OOPS
The head of Sweden's no-lockdown coronavirus plan said the country's heavy death toll 'came as a surprise'

Sinéad Baker May 6, 2020

The epidemiologist Anders Tegnell of the Public Health Agency of Sweden at a coronavirus press conference in Solna, Sweden, in March. 

JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images

The head of Sweden's coronavirus response said in a new interview that the country's high death toll had "come as a surprise" and was "really something we worry a lot about."
The state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell told "The Daily Show" that the Swedish strategy had still been successful in many ways.

But he said the no-lockdown strategy was not a conscious decision in favor of more deaths — instead he said the outsize toll was not part of the plan.
About half of Sweden's deaths have been in nursing homes, which prohibit visitors. Tegnell said health officials had thought it would be easier to keep the disease away from them.

The man leading Sweden's coronavirus response says the country's elevated death toll "really came as a surprise to us."

Dr. Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist, appeared on "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah" on Tuesday, when he described the country's controversial approach.

"We never really calculated with a high death toll initially, I must say," he said.

"We calculated on more people being sick, but the death toll really came as a surprise to us."

As of Tuesday, Sweden reported more than 2,700 COVID-19 deaths and more than 23,000 infections. That death toll is far higher than its Nordic neighbors' and many other countries that locked down.

Tegnell with Trevor Noah on "The Daily Show." 

YouTube/The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

Tegnell said there were good points to Sweden's unusual strategy, which largely relies on people to socially distance without fixed rules

The architect of Sweden's decision not to have a coronavirus lockdown says he still isn't sure it was the right call

Sinéad Baker May 4, 2020

People enjoying the spring weather in Stockholm on April 22

 despite the coronavirus pandemic.

 ANDERS WIKLUND/TT NEWS AGENCY/AFP via Getty Images


The architect of Sweden's unusual coronavirus plan says he still isn't sure it was the right call not to introduce a lockdown.

The state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet he was "not convinced at all" and his team was constantly examining how it was going and what else should be done.

He also said it was important to "be humble all the time because you may have to change," according to The Independent.

Sweden has introduced only a handful of rules and has left places like parks and restaurants open, but its death toll is much higher than neighboring countries'.

The scientist behind Sweden's controversial coronavirus plan says he is still not sure whether the country made the right decision by not implementing a lockdown.

"I'm not convinced at all," Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist, told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet on Friday, adding that the country's Public Health Agency — where he works — was constantly monitoring the situation.

"We are constantly thinking about this … What can we do better and what else can we add on?" he said, according to The Independent.

"I think the most important thing all the time is to try to do it as well as you can, with the knowledge we have and the tools you have in place. And to be humble all the time because you may have to change."

The state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell at a press conference 

in Solna, Sweden, on March 12. 

JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images
Sweden has attracted international attention and scrutiny for choosing to rely on citizens' sense of public duty and trust that they'll practice social distancing even without a host of rules meant to keep people apart.

People in Sweden are urged to stay apart, but shops, restaurants, bars, parks, and elementary schools are still open, with the limited rules including a ban on gatherings of more than 50 people, a ban on visits to care homes, and restaurants kept from serving customers who aren't seated.

If Sweden's plan proves successful, it could serve as evidence that other countries might have dealt with the virus without devastating their economy and keeping people inside.

But whether it has been successful is up for debate: The country's death toll is far higher than that of many other countries that introduced harsher restrictions.

People in Stockholm on April 21. Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images

UN chief says pandemic is unleashing a `tsunami of hate'

EDITH M. LEDERER,Associated Press•May 7, 2020

FILE - In this Dec. 17, 2019 file photo, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attends the UNHCR - Global Refugee Forum at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. When financial markets collapsed and the world faced its last great crisis in 2008, major powers worked together to restore the global economy, but the COVID-19 pandemic has been striking for the opposite response. The financial crisis gave birth to the leaders’ summit of the Group of 20, the world’s richest countries responsible for 80% of the global economy. But when Guterres proposed ahead of their summit in late March that G-20 leaders adopt a “wartime” plan and cooperate on the global response to suppress the virus, there was no response (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday the coronavirus pandemic keeps unleashing “a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering.”

The U.N. chief said “anti-foreigner sentiment has surged online and in the streets, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have spread, and COVID-19-related anti-Muslim attacks have occurred.”

Guterres said migrants and refugees “have been vilified as a source of the virus -- and then denied access to medical treatment.”

“With older persons among the most vulnerable, contemptible memes have emerged suggesting they are also the most expendable,” he said. “And journalists, whistleblowers, health professionals, aid workers and human rights defenders are being targeted simply for doing their jobs.”

Guterres appealed “for an all-out effort to end hate speech globally.”

