Public health experts: Single-payer systems coping with coronavirus more effectively than for-profit model

March 16, 2020 By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams


“Having a healthcare system that’s a public strategic asset rather than a business run for profit allows for a degree of coordination and optimal use of resources.”

As the coronavirus pandemic places extraordinary strain on national healthcare systems around the world, public health experts are making the case that countries with universal single-payer systems have thus far responded more efficiently and effectively to the outbreak than nations like the United States, whose fragmented for-profit apparatus has struggled to cope with the growing crisis.

“There is no need for people to worry about the tests or vaccine or cost of care if people become ill.”
—Helen Buckingham, Nuffield Trust

“It is too soon to see definite outcomes among competing healthcare systems. But even in this early phase, public health experts say the single-payer, state-run systems are proving themselves relatively robust,” the Washington Post reported Sunday. “Unlike the United States, where a top health official told Congress the rollout of testing was ‘failing‘ and where Congress is only now moving through a bill that includes free testing, the single-payer countries have been especially nimble at making free, or low-cost, virus screening widely available for patients with coughs and fevers.”

While the Trump administration only recently took steps to massively expand COVID-19 testing—sparking concerns that the outbreak in the U.S. is far more severe than official numbers suggest—countries with forms of single-payer healthcare like South Korea and Denmark have for weeks been offering “drive-through” testing and other innovative mechanisms, allowing them to quickly test hundreds of thousands of their citizens and respond accordingly.

“Unhampered government intervention into the healthcare sector is an advantage when the virus is spreading fast across the country,” said Choi Jae-wook, a professor of preventive medicine at Korea University in Seoul.

South Korea has done more than just “flatten the curve” of new Covid-19 infections. It bought the curve down through:
– Aggressive testing (20,000 tests daily, “drive through” testing)/isolation
– School holiday extended
– Government advice to stay inside
– large events cancelled pic.twitter.com/MGzuX9Oc6w
— Tom Hancock (@hancocktom) March 13, 2020

Jorgen Kurtzhals, the head of the University of Copenhagen medical school, told the Post that the strength of Denmark’s single-payer system is that it has “a lot of really highly educated and well-trained staff, and given some quite un-detailed instructions, they can actually develop plans for an extremely rapid response.”

“We don’t have to worry too much about whether this response or that response demands specific payments here and there,” said Kurtzhals said. “We are aware that there will be huge expenditure within the system. But we’re not too concerned about it because we have a direct line of communication from the national government to the regional government to the hospital directors.”

None of which is to say that countries with forms of single-payer healthcare or nationalized systems are flawlessly handling the COVID-19 pandemic, which has infected at least 173,000 people and killed more than 6,000 worldwide.

“We don’t have to worry too much about whether this response or that response demands specific payments here and there.”
—Jorgen Kurtzhals, University of Copenhagen

Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), following years of austerity imposed by Conservative governments, is facing staff and supply shortages as hospitals are being overwhelmed with patients. Canada, like the U.K., is struggling with a shortage of ventilators.

But Helen Buckingham, director of strategy and operations at the London-based Nuffield Trust think tank, told the Post that the NHS is in a relatively good position to cope with COVID-19 because it has “a very clear emergency planning structure.”

Additionally, Buckingham noted, “there is no need for people to worry about the tests or vaccine or cost of care if people become ill.”

David Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, said that in a “time of crisis” like the coronavirus pandemic, “having a healthcare system that’s a public strategic asset rather than a business run for profit allows for a degree of coordination and optimal use of resources.”

During the Democratic presidential primary debate Sunday night in Washington, D.C., former Vice President Joe Biden cited Italy’s struggles to contain COVID-19 as evidence that the Medicare for All system advocated by rival candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would not be effective in a pandemic. Italy has been the hardest-hit country outside China with nearly 25,000 cases of the novel coronavirus.

“With all due respect for Medicare for All, you have a single-payer system in Italy,” said Biden. “It doesn’t work there.”

Critics were quick to take issue with Biden’s talking point. “[Single-payer] isn’t the reason Italy is having problems,” tweeted HuffPost healthcare reporter Jonathan Cohn. “Italy’s problem is health system capacity. Independent of health system design.”

This is the dumbest point. No, single payer does not solve the problem of pandemics. But it definitely solves the problem of thousands and thousands of people going bankrupt because there’s a pandemic. It solves the problem of people not seeking out care for fear of bankruptcy. https://t.co/L2Cx2VJGZj
— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) March 16, 2020

Dr. David Himmelstein, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program and distinguished professor of public health at the City University of New York at Hunter College, said in a statement Sunday night that the “fragmented system” in the United States “leaves public health separate and disconnected from medical care, and provides no mechanism to appropriately balance funding priorities.”

“As a result, public health accounts for less than 3 percent of overall health expenditures, a percentage that has been falling for decades, and is about half the proportion in Canada or the U.K.,” said Himmselstein. “One result is that state and local health departments that are the front lines in dealing with epidemics have lost 50,000 position since 2008 due to budget cuts.”

On the debate stage Sunday evening, Sanders made the case for transitioning the U.S. to a single-payer program, arguing that the coronavirus “exposes the incredible weakness and dysfunctionality of our current healthcare system.”

“How in God’s name does it happen,” said Sanders, “that we end up with 87 million people who are uninsured or underinsured and there are people who are watching this program tonight who are saying, ‘I’m not feeling well. Should I go to the doctor? But I can’t afford to go to the doctor. What happens if I am sick?'”

“So the word has got to go out, and I certainly would do this as president: You don’t worry,” Sanders added. “People of America, do not worry about the cost of prescription drugs. Do not worry about the cost of the healthcare that you’re going to get, because we are a nation—a civilized democratic society. Everybody, rich and poor, middle class, will get the care they need. The drug companies will not rip us off.”

How the coronavirus has exposed the religious right’s racism



By Samel L. Perry, Andrew L. Whitehead and Joseph O. Baker
on March 13, 2020


On March 10, President Trump retweeted a post from conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, who referred to the coronavirus (COVID-19) as the “China Virus.“ Kirk also exclaimed in his tweet, “Now, more than ever, we need the wall…the US stands a chance if we can get control of our borders.” Trump retweeted this and added the comment, “Going up fast. We need the wall more than ever!”

