Pass the salt: The minute details that helped Germany build virus defences

MUNICH (Reuters) - One January lunchtime in a car parts company, a worker turned to a colleague and asked to borrow the salt.



As well as the saltshaker, in that instant, they shared the new coronavirus, scientists have since concluded.

That their exchange was documented at all is the result of intense scrutiny, part of a rare success story in the global fight against the virus.

The co-workers were early links in what was to be the first documented chain of multiple human-to-human transmissions outside Asia of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

They are based in Stockdorf, a German town of 4,000 near Munich in Bavaria, and they work at car parts supplier Webasto Group. The company was thrust under a global microscope after it disclosed that one of its employees, a Chinese woman, caught the virus and brought it to Webasto headquarters. There, it was passed to colleagues - including, scientists would learn, a person lunching in the canteen with whom the Chinese patient had no contact.

The Jan. 22 canteen scene was one of dozens of mundane incidents that scientists have logged in a medical manhunt to trace, test and isolate infected workers so that the regional government of Bavaria could stop the virus from spreading.

That hunt has helped Germany win crucial time to build its COVID-19 defences.

The time Germany bought may have saved lives, scientists say. Its first outbreak of locally transmitted COVID-19 began earlier than Italy’s, but Germany has had many fewer deaths. Italy’s first detected local transmission was on Feb. 21. By then Germany had kicked off a health ministry information campaign and a government strategy to tackle the virus which would hinge on widespread testing. In Germany so far, more than 2,100 people have died of COVID-19. In Italy, with a smaller population, the total exceeds 17,600.


“We learned that we must meticulously trace chains of infection in order to interrupt them,” Clemens Wendtner, the doctor who treated the Munich patients, told Reuters.


Wendtner teamed up with some of Germany’s top scientists to tackle what became known as the ‘Munich cluster,’ and they advised the Bavarian government on how to respond. Bavaria led the way with the lockdowns, which went nationwide on March 22.

Scientists including England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty have credited Germany’s early, widespread testing with slowing the spread of the virus. “‘We all know Germany got ahead in terms of its ability to do testing for the virus and there’s a lot to learn from that,’” he said on TV earlier this week.

Christian Drosten, the top virologist at Berlin’s Charite hospital, said Germany was helped by having a clear early cluster. “Because we had this Munich cohort right at the start ... it became clear that with a big push we could inhibit this spreading further,” he said in a daily podcast for NDR radio on the coronavirus.

Drosten, who declined to be interviewed for this story, was one of more than 40 scientists involved in scrutiny of the cluster. Their work was documented in preliminary form in a working paper at the end of last month. The paper, not yet peer-reviewed, was shared on the NDR site.
ELECTRONIC DIARIES

It was on Monday, Jan. 27, that Holger Engelmann, Webasto’s CEO, told the authorities that one of his employees had tested positive for the new coronavirus. The woman, who was based in Shanghai, had facilitated several days of workshops and attended meetings at Webasto’s HQ.

The woman’s parents, from Wuhan, had visited her before she travelled on Jan. 19 to Stockdorf, the paper said. While in Germany, she felt unusual chest and back aches and was tired for her whole stay. But she put the symptoms down to jet lag.

She became feverish on the return flight to China, tested positive after landing and was hospitalised. Her parents also later tested positive. She told her managers of the result and they emailed the CEO.


In Germany, Engelmann said he immediately set up a crisis team that alerted the medical authorities and started trying to trace staff members who had been in contact with their Chinese colleague.

The CEO himself was among them. “Just four or five days before I received the news, I had shaken hands with her,” he said.

Now known as Germany’s “Case #0,” the Shanghai patient is a “long-standing, proven employee from project management” who Engelmann knows personally, he told Reuters. The company has not revealed her identity or that of others involved, saying anonymity has encouraged staff to co-operate in Germany’s effort to contain the virus.

The task of finding who had contact with her was made easier by Webasto workers’ electronic calendars – for the most part, all the doctors needed was to look at staff appointments.

“It was a stroke of luck,” said Wendtner, the doctor who treated the Munich patients. “We got all the information we needed from the staff to reconstruct the chains of infection.”

For example, case #1 - the first person in Germany to be infected by the Chinese woman - sat next to her in a meeting in a small room on Jan. 20, the scientists wrote.

Where calendar data was incomplete, the scientists said, they were often able to use whole genome sequencing, which analyses differences in the genetic code of the virus from different patients, to map its spread.

By following all these links, they discovered that case #4 had been in contact several times with the Shanghai patient. Then case #4 sat back-to-back with a colleague in the canteen.

When that colleague turned to borrow the salt, the scientists deduced, the virus passed between them. The colleague became case #5.