The secretary-general called on political leaders to show solidarity with all people, on educational institutions to focus on “digital literacy” at a time when “extremists are seeking to prey on captive and potentially despairing audiences.”

He called on the media, especially social media, to “remove racist, misogynist and other harmful content,” on civil society to strengthen their outreach to vulnerable people, and on religious figures to serve as “models of mutual respect.”

“And I ask everyone, everywhere, to stand up against hate, treat each other with dignity and take every opportunity to spread kindness,” Guterres said.

The secretary-general stressed that COVID-19 “does not care who we are, where we live, what we believe or about any other distinction.”

His global appeal to address and counter COVID-19-related hate speech follows his April 23 message calling the coronarivus pandemic “a human crisis that is fast becoming a human rights crisis.”

Guterres said then that the pandemic has seen “disproportionate effects on certain communities, the rise of hate speech, the targeting of vulnerable groups, and the risks of heavy-handed security responses undermining the health response.”

With “rising ethno-nationalism, populism, authoritarianism and a push back against human rights in some countries, the crisis can provide a pretext to adopt repressive measures for purposes unrelated to the pandemic,” he warned.

In February, Guterres issued a call to action to countries, businesses and people to help renew and revive human rights across the globe, laying out a seven-point plan amid concerns about climate change, conflict and repression.

TRUMP CONFUSES OBAMA WITH OLD MOTHER HUBBARD

Trump claims he inherited a 'bare' national stockpile. Former Obama officials beg to differ

Jane C. Timm, NBC News•May 6, 2020

President Donald Trump has repeatedly complained that he inherited an empty national stockpile from the Obama administration, hamstringing his pandemic response because of a lack of emergency supplies.

"The cupboard was bare. The other administration, the last administration, left us nothing," Trump told ABC News' David Muir on Tuesday. "We didn't have ventilators. We didn't have medical equipment. The tests were broken — you saw that. We had broken tests. They left us nothing. We've taken it and we've built an incredible stockpile, a stockpile like we've never had before."

It's a sweeping claim Trump has made several times when faced with criticism that the government was slow to help states hit hard by the coronavirus and in dire need to supplies like personal protective equipment for front line workers and ventilators for an influx of patients — and one that former Obama administration and past news reports dispute.


Former federal officials argue that the Trump administration dropped the ball on stocking up at the first signs of a pandemic. (We've previously fact checked Trump's claim of a broken test — it's false.)

"It's not accurate to say the shelves were empty," said Dr. Nicole Lurie, who was assistant secretary of health and human services for preparedness and response under Obama.

Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

NPR toured one of the Strategic National Stockpile's warehouses in June 2016, describing a massive warehouse with rows of supplies, including ventilators; it noted a locked section for addictive medicines and a freezer full of temperature-controlled supplies. According to the report, an official valued the stockpile at $7 billion.

Vice toured the same year, reporting that the warehouse it visited "looked like a prepper's Ikea, with row after row of containers filled with mystery medications and equipment."

It's true that the stockpile wasn't as full as officials might have liked.

Lurie and Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under Obama, both aknowledged that congressionally ordered budget cuts had depleted the stockpile's reservecs. The Washington Post reported that 85 million N95 masks that were deployed from the stockpile during the swine flu crisis weren't replenished, for example.

But they said the Obama administration had put detailed plans and systems in place — for both refilling the stockpile and stocking up quickly in the event of a pandemic — that weren't maintained or used by the Trump administration.

"When we left, there was a pandemic plan," Lurie said. "There was a checklist about where you're supposed to do when. All of that stuff was in place, and it was quite comprehensive. That plan should have been activated that first week in January, and if you look at Rick Bright's whistleblower complaint, you see multiple attempts to do that."
She said that the Obama administration had left a crucial contract in place to speed the 

Fugate said the stockpile was supposed to be the first line of defense — not the only resource in an emergeproduction of masks but that the contract was dropped after Trump took office in 2017. Another plan created under the Obama administration that would have developed reusable masks was deployed too late to boost current efforts, she said.
ncy.

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The stockpile was "never envisioned to be stocked with everything you'd need to stock a pandemic-impacted country, but [they] were seen as the first out-of-the-door packages," he said. "Then you'd look at federal procurement."

Fugate recalled a transition exercise he participated in with the incoming Trump administration that simulated a government response to a potential pandemic.

It was "really just trying to walk them through how the processes were set up," he said. "It wasn't trying to tell them 'here's what you have to do.' It's 'here is how the system is set up.'"

But at the end of the day, Fugate said, "when you take over as the new administration, you own everything."

Muir pressed Trump on the fact that the pandemic hit three years into his term and he was still invoking his predecessor in response to criticism. Trump again sought to cast blame elsewhere.

