organizations, which almost always include Jewish students, are being banned on college campuses in the name of fighting racism. Activists in these outlawed groups are often barred from holding any student leadership positions on campus. Professors that dare to counter the Zionist narrative, such as the Palestinian American scholar Steven Salaita, have had job offers rescinded, been fired or denied tenure and dismissed. Norman Finkelstein, one of the most important scholars on the Israel-Palestine conflict, has been ruthlessly targeted by the Israel lobby throughout his career, making it impossible for him to get tenure or academic appointments. Never mind that he is not only Jewish but the son of Holocaust survivors. Jews, in this game, are branded as racists, and actual racists, such as Donald Trump, because they back Israel's refusal to recognize Palestinian rights, are held up as friends of the Jewish people.

I have long been a target of the Israeli lobby. The lobby, usually working through Hillel Houses on college campuses, which function as little more than outposts of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), does not attempt to address my enumeration of the war crimes committed by Israel, many of which I witnessed, the egregious flouting by Israel of international law, exacerbated by the plans to annex up to 30 percent of the West Bank, or the historical record ignored and distorted by the lobby to justify Jewish occupation of a country that from the 7th century until 1948 was Muslim. The lobby prefers not to deal in the world of facts. It misuses the trope of anti-Semitism to ensure that those who speak up for Palestinian rights and denounce Israeli occupation are not invited to events on the Israel-Palestine conflict, or are disinvited to speak after invitations have been sent out, as happened to me at the University of Pennsylvania, among other venues.

It does not matter that I spent seven years in the Middle East, or that I was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times, living for weeks at a time in the Israel-occupied territories. It does not matter that I speak Arabic. My voice and the voices of those, especially Palestinians, who document the violations of Palestinian civil rights are canceled out by the mendacious charge that we are racists. I doubt most of the college administrators who agree to block our appearances believe we are racists, but they don't also want the controversy. Zionism is the cancel culture on steroids.

The Israel lobby, whose interference in our electoral process dwarfs that of any other country, including Russia, is now attempting to criminalize the activities of those, such as myself, who support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The lobby, with its huge financial clout, is pushing state legislatures, in the name of fighting anti-Semitism, to use anti-boycott laws and executive orders to punish companies and individuals that promote BDS. Twenty-seven states have so far enacted laws or policies that penalize businesses, organizations and individuals for supporting BDS.

The debate about the excesses of cancel culture was most recently ignited by a letter signed by 153 prominent and largely privileged writers and intellectuals in Harper's Magazine, a publication for educated, white liberals. Critics of the letter argue, correctly, that "nowhere in it do the signatories mention how marginalized voices have been silenced for generations in journalism, academia, and publishing." These critics also point out, correctly, that signatories include those, such as New York Times columnist David Brooks and Malcolm Gladwell, with access to huge media platforms and who face no danger of being silenced. They finally note that a few of the signatories are the most vicious proponents of the Zionist cancel culture, including New York Times editor Bari Weiss, who led campaigns while at Columbia University to destroy the careers of Arab professors; literary scholar Cary Nelson, who was one of those who denounced the Palestinian American scholar Salaita as a racist; and political scientist Yascha Mounk, who has attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar as an anti-Semite.

I find the cancel culture and its public denunciations as distasteful as those who signed the letter. But these critics are battling a monster of their own creation. The institutional and professional power of those targeted by the Harper's letter is insignificant, especially when set against that of the signatories or the Israel lobby. Those singled out for attack pose little threat to the systems of entrenched power, which the signatories ironically represent, and indeed are more often its victims. I suspect this is the reason for the widespread ire the letter provoked.

The most ominous threats to free speech and public debate do not come from the cancel culture of the left, which rarely succeeds in removing its targets from power, despite a few high-profile firings such as James Bennet, who oversaw a series of tone-deaf editorial decisions as the opinion page editor at the New York Times. These corporate forces, which assure us that Black Lives Matter, understand that the left's witch hunts are a harmless diversion.

Corporations have seized control of the news industry and turned it into burlesque. They have corrupted academic scholarship. They make war on science and the rule of law. They have used their wealth to destroy our democracy and replace it with a system of legalized bribery. They have created a world of masters and serfs who struggle at subsistence level and endure crippling debt peonage. The commodification of the natural world by corporations has triggered an ecocide that is pushing the human species closer and closer towards extinction. Anyone who attempts to state these truths and fight back was long ago driven from the mainstream and relegated to the margins of the internet by Silicon Valley algorithms. As cancel culture goes, corporate power makes the Israel lobby look like amateurs.

The current obsession with moral purity, devoid of a political vision and incubated by self-referential academics and educated elites, is easily co-opted by the ruling class who will say anything, as long as the mechanisms of corporate control remain untouched. We have enemies. They run Silicon Valley and sit on corporate boards. They make up the two ruling political parties. They manage the war industry. They chatter endlessly on corporate-owned airwaves about trivia and celebrity gossip. Our enemies are now showering us with politically correct messages. But until they are overthrown, until we wrest power back from our corporate masters, the most insidious forms of racism in America will continue to flourish.