At first blush, this exchange might seem like the garden-variety white nationalist xenophobia characteristic of Trump or many of his influential supporters. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and GOP House Representative Kevin McCarthy, in fact, have both insisted on continuing to call the disease the “Chinese Coronavirus.” But Trump’s retweet, and where it originates, helps shed light not only on the Right’s brazen xenophobia, but on the link between America’s supposed religious heritage and fears of ethnic pollution.

Charlie Kirk is co-founder of Liberty University’s Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty. The Falkirk Center is described by Liberty’s newspaper as a “modern think tank set to renew and defend God-given freedoms and Christian principles throughout American politics and culture.”

That an ambassador of Christian nationalism like Kirk would hold xenophobic attitudes should be no surprise. In Taking America Back for God, we show that such views are fundamental to the Christian nationalist framework. One of the most consistent findings in research on Christian nationalism over the past decade is that Americans who more strongly subscribe to this ideology are more likely to be staunchly anti-immigrant―especially if those immigrants are non-white and/or non-Christian.

But Kirk’s repeated “China Virus” tweets, and Trump’s powerful retweet, both connecting the spread of disease with the need to keep immigrants out, are a clear reminder that white Christian nationalism has always connected non-white immigrants with social and biological contamination. Immigration is framed as an issue of purity or contamination; a righteous body politic or pathological disease.

Chinese immigrants have long been the target of such attacks. The Immigration Act of 1882 included the Chinese Exclusion Act, which all but banned immigrants from anywhere in Asia, who were perceived to be plagued with “the social and political diseases of the Old World.” Asians in particular, and to a lesser extent Eastern Europeans, were deemed less worthy than immigrants from parts of Europe populated by those more likely to be “White” and “Protestant,” which have often been historically been understood to mean the same thing.

Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign, which was successful due in no small part to his appeals to white Christian nationalism, drew on similar “contamination” rhetoric to shore up support for the Mexican border wall. He insisted that not only are Mexicans supposedly bringing violent crime and drugs into the country, but they are responsible for “tremendous infectious disease…pouring across the border.”

Survey data from a nationally representative sample of Americans collected within the past year allows us to see the explicit connection between White Christian nationalism and Americans’ perceptions that immigrants are disease-ridden. The 2019 Chapman University Survey of American Fears asked respondents to indicate how much they agreed with five statements, including: “The federal government should declare the US a Christian nation,” and “The federal government should advocate Christian values.” Responses ranged from zero (“strongly disagree”) to three (“strongly agree”). We added the responses together to make a Christian nationalism index, with values ranging from 0 to 15. The survey also asked Americans about their agreement with a range of statements about perceived xenophobic threats, including: “Immigrants bring diseases into the United States.”

To the left we see the percentage of Americans who agree that immigrants bring diseases across scores on the Christian nationalism index. The trend is striking. Not only are those who affirm Christian nationalism more likely to believe immigrants transport disease into the U.S., at the highest levels of Christian nationalism, nearly all (98%) believe this to be true.

But is this perhaps just a function of political conservatism, or age, or being a fundamentalist Christian, all of which are associated with both Christian nationalism and xenophobic fears?

Not at all. When we account for various factors such as age, political party and ideology, religious practice and belief,

education, gender, and so on, we see the same pattern. In fact, as the figure to the right shows, this trend shows up across political party. While numbers aren’t quite as pronounced for Democrats and Independents as Republicans, clearly, as adherence to Christian nationalist ideology increases, the likelihood that someone associates immigration with disease increases greatly.

What all this shows is that xenophobic responses to the coronavirus by Christian nationalists like Charlie Kirk, or their champions like Donald Trump, are entirely predictable. It has been this way for centuries. For those who believe the nation rightly belongs to “people like us” (read: White, native-born, Christians), anyone who falls into the category of “them” is polluting―both culturally and biologically. 

THE FACT THAT WASPS ARE ALSO THE KKK IS PROVEN BY THEIR CLASSIC HATRED OF ALL THINGS PAPIST, AKA CATHOLIC WITH AS MUCH

DISDAIN, CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND BIGOTRY AS THEY HAVE

 TOWARDS BLACK BAPTISTS!

---30---

UPDATED
BUSTED: ‘Dead Sea Scroll’ exhibit at right-wing supported Museum of the Bible is filled with fakes

March 13, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris


The National Geographic revealed in a story on Friday that what the Museum of the Bible has claimed are fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls are a complete fraud.

The museum, founded by Hobby Lobby CEO Steve Green, already faced problems when they were “forced to forfeit thousands of cuneiform texts from Iraq, and pay a $3 million fine for illicit importation,” reported Politico.

Now the museum is back in the news as independent researchers funded by the museum announced that all of the 16 fragments are forgeries. The museum says that they were duped by the collector and Green, as well as biblical scholars.

“The Museum of the Bible is trying to be as transparent as possible,” says CEO Harry Hargrave. “We’re victims—we’re victims of misrepresentation, we’re victims of fraud.”

The museum researchers released a report of over 200 pages detailing how “these fragments were manipulated with the intent to deceive,” said fraud investigator Colette Loll.

“The new findings don’t cast doubt on the 100,000 real Dead Sea Scroll fragments, most of which lie in the Shrine of the Book, part of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem,” said National Geographic. “However, the report’s findings raise grave questions about the ‘post-2002’ Dead Sea Scroll fragments, a group of some 70 snippets of biblical text that entered the antiquities market in the 2000s. Even before the new report, some scholars believed that most to all of the post-2002 fragments were modern fakes.”

“Once one or two of the fragments were fake, you know all of them probably are, because they come from the same sources, and they look basically the same,” said Norway’s University researcher Årstein Justnes, who has tracked the post-2002 pieces.

“It really was—and still is—an interesting kind of detective story,” says Jeffrey Kloha, the Museum of the Bible’s chief curatorial officer. “We really hope this is helpful to other institutions and researchers because we think this provides a good foundation for looking at other pieces, even if it raises other questions.”

Read the full expose at the National Geographic.

Museum of the Bible's Dead Sea Scrolls are fake, analysis shows


All of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Museum of the Bible's collections have been determined to be fake. File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

March 13 (UPI) -- An art fraud investigation team announced Friday that none of the Museum of the Bible's Dead Sea Scrolls fragments is genuine.

The results of the third-party scientific analysis by Art Fraud Insights came more than a year after the museum determined that five of its fragments were fake and removed them from exhibition.