"I'll be honest, I have a lot of things going on," Trump said. "We had a lot of people that refused to allow the country to be successful. They wasted a lot of time on Russia, Russia, Russia. That turned out to be a hoax. Then they did Ukraine, Ukraine, and that was a total hoax. Then they impeached the president of the United States for absolutely no reason."

Trump Wants a Quick Reopening. Data His Own White House Is Examining Shows It Could Be a Disaster

Erin Banco,The Daily Beast•May 6, 2020

Getty

One of the studies that the Trump administration is relying on as it moves ahead with plans to reopen the U.S. economy warns that even if states take the necessary steps to ease social distancing restrictions, counties across the country—both big and small—will see a significant spread of coronavirus.

The study, which was put together by PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is in the hands of top coronavirus task force officials and people working with the team, sources confirmed to The Daily Beast. It projects that if officials move too quickly and too aggressively to reopen in mid May, individual counties could witness hundreds, if not a thousand-plus, more coronavirus cases reported each day by August 1. Just two weeks more social distancing, the study projects, could reduce infections substantially—with potentially hundreds of thousands of fewer cases if the projections are conservatively expanded out to all 3,000-plus counties across the country.

The modeling shows that those counties exist in various parts of the country, in both urban and rural communities. In almost all cases, counties would see notably fewer cases per day if they waited to ease social distancing restrictions until June 1, according to the study’s projections. The model also suggests that states moving to ease restrictions should consider allowing individual counties to craft their own policies. Under the projections, one county could experience significantly different daily case numbers than others in the state—even those nearby—merely by continuing to adhere to social distancing protocols.

“There’s going to be transmission if people stop sheltering in place,” Dr. Rubin, the director of PolicyLab at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said in an interview. “It’s not that all [counties] are safe to reopen. Every area is extremely sensitive to the amount of distancing you’re doing. The more cautious you are the better.”

Dolly Parton Is Backing Research Into Promising COVID Treatment

Two administration officials who have seen the PolicyLab study say it is one of the few being seriously considered by the Trump coronavirus task force and that the White House is using it to inform how they advise governors on easing social distancing restrictions. One other official said it is “one of a number of studies and data” that the administration is looking at in the process of safely reopening the country.

The study’s findings raise questions about the White House’s push to shift the focus of its coronavirus response away from combating and mitigating the disease and more towards managing it. In recent days, President Donald Trump has talked about reorienting his coronavirus task force towards reopening the economy and insisted that the shift in focus could happen without putting additional lives at risk.

The data put together by PolicyLab suggests it’s not quite so risk-free. The authors laid out a variety of projections, including what would happen if there was roughly 33 percent less social distancing than prior to the pandemic. Such a percentage decrease, they calculated, would represent people in the county going “roughly halfway back to normal travel (pre-epidemic) to non-essential businesses” like bars and gyms.

Trump’s America Now Leads the World—in Suicidal Stupidity

Under their projections, if starting on May 15 residents in Los Angeles county were to conduct 33 percent less social distancing, the coronavirus daily case count would jump from about 471 cases to 1,467 by August 1. Similarly, Illinois’s Cook County, where Chicago is located, would see daily coronavirus case numbers spike from 626 to 2,494 between May 15 and August 1.

Among officials working with the president’s coronavirus task force, projections like these have sparked fears that states will ignore warnings and move too quickly to completely reopen their economies, prompting coronavirus case numbers and related deaths to continue to rise. That’s already happening in states such as Kansas and Nebraska, according to publicly available data from the state’s health departments.

A similar study reported by The Washington Post and The New York Times this week shows the coronavirus daily case count surging as high as 200,000 by June 1. The report includes stamps from the Center for Disease Control, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Homeland Security. But officials inside the administration have said the study was not vetted before release.

Unlike that study, Rubin’s study looks at the disease’s impact locally. His modeling case counts for individual counties as a way to show how smaller communities might begin to think about reopening.

“I think what people are taking from the study is that it is OK to have selective strategies for reopening,” Rubin said, adding that the study is still in progress and currently under peer review.

The study looks at the coronavirus epidemic across 260 counties throughout the country. The team used publicly available data to model how social distancing, population density, and daily temperatures affect the number and spread of coronavirus infections over time across a county. It accounts for population characteristics, such as age, health insurance status, and smoking prevalence and uses cellphone movement data to include factors related to social distancing.

The model illustrates four scenarios in which social distancing practice reduces from its current national average of 70 percent, back to either 50 percent or 33 percent. It also considers two options for reopening: May 15 or June 1.