CHRIS HEDGES
is the former Middle East bureau chief of the New York Times, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a columnist at Truthdig. He is the author of several books, including "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning."MORE FROM CHRIS HEDGES

Biden’ My Time: Soviet Newspaper Reveals What the Democratic Candidate Did Back in the USSR


© REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque

There was a well-publicised Bernie Sanders trip to the USSR in 1988, but Joe Biden, the would-be Democratic presidential candidate, visited America's Cold War foe years before, when the geopolitical situation was much more complex.

Joe Biden visited the Soviet Union in August 1979 as part of a five-day Senate mission to discuss disarmament.

A brief piece in the Pravda newspaper, published on 27 August that year, recapped Biden’s visit to Leningrad at the helm of a group of US senators.
They reportedly paid tribute to victims of the Second World War at a local cemetery, with the 36-year-old Biden saying: “Humanity is thankful to Leningraders for their great feat. The peace they achieved must become the goal of our life.”

The Americans also went to the Hermitage Museum and the Peterhof Palace, before attending a dinner with members of the city executive committee, according to the article.

Biden, then the Democratic senator from Delaware and head of the European Affairs sub-committee of the Foreign Relations Committee, was leading a group of lawmakers who were uncertain about the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) with the Soviet Union.

A month prior to the visit, the two nuclear-armed superpowers signed the SALT II treaty, which would put broad limitations on strategic offensive weapons. US Congress refused to ratify the agreement, and Biden, a vocal supporter of the deal, took some of the senators to the USSR to bring them on board and educate Soviet leaders about their concerns.

The trip left him with the impression that the Soviet leadership was genuinely prepared to consider deep cuts to its nuclear and conventional arsenal, but the war in Afghanistan that started in December 1979 upended the decade-long detente, and the SALT II treaty was never ratified.

The Biden-led group of senators also visited Moscow, where they met with then-Soviet Prime Minister Aleksei Kosygin, Defence Minister Dmitry Ustinov, and several other high-profile members of the government and parliament (some details of the trip have been declassified).

Recalling those talks during a 2011 visit to Russia, Biden said that Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was “sicker than we thought then”.

Biden recounted: “He excused himself and left the meeting early and turned it over to Kosygin, Premier Kosygin, who in his opening statement said the following – I will never forget it – he said: ‘Before we begin our discussion, Senator, let’s agree that we do not trust you, and you do not trust us. And we both have good reason.’”

‘Convenient Excuse’: Trump New Hampshire Rally Called Off Due to Low Ticket Sales, Not Bad Weather


© AP Photo / Mary Altaffer

When US President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign called off a rally in New Hampshire over the weekend, they claimed it was because of a tropical storm bearing down on New England. However, a figure close to the campaign has claimed the reason was actually embarrassingly low ticket sales.

It now appears Tropical Storm Fay, which swept through the northeastern US over the weekend, was nothing more than a “convenient excuse” for Trump to cancel a planned rally in the storm’s path, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.

“It’s the perfect timing,” an unidentified outside adviser to the Trump 2020 campaign told NBC on Friday. “The weather may have been dissuading people to attend, but many weren’t coming to begin with because of the virus.”

The rally was supposed to be held outdoors in the coastal city of Portsmouth, but forecasters predicted the storm would pass before Trump’s 8 p.m. event on Saturday. The storm made landfall in New Jersey on Thursday before heading north across eastern New York and western Vermont, crossing the border into Canada by 5 p.m. on Saturday.

According to NBC, when Trump campaigned in the Granite State in 2016, he packed a stadium of 11,000, but this time around, far fewer people wanted to risk the storm or potential COVID-19 infection to attend. In addition, the canceled Saturday rally was to be held inside a large airport hangar, not at a downtown sports venue.

A contributing factor might have been the campaign’s strategic decision not to hype the Portsmouth rally, having suffered an embarrassing reversal last month in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when a rally for which Trump expected record attendance instead turned out to be a dud: just 6,200 people showed up to an auditorium that seats 19,000, and for which Trump boasted 1 million had applied for tickets.

Trudeau urges Trump to think twice ABOUT ALUMINIUM TARIFFS 
By James McCarten | News, US News, Politics | July 13th 2020

Aluminum in a smelter is seen at the Alouette aluminum plant in Sept-Iles, Que., on Tuesday, May 21, 2019. File photo by The Canadian Press/Jacques Boissinot

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged Donald Trump to think twice Monday before imposing new tariffs on Canadian aluminum, saying the sector is emerging from the pandemic-induced production stance that prompted the White House to consider such measures in the first place.