"After an exhaustive review of all the imaging and scientific analysis results, it is evident that none of the textual fragments in Museum of the Bible's Dead Sea Scroll collection are authentic," said Colette Loll, founder and director of Art Fraud Insights. "Moreover, each exhibits characteristics that suggest they are deliberate forgeries created in the 20th century with the intent to mimic authentic Dead Sea Scroll fragments."

Museum officials said they planned to continue using the services of Art Fraud Insights to analyze the facility's entire collection.

"Notwithstanding the less than favorable results, we have done what no other institution with post-2002 DSS fragments has done," Museum of the Bible Chief Curatorial Officer Jeffrey Kloha said. "The sophisticated and costly methods employed to discover the truth about our collection could be used to shed light on other suspicious fragments and perhaps even be effective in uncovering who is responsible for these forgeries."

Before it opened in November 2017, the Museum of the Bible's collection came under scrutiny by critics of the collecting practices of Hobby Lobby President Steve Green, who donated some of the exhibits at the museum. He donated the five fragments discredited in 2018.

The Green family has collected about 40,000 artifacts worth more than $205 million over the past decade.

In May 2018, Hobby Lobby returned thousands of historic artifacts from modern-day Iraq that Green purchased in Dubai and improperly brought to the United States. He paid $1.6 million for 5,500 pieces, which included 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablets and stone cylinders, in 2010. The company also agreed to pay a $3 million fine.

The Department of Justice found that the company had the tablets shipped to its Oklahoma headquarters, but that the boxes were labeled as containing ceramic tile samples. Green promised more oversight at the time and blamed the incident on his own inexperience as a collector.

"We made mistakes, but we've learned from them," he said.

"Before this, we weren't collectors or museum-goers," Green added. "We didn't know we needed to ask for all this paperwork" to prove provenance.

Proving prior ownership of an artwork or artifact is meant not only to verify the authenticity of the piece, but to prevent the sale of looted items.

The misstep cast doubt on the veracity of other objects the Green family owns, including some that are on display at the Museum of the Bible.

Loll praised Museum of the Bible officials for being transparent about the inauthentic items.

"Usually, items that are determined to be fake are quietly removed from display and transferred to the euphemistic 'study collection.' Museum of the Bible has opted to be as transparent as possible with its collection of Dead Sea Scrolls -- from the interim gallery labels, to the public announcement of the results of the research and the subsequent release of all of the associated research materials. This data can now be used for comparison to other questioned fragments. What a tremendous contribution to the field," she said.

Fox News guest cites Bible as proof coronavirus is ‘plot’ to unleash ‘biological warfare’

March 15, 2020 By David Edwards


Evangelist Alveda King told Fox News viewers on Sunday that the novel coronavirus is part of a “plot” to unleash “biological warfare” on the planet.

On Sunday, King appeared on Fox & Friends to praise President Donald Trump for declaring a national day of prayer to combat the pandemic.

“President Trump is reminding us to be wise,” King told Fox News host Pete Hegseth. “I think he said that a vaccine is on the verge and some other types of precautions… That should be very comforting for us.

(In fact, a COVID-19 vaccine will take at least 18 months to develop, according to the World Health Organization.)

King continued: “In my prayer, [I say], ‘God is this you doing this for judgement?’ And then I went to Psalms 2 and it says the rulers and the kings of the Earth get together and plot and do certain kind of things.”

“So, evil people — it seems as though biological warfare was involved in this to some degree,” she added. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist and I don’t want to make up anything.”

“Yeah, we don’t know that,” Hegseth interrupted. “I get that.”

“We don’t,” King agreed. “I think this is human error, not God trying to [punish] America.”

Watch the video below from Fox News.

BILLION DOLLARS BOONDOGGLE

GAO: F-35 central logistics system 'does not work properly,' needs redesign

By Ed Adamczyk


An F-35 fighter plane of the U.S. Air Force departs Edelson AFB, Alaska. Photo courtesy of Lockheed Martin

March 16 (UPI) -- The central logistics system of the F-35 fighter plane needs a complete redesign, the General Accounting Office said on Monday after an investigation.

In a report made public on Monday, GAO advised the Defense Department to develop a performance measurement process of the plane's Autonomic Logistics Information System.

"After years of development and testing, the system does not work properly -- with inaccurate or missing data sometimes leading ALIS to ground flight-ready aircraft, among other problems," GAO said in a summary of the report.

Lockheed Martin, the plane's manufacturer, refers to ALIS as "the fleet management backbone for the F-35. Pilots plan and debrief missions, and sustainment professionals maintain the F-35 using ALIS. Delivering an integrated interface to maintenance, supply chain and sustainment information, ALIS is the single management tool supporting all F-35 operations."

The recommendations came in a 58-page GAO report, published March 6 and made available to the public today. It noted that key risks associated with the system have been reported in the past five years, including inaccurate data within the system and ineffective personnel training.

The report calls for a Defense Department review of efforts to improve the system, noting that its investigation included interviews with Defense Department and contractor officials, and visits to five F-35 air bases.

Regarded as the best fighter plane in the world, the three variants of F-35 are in use, or on order, by 14 nations.

With U.S. sustainment costs estimated at about $1.2 trillion over an expected 66-year life cycle, the GAO called it the "most ambitious and costly weapon system in history."

The program has also had numerous development delays, parts shortages and replacement part failures, to the point that the U.S. Congress has been reluctant to approve multi-year contracts to suppliers.

South Korea university develops recyclable facial masks
ByKim Deul-pul, UPI News Korea


South Korean scientists said Monday they have developed face masks that people can reuse even after washing them 20 times. Photo courtesy of Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology

SEOUL, March 16 (UPI) -- A team of South Korean researchers have developed a recyclable face mask, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology said Monday.

The team headed by Professor Kim Il-doo said people can reuse the cotton mask, which is equipped with a nanofiber filter, even after washing it more than 10 times.

The reusable masks are expected to help the country grapple with the shortage of face masks due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Thai workers were caught recycling and reselling masks early this month after washing and repackaging them.

"Traditional mask filters use static electricity to block pollution sticks or viruses. When they are exposed to water, however, they lose efficiency," Kim told UPI News Korea.

"In comparison, our products are based on different technology to make nanofiber membranes. We learned that their effectiveness continues even after washing with ethanol spray 20 times."