If Cook County were to conduct 33 percent less social distancing (or, put another way again, bring its economy roughly halfway back to normal) starting on June 1, as opposed to May 15, it would see its daily case numbers go up to 701 by August 1 instead of 1,868. Los Angeles County would experience a similar phenomenon with its daily case numbers increasing up to 383 by August 1 if it were to bring its economy roughly halfway back to normal starting on June 1, instead of 1,467 if it did so from May 15.

The model identifies social distancing as the most important factor in reducing transmission, but does not take into account what happens when people start ramping up commuting or flying, Rubin said.

“The outcomes and the forecasts… transfer responsibility back to the individual and the businesses,” he said.

Three senior Trump administration officials acknowledged that the White House and the coronavirus task force have been working with doctors at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia in drafting guidelines for reopening the country. One official said the task force is particularly interested in the study’s findings that rising temperatures appear to be reducing the risk for large second peaks of coronavirus cases during the summer in many locations. But Rubin says that will only be the case as long as states move forward with reopening cautiously.

“No place, including those more rural areas, is immune from the effects of this virus,” Rubin said. “Temperature alone is not going to solve the problem.

--With reporting by Asawin Suebsaeng

Researcher 'on verge of very significant' coronavirus findings shot to death
A medical researcher said to be on the "verge of making very significant" coronavirus findings was found shot to death over the weekend in Pennsylvania, officials said.

Image: Bing Liu (University of Pittsburgh)


Tim Stelloh and Doha Madani, NBC News•May 5, 2020
A

Bing Liu, 37, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, was found dead Saturday inside a home in Ross Township, north of Pittsburgh, the Allegheny County medical examiner said.

He had been shot in the head and the neck, the agency said.

An hour after Liu's body was discovered, a second person, Hao Gu, 46, was found dead inside a car less than a mile away, the agency said.

Ross Township police Detective Sgt. Brian Kohlhepp told NBC News that the men knew each other. Investigators believe Gu killed Liu before returning to his car, where he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Police believe the deaths occurred on Saturday after a "lengthy dispute regarding an intimate partner," according to the Ross Police Department Wednesday.

"We have found zero evidence that this tragic event has anything to do with employment at the University of Pittsburgh, any work being conducted at the University of Pittsburgh and the current health crisis affecting the United States and the world," police said.

The investigation has been forwarded to federal authorities because neither of the men were U.S. citizens.

Liu, who earned a Ph.D. in computational science from the National University of Singapore, worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University before becoming a research associate at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

In a statement, the University of Pittsburgh described him as an excellent mentor and prolific researcher who had co-authored more than 30 papers. His work focused on systems biology.

"Bing was on the verge of making very significant findings toward understanding the cellular mechanisms that underlie SARS-CoV-2 infection and the cellular basis of the following complications," the school said. "We will make an effort to complete what he started in an effort to pay homage to his scientific excellence."

Russian coronavirus doctors are mysteriously falling out of ...

https://www.vox.com › coronavirus-russia-doctors-windows-death

1 day ago - Three Russian doctors working to treat coronavirus patients have ... fell out of a window during a conference call at her hospital and died on May 1 after ... the coronavirus, she was hospitalized at the Federal Scientific Clinical ...

Doctor Who Sounded Early Alarm on Coronavirus Dies at 34 ...

https://time.com › World › COVID-19

Feb 7, 2020 - Whistleblower Doctor Who Sounded Alarm on Coronavirus Dies in China ... At the end of December, several weeks into a mysterious disease ... He was reportedly diagnosed with the coronavirus after treating an infected glaucoma patient. ... Science · History · Newsfeed · Sports · Magazine · The TIME Vault ..

The final results are in: Finland's basic-income trial found people were happier, but weren't more likely to get jobs


Business Insider•May 6, 2020

Juha Jaervinen, a participant in Finland's basic income experiment, rides on a rented bike in April 2018..

Gregor Fischer/DPA/Getty Images


The final results of a basic-income study in Finland found people were happier but not likelier to get a job after given free money.

2,000 unemployed people were given $600 each month for two years.

The study drew criticism from some experts for its design.

The idea of basic income has gained renewed interest during the pandemic with millions people out of work and national economies thrown into tailspins.

The final results were published on Wednesday for a landmark two-year basic-income study conducted in Finland: Participants were happier when given free money, but they were not any more likely to land a job.

Bloomberg reported that the findings align with the initial results released in early 2019. More than 2,000 unemployed people aged 25 to 58 were randomly selected and given a monthly stipend of 560 euros (or $600).

"This was a big carrot, and we can see it didn't fully work," Kari Hamalainen, chief researcher at the VATT Institute for Economic Research, said on a livestream, according to the outlet.