Trudeau, who said in a news conference he had spoken to the U.S. president earlier in the day, told him that with the North American economy getting back up to speed, Canada's aluminum smelters would soon be back producing value-added specialty products for the American auto sector.

The spectre of new tariffs emerged last month after Canadian producers, unable to shut down production and with their usual customers hamstrung by the impact of COVID-19, were forced to make a more generic form of aluminum and ship it to warehouses in the United States.

That alarmed certain U.S. smelter owners and operators, who have been urging the U.S. trade representative's office to slap fresh levies on imports from Canada.

The pandemic "caused certain disruption in the aluminum sector that is starting to realign itself, given the economies are starting up again and manufacturing is getting going," Trudeau said after his call with Trump.

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"I impressed upon him that it would be a shame to see tariffs come in between our two countries at a time where we're celebrating NAFTA and at a time where we want our businesses and our manufacturers to get going as quickly as possible."

Canada has been on the outside looking in when it comes to the coming into force of NAFTA's successor, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which took shape in 2017 and 2018 before a backdrop of steadily worsening relations between Trump and Trudeau.

While Trump welcomed Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to a celebratory event at the White House last week, Trudeau kept his distance, citing the tariff dispute and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic among his reasons. A readout from Monday's call said the prime minister "expressed regret" for being unable to attend.

The U.S. trade representative reportedly gave Canada a deadline of July 1 to impose export restrictions — the very day the USMCA took effect. That deadline has come and gone without a hint from either the White House or U.S. trade ambassador Robert Lighthizer about what happens next.

Trudeau said he and Trump also discussed the Canada-U.S. border, where non-essential travel has been curtailed since March in an effort to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. The 30-day bilateral agreement to limit discretionary cross-border travel without restricting trade or essential workers has been extended three times and is now set to expire July 21.

Since the last extension, however, the public health crisis in the U.S. has exploded.

More than 100,000 new COVID-19 cases were identified over the weekend, particularly in southern states that reopened early, with Florida emerging as the new epicentre. Canada has had 108,000 confirmed cases in total, compared with more than 3.3 million cases and 135,000 deaths in the U.S. to date.

Hospitals in major urban centres across the United States are again nearing capacity and health care workers face another critical shortage of personal protective equipment like masks and respirators.

Recent polls suggest Canadians remain unequivocally opposed to reopening the border any time soon — a predictable symptom of the accelerating crisis in the U.S., said Kathryn Friedman, a University at Buffalo law professor and Wilson Center global fellow.

But there could be other lingering foreign-policy irritants at play, she added.

"I wonder if the United States had treated our dear neighbour, friend and ally a little bit better over the last three-and-a-half or so years, if the reaction would be as harsh," Friedman said. "Maybe people are just like, 'Well, too bad, I don't care if you want to open the border.'"

Friedman is among several Canada-U.S. experts, border community leaders, northern state lawmakers and others who want to see a plan for when the time comes to lift the restrictions.

"I think we have to have this conversation," she said. "I think we have to engage the right people now, so that when the border restrictions are eased, whenever that's going to be, they are done so responsibly."

It's less a question of when and more a question of how, Friedman said — what sort of controls, testing and screening measures and other tools will need to be in place even after the emergency has passed.

"I'm more concerned that the climate will change, and some relevant government officials won't have given any thought to how this border opening is going to take place," she said.

"We have to get our act together and really think more clearly about how we're going to handle these kinds of situations in the future, and really use science-based data — an evidence-based, science-based approach — to health screenings when it comes to border restrictions and border policies."

Trudeau demurred Monday when asked whether this time, Canada and the U.S. might negotiate a closure that lasts longer than the standard 30-day window.

"We will be discussing with our American partners what the next steps should be, and I think this is a situation that is evolving rapidly and we need to keep responding to the situation on the ground."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 13, 2020

How Fauci's relationship with the White House appeared to break down through the coronavirus response

President Donald Trump with Dr. Anthony Fauci on May 15, 2020. Throughout the White House's coronavirus response, slews of reports have detailed Fauci's fading relationship with the administration, though Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, emerged as an expert voice in the White House's chaotic response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

In the early days of the response, President Donald Trump praised Fauci, saying at a March press briefing he was "doing a tremendous job working long, long hours."

However, Fauci's relationship with the White House has since grown distant from the outside as he was cut from appearances, openly broke with the administration on claims about the virus, and said in a recent interview he hadn't briefed the president in two months, though he didn't reveal why.

Dr. Anthony Fauci was announced as a member of the White House coronavirus task force on January 31. Fauci emerged early on as the widely recognized face of the US coronavirus response, offering sober forecasts and prevention recommendations as Trump largely downplayed the threat of the virus (and even floated conspiracy theories and unproven cures).

However, in recent months, Fauci appears to have been sidelined by the White House as the coronavirus response has grown politically charged. President Donald Trump's administration was even reported to be attempting to discredit the infectious disease expert as states across the US are experiencing large surges in outbreaks of the virus.