Webasto said on Jan. 28 it was temporarily closing its Stockdorf site. Between Jan. 27 and Feb. 11, a total of 16 COVID-19 cases were identified in the Munich cluster. All but one were to develop symptoms.


All those who tested positive were sent to hospital so they could be observed and doctors could learn from the disease.

Bavaria closed down public life in mid-March. Germany has since closed schools, shops, restaurants, playgrounds and sports facilities, and many companies have shut to aid the cause.

HAMMER AND DANCE

This is not to say Germany has defeated COVID-19.

Its coronavirus death rate of 1.9%, based on data collated by Reuters, is the lowest among the countries most affected and compares with 12.6% in Italy. But experts say more deaths in Germany are inevitable.

“The death rate will rise,” said Lothar Wieler, president of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.

The difference between Germany and Italy is partly statistical: Germany’s rate seems so much lower because it has tested widely. Germany has carried out more than 1.3 million tests, according to the Robert Koch Institute. It is now carrying out up to 500,000 tests a week, Drosten said. Italy has conducted more than 807,000 tests since Feb. 21, according to its Civil Protection Agency. With a few local exceptions, Italy only tests people taken to hospital with clear and severe symptoms.

Germany’s government is using the weeks gained by the Munich experience to double the number of intensive care beds from about 28,000. The country already has Europe’s highest number of critical care beds per head of the population, according to a 2012 study.

Even that may not be enough, however. An Interior Ministry paper sent to other government departments on March 22 included a worst-case scenario with more than 1 million deaths.

Another scenario saw 12,000 deaths - with more testing after partial relaxation of restrictions. That scenario was dubbed “hammer and dance,” a term coined by blogger Tomas Pueyo. It refers to the ‘hammer’ of quick aggressive measures for some weeks, including heavy social distancing, followed by the ‘dance’ of calibrating such measures depending on the transmission rate.


The German government paper argued that in the ‘hammer and dance’ scenario, the use of big data and location tracking is inevitable. Such monitoring is already proving controversial in Germany, where memories of the East German Stasi secret police and its informants are still fresh in the minds of many.

A subsequent draft action plan compiled by the government proposes the rapid tracing of infection chains, mandatory mask-wearing in public and limits on gatherings to help enable a phased return to normal life after Germany’s lockdown. The government is backing the development of a smartphone app to help trace infections.

Germany has said it will re-evaluate the lockdown after the Easter holiday; for the car parts maker at the heart of its first outbreak, the immediate crisis is over. Webasto’s office has reopened.

All 16 people who caught COVID-19 there have recovered

LGBTQ activist Phyllis Lyon dies at 95

LGBT activist Phyllis Lyon (R) seen here at her 2008 wedding to her partner of more than 50 years, Del Martin, died on Thursday of natural causes. File Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI | License Photo

April 9 (UPI) -- LGBTQ activist Phyllis Lyon, known as a pioneer of same-sex marriage in California, died on Thursday at the age of 95.

Calfornia state senator and chair of the legislative LGBTQ caucus, Scott Wiener, announced on Twitter that Lyon died of natural causes.

"We lost a giant today," Wiener wrote. "Phyllis Lyon fought for LGBT equality when it was neither safe nor popular to do so. Phyllis and her wife, Del, played a crucial role in winning the rights and dignity our community now enjoys."

Lyon and her wife, Del Martin, co-founded the first lesbian rights organization in the United States in 1955.

The couple first married in 2004 when Lyon was 80 years old and Martin was 83, after San Francisco allowed same-sex couples to wed, but the union was ultimately voided by the courts.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who served as mayor of San Francisco from 2004-2011, officiated a second wedding between the couple in 2008 after the Supreme Court struck down the state's same-sex marriage ban.

"Phyllis and Del were the manifestation of love and devotion. Yet for over 50 years they were denied the right to say 2 extraordinary words: I do," Newsom wrote on Twitter Thursday afternoon. "Phyllis -- it was the honor of a lifetime to marry you and Del. Your courage changed the course of history."

Martin died in August 2008, months after their wedding.

Votes for women: S. Korea's first feminist party seeks parliament seats

AFP / Jung Yeon-jeSouth Korea's Women's Party has about 10,000 members, around three-quarters of them in their 20s

South Korea is regularly ranked lowest in the developed world for gender equality, but for the first time a feminist party is seeking parliamentary seats at Wednesday's election, accusing the political establishment of having failed women.

The party was founded last month on International Women's Day on the back of a surge of anger over the country's spycam porn epidemic and other crimes, and against a backdrop of an enduring pay gap and employment and childcare issues.

But it has a mountain to climb.

It has put forward four candidates in the proportional representation section of the vote, and to secure a single seat will need three percent of the popular vote.