During the first year, roughly 18% of the participants were able to get jobs — around the same rate as the control group. The following year saw 27% of people working, slightly higher than the control group.
But the study drew criticism from other basic-income researchers for containing what they characterized as serious flaws in the experiment's design that skewed conclusions, Business Insider's Aria Bendix reported in December.

They pointed out the subjects in the study had to waive other benefits to get the money, and researchers rushed the experiment under political pressure.

The idea of basic income has gained renewed interest during the coronavirus pandemic. Millions of jobless people are relying on social safety nets that vary greatly from one country to the next. Spain, for example, is seeking to implement a basic income scheme to supplement the income of its poorest citizens.

Three million people are expected to benefit under a program that's rolling out this month, Reuters reported.

In the US, federal efforts have focused on aiding Americans after they lose jobs and their health insurance with it. That's in stark contrast to European nations like Denmark, which is subsidizing shuttered businesses to keep workers on payrolls.

Nearly 150 million Americans are also slated to get one-time stimulus checks up to $1,200. Some Democrats, like Sen. Bernie Sanders, are calling for recurring payments to cushion devastated household finances during the pandemic.

Infectious-disease doctors ask government to explain how it decides who gets Gilead’s remdesivir

Published: May 7, 2020 By Jaimy Lee
Emergency-use authorization for remdesivir states that distribution of the drug will be controlled by the U.S. government, and several organizations have raised questions about access to the drug

Getty Images

Within a week of the Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of remdesivir as a COVID-19 treatment, clinicians are pushing the Trump administration to clarify how it is selecting which hospitals get access to the drug.

Shares of Gilead Sciences Inc. GILD, +0.18%, which developed remdesivir, edged up 0.2% in Thursday trades and are up 19.4% in 2020.

The emergency-use authorization, or EUA, for remdesivir, which came out on Friday, states that distribution of the drug will be controlled by the U.S. government, which will then allocate the medication to hospitals and other health-care providers. However, several organizations have raised questions this week about access to the treatment, which is one of two types of COVID-19 drugs to receive an EUA since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Read:FDA grants Gilead’s remdesivir emergency authorization for COVID-19 treatment
AmerisourceBergen Corp. ABC, +3.78%, the distributor for remdesivir, said in a statement on Tuesday that the administration is coordinating “the distribution of remdesivir to hospitals in regions most heavily impacted by COVID-19,” and that it and Gilead aren’t involved in the distribution decision-making process.

In a letter addressed to Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday, the HIV Medicine Association and the Infectious Diseases Society of America said: “The plan for distributing remdesivir should be transparent and should be based on state and regional COVID-19 case data and hospitalization rates.”


A similar request for insight into the allocation process was made by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists in a letter on Thursday. The organization requested that the administration share details about how the donated doses of the drug are being distributed so hospitals can better plan if they need to purchase remdesivir when it becomes available commercially. “The process for hospitals to access the drug remains unclear,” the ASHP CEO Paul W. Abramowitz wrote.

A physician associated with Boston Medical Center tweeted that the hospital hasn’t received any doses of remdesivir. “We have the second highest absolute case count and highest per bed in Boston,” Dr. Benjamin Linas, an epidemiologist at the safety-net hospital, tweeted on Wednesday. “We also had no access to early trials. Today, the family of a dying patient asked me why we do not have RDV. What am I supposed to say?”

Doctors at other hospitals around the U.S. have raised similar concerns, according to Stat News, and a spokesman for the American Hospital Association said the organization is “waiting to hear more” from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA.

The development and distribution of remdesivir doesn’t follow the same model as drugs launched pre-pandemic. The therapy didn’t go through the FDA approval process; instead it received an EUA, and only the top-line data from a Phase 3 clinical trial conducted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has been shared publicly and used to inform the EUA. Gilead has said that additional data will be made available in a study that will be peer reviewed and published in a medical journal.


In addition, Gilead has said that through June it will donate 1.5 million doses of the drug, which can be used for 140,000 patients on a 10-day regimen.

When the FDA granted an EUA to hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to treat COVID-19 patients, it prompted a run on the products that led some states, including New York, to put requirements around who could get a prescription for hydroxychloroquine as patients who take the medicines for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis found themselves without access to their prescriptions.

Given the lack of proven treatments for a disease that has killed more than 266,000 people worldwide, since the novel coronavirus was detected last year, it’s not surprising that access to remdesivir has become a concern for those on the front line of caring for severely ill COVID-19 patients. On Tuesday, Gilead announced it was in talks with other drug makers to produce remdesivir outside of the U.S.

“We intend to allocate our available supply based on guiding principles that aim to direct global access for appropriate patients in urgent need of treatment,” CEO Daniel O’Day told investors last week, according to a FactSet transcript of the earnings call.

Separately, Gilead announced Thursday that it received approval for remdesivir under the brand name Vuklury in Japan as a treatment for severely ill COVID-19 patients there.