Kim added that the filters are replaceable so that people can use the masks for weeks.

"As our masks can be reused after hand washing, we hope that they will enable the country to better deal with nationwide shortages while addressing environmental problems caused by used masks," he said. "Mass production would be possible after getting the government approval."

Health officials have debated whether face masks can help protect people from the fast-spreading COVID-19. But the Seoul administration has encouraged people to wear them.

Meet the 17-year-old behind a website tracking coronavirus cases that is now a vital global resource


March 15, 2020 By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!


A teenager’s website tracking coronavirus has become one of the most vital resources for people seeking accurate and updated numbers on the pandemic. The URL is nCoV2019.live. We speak with 17-year-old Avi Schiffmann, a high school junior from Mercer Island outside Seattle, who started the site in late December, when coronavirus had not yet been detected outside of China. Now the site has been visited by tens of millions from every country on Earth. It tracks deaths, numbers of cases locally and globally, and provides an interactive map, information on the disease, and a Twitter feed. The resource updates every minute or so, and pulls information from the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and elsewhere.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we go now to Seattle, Washington, where one teenager’s website tracking the coronavirus has become one of the most vital resources for people seeking accurate and updated numbers on the pandemic. The URL is nCoV2019.live. That’s nCoV2019.live. Seventeen-year-old Avi Schiffmann started the site in late December when the coronavirus had not yet been detected outside China. Now the site’s been visited by tens of millions of people from all over the planet. The site tracks deaths, numbers of cases locally and globally, and it talks about the number of people who have recovered. It also provides an interactive map, information on the disease, and a Twitter feed. The resource, which updates every minute or so, pulls information from the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and elsewhere.


Well, 17-year-old Avi Schiffmann joins us now from Seattle, Washington.

Welcome to Democracy Now! First off, Avi, is your school still in session?





AVI SCHIFFMANN: No, my school closed today for about a month and a half or two. It’s kind of crazy.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, it only leaves you more time, I guess, to continue this unbelievable global resource.

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about your website. And what? You started it in December?




AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah, I started this website around Christmas of last year. And I mean, the main goal of it was to provide just an easy way to see the straight facts and the data, you know, without having to make a website that was biased or, you know, full of ads or anything like that. So, I mean, you can, like, go on a phone and just instantly see like the quick facts. You can see the total amount of cases, the total deaths and, you know, all that kind of information. And you can get that for individual countries, and now U.S. states, too, and all kinds of things. So, I didn’t want to make it hard. You know, you shouldn’t have to go through government websites and download like a daily PDF that’s probably out of date by the time you read it, and, you know, have to go through all kinds of complicated things, just to see, you know, the straight facts. So, that was the main reason why I wanted to make this website.

AMY GOODMAN: But how did you know — how did you know what the Trump administration didn’t know? We’re talking about last December. I mean, no one was talking about this —




AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — in the United States. Yes, this was a terrible crisis in China. What first sparked your interest to do this?

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah, so, I mean, when I started this website, there was less than like a thousand total cases, and they were all just in like the Wuhan area of China. So, I saw this on the news kind of a long time ago, and I noticed that it was really hard just to find the information. And there was a lot of just misinformation spreading. So I decided it would be kind of cool to create a website and just kind of make it like a central hub of information.

AMY GOODMAN: And how did you do it? How did you code this? How do you know how to do this?




AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah, I mean, I’ve been programming for about a decade now. But I’ve only been doing web development for a couple months. So, a lot of it was, you know, just kind of learning as I went along. I mean, you can learn like anything online. I just kind of — you know, if I had a question, I didn’t know how to do a certain thing, I just went on Google and searched it up, figured out how to do it and eventually got it to work.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about how this website works. I mean, we’re using it every single day at Democracy Now!, because right before we go on the air, we want to give people the latest figures.

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: How often are you updating this? How does this automatically update for each country in the world?

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Sure. So, the entire website updates every minute or so. And the way it works is with something called web scraping. So, I’m able to input websites, such as — you know, let’s say Korea. They have a local government health department kind of website that updates those information, those numbers all the time. So I’m able to web scrape those tables and stuff and get the latest information. And then there’s also plenty of news sources, as well. So, there’s plenty of reputable news sources. In Korea, there’s one called Yonhap, I believe, that’s pretty reputable. And sometimes they’re able to get the information faster than those local Korean government sites. So, it goes around, you know, for all those kind of places. China, for example, every province has their own health department kind of website, and they have all kinds of information and all the numbers. And I’m able — I basically just wrote a script that every minute or so just goes to those websites and downloads the latest information.




AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the way you’ve broken it down at the top. When you hit the website, we see it starts out with — explain each of the set of numbers, before you go into the countries, and then you break down the countries.

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah. So, right now, as soon as you go to the website, especially on a mobile device, you just see the quick facts. You know, you see the totals of the deceased and infected and recovered. And then you’re able to see individual tables that you can sort and search. So let’s say I want to sort specifically Europe just by how many deceased there were. Then I’m able to sort it that way, and I can see all that kind of information for individual countries. And I’ve been working to break it down. So, for example, the United States, you can see the individual states. You can see the same thing for Australia. And later tonight, I’ll probably have something for other places, too, like India, where you can see the individual kind of provinces, state, region, areas.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you have the number of people affected overall in the globe, and then by country, and then by region. You have the number of people who have died. And you have the number of people who have recovered. Talk about how that came into being.

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah, so that was kind of interesting. So, that, that wasn’t there for quite a while. And I started to get a lot of emails saying that the site was kind of overly negative. And I decided that it would be really cool if I could show how many people were recovering, to give people a more positive outlook and maybe more hope. So I added that to the quick facts. In every single country, you can see how many people have recovered, which I think gives people a lot of hope, because you can see, in places like Korea, I think, they reported more people that recovered today than people that had been infected, which is really big. And I’m also working on things like a vaccine tracker to continue making it more positive, because it shouldn’t have to be, you know, super negative and you only see the amount of people that have died.




AMY GOODMAN: What does a vaccine tracker mean, Avi?

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah. So, around the world, there’s, you know, plenty of governments and private health kind of companies that are working on antiviral medications, and there are vaccine trials going on. So, right now, there is no cure, but plenty of people are working on some kind of preventative measures. So I thought it would be kind of interesting for people to kind of track that, I guess, you know, track their progress and how far they are into these clinical trials, you know, what stage they’re in, and all that kind of cool stuff.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about who is watching this. I mean, we’re talking about — are you at 12 million now?