Here's a timeline of the reported decline in the relationship between the infectious disease expert and the White House:

NYC reported zero deaths from wo months after announcing the task force as the administration was ramping up its response amid rising outbreaks across the country, Trump praised Fauci at a March 13 press briefing, calling him "Tony" and saying the expert was "doing a tremendous job working long, long hours."
By early April, reports began to surface that indicated Fauci and Trump's relationship had begun to sour.
On April 12, Fauci told CNN that "no one is going to deny" the US could have saved lives by instituting containment measures earlier on in the pandemic based on prior warnings from public-health experts.
Later that day, Trump retweeted a post that included the hashtag "#Fire Fauci," which raised alarms that the public-health expert could be the latest in a line of administration officials ousted by the president.
Fauci later walked back his comment and defended Trump's record with the coronavirus response. 

Following a May 4 interview on CNN, Fauci was noticeably absent from public appearances for about two weeks, before a May 21 town hall on CNN, where he said the public would "probably be seeing a little bit more" of him.
On June 1, CNN reported that Fauci said he hadn't spoken to Trump in two weeks.
As cases surged across the US in June and Trump continued to downplay outbreaks, Fauci found other platforms to speak out on the state of the country through other outlets.
"As a country, when you compare us to other countries, I don't think you can say we're doing great," he said on a FiveThirtyEight podcast aired July 9. "I mean, we're just not."
In an interview with the Financial Times published on July 10, Fauci revealed he hadn't seen the president since June 2 and hadn't briefed him in at least two months, though he continued meetings with the task force. 

Fauci's apparently distant relationship with the White House took a turn in mid-July when an unnamed White House official told CNN that the administration had drawn up a list of "wrong" things Fauci had said in February and March that have since been scrapped from his recommendations for Americans.
Peter Navarro, a trade adviser for Trump, told the Post in a statement on Fauci's distance from the White House that while "Dr. Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have ever interacted with him on."
Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany bat down reports characterizing Trump and Fauci as at odds, saying at a July 13 press briefing that "the notion of opposition research and 'Fauci versus the president' couldn't be further from the truth," and the two "have a good working relationship."

Trump echoed McEnany, telling reporters later that day he has a "very good relationship" with Fauci and does not intend to fire him. 

THE KISS OF DEATH, HE INTENDS TO FIRE HIM ON A FRIDAY

EU, Turkey clash over Hagia Sophia, Mediterranean drilling

EU IMPOTENT LIKE UN

THE UN WILL HAVE TO SURROUND UNESCO SITES WITH PEACE KEEPERS

TO STOP THEIR NATIONALIZATION

1 of 12 https://apnews.com/3017394f54b5ecc13fc13384a7cfb110
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell speaks during a media conference after a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the European Council building in Brussels, Monday, July 13, 2020. European Union foreign ministers met for the first time face-to-face since the pandemic lockdown and will assess their discuss their relations with China and Turkey. (Francois Lenoir, Pool Photo via AP

BRUSSELS (AP) — Turkey and the European Union clashed on Monday over Ankara’s decision to change the status of Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque and its continued energy exploration in disputed Mediterranean waters.

After their their first face-to-face meeting in months, the 27 EU foreign ministers said that they “condemned the Turkish decision to convert such an emblematic monument as the Hagia Sophia,” EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said.

“This decision will inevitably fuel the mistrust, promote renewed division between religious communities and undermine our efforts at dialog and cooperation,” he said after the meeting of EU foreign ministers.

He said there was “broad support to call on the Turkish authorities to urgently consider and reverse this decision.” Hagia Sophia was originally built in Istanbul as a Christian cathedral, and the pope and others have expressed their sadness and criticism of the move by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas said Monday that the EU was “faced with a challenge and insult” meted out by Erdogan.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu hit back and rejected international intervention concerning its decision to convert Hagia Sophia back into a mosque.

“Hagia Sophia was left as a legacy as a mosque and must be used as a mosque,” Cavusoglu told state broadcaster TRT. “We strongly reject comments that amount to an intervention in Turkey’s sovereign rights.”

Borrell was in Turkey last week where he also discussed Ankara’s disputes with Greece and Cyprus over energy exploration in the eastern Mediterranean region. Turkey has dispatched warship-escorted vessels to drill for gas in an area where Cyprus insists it has exclusive rights. The Turkish government has said it’s acting to protect its interests in the area’s natural resources and those of Turkish Cypriots.

Petsas said that Turkish drilling was blatantly contrary to international obligations and international law” and said that Greece would be looking to prepare a list for possible “political, diplomatic and financial” sanctions.

Again, Cavusoglu stood firm.

“If Greece were to turn away from its maximalist ways and agree to a fair sharing (of rights), and if it were to convince Cyprus to a fair sharing of revenues (from the exploration of natural resources), then 80% of our problems would solved,” Cavusoglu said.