"I had signed petitions, I participated in rallies against sexual violence against women, but realised it wasn't going to work. So I've decided to go to the National Assembly," said Kim Ju-hee, one of the four, who at 25 is among the youngest candidates in the whole election.

The party has about 10,000 members -- around three-quarters of them in their 20s -- and Kim says she will never marry nor have children in her efforts to fight patriarchy.

AFP / Jung Yeon-jeSingle-issue parties have long struggled in South Korea

But with the party unlikely to attract male voters, the threshold means it needs to secure the backing of six percent of all women.

It is an ambitious goal when the South's two major parties -- the ruling left-leaning Democratic party and the conservative main opposition United Future Party (UFP) -- and their satellite entities dominate the political system.

And single-issue parties have long struggled. "For many women, it's hard to support a party only because it deals with women's issues," acknowledged Kwon Soo-hyun, president of Korea Women's Political Solidarity, a rights organisation.

Chai Hyun-jung, a 33-year-old mother who works in Seoul, said she would vote for a party that offered solid pledges on children's education and tackling the South's sky-high housing prices.

"I have too many other responsibilities in my life to solely focus on gender issues," she told AFP.

"Of course I'm angry about cyber sexual violence, but I'm sceptical giving a single seat to a feminist party can actually lead to a significant difference."

- Glass ceiling -

Despite its economic and technological advances, South Korea remains socially traditional and patriarchal, and has one of the world's thickest glass ceilings for women.

It has the highest gender wage gap in the OECD club of developed economies, and only 3.6 percent of Korean conglomerates' board members are female.

AFP / Jung Yeon-jeWith the party unlikely to attract male voters, the threshold means it needs to secure the backing of six percent of all women

Similarly in politics, women make up just 17 percent of assembly seats in the outgoing parliament -- 125th in a global ranking maintained by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, just behind North Korea in 120th place.

"Almost all male politicians, regardless of being progressive or conservative, are traditionalist when it comes to rights of women," said Lee Soo-jung, a criminology professor at Kyonggi University, adding that some do not understand the difference between pornography and crime.

Former UFP presidential candidate Hong Joon-pyo admitted in his memoirs that at university he supplied a stimulant to a friend who tried to drug and have sex with a female student.

In 2019, a provincial governor from the Democratic party who used to proclaim himself a feminist was convicted and jailed for raping a female aide.

- Stones thrown -

Young South Korean women have enjoyed unprecedented campaigning successes outside parliament in recent years -- fighting to legalise abortion and organising a widespread #MeToo and anti-spycam movement that led to the largest women's rights demonstrations in Korean history.

But being an open feminist can lead to social stigma in a society where the movement is often framed as selfish, extreme and even irrational.

Women's Party candidate Lee Ji-won said party members had received online death threats and had stones thrown at them while on the stump.

AFP / Jung Yeon-jeYoung South Korean women have enjoyed unprecedented campaigning successes outside parliament in recent years

Linda Hasunuma, a politics scholar at Temple University in the US, said feminist issues were often framed as "not representing the mainstream", and portrayed instead as the "concerns of extreme activists".

"It's hard for women's issues to gain traction in a society that has devalued women's status and labour for generations."

But the party's Kim said winning isn't impossible.

"Thousands of women joined our party within the first week," she said.

"I believe in young women's collective wish to live a dignified life."

Trashy fashion: 
dressing up to take the bins out
 in virus lockdown

Courtesy of Simon Wait/AFP / Melanie WaitThe craze swept through Australia

Staying at home all day is rubbish, so people around the world are dressing up to take the bins out and sharing photos of their outfits online to cheer up others in lockdown.

Wearing evening gowns, a teddy-bear costume or full cosplay, thousands are using the garden path as a catwalk to show off the fruits of ample time spent in isolation.

Courtesy of Stuart Cunningham/AFP / HandoutScottish bus driver Stuart Cunningham wore his kilt

"As crazy as I feel dressing up at home, it's the only thing keeping me sane during isolation. Wheeling my bin out in style helps me feel happy again," said Victoria Anthony, 30, a DJ who lives in Sydney.

Anthony, who posted a photo of herself in a cocktail dress on Instagram under the hashtag #BinIsolationOuting, said all her gigs had been cancelled because of the pandemic, which has sparked enforced stay-at-home orders affecting billions across the world.

Courtesy of Jodie Bignall/AFP / HandoutJodie Bignall dressed as Snow White to take out her trash in Adelaide, Australia

The trend began in Australia but has inspired jokey posts from as far as Texas, the UK and the Netherlands.

Bus driver Stuart Cunningham, from Glasgow in Scotland, posted a picture of himself taking out the bins in a kilt with a bottle of whisky.

And Christine Leland shared a photo of her husband wheeling a bin through the Canadian snow in a superman T-shirt, wig and red towel for a cape.