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah. Right now I’m at about 35 million.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re at 35 million viewers —




AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — users of your website.

AVI SCHIFFMANN: The past 24 hours — yeah, the past 24 hours has been about six-and-a-half million visitors. So, it’s a lot of pressure.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is astounding. How many people outside the United States? Inside? Where are most of the people viewing your website from?




AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah. So, what’s really interesting is that only about 60% of my traffic is from the United States, which means that I’m able to see it breaking down per country. And actually, I get a lot of visitors from places like Taiwan and, you know, United Kingdom and France. And a lot of places in Europe and Asia visit my website, too. So that’s why I’m also working on translations, because, you know, if you’re in Taiwan, you might like to see the website in Chinese more than English. So I’m working on things like that, too.

AMY GOODMAN: And what have you been able to learn about the transmission of the disease, of COVID-19, as a result of your tracking?

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah. So, one thing that’s been really interesting to see is that you can see countries like Iran and South Korea. They used to have, you know, pretty similar kind of case counts, but you’d see that Iran would have five times more deaths, which is just insane. So I think it’s really interesting that you’re able to see the kind of difference in fatality rates depending on the country’s healthcare system and how they’re dealing with it, you know, transparency-wise.

AMY GOODMAN: Who taught you to code?




AVI SCHIFFMANN: I just — I learned myself, just watching YouTube videos and just reading online kind of articles and things. I mean, you can learn anything online. You can learn underwater basket weaving, for all you want. I mean, there’s just so much great resources out there. And I think that’s what’s really cool about the internet. I mean, I can just go on YouTube, and I can find a 14-hour-long tutorial on how to code websites. You know, there’s anything out there.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re 17 years old. You’re a high school junior. School is now out. You code hours a day anyway, even with school.

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: What are your plans now that Mercer Island High School, like the Seattle school system or many of the schools within it are, well, have ended?

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah. Now that it’s closed, I’m able to work on the website a lot more and stay up, you know, later without having to worry about going to school in the morning. And then it’s also pretty helpful, you know, just because there are like — for example, there’s a student that’s helping me with media things and going through my emails and stuff. So, now that school’s out, you know, more people are able to help me that I know personally. So, yeah, it’s been really cool.




AMY GOODMAN: And finally, if you can talk about your — this is not just sort of an academic project. This is, you are documenting a life-and-death moment, not only in the United States, but all over the world.

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about message you have for other youth, and also the conversations you’re having with people off and online about how to protect the most vulnerable, and just what this has meant for you? Has it shifted your view of the world and what young people can do?

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah. So, I think a really interesting thing about this is that we’re at the point where we can use technology and, you know, all kinds of great online kind of things, with big things like world events, for example, this global pandemic. You know, when Ebola came out, or, you know, SARS or something like that, there wasn’t just like a website you could go to easily on a phone and just see these stats updated every minute. So I think it’s really interesting how I can help combat misinformation and just provide the straight facts, and also that, you know, this is just so cool how you can combine technology and global health together to just make something really neat. And I hope it inspires a lot of people to, you know, maybe learn programming and make their own tracker in the future, because the more information that’s easily accessible, the better. You know, you shouldn’t have to read Korean government websites to just know how many people are infected in Korea. So, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I finally want to ask you about another 17-year-old, the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, known for her Fridays for Future school strikes. She just called for digital strikes during the coronavirus outbreak, instead of the mass public events that happen in many communities. She tweeted, “We can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis and we must unite behind experts and science. This of course goes for all crises. Now the experts urge us to avoid big public gatherings for a better chance to #flattenthecurve and slow the spreading of the Coronavirus. … We young people are the least affected by this virus but it’s essential that we act in solidarity with the most vulnerable and that we act in the best interest of our common society.” Had you heard about Greta Thunberg? And what are your final thoughts, Avi?

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah, of course. Yeah, I mean, I agree. It’s definitely a big thing that we’re able to use all these resources. You know, as myself, I’m just 17, but it’s really cool that I’m able to provide — you know, for example, there’s a wiki page on the site that has all kinds of information, what to do if you’re infected or, you know, the symptoms and kind of things. And I think it’s really cool that I’m able to put that information out there for the rest of the world and all kinds of adults, that that way they can just, you know, easily access it.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Avi Schiffmann, I want to thank you for being with us. Avi is 17 years old, high school junior at Mercer Island High School, which has closed. It’s right outside Seattle, Washington. He developed this most remarkable coronavirus tracker. And finally, Avi, when I was asking you how you pronounce the name of your website, you said you might be changing it. Tell us the website again and what you’re thinking of changing it to.

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: What you — why you came up with that name.

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Sure. So, right now the website domain is nCoV2019.live, which is pretty hard to even say or remember. So, I mean, that used to be the unofficial name of the virus, but now that it’s changed, I’d like to rename the website. I bought a domain called GermTracker.com. That way, it’s so much easier to remember. And that way, I can also use it in the future for more global pandemics, I mean, because there’s only going to be another big thing a couple years from now. And, you know, I’ll be the first one to make a tracker for it. So…

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much, Avi. Again, all the very, very best to you, to your family, to the community. And thank you for helping the entire community, not only in this country, but around the world. Avi Schiffmann, 17-year-old high school junior, speaking to us from Seattle, Washington.

AVI SCHIFFMANN: Thank you so much.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Has developed the germ tracker. We’ll link to it at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us. And don’t forget, folks, wash your hands. Don’t wash your hands of how we have to deal with this. We have to all dive in together. But wash your hands frequently throughout the day. Thanks so much.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us

USA
Paid sick leave: Who gets it during the coronavirus outbreak

There’s growing consensus that Americans need to stay home to help prevent the spread of covid-19, especially if they feel sick or have a suspected or confirmed case of the coronavirus. The health of the nation comes first, experts say, but there’s broad concern that many workers might be forced to choose between staying home or getting paid if they feel under the weather or need to care for a sick relative.

On Saturday, the House passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act after negotiations with the White House. The bill, supported by President Trump and headed to the Senate, aims to provide money to most American workers stuck at home due to the coronavirus. If the bill is approved by the Senate and signed by Trump, it would grant two weeks of paid sick leave to most workers at 100 percent of the person’s normal salary. It would also provide up to 12 weeks of paid family leave at 67 percent of the person’s normal pay for most workers.