Borrell said there were no immediate decisions at Monday’s meeting but that the ministers would revisit the issue at their next meeting in Berlin in August.

Even as the rift between both sides was deepening, the 27 EU ministers couldn’t get that close among themselves either. It was their first in-person meeting since the coronavirus lockdown set in, but because of social distancing rules, there was only room for lots of elbow bumping for a greeting and little reading of lips, since ministers were wearing masks around the meeting table.

___

Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Derek Gatopoulos in Athens, Greece, contributed to this report.

#PRISONINDUSTRIALCOMPLEX

Congress questions private ICE detention center CEOs about pandemic response

July 13 (UPI) -- Four CEOs of private-sector immigrant detention companies defended their response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in front of a congressional subcommittee Monday.

Since the pandemic began, more than 3,000 detainees, 280 contractors and 45 ICE employees have tested positive for COVID-19. Two detainees and five contractors have died of complications after contracting COVID-19, a statement from Chairwoman Kathleen Rice, of the Border Security, Facilitation and Operations Subcommittee.

Rice said transfers between facilities and inadequate medical care are two factors spreading COVID-19 among detained populations.

Members of the House Homeland Security Committee requested testimony from heads of CoreCivic, Geo Group, Management and Training Corp and LaSalle Corrections after the DHS Inspector General issued a June report saying that facilities lacked the space to practice social distancing and lacked space to isolate detainees with symptoms or a coronavirus diagnosis.

More than 80 percent of the 34,000 immigrants in ICE custody are housed at privately run detention facilities. Contractors are paid $130 per day to house detainees.

Rice said ICE officials refused to attend the virtual hearing saying that the White House advised the agency not to testify in Congress unless the hearings were held in person.

CEOs said they worked with ICE to maintain best practices and that employees and detainees were tested regularly for symptoms and were then tested for COVID-19. Employees and detainees had access to masks, and were tested regularly, they said.

Whistleblowers from the Government Accountability Project and about 30 detainees who spoke to The New York Times have said that social distancing in ICE facilities is difficult, as 50-75 detainees are kept in each "pod" and that PPE for detainees is difficult to acquire.

Nearly half of the employees at a CoreCivic facility in Eloy, Ariz., recently tested positive for the virus, where CEO Damon Hininger, CEO of CoreCivic said that masks were "optional" for detainees.

Other committee members had questions about their specific local detention centers.

RELATED Supreme Court blocks Trump's move to end DACA program

"My office has heard reports of dozens and even hundreds of detainees being moved in and out of the Colorado facility with little or no notice to their families of their lawyers," said Joe Neguse, D-Colo.

Neguse asked about a disinfectant called HALT that was allegedly being used by Geo Group contractors in "crowded and confined spaces" in the Aurora, Colo., facility, saying that detainees were complaining of bloody noses and skin rashes.

George Zoley, CEO of Geo Group also denied to Neguse that detainees were asked to "volunteer" to clean common areas under threat of solitary confinement if they refused. The ACLU filed a $5 million class-action lawsuit in 2014 alleging that Geo Group had forced detainees to work as "slave labor" in the kitchens and laundry rooms for $1 per day.

ICE has worked within Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations and reduced the density of detainees to 70 percent in its facilities, said Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., the panel's ranking member.

The federal agency also released 900 detainees across the country who "posed a low risk to public safety," Higgins said.

Higgins complained that ICE contractors were doing their best to work with guidelines set by the CDC and Congress.

"We create ever moving goalposts for hardworking federal employees and contractors who are simply doing their jobs abiding by the laws as prescribed by Congress," Higgins said.

upi.com/7021718

A 51-Year-Old Immigrant Man From Mexico Has Died In ICE Custody After Testing Positive For COVID-19

The death comes more than a month after a Guatemalan man who tested positive for COVID-19 died in ICE custody.

Last updated on July 13, 2020,

Ted S. Warren / AP

A 51-year-old Mexican man has died in ICE custody at a Florida hospital after testing positive for COVID.

Onoval Perez-Montufa, 51, had been in ICE custody since June 15 and was detained at the Glades County Detention Center in Florida before he died on Sunday, ICE said in a statement. Perez-Montufa was a patient at Palm Beach County hospital since July 1 after reporting shortness of breath while in ICE detention.

He tested positive for COVID-19 on July 2, ICE said. The cause of death on Sunday was not immediately known.

Perez-Montufa's death comes more than a month after a 34-year-old Guatemalan man who had tested positive for COVID-19 died in ICE custody at a Georgia hospital in May. That man, 34-year-old Santiago Baten-Oxlaj, had been in ICE custody at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin since early March, the agency confirmed in a statement.

There are currently 883 cases of COVID-19 among the 22,579 inmates in ICE custody.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, medical experts and immigrant advocates have warned that the coronavirus would put detainees at risk. They have pointed to the inherent problems within jails — such as a lack of necessary space to accommodate proper social distancing guidelines — that put people in danger. Advocates have used these arguments as a way to push for more releases.