Courtesy of Victoria Anthony/AFP / HandoutVictoria Anthony posted a photo of herself in a cocktail dress on Instagram under the hashtag #BinIsolationOuting

Others have gone all-out with horror clown outfits or whole-body suits made to look like characters from sci-fi series, from Star Wars to Gundam.

For Simon Wait, an Australian superhero fanatic who has built "dozens of costumes and props" over the last decade, bin night was the perfect occasion to don his huge, eight-foot (2.5-metre) tall Hulkbuster outfit.

It all began when Danielle Askew, a kindergarten teacher from Hervey Bay in the Australian state of Queensland, started a dedicated Facebook group that has now grown to 470,000 members.

Courtesy of Sean Leland/AFP / HandoutChristine Leland shared a photo of her husband wheeling a bin through the Canadian snow in a superman T-shirt, wig and red towel for a cape

"A friend put a post up on her Facebook page saying that she was excited it was garbage night and she gets to go out," the 47-year-old told AFP.

"I dared her to dress up to take it out and she said she would take that challenge. I said I would too, and I'd make a Facebook group for us to laugh at, to have a giggle at each other."

Askew said she was happy to have "cheered so many people up" and had received messages from users saying they were feeling depressed or scared about the virus, but that looking at her page had made them smile.

"There are just so many wonderful, creative people out there," she said.

Virus fears hit world's oldest profession

AFP/File / Emily KaskThere are approximately one million sex workers in the United States, many of whom are more vulnerable than ever due to the coronavirus pandemic

"Being a prostitute has always been a good option in times of crisis... until this one," says Bruno, a sex worker who fears catching the deadly coronavirus at a time when those in his trade are more vulnerable than ever.

One of approximately a million sex workers in the United States, Bruno -- not his real name -- has stopped taking clients in the past month as the once-in-a-century pandemic arrived in America.

Like most legal trades, demand for the 33-year-old's services has plummeted with much of the country staying home under lockdown.

But Bruno, who is based in the Los Angeles area, started in this business about two years ago precisely because he couldn't get a steady job that paid well.

Now his savings are rapidly dwindling -- and unlike most unemployed workers, Bruno is not eligible for federally approved relief.

Despite his health concerns over a pandemic that has killed more than 14,000 people in the US, Bruno is considering returning to work.

"I'm going to have to take the risk, it's the only way I can make money," he said.

Demand has already fallen by around 80 percent, he said -- but a handful of clients are still contacting him.

Bruno already considers his job to be high-risk because of potential exposure to sexually transmitted diseases.

"I'm surprised that, with this virus going around, people still want to take the danger," he admitted.

Returning is not a decision he takes lightly.

"How can I be sure the person is taking care of themselves?" he asked.

- 'The only way' -

Small businesses hit by the crisis seeking emergency loans, according to government guidelines, may not sell "products or services... of a prurient sexual nature."

"Our government's unwillingness to recognize sex work as a non-criminal venue of employment means that many workers are quickly being pushed into a state of financial desperation," wrote Molly Simmons, a New York sex worker, on the Huffington Post.

The situation, she warned, may force sex workers to "accept clients they know aren't safe and risk an assault or rape because they need to feed themselves or their children or keep the electricity on."

The Desert AIDS Project, an NGO specializing in HIV-AIDS in California, has published recommendations for sex workers during the pandemic.

"When negotiating services, prices, and laying ground rules, cover off on coronavirus too," it advises, suggesting other measures such as protective gloves.

Other organizations have promoted ways for sex workers to avoid physical meetings altogether during the pandemic.

Advocacy groups COYOTE and BAWS have called on clients to make donations or pay in advance for post-crisis services.

Some sex workers have emulated pornographic actors by making a living from home via webcam appearances and connecting with clients by phone calls or messaging.

Bruno has friends who already do this and earn up to $3,000 a month.

But he is wary of that route, which risks exposing his identity.

"I'm not criticizing it, but I'm not getting into it," he said. "I don't want my financial difficulties to cost me my privacy."

Cleanup of US nuclear waste takes back seat as virus spreads

FILE - In this March 1999 file photo, the first load of nuclear waste arrives at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) site in Carlsbad, N.M., from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The U.S. government's efforts to clean up decades worth of Cold War-era waste from nuclear research and bomb making at federal sites around the country has chugged along, often at a pace that watchdogs and other critics say threatens public health and the environment. Now, fallout from the global coronavirus pandemic is resulting in more challenges as WIPP, the nation's only underground repository for nuclear waste, finished ramping down operations Wednesday, April 1, 2020, to keep workers safe. (AP Photo/Thomas Herbert, File)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The U.S. government’s efforts to clean up Cold War-era waste from nuclear research and bomb making at federal sites around the country has lumbered along for decades, often at a pace that watchdogs and other critics say threatens public health and the environment.