But there’s a catch: It doesn’t cover everyone. Small and midsize companies are required to provide these benefits. “Gig” workers and people who are self-employed also get them. But large companies with more than 500 employees are not mentioned in the bill. Experts say that’s a significant loophole. Still, 89 percent of workers at big companies have access to at least some paid sick leave, though the average of eight days falls well short of the 14-day quarantine prescribed for people who may have the coronavirus.

In a worst-case scenario, 6.7 million U.S. workers could be left without any sick pay at all, according to a calculation by the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think tank. That’s less than 5 percent of the nation’s nearly 159 million workers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday that big companies should step up and pay.

Here’s a rundown of who qualifies for sick and paid leave according to the legislation.

Employers with 500 or fewer workers have to provide paid sick leave and family leave. Small and midsize companies are required to provide 14 days of paid sick leave and up to 12 weeks of paid family leave for employees affected by the coronavirus who have worked at the company for at least a month.

Sick leave is to be paid at the usual pay rate. Family leave is to be paid at two-thirds of the usual pay rate. The House capped paid sick leave at $511 per day and paid family leave at $200 per day. In other words, paid sick leave would fully compensate employees earning up to about $130,000 a year for that two-week period, and paid family leave would fully compensate employees earning up to about $75,000 a year for the three-month period, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank.

Many small-business owners are worried about how to pay for these benefits, especially at a time when business across numerous industries has basically come to a halt. The bill provides a tax credit to cover the costs. The credit is applied to the tax the company normally pays for each employee’s Social Security. (This is the 6.2 percent tax employers pay on each employee’s salary.) If sick leave or family leave ends up costing more than the Social Security bill, the U.S. government will send the employer a check to cover the remaining costs. How this will be determined is up to the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service.

There is a loophole for small businesses on paid leave. Employers with fewer than 50 workers can apply for an exemption through the Labor Department from having to provide paid family leave “when the imposition of such requirements would jeopardize the viability of the business.” It is unclear how lenient the Trump administration will be. (Note that there is no small-business loophole for sick pay, according to Cynthia Ward Wikstrom of Main Street Alliance, a left-leaning advocacy group for small businesses.)

About 35 million people work for small businesses in the United States, and 30.5 million of those workers currently have no paid family leave, according to the Center for American Progress.

Government employers must provide paid sick and family leave. The House bill says all government employers must provide these benefits to workers. The same is also true for any union workers who are part of a “multi-employer” agreement.

Gig workers get a new form of paid sick and family leave. Experts say one of the most innovative parts of the House bill is that it gives gig workers similar benefits to Americans working at small and midsize companies. People who are self-employed but work for another employer — e.g. Lyft and Uber drivers, caterers or planners for major events like South by Southwest — are eligible for a tax credit of up to two weeks of sick pay at their average pay and 12 weeks of family leave pay at two-thirds their normal rate.

These workers must show that they had to comply with a self-isolation recommendation or that they had to care for a family member or a child whose school closed due to the coronavirus. Their benefit is capped at $511 per day for paid sick leave and $200 for family leave (or the average daily income the person usually receives if it is less than those amounts).

The tax credit can be applied against a person’s income taxes and it is refundable, meaning taxpayers will get a government rebate if their sick or family leave pay was greater than their tax bill.

The majority of workers at big companies already have paid sick leave. Since the bill was released, it has been criticized for not covering all workers. For example, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents grocery, retail and food-processing workers, blasted Congress for “gutting” the benefits by excluding giant employers.

Many workers at big firms receive some form of paid sick leave, but it isn’t always a full two weeks. As of March 2019, 89 percent of workers at large private-sector establishments had access to paid sick leave, according to the National Compensation Survey from the Labor Department. Employers with 500 or more workers on average offer eight days of paid sick leave after one year of service, according to the Labor Department, while companies with fewer than 100 workers on average offer six days, according to the Labor Department.

Mnuchin said Sunday that “big companies can afford these things.” Pelosi echoed that sentiment, tweeting Sunday that she does not support “subsidizing corporations to provide benefits to workers that they should already be providing.”

In recent days, some big employers such as Walmart and Uber have announced special paid leave policies to help workers dealing with the coronavirus. But not all policies are equal. Darden Restaurants, for example, the parent company of Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse with about 180,000 workers, is offering 40 hours of paid sick leave, which is half of what small and midsize firms are required to provide.

Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, estimates that about 7 million workers at large firms might “needlessly fall through the cracks” because the House bill excludes big business. That’s similar to the Center for American Progress calculation, although both organization say that could grow substantially for people missing out on paid family leave.

You don’t have to have the coronavirus to get the benefit. The two weeks of paid sick leave apply to anyone told to quarantine or trying to get a test or preventive care. That’s a broad definition. The Internal Revenue Service will probably have to come up with an exact rule, but it’s clear Congress wants to avoid a situation in which everyone is trying to get a doctor’s note to qualify.

Qualifying for family leave is even easier. A person is eligible to take up to three months of paid leave to adhere to a quarantine recommendation or to care for an at-risk family member. This includes caring for a child whose school or child-care facility is closed due to the coronavirus.

The benefits are in place for a year. The House bill covers coronavirus-related sick leave taken during the next 12 months.

Many part-time workers are covered. The bill says part-time employees also get paid sick leave equivalent to the number of hours they typically work during a two-week period. So if a person usually works 20 hours a week, they are eligible for up to 40 hours of pay. (Remember, this particular bill does not mandate paid sick leave for workers at big companies, so part-time workers might not be covered at those employers.)

It is unclear how much it will cost. Congress did not put a price tag on this part of the bill. It wasn’t an oversight. Lawmakers simply have no idea how many Americans are going to need these benefits or for how long. In an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Mnuchin predicted the cost would be “significant, but not huge.”

Economists mostly agree that now is not the time to be worrying about the deficit. Borrowing costs are at all-time lows right now, making it inexpensive for the government to take out loans to pay for the coronavirus response. The bill also stipulates that Congress will put money into the Social Security Trust Funds to cover the costs of the program so there won’t be any decline in Social Security funds.

“We need to get economic relief to the people who are impacted by this,” Mnuchin said Sunday.