In March, ICE officials began assessing their inmate population to locate “vulnerable” detainees, including those who are over 60 or are pregnant.

Federal judges across the country have ordered the release of 502 ICE detainees since the beginning of the pandemic, citing the preexisting medical conditions of the immigrants released and the potential for life-threatening complications from COVID-19.


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An Immigrant Who Tested Positive For The Coronavirus Has Died In ICE Custody

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


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

Sea vegetables could become tasty new nutrition source


Sea asparagus and sea purslane are harvested by Professor Megan Davis (L) and staff as part of an aquaculture study at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. Photo by Megan Davis/Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute

ORLANDO, Fla., July 13 (UPI) -- Aquaculture experts and fish farm operators in Florida say a potential new crop, sea vegetables, could provide a tasty source of nutrition and generate revenue.

The native Florida vegetables that grow in salty areas near the ocean can be cultivated in fish farms using fish waste for fertilizer, according to new research. Such crops could provide a new sustainable and environmentally friendly source of nutrition, researchers say.

"I think there's a huge market for these sea veggies, which are more nutritious than even kale, the most nutritious soil-farmed plant," said Megan Davis, professor of aquaculture at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce, about 120 miles southeast of Orlando.

Davis led a 10-week study this spring to determine the best growing conditions for sea vegetables. Plants in the study were sea asparagus, which looks similar to regular asparagus; sea purslane, harvested for the fleshy leaves on long red stems; and saltwort, a smaller frilly plant.

RELATED Florida indoor farming firm turns pandemic disruption into opportunity

The plants are high in minerals, such as zinc and iodine, and vitamins, but Davis said she is awaiting a detailed nutrition analysis from the harvest.

"Obviously, a lot of people eat seaweed, but I think these sea vegetables appeal to a broader public. They have a crisp salty taste," Davis said.

Besides Florida, the sea vegetables are native to other coastal regions around the world. For the Harbor Branch experiment, they were grown in tanks that also raise fish, shrimp, urchins and oysters.

RELATED Iowa farm group restoring habitat for bees, fish

The vegetables were grown in three different types of hydroponic media -- sand, clay pebbles and only water with nutrients. Davis and other researchers used the waste from the marine life to provide nutrients, or fertilizer.

She said the sand provided the best growth in the study, which received $25,000 in funding from the state's marine-themed specialty license plate sales. One of the plants grew to weigh 2 pounds in 10 weeks.

Companies that farm fish, shrimp and clams said they were impressed with the findings by the institute, which is part of Florida Atlantic University.

RELATED Florida team studies hydroponic hemp as toxic algae remed

Shrimp farmer Robin Pearl said he'd like to add sea vegetables to his product lineup at his company, American Penaeid in Pine Island, Fla., 120 miles south of Tampa.

"We currently sell shrimp to many high-end restaurants, and we'd offer sea vegetables to the chefs who like new, interesting cuisine," Pearl said.

With 100 acres of shrimp tanks, Pearl's company has plenty of shrimp waste to use as fertilizer, he said.

"We've thought about doing this before, but we've been too focused on the business of growing shrimp. Given what we've learned, it might make sense now," Pearl said.

Shrimp are among many farmed marine products that could complement sea vegetables, said Carolina Panoff, sales and marketing manager at Seaventures Clam Co. in Fort Pierce.

Seaventures, founded in 2018, sells young clams to clam farmers. The company plans to grow sea vegetables, Panoff said.

"Sea vegetables look like an incredible market to get into. Seaweed is super healthy, and frankly, it should be available in every grocery store in the near future," Panoff said.

Poll: Most in U.S. wear mask in public 'always' or 'very often'
SURVIVAL OF THE FIT TESTED 

THESE PEOPLE WILL GET THE VIRUS ITS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME
Protesters rally against a mandatory statewide mask order in Ohio, at Edgewater Park in Cleveland, Ohio, on Saturday. Photo by Aaron Josefczyk/UPI | License Photo

MOST AMERICANS ARE NOT AS STUPID AS TRUMP, THE GOP OR THE TRUMP BASE

July 13 (UPI) -- Nearly three-quarters of Americans say they always wear a face mask when in public or do so "very often," a new Gallup poll showed Monday.

The survey examined mask use among respondents and found the numbers vary a bit along different demographics.

According to the poll, 44 percent said they "always" wear a mask away from their home, while 28 percent said they do so "very often."
Eleven percent said they wear a mask in public "sometimes," 4 percent said they "rarely" do and 14 percent said they "never" do.

"Although a broad majority of Americans are wearing masks in public at least very often, fewer are doing so all the time recommended by the CDC and other health officials," Gallup wrote. "Since April, a growing minority of U.S. adults are eschewing mask usage."