Now, fallout from the global coronavirus pandemic is resulting in more challenges as the nation’s only underground repository for nuclear waste finished ramping down operations Wednesday to keep workers safe.

Over more than 20 years, tons of waste have been stashed deep in the salt caverns that make up the southern New Mexico site. Until recently, several shipments a week of special boxes and barrels packed with lab coats, rubber gloves, tools and debris contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive elements were being trucked to the remote facility from South Carolina, Idaho and other spots.



FILE - In this file photo provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, cesium and strontium capsules are stored in water at the Department of Energy's Hanford site in Washington State. The U.S. government's efforts to clean up decades worth of Cold War-era waste from nuclear research and bomb making at federal sites around the country has chugged along, often at a pace that watchdogs and other critics say threatens public health and the environment. Now, fallout from the global coronavirus pandemic is resulting in more challenges as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the nation's only underground repository for nuclear waste, finished ramping down operations Wednesday, April 1, 2020, to keep workers safe. (U.S. Department of Energy via AP,)

That’s all but grinding to a halt.

Shipments to the desert outpost will be limited for the foreseeable future while work at the country’s national laboratories and defense sites shift to only those operations considered “mission critical.”

Officials at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant warned state regulators in a letter Tuesday that more time would be needed for inspections and audits and that work would be curtailed or shifts would be staggered to ensure workers keep their distance from one another.

“This action is being taken out of an abundance of caution for the safety of employees and the community,” said Donavan Mager, a spokesman for Nuclear Waste Partnership, the contractor that runs the repository.

Some critical duties still must be done — like placing bolts in the repository’s ceilings to ensure the shifting salt doesn’t collapse.

It’s the same at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the once-secret city in northern New Mexico that gained famed for being the birthplace of the atomic bomb. Most employees there are working remotely, and the summer intern program is on pause.

Some work related to cleanup is ongoing, such as radiological surveys, inspections of hazardous waste storage facilities and maintenance of an early notification system designed to protect drinking water supplies.

In Washington state, tours of one of the most significant nuclear reactors in atomic history are on hold. Public meetings at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation have been canceled, and those who want to review documents in person are out of luck as officials there downsized to mission critical operations nearly two weeks ago.
FILE - This file aerial photo, date not known, shows Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M. The U.S. government's efforts to clean up decades worth of Cold War-era waste from nuclear research and bomb making at federal sites around the country has chugged along, often at a pace that watchdogs and other critics say threatens public health and the environment. Now, fallout from the global coronavirus pandemic is resulting in more challenges as the nation's only underground repository for nuclear waste, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, finished ramping down operations Wednesday, April 1, 2020, to keep workers safe. (The Albuquerque Journal via AP, File)

The number of employees on site has dwindled to the “absolute minimum” needed to run safety and security programs and keep IT systems humming for those working at home.

The circumstances are unlike anything ever faced by managers at Hanford, Los Alamos and elsewhere.

They’ve indicated in letters, online posts and other documents that their decisions are guided by state and federal public health orders aimed at getting people to stay home and limit contact with others to stem the growing number of cases and deaths related to COVID-19.

Worker safety is always a top priority, said U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, who was among those who pushed during a congressional hearing in early March for more funding and federal action to speed up the nation’s multibillion-dollar cleanup program.

“We are fighting to make sure workers and their families are taken care of during this crisis and that workers have the resources they need to meet cleanup goals when they are able to safely return to their jobs,” she told The Associated Press in an email.

Democratic senators had voiced concerns just weeks ago that the Trump administration’s proposed budget for the U.S. Energy Department calls for less money to clean up the Cold War-era waste while funneling significantly more to fund modernization of the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

FILE - In this April 2019 file photo provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory, barrels of radioactive waste are loaded for transport to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) at the Radioactive Assay Nondestructive Testing (RANT) facility in Los Alamos, N.M. The U.S. government's efforts to clean up decades worth of Cold War-era waste from nuclear research and bomb making at federal sites around the country has chugged along, often at a pace that watchdogs and other critics say threatens public health and the environment. Now, fallout from the global coronavirus pandemic is resulting in more challenges as WIPP, the nation's only underground repository for nuclear waste, finished ramping down operations Wednesday, April 1, 2020, to keep workers safe. (Nestor Trujillo/Los Alamos National Laboratory via AP, File)

The proposal provides nearly $27 billion, most of which would go toward nuclear security work that includes restarting production of the plutonium cores that are used as triggers inside nuclear weapons. Less than one-quarter of that would be used for cleanup of 16 sites in 11 states.

“The coronavirus pandemic demonstrates why we should get cleanup done once and for all,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. “What we do as humans ebbs and flows with history, but the radioactive and toxic wastes that we leave behind last longer than our recorded history. We should be acting now.”