There’s concern about how quickly the money will flow. Experts say one of the biggest issues with these new benefits is that they are largely being paid for by tax credits. That means small businesses and gig workers will have to apply to the Internal Revenue Service to get a tax credit — or a tax refund if a person’s tax bill is not as large as the cost of their paid sick and family leave.

Mnuchin pledged over the weekend to get this process up and running as quickly as possible, but it will take some time to create the forms and procedures.

Small-business groups have already voiced concerns over the fact that restaurants and travel and hospitality companies have seen sales plummet. They do not have the cash on hand to start paying these benefits.

WHAT GOES UP....AND UP....AND UP....

With unprecedented force and speed, a global recession is likely taking hold

A man wearing a protective mask walks on a Manhattan 

street on Saturday. (JEENNAH MOON/Washington Post )

By David J. Lynch and Heather Long March 14, 2020 at 2:06 p.m. MDT

The United States is suffering the most abrupt and widespread cessation of economic activity in its history, hurtling toward a recession that could mean lost jobs, income and wealth for millions of Americans.

Across the country, consumer spending — which supports 70 percent of the economy — is grinding to a halt as fears of the escalating coronavirus pandemic keep people from stores, restaurants, movie theaters and workplaces.

The rapid national shutdown already has caused layoffs and reverberated on Wall Street, driving stocks into their first bear market in 11 years. Amid panic selling, unusual strains have appeared in less visible market niches that are critical to the ability of businesses to operate normally.

For millions of workers, consumers and investors, the economy’s sudden stop comes as memories of the 2008 global financial crisis remain fresh. Less than 12 years ago, the economy sank into a painful recession after risky Wall Street investments tied to real estate went sour. The number of jobless workers more than doubled in the aftermath while the stock market lost more than half its value.

Some veterans of that tailspin — the worst since the Great Depression — say today’s epidemic is hammering the economy in complex ways that could prove even more difficult to combat.


“The problem is everyone in America is cutting back their consumption,” said Jason Furman, who led the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration. “A lot of sectors are being hit, especially the services sector. A lot of income and spending is being reduced. That’s just an enormous shock to the economy.”

The economy has weathered numerous painful recessions and previous shocks, including natural disasters and terrorist attacks. But what’s different this time is the speed of decline and the comprehensive economic hit caused by an unpredictable health scare that interferes with Americans’ ability to produce and consume.

By the end of this month, the global economy probably will have shrunk by 1.2 percent — “not far short of the 1.6 percent drop in world output seen at the depth of the global final crisis” in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to Capital Economics in London. As the United States reels, Europe and Japan are also probably in recession.

“This is like a hurricane happening everywhere simultaneously for months and months on end,” Furman said.

The companies that feed America brace for labor shortages and worry about restocking stores as coronavirus pandemic intensifies

President Trump supports the cruise industry amid coronavirus outbreak

The economic costs in the United States are mounting quickly. Apple chief executive Tim Cook said Saturday that the company is closing all stores outside China until March 27.

In Las Vegas, MGM Resorts — where several employees have tested positive for the virus — said late Friday that it would begin layoffs and furloughs in the coming week. “Business demand has decreased significantly,” CEO Bill Hornbuckle wrote in a letter to employees, which was first reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

As Americans hunker down at home because of the health scare, restaurants are among the hardest hit. Within three weeks of the first reported coronavirus death in a Seattle suburb, restaurant reservations in the city fell nearly 60 percent, according to OpenTable, the online service.

In Boston, Ayr Muir, who runs Clover Food Lab, a 12-restaurant chain, said he expects “a very serious drop-off” in sales. Several of his restaurants are on, or near, college campuses that are closing. Others are in business districts that have become ghost towns as workers telecommute.

Muir said he knows of restaurants that have closed rather than risk incurring additional debt riding out an extended business interruption.

“I think it’s less about people choosing not to go out and more that they’re not there,” he said. “I think this is going to end up being a pretty dramatic period, certainly for smaller businesses, but some larger ones, too.”

On the corporate front, the Big Three automakers and their suppliers pleaded with the Trump administration for a delay in the planned June 1 scheduled implementation of a new North American trade deal.\

“We are in the midst of a global pandemic that is significantly disrupting our supply chains, and the industry is throwing all available resources into managing production through this crisis,” an industry statement said.

The eventual economic damage could be massive. More than 18 million Americans work in industries that are being hurt by the initial efforts to contain the virus: travel and tourism; spectator sports; museums; hotels; railways; and the performing arts, according to economist Michael Feroli of JPMorgan Chase.

Activity in this roughly $2 trillion slice of the economy will be significantly depressed for three months, he wrote in a note to clients Thursday, longer if the virus does not dissipate in the summer.

A sign of what’s ahead came Friday, when Delta Air Lines said it is slashing flights by 40 percent, the largest reduction in its history, surpassing even that executed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “The speed of the demand falloff is unlike anything we’ve seen — and we’ve seen a lot in our business,” Ed Bastian, Delta’s chief executive, wrote in a note to employees.
Airports empty out as coronavirus fears slam airline industry

Across the globe, flights were canceled and travelers stayed home as the novel coronavirus outbreak became a pandemic. (The Washington Post)

The U.S. economy that President Trump hailed in January as “the best it has ever been” will be smaller at the end of June than it was on New Year’s Day, according to Feroli. And it will shrink in the second quarter at an annual rate that exceeds the decline at the time the failure of the investment bank Lehman Brothers turned the 2008 downturn into a cataclysm.

“If we don’t change the trajectory, we are certainly headed for a worse outcome than officials are indicating,” said Simon Johnson, who was the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist in 2008. “We’ve never experienced a shock like this.”

Still, many economists, including Feroli, anticipate an economic rebound in the second half. That assumes that the coronavirus outbreak ebbs, perhaps because of warmer weather. But amid tremendous uncertainty about the disease, all such forecasts are tentative.

On Friday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the president was moving quickly to counter the epidemic and ensure that the economy rebounds before year’s end. The House early Saturday passed legislation, backed by Trump, that would spend billions of dollars on medical tests, paid sick leave for affected workers and unemployment insurance.

“This isn’t like the financial crisis. We have a medical situation that has shut down and will shut down parts of the economy like we’ve never seen,” Mnuchin told CNBC. “But then they’re going to open back up and I think there’s going to be a lot of demand.”
 