Since the start of the year, as Gilead’s stock has surged more than 19%, shares of AmerisourceBergen have gained 4.9% and the S&P 500 SPX, +1.15% is down 11.8%.

Face masks becoming a culture-war front as Trump says his wearing one would ‘send the wrong message’

Published: May 7, 2020 By Associated Press

After criticism of his decision not to wear a face mask during an April 28 visit to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.,Vice President Mike Pence did wear one two days later as he toured a General Motors/Ventec ventilator production facility Kokomo, Ind., with Chris Kiple of Ventec and GM CEO and Chairman Mary Barra. Associated Press

PENCE WEARS A MASK IN AN AUTO FACTORY 

AFTER REFUSING TO WEAR ONE IN A HOSPITAL

VISITING A RECOVERING PATIENT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The decision to wear a mask in public is becoming a political statement — a moment to pick sides in a brewing culture war over containing the coronavirus.

While not yet as loaded as a “Make America Great Again” hat, the mask is increasingly a visual shorthand for the debate pitting those willing to follow health officials’ guidance and cover their faces against those who feel it violates their freedom or buys into a threat they think is overblown.


Trump is known to be especially cognizant of his appearance on television and has also told confidants that he fears he would look ridiculous in a mask and the image would appear in negative ads.

That resistance is fueled by some of the same people who object to other virus restrictions. The push-back has been stoked by President Donald Trump — he didn’t wear a mask during an appearance at an Arizona facility making them — and some other Republicans, who have flouted rules and questioned the value of masks. It’s a development that has worried experts as Americans are increasingly returning to public spaces.

“There’s such a strong culture of individualism that, even if it’s going to help protect them, people don’t want the government telling them what to do,” said Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech engineering professor with experience in airborne transmission of viruses.


Inconclusive science and shifting federal guidance have muddied the political debate. Health officials initially said wearing masks was unnecessary, especially amid a shortage of protective materials. But last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began recommending wearing cloth masks in crowded public situations to prevent transmitting the virus.

Whether Americans are embracing the change may depend on their political party. While most other protective measures like social distancing get broad bipartisan support, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they’re wearing a mask when leaving home, 76% to 59%, according to a recent poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.



‘You’d think, as the president of the United States, you would have the confidence to honor the guidance he’s giving the country.’— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking of President Donald Trump

The split is clear across several demographics that lean Democratic. People with college degrees are more likely than those without to wear masks when leaving home, 78% to 63%. African Americans are more likely than either white people or Hispanic Americans to say they’re wearing masks outside the home, 83% to 64% and 67%, respectively.

The notable exception is among older people, a group particularly vulnerable to serious illness from the virus. Some 79% of those age 60 and over were doing so compared with 63% of those younger.

“Who knows what the truth is on masks?” asked Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who, unlike some of his colleagues, went without a mask in the Senate. Paul, himself an ophthalmologist, already contracted the virus and believes he is no longer contagious.

That was a long way from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s moral argument for masks days earlier. “How people cannot wear masks — that to me is even disrespectful,” Cuomo said. “You put so many people at risk because you did not want to wear a mask?”


Effectiveness aside, politicians of both parties are clued into the powerful symbolism of the mask, and many Americans who support him likely take their cues from the president.

Trump was barefaced when he spoke to masked journalists, workers and Secret Service agents at the Arizona factory Tuesday. He later said he briefly wore a mask backstage but took it off because facility personnel told him he didn’t need it.

But Trump has been mask averse for weeks. Within minutes of the CDC’s announcing its updated mask recommendations, he said, “I don’t think that I’m going to be doing it.”

Trump has told advisers that he believes wearing one would “send the wrong message,” according to one administration and two campaign officials not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations. The president said doing so would make it seem like he is preoccupied with health instead of focused on reopening the nation’s economy — which his aides believe is the key to his reelection chances.

Moreover, Trump, who is known to be especially cognizant of his appearance on television, has also told confidants that he fears he would look ridiculous in a mask and the image would appear in negative ads.

“It’s a vanity thing, I guess, with him,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of Trump on MSNBC. “You’d think, as the president of the United States, you would have the confidence to honor the guidance he’s giving the country.”

That’s left those around him unsure of how to proceed. White House aides say the president hasn’t told them not to wear them, but few do. Some Republican allies have asked Trump’s campaign how it would be viewed by the White House if they were spotted wearing a mask.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Thursday that he himself wears a mask when near others but said of Trump, “The president has his doctor around him all the time” and makes “sure what he does is correct.”


Republican allies have asked Trump’s campaign how it would be viewed by the White House if they were spotted wearing a mask.