Watchdogs also pointed to permit renewals and other regulatory actions related to cleanup that could get pushed back.

The federal government has agreements with several states to reach certain cleanup milestones. Officials were reticent to say what deadlines might be missed, noting only that the Energy Department’s environmental managers are evaluating the potential effects on projects across the complex as the virus spreads.

U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich said worker health should remain the priority but noted that as lawmakers consider more economic stimulus legislation, increased funding for environmental management could help support jobs and accelerate cleanup in the future.

FILE - In this March 6, 2014, file photo, empty nuclear waste shipping containers sit in front of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. The U.S. government's efforts to clean up decades worth of Cold War-era waste from nuclear research and bomb making at federal sites around the country has chugged along, often at a pace that watchdogs and other critics say threatens public health and the environment. Now, fallout from the global coronavirus pandemic is resulting in more challenges as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the nation's only underground repository for nuclear waste, finished ramping down operations Wednesday, April 1, 2020, to keep workers safe. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan, File)

Wildlife group: Gulf oil spill still affecting wildlife

FILE - In this May 2, 2010 photo, Institute of Marine Mammal Sciences researcher Justin Main takes photographs of a dead sea turtle on the beach in Pass Christian, Miss. The National Wildlife Federation released a report Tuesday, April 7, 2020, looking at Gulf restoration after the BP oil spill. The report states serious ongoing harm to dolphins, turtles and other wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico. (AP Photo/Dave Martin, File)


ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — A decade after the nation’s worst offshore oil spill, dolphins, turtles and other wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico are still seriously at risk, according to a report released Tuesday.

The fact that the Gulf hasn’t fully recovered is “hardly surprising given the enormity of the disaster,” said David Muth, director of the Gulf of Mexico Restoration Program for the National Wildlife Federation, which authored the report.

The April 20, 2010, explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers and spewed what the nonprofit environmental organization Ocean Conservancy estimated to be 210 million gallons (795 million liters) of oil before it was capped 87 days later.

What followed, Muth said, was the largest restoration attempt ever in the world, with billions invested or committed to projects to help restore the Gulf and its ecosystem, and another $12 billion to be spent through the year 2032.

“It’s an opportunity we cannot afford to squander,” he said, adding that the projects create jobs.

In the report, the NWF said it believes a large portion of the money should be spent on estuary restoration, where freshwater mixes with the saltwater of the Gulf.

“Projects that restore wetlands, rebuild oyster reefs, protect important habitats from development, and recreate natural patterns of water flow and sediment deposition will help many species harmed by the oil. In addition to helping wildlife, many of these projects will help protect coastal communities from rising seas and extreme weather,” the report said.

During a telephone news conference Tuesday, NWF experts highlighted the plight of a few species of wildlife that were affected by the spill:
FILE - In this May 10, 2015, file photo, a dead dolphin washes ashore in the Gulf of Mexico on Grand Isle, La. The National Wildlife Federation released a report Tuesday, April 7, 2020, looking at Gulf restoration after the BP oil spill. The report states serious ongoing harm to dolphins, turtles and other wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico. (AP Photo/Cain Burdeau, File)

— Dolphins. They are still struggling, with many living in oiled areas still ill. About 55 percent had worsening lung disease, 43 percent exhibited abnormal stress responses, 25 percent were underweight, and 19 percent were anemic, the report said. Dolphins born after 2010 aren’t as sick as those that were exposed directly to oil, but they also aren’t as healthy as dolphins born in unoiled areas. Scientists say it could take affected dolphin populations decades to recover.

— Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle. Once facing extinction in the 1960s, the sea turtles were largely saved by conservation efforts until the oil spill, which killed as many as 20 percent of adult females. Nesting in the post-spill years has fluctuated.
FILE - In this June 3, 2010 file photo, a brown pelican covered in oil sits on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast. The National Wildlife Federation released a report Tuesday, April 7, 2020, looking at Gulf restoration after the BP oil spill. The report states serious ongoing harm to dolphins, turtles and other wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

— Birds. About 12 percent of brown pelicans and 32 percent of the laughing gulls in the northern Gulf died in the oil spill. Approximately 1 million offshore and coastal birds perished.

Scientists estimate the oil killed or seriously hurt “billions, if not trillions” of animals, according to a lawsuit filed by environmental groups in 2019. The government declared a fisheries disaster. BP says its costs have topped $60 billion.

In June of last year, environmental groups sued to challenge a decision by President Donald Trump’s administration that they say weakened critical safety rules created after the spill.

Report: Outbreak triggers drop in climate-changing emissions

WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite mocking the idea of climate change, President Donald Trump will preside over one of the country’s sharpest drops in climate-damaging emissions on record, as the economic paralysis from the coronavirus tamps down energy use, according to an Energy Department projection on Tuesday.