Gallup said in another survey last week that 86 percent of respondents said they'd worn a mask in public and 11 percent said they'd never considered it.

Monday's survey found that women (54 percent), Democrats (61 percent) and residents in the U.S. Northeast (54 percent) are most likely to always wear a mask in public. The lowest share (33 percent) was seen in the Midwest.
Researchers said the findings are from the probability-based online Gallup Panel survey that was conducted between June 29 and July 5.

DEVELOPMENT RUSH 

State of emergency called in Arctic after Russian fuel spill

It was the second Russian fuel spill in the Arctic in two weeks 



Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a virtual meeting near Moscow on the remedial action after the diesel fuel spill in Norilsk on June 19. A second spill in the Arctic Sunday caused officials there to call a state of emergency. Photo by Alexei Nikolsky/EPA-EFE

July 13 (UPI) -- The Taimyr District administration declared a state of emergency in the Arctic's Tukhard settlement located in the country's Krasnoyarsk Region Monday after a pipeline lost pressure and released jet fuel into the environment.

The pipeline, owned by the Nornickel Company subsidiary Norilsktransgas, is used to transfer fuel to a tank. It lost pressure Sunday, causing the line to break.

"According to updated information, a total of 55 cubic meters of fuel contaminated over 30 square meters of soil," the district said in a statement. "The fuel has also spread into two bodies of water connected by a stream."

Authorities said the spill was contained and prevented from spreading into the Bolshaya Kheta River with the use of seven lines of containment booms.

The company said 44.5 tons of fuel spilled for about 15 minutes. Nornickel, a mining company, said there was no threat to life or to the health of people in the area, but an internal investigation into what happened has started.

It was the second Russian fuel spill in the Arctic recently. Two weeks ago, 20,000 tons of diesel fuel spilled into a river at a power plant near Norilsk, a town just north of the Arctic Circle. In that case, four power plant employees were arrested on charges of violating environmental regulations.

Norilsk's mayor was also charged with negligence. Sergey Dyachenko, the chief operating officer of Norilsk Nickel, blamed global warming for thawing permafrost beneath it for the spill.

States sue to block deportation of international university students


July 13 (UPI) -- Attorneys general in 18 states sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Monday over a new threat to deport international university students enrolled in online-only classes this fall.

Calling a July 6 Immigration and Customs Enforcement ruling "senseless and cruel," states led by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said the ICE decision imposes "an insuperable burden on our colleges and universities." The higher-learning institutions have until Aug. 4 to provide to ICE a list of every international student and certify that they are attending in-person classes.


Universities will have to choose "between keeping their international students enrolled and protecting the health and safety of their campuses," attorneys general said in filing their complaint. File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

Universities have been developing programs to address how and whether students can return to in-person classes based on health recommendations amid the coronavirus pandemic. An earlier March ICE ruling allowed international students to switch to online classes "for the duration of the emergency" the suit said. Non-immigrant student F-1 and M-1 student visas were permitted under the previous rules.

Universities have developed protocols for the 2020 fall school schedule and which classes will be online and in-person, the suit said. Universities will have to choose "between keeping their international students enrolled and protecting the health and safety of their campuses," the complaint said.

RELATED California sues Trump admin over 'absurd' student visa policy

Losing international students will be devastating for university budgets, as they pay higher international tuition, the suit said. States could lose hundreds of billions of dollars in lost tuition, as well as fees for housing and other services, the suit said.

States co-filing the suit include Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. Private universities Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology filed similar lawsuits earlier.

The directive by ICE attacking university systems' bottom line was followed by a tweet Friday by U.S. President Donald Trump attacking the "Radical Left indoctrination" on college campuses.

RELATED Harvard, MIT sue to block ICE from removing student visas for online instruction

"Too many universities and school systems are about radical left indoctrination, not education. Therefore, I am telling the Treasury Department to re-examine their tax-exempt status... and/or Funding," Trump tweeted "...which will be taken away if this propaganda or act against public policy continues. Our children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated!"

RELATED ICE to require students on visas to leave universities that transition to fully online

British army to cut armored vehicles acquired for war in Afghanistan
PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY WAR IS WASTE

Heavily armored vehicles like the Mastiff, pictured, were useful in the Afghanistan war but offering no current advantage and are the next elements on Britain's list of equipment to be sold, British defense officials have said. Photo courtesy of British Ministry of Defense

July 13 (UPI) -- The British army intends to cull massive armored trucks using during the war in Afghanistan because, officials say, they have no practical purpose now, a plan revealed this month indicates.

The blast-proof trucks, designed to withstand roadside explosives, will be removed from service under the new Land Environment Fleet Optimization Plan, Defense Ministry Procurement Minister Jeremy said.

About 733 vehicles will be removed from service and likely sold to defense agencies of other countries, officials say.