Meanwhile, Trump’s re-election campaign has ordered red Trump-branded masks and is considering giving them away at events or in return for donations. But some advisers are concerned the president will eventually sour on the idea.

That uncertainty was on display last week, when Vice President Mike Pence went maskless at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. He later said he should have worn one and did during a subsequent trip to a ventilator plant in Indiana. Pence didn’t wear a mask Thursday while dropping off supplies at a rehabilitation center outside Washington — but he also didn’t go in.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden says he wears a mask when interacting with the Secret Service. But dilemmas for politicians and other Americans are going to increase as parts of the country ease stay-at-home orders. Such tensions have already flared in Michigan, where a dispute over a mask turned deadly.

One of the earliest communities to require masks in public was Laredo, Texas. A $1,000 noncompliance fine was negated by an order from the governor, but Mayor Pete Saenz said his community is still asking citizens to comply so hospitals aren’t overtaxed with new cases.

“We don’t want to violate anyone’s civil liberties,” Saenz said. But “we can’t help you, if it’s beyond our medical capacity, whether you exercise your civil liberties or not.”

Giant ‘murder hornet’ is in U.S. to stay, will eventually reach East Coast, experts say

Are they dangerous? ‘Absolutely. Oh, my God,’ ex-NYPD beekeeper says


The Asian giant hornet, aka "murder hornet," has made it to the U.S. Washington Department of Agriculture

The New York Post 

Published: May 3, 2020 By Reuven Fenton and Kate Sheehy

It’s not a matter of if but when the “murder hornet’’ will hit the East Coast, experts warned The Post on Sunday.

The deadly meat-eating Asian giant hornet, which has been known to kill up to 50 people a year in Japan, recently surfaced for the first time in the US in Washington state — and New York City beekeepers say there is no way it won’t make its way here, too.

“I told the NYPD back in 2012 … ‘Your problem is not the bees. This [the murder hornet] is your problem,’” recalled retired Police Department beekeeper Anthony “Tony Bees” Planakis.

“I showed them a picture of it, and they go, ‘What the hell is that?’ ” Planakis said. “I go, ‘That is an Asian hornet. My suit is useless against that thing.’”


Asked if the monstrous insects are dangerous to humans, Planakis added, “Absolutely. Oh, my God.”

“Have you seen the mandibles on these things?”

The hornets, the world’s largest at more than 2 inches long, were first spotted in Washington in December, likely having made their way to the U.S. aboard a ship from China, experts said.

Planakis said he expects them to arrive East at least in the next two to three years.

He said that in terms of eventual local infiltration, city green spaces in the outer boroughs are the most likely places.

“All it takes is a few hornets, and you’ve got a colony,” Planakis said.

Spots such as the Bronx Botanical Gardens are ideal because there’s plenty of open space and lots of food, he said. Parks in general would be attractive to the giant hornets, although you won’t find them in very urban spots such as Manhattan because they tend to nest in the ground or burrow in rotted wood, he said.

Manhattan beekeeper Andrew Cote said it “could be years before they make a foothold [on the East Coast] — or they could end up in the back of somebody’s truck and be here in four days.”

Either way, the carnivorous insect “is here to stay” in the U.S., he said.

“We can expect them to be everywhere on the continent in time. … It’s a done deal,” Cote said. “There’s no way to contain it to the West Coast.”

He said he saw the giant hornets on a trip to China in 2017, where “local beekeepers there used small bats that looked like miniature cricket bats” to hit the hornets mid-air.

“It sounded like someone hitting a rock. The hornets are extraordinarily aggressive,” Cote said.

“The prospect of my semi-defenseless bees having to confront them sends chills up my spine.”

The killer hornet “can decimate a honey-bee colony because it needs to build up protein for its own colony, so it decapitates and consumes part of the honey bee,” Cote said.

Planakis said the hornet’s stinger “is approximately a quarter of an inch,” compared to the one-sixteenth of an inch for a honey bee.

“It’s a little bit bigger than a cicada,” he said of the hornet. “You’ll see the tip of the stinger, but it’s not until it actually extends the stinger out that it goes into your skin. And they’re meat-eaters. … They’ll go after birds, small sparrows if they have to.”

Planakis said that inside their venom “is a pheromone, which is like a magnet to other hornets.”

“So you can get swarmed just from getting stung by one.”

“The worst thing anyone can do with these things is kill them,” he said. “That scent is going to be airborne, and the rest of the hive will come.

“Getting stung is extremely painful, and anyone who is allergic, heaven help them,” he added. “And they don’t sting you one time. They have the ability to sting you multiple times. Honeybees can only sting you once, and then they die.”

Still, “you have to understand, out in the wild, unless you go up to their hive, they’re not going to sit there and just seek you out,” the beekeeper said. “There’s got to be a reason for them to come at you.”