The agency’s Energy Information Administration projects a 7.5% drop in fossil fuel emissions for 2020. That would be the biggest cut in U.S. energy emissions since at least 1990, EIA records show. The year after the start of the 2008 recession saw a 7.3% decline.

Trump routinely mocks the science of climate change, and his administration has moved to roll back tougher mileage and emissions standards and other climate efforts from the Obama administration.

Emissions will fall markedly this year anyway, owing to the slowing economy and restrictions on business and travel related to the coronavirus, the EIA said.

Burning of fossil fuels, and the rate of climate damage, typically rebounds as an economy does, after economic downturns.

Globally, “we’re seeing radical declines in transportation emissions and drops in other sectors of the economy,” said Stanford University’s Rob Jackson, who heads a group of independent scientists who monitor global carbon pollution. “We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Depression.”

The energy agency projects Americans will burn 9% less gasoline and diesel and 10% less jet fuel, and that the electricity sector will generate 3% less power overall, among other declines. Solar and wind power — which get scant attention from Trump, other than his statements of loathing for wind turbines — will account for the majority of the country’s new electricity generation, the report says. As marketplace competition reshapes how Americans get their energy, power plants will use 11% more renewables and 20% less coal this year.

The 2020 outlook also marks a setback in Trump’s frequently stated mission of helping make the United States the world’s dominant player in energy production. The coronavirus and an unrelated petroleum supply glut caused by ramped-up pumping by Saudi Arabia and Russia will return the United States to being a net importer of petroleum for at least a time, as domestic drilling subsides, the EIA report said. Any global accord to cut back oil production could change that, the agency noted.

“These trends are only temporary and they’ll go away as fast as this coronavirus crisis goes away,” said climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck, the University of Michigan’s environment dean.

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AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this report.

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The story has been corrected to reflect that the University of Michigan’s environment dean, not an Energy Department spokeswoman, said a drop in climate-changing emissions during the coronavirus outbreak would be temporary.

Bleaching on Great Barrier Reef more widespread than ever

FILE - In this December, 1999, file photo, tourists snorkel around Upolu Cay on the Great Barrier Reef near Cairns off the Australian north east coast. An aerial survey of the Great Barrier Reef shows coral bleaching is sweeping across the area off the east of Australia for the third time in five years. Bleaching has struck all three regions of the world’s largest coral reef system and is more widespread than ever, scientists from James Cook University in Queensland state said Tuesday, April 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Brian Cassey, File)


BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — An aerial survey of the Great Barrier Reef shows coral bleaching is sweeping across the area off the east of Australia for the third time in five years.

Bleaching has struck all three regions of the world’s largest coral reef system and is more widespread than ever, scientists from James Cook University in Queensland state said Tuesday.

The air surveys of 1,036 reefs in the past two weeks found bleached coral in the northern, central and southern areas, James Cook University professor Terry Hughes said.

“As summers grow hotter and hotter, we no longer need an El Nino event to trigger mass bleaching at the scale of the Great Barrier Reef,” Hughes said. “Of the five events we have seen so far, only 1998 and 2016 occurred during El Nino conditions.”


El Nino is a climate pattern that starts with a band of warm ocean water in the central and east-central Pacific around the equator and affects global weather.

The Great Barrier Reef is made up of 2,900 separate reefs and 900 islands. It is unable to recover because there is not enough time between bleaching events.

“We have already seen the first example of back-to-back bleaching — in the consecutive summers of 2016 and 2017,” Hughes said, adding that the number of reefs spared from bleaching is shrinking as it becomes more widespread.

He said underwater surveys will be carried out later in the year to assess the extent of damage.

In early March, David Wachenfeld, chief scientist at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, said the reef was facing a critical period of heat stress over the coming weeks following the most widespread coral bleaching the natural wonder has ever endured.

The authority, the government agency that manages the coral expanse off northeast Australia, said ocean temperatures over the next month would be crucial to how the reef recovers from heat-induced bleaching.

“The forecasts ... indicate that we can expect ongoing levels of thermal stress for at least the next two weeks and maybe three or four weeks,” Wachenfeld said in a weekly update on the reef’s health.

“So this still is a critical time for the reef and it is the weather conditions over the next two to four weeks that will determine the final outcome,” he said.

Ocean temperatures across most of the reef were 0.5 to 1.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the March average.

In parts of the marine park in the south close to shore that avoided the ravages of previous bleachings, ocean temperatures were 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above average.

The authority had received 250 reports of sightings of bleached coral due to elevated ocean temperatures during an unusually hot February.