Factory closings in Reading, Pa., contributed to the highest percentage of residents living in poverty for cities over 65,000 in 2009. (Michael S. Williamson/WASHINGTON POST)

In 2008, the economy felt the effects of problems that originated in the financial markets. This time, the virus-induced paralysis of real activity is putting key financial channels at risk of seizing up.

A key worry is the ability of businesses to access sufficient cash to fund their routine operations. As companies from Main Street to the oil patch fret about paying their bills, many are drawing down their bank credit lines.

Leaders of the largest U.S. banks told Trump on Wednesday that — thanks to deeper reserves and years of Federal Reserve stress tests — they are financially sound. But banks will face enormous pressure to keep funds flowing to businesses that are struggling to keep their doors open.

Minutes after the president’s prime-time coronavirus speech Wednesday, Linda Schreiber, owner of travel agency Starship Travel outside Chicago, started hunting for a financial lifeline.

Virus fears have resulted in numerous cancellations of spring break trips, graduations and d  tination weddings that account for most spring bookings. “It’s horrible timing for this to happen,” she said. “People are canceling left and right.”
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The next day she secured a small-business loan to cover two months of overhead and salaries for 29 employees. If the downturn continues past the two-month window her loan covers, she plans to close one location and reduce her staff to part time.


“I’ve been through 9/11, Zika, MERS, SARS; I’ve been through it all over 34 years,” she said. “With this, the timing couldn’t have been worse.”

The resulting pressure has been most evident in bond markets. Typically, as stocks plummet, investors buy U.S. government bonds, which are widely viewed as a haven. But last week, both stocks and bonds sold off.

As stock prices plunged, some hedge funds sold Treasury bonds to raise cash to repay borrowings they had used to make risky investments. Cash-strapped energy companies likewise sought to turn their government securities into cash. And banks that needed cash to fund their business customers did the same.

“Bank treasurers are faced with a choice: Support their corporate customers who want a line of credit or deploy capital to markets. It’s clear which one they’re choosing: their customers,” said Guy LeBas, chief fixed income strategist at Janney Capital Management.

In the trading frenzy, bond sellers demanded much higher prices than the handful of ready buyers would accept — an extraordinary sign of dysfunction in a market that is usually the epitome of order.

“What happened is the Treasury market became one-sided: everyone is selling and not many people are buying,” said Roberto Perli, a former Fed official in 2008 and now a partner at Cornerstone Macro.

The Fed stepped in twice in recent days to inject extra cash to grease bond market operations. That came on top of the Fed’s March 3 interest rate cut of half a percentage point, which did little to calm the market. More aid might be needed and could come on or before the central bank’s next rate-setting meeting scheduled for Wednesday.

Further complicating the economic outlook is an intensifying oil price war involving Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Oil prices face a one-two punch. The coronavirus is idling people, trucks and ships, causing a collapse in demand. And after price-setting talks between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia broke down this month, the Saudis opted to increase production. That flooded the market with oil and sent prices spiraling toward levels not seen since the late 1990s.

“We’ll see a huge surge in oil supply over the next few weeks and no demand for it. We think the price will dip into the $20 range and could even touch the teens,” said Francisco Blanch, head of commodities and derivatives research at Bank of America.

At those prices, the United States’ shale oil and gas boom is in trouble. Most U.S. and European companies can’t survive for long with oil below $40 a barrel, many analysts say. On Friday, the president announced that the government will buy oil on the open market to fill the nation’s strategic reserves.

The news nudged oil up a few dollars per barrel, but prices remain well below the break-even point for most producers. Goldman Sachs predicts that nearly one-third of the oil and oil services companies in the country will vanish, acquired by rivals or driven out of business.

Traders are watching for signs that energy companies may default on their debts, a development that would batter regional banks in Texas and Oklahoma and could cascade through the $10 trillion corporate bond market.

For now, analysts say the financial pain is unlikely to be as widespread as in 2008 because fewer financial products are linked to these securities in the way that mortgages were used to create complex derivatives during the housing bubble.

Even so, investors are nervous. Overall financial conditions — a measure of access to credit that takes into account interest rates, currency values and bond yields — are tighter than they have been in nearly a decade, since a 2011 scare over a potential sudden slowdown in China.

And when Wall Street opens Monday, analysts will be watching potential trouble spots such as risky corporate borrowings called leveraged loans and exchange-traded funds, a popular consumer investment, for any hint of bottlenecks.

Mark Guarino in Chicago and Karen Weintraub in Boston contributed to this report.

Trump Food-Stamp Cuts Blocked by Judge Who Cites Pandemic
(Bloomberg) -- A federal judge in Washington put off much of the Trump administration’s effort to make it harder for poor Americans to get food assistance, in a blistering ruling that not only criticized the White House but chided other courts for having too often “rolled over” to the president’s demands.

© Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America SAN FRANCISCO, CA - MAY A worker wraps a pallet of donated produce at the SF-Marin Food Bank on May 1, 2014 in San Francisco, California. Food banks are bracing for higher food costs and an increased demand for food from the needy as food prices are skyrocketing due to a reduction in food stamps and drought conditions in several states. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

In an 84-page ruling, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell issued a nationwide injunction that blocks two of the three changes the White House had made to the nation’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

The changes tighten the rules that states, who administer the program programs, must follow when extending food-stamp benefits beyond three months. They would cut off benefits to about 700,000 people, at a time when the coronavirus is spreading across the country, Howell wrote. She allowed to let stand a provision that would limit states’ ability to carry over unused discretionary exemptions for the three-month limit.

“As a global pandemic poses widespread health risks, guaranteeing that government officials at both the federal and state levels have flexibility to address the nutritional needs of residents and ensure their well-being through programs like SNAP, is essential,” Howell said,

Howell’s ruling holds off on the new Snap rules while they are reviewed by the court.

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine celebrated the ruling on Twitter:

Nineteen states, the district and New York City sued the Trump administration in January to block the new rule.

In her ruling, Howell vigorously rejected the administration’s claim that federal courts lacked the authority to issue a nationwide injunction to check the power of the White House.

“Perhaps that sort of power grab is to be expected from the executive branch,” she wrote. “What is unexpected, and dangerous to the maintenance of our constitutional order, is that instead of fighting back, some courts have rolled over. In a growing number of cases, the Supreme Court has granted the federal government the relief it seeks.”