Britain purchased thousands of armored vehicles to improve protection for patrol and logistics operations, but by ending its involvement in Afghanistan in 2014, it has little use for them, officials say.

With names like Mastiff, Ridgeback and Wolfhound, the U.S.-made vehicles stand out by their size and armament.

The Defense Ministry notes that the Mastiff is "a heavily armored, six by six-wheel-drive patrol vehicle which carries eight troops, plus two crew. It is suitable for road patrols and convoys and is the newest in a range of protected patrol vehicles being used for operations.

Mastiff has a maximum speed of 90kph [56mph], is armed with the latest weapon systems, including a 7.62mm general purpose machine gun, 12.7mm heavy machine gun or 40mm automatic grenade launcher."

The British Army has already removed over 2,800 vehicles from service as Britain reduces its catalog of military equipment. The next phase of cuts involves the armored vehicles, Quin said on July 2.

Britain's Conservative government, working with a gross domestic product reduced by 20 percent because of the COVID-19 pandemic, continues to shrink the military, which is roughly half the size it was when the Soviet Union fell in 1991.

Since 2010, two light aircraft carriers, two amphibious ships, four frigates, maritime patrol planes and carrier-compatible Harrier jump jets have been eliminated, and the number of service members dropped by 30,000.The army now has 89 fewer 316 Challenger 2 tanks and only about one-third of about 130 self-propelled howitzers available to it in 2010.

Ridgecrest temblors increase chance of San Andreas earthquake


The greater Los Angeles area lies near the San Andreas Fault, which researchers said Monday is at greater risk for an earthquake following two tremblors last year. Photo courtesy of Temblo

July 13 (UPI) -- The Ridgecrest temblors that hit California last year could make a San Andreas earthquake more likely, a new study found.

The likelihood is higher because the 2019 temblors in Ridgecrest, Calif., "stressed the Garlock Fault," and the Garlock Fault links the Ridgecrest faults with the San Andreas fault, researchers said in the study, published Monday in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

The 6.4-magnitude and 7.1-magnitude Ridgecrest earthquakes caused no deaths and modest damage because they were in a remote desert area of Southern California, but they "could have far-reaching effects," according to researchers.

If another big earthquake ruptures the Garlock, it could cause a chain reaction that triggers a San Andreas earthquake north of Los Angeles, researchers said. The probability of such a rupture in the next year remains low at a 2.3 percent chance, but that's still 100 times higher than previous models have found.

"So, the sky is not falling, co-author Ross Stein, CEO of Temblor, which assesses the risks of earthquakes, told National Geographic. "But it is significantly higher, in our judgment, than what it would have been had the Ridgecrest earthquake not occurred."

FDA fast tracks possible COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, BioNTech

BIG PHARMA RACE FOR $$$$$ PROFITS 

AND MONOPOLY

Pfizer and BioNTech are evaluating at least four experimental vaccines in its BNT162 program, all based on an mRNA, or "messenger RNA," technique. File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo

July 13 (UPI) -- U.S. pharma giant Pfizer and BioNTech announced Monday that they have received "fast track" designation from U.S. health officials for two COVID-19 vaccine candidates.

The companies said the designation from the Food and Drug Administration -- a process used by reguators to speed the development and review of potential drugs and vaccines -- means a large-scale human trial of their BNT162b1 and BNT162b2 candidates could begin as soon as this month.

"The FDA's decision to grant these two COVID-19 vaccine candidates Fast Track designation signifies an important milestone in the efforts to develop a safe and effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 [the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19]," Pzizer Senior Vice President Peter Honig said in a statement.

The FDA granted fast-track status based on preliminary data from ongoing studies in the United States and Germany, as well as earlier animal studies.

ANOTHER WALL ST. PITCH 

Regeneron to launch Phase 3 trials of antibody 'cocktail' for COVID-19

Pfizer and BioNTech are evaluating at least four experimental vaccines in its BNT162 program, all based on an mRNA, or "messenger RNA," technique -- which, unlike traditional vaccines, does not use an inactivated virus but rather a portion of the coronavirus' own genetic code to trigger production of antibodies.

The initial results of the Phase 1 and 2 studies, published earlier this month, showed that all 24 participants who received lower dose levels of the BNT162b1 candidate generated antibodies against COVID-19.

Some of the antibodies were found to be "neutralizing," or sufficiently powerful to halt the virus. Pfizer called the results encouraging because the vaccine succeeded in activating antibody responses at least as robust as convalescent sera -- the antibody collected from patients who have recovered from COVID-19.

YES BUT NO Health officials: Quick work for COVID-19 vaccine a 'risk we have to take'

The companies said last month they're preparing to produce millions of vaccine doses this year and hundreds of millions in 2021.

Other vaccine candidates have also shown early promise in fighting COVID-19, including potential drugs from Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Moderna and China's CanSino Biologics.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/07/postmodern-monopoly-imperialism-as-u.html