The 345,400-square kilometer (133,360-square mile) World Heritage-listed colorful coral network has been devastated by four coral bleaching events since 1998. The most deadly were the most recent, in those consecutive summers of 2016 and 2017.

Modeling coronavirus: ‘Uncertainty is the only certainty’

HEISENBERG PRINCIPLE IN REAL LIFE

By SETH BORENSTEIN and CARLA K. JOHNSON April 7, 2020

In this Monday, April 6, 2020, photo, a report delivered to the city of Austin, Texas, on COVID-19 health care demand is photographed in Frederick, Md. The latest statistical models forecast fewer deaths in the U.S. from the coronavirus pandemic before August. But there’s huge uncertainty in these models because health officials are still trying to get a handle on how the virus acts, how carefully people stick with social distancing and other restrictions, and treatment of the disease. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

SEATTLE (AP) — A statistical model cited by the White House generated a slightly less grim figure Monday for a first wave of deaths from the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. — a projection designed to help officials plan for the worst, including having enough hospital staff, beds and ventilators.

The only problem with this bit of relatively good news? It’s almost certainly wrong. All models are wrong. Some are just less wrong than others — and those are the ones that public health officials rely on.

Welcome to the grimace-and-bear-it world of modeling.

“The key thing is that you want to know what’s happening in the future,” said NASA top climate modeler Gavin Schmidt. “Absent a time machine you’re going to have to use a model.”

Weather forecasters use models. Climate scientists use them. Supermarkets use them.

As leaders try to get a handle on the coronavirus outbreak, they are turning to numerous mathematical models to help them figure out what might — key word, might — happen next and what they should try to do now to contain and prepare for the spread.

The model updated this week by the University of Washington — the one most often mentioned by U.S. health officials at White House briefings — predicts daily deaths in the U.S. will hit a peak in mid-April then decline through the summer.

Their latest projection shows that anywhere from 49,431 to 136,401 Americans will die in the first wave, which will last into the summer. That’s a huge range of 87,000. But only a few days earlier the same team had a range of nearly 138,000, with 177,866 as the top number of deaths. Officials credit social distancing.

The latest calculations are based on better data on how the virus acts, more information on how people act and more cities as examples. For example, new data from Italy and Spain suggest social distancing is working even better than expected to stop the spread of the virus.

The time it took for the epidemic to peak — that is, for those deaths to start declining — was shorter in those Italian and Spanish cities than it was Wuhan, China, said Dr. Christopher Murray of the University of Washington, who developed the model.

So how does modeling work? Take everything we know about how the coronavirus is spreading, when it’s deadly and when it’s not, when symptoms show and when they don’t.

Then factor in everything we know about how people are reacting, social distancing, stay-at-home orders and other squishy human factors.



Now add everything we know about testing, treating the disease and equipment shortages. Finally, mix in large dollops of uncertainty at every level.

Squeeze all those thousands of data points into incredibly complex mathematical equations and voila, here’s what’s going to happen next with the pandemic. Except, remember, there’s a huge margin of error: For the prediction of U.S. deaths, the range is larger than the population of Wilmington, Delaware.

“No model is perfect, but most models are somewhat useful,” said John Allen Paulos, a professor of math at Temple University and author of several books about math and everyday life. “But we can’t confuse the model with reality.”

One challenge for modelers is dealing with seesawing death totals from overburdened public health departments. A state’s data might show big swings in deaths — but only because a backlog of reports showed up all at once. The tremendous leaps in deaths in a single day could throw off predictions.

Another problem, said University of Texas disease modeler Lauren Ancel Meyers, is that most of the pandemic models, including hers, are based on how influenza acts, and that is different from this new coronavirus.

Most models use calculus to factor in “things you can’t predict,” Meyers said. To her, they are simple equations, ones that a person who knows advanced calculus can figure out. To the rest of the world, it’s Greek. Literally full of sigmas, phis, omegas and other symbols.

Even with all of the uncertainty, “it’s much better than shooting from the hip,” said Meyers, who is churning out iterations of what she calls a “workhorse model” of COVID-19 for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Data-driven models are the best evidence we have.”

Because of the large fudge factor, it’s smart not to look at one single number — the minimum number of deaths, or the maximum for that matter — but instead at the range of confidence, where there’s a 95% chance reality will fall, mathematician Paulos said. For the University of Washington model, that’s from 50,000 to 136,000 deaths.
Full Coverage: Virus Outbreak

Uncertainty will shrink with time, but never really go away — just like in hurricane forecasts, when the cone of uncertainty shrinks as the storm gets closer to making landfall, but remains large.

“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is,” Paulos said. “And knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.”


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This story has been updated to correct the name of the University of Texas disease modeler to Lauren Ancel Meyers, not Lauren Meyer.

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Borenstein reported from Kensington, Maryland.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.