Cote said bees can fight back by swarming a hornet if it gets in their hive and suffocating it.

Meanwhile, beekeepers can make the entrance to their beehives smaller to limit the number of hornets getting in at a time, or place “a roach motel for hornets’’ outside of hives that consists of a cage with meat in it to attract, and then trap, the carnivorous insects, said Cote, author of the upcoming book “Honey and Venom: Confessions of an Urban Beekeeper.”

Planakis said that in China, they have hornet hunters.

“There’s a tracker, and what they do is they set up a water source, and they wait there, like a deer hunter would,” he said.

“As soon as they see the hornet coming to the water source to drink, the guy jumps out with a net, and he grabs it. Then, ever so carefully, he ties a strong on it and lets it go.

“There’s a spotter watching it now with binoculars, and he watches this thing as it flies, because obviously it’s going to fly back to the nest. When they find it, they mark where the nest is.

“And at night they come back and with a flame-thrower, pretty much go at it, just follow them back to their base camp, and when they least expect it, boom, go after them.”

This report originally appeared on NYPost.com.

Trump campaign slammed for ‘Death Star’ tweet: ‘A little too on the nose’

Published: May 7, 2020 By Shawn Langlois

666
‘Laugh all you want, we will take the win!’ — Brad Parscale

MarketWatch photo illustration/Getty Images, Everett Collection

President Trump reportedly erupted at his top political advisers when they presented him with polling data last month that showed he was losing support in some of the battleground states.

“I am not f—-ing losing to Joe Biden,” he repeated in a series of heated conference calls, according to five sources cited by the Associated Press last week.

Among those on the receiving end of his rant: campaign manager Brad Parscale, the bearer of bad news who reportedly took the brunt of it. Parscale has apparently been under fire lately because Trump and some of his aides, according to the AP, believe he’s been using association with the president to seek personal publicity and enrich himself in the process.

Regardless of whatever infighting there may be in the White House, Parscale is still on the front lines of Trump’s campaign, and that means firing off tweets like this:

The Atlantic described “Death Star” as a “disinformation campaign” that is “heavily funded, technologically sophisticated, and staffed with dozens of experienced operatives.”  

(LONG READ WELL WORTH IT, BUT BEHIND PAYWALL IF YOU HAVE USED UP YOUR MONTHLY QUOTA SEE EXCERPT BELOW)

Critics might also say “you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

Aside from the perhaps poor taste, timing-wise, the internet was there to remind Parscale and the bunch at campaign headquarters of what ultimately happened in the original story and pushed “Death Star” to the top of Twitter’s TWTR, +3.93% trending list in the process:

Then again, Parscale’s defenders offered a different take either way, Parscale seems pleased with how it all played out

EXCERPT FROM ATLANTIC ARTICLE DEATHSTAR

DISINFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
In his book This Is Not Propaganda, Peter Pomerantsev, a researcher at the London School of Economics, writes about a young Filipino political consultant he calls “P.” In college, P had studied the “Little Albert experiment,” in which scientists conditioned a young child to fear furry animals by exposing him to loud noises every time he encountered a white lab rat. The experiment gave P an idea. He created a series of Facebook groups for Filipinos to discuss what was going on in their communities. Once the groups got big enough—about 100,000 members—he began posting local crime stories, and instructed his employees to leave comments falsely tying the grisly headlines to drug cartels. The pages lit up with frightened chatter. Rumors swirled; conspiracy theories metastasized. To many, all crimes became drug crimes.

Unbeknownst to their members, the Facebook groups were designed to boost Rodrigo Duterte, then a long-shot presidential candidate running on a pledge to brutally crack down on drug criminals. (Duterte once boasted that, as mayor of Davao City, he rode through the streets on his motorcycle and personally executed drug dealers.) P’s experiment was one plank in a larger “disinformation architecture”—which also included social-media influencers paid to mock opposing candidates, and mercenary trolls working out of former call centers—that experts say aided Duterte’s rise to power. Since assuming office in 2016, Duterte has reportedly ramped up these efforts while presiding over thousands of extrajudicial killings.

The campaign in the Philippines was emblematic of an emerging propaganda playbook, one that uses new tools for the age-old ends of autocracy. The Kremlin has long been an innovator in this area. (A 2011 manual for Russian civil servants favorably compared their methods of disinformation to “an invisible radiation” that takes effect while “the population doesn’t even feel it is being acted upon.”) But with the technological advances of the past decade, and the global proliferation of smartphones, governments around the world have found success deploying Kremlin-honed techniques against their own people.

Read: Peter Pomerantsev on Russia and the menace of unreality

In the United States, we tend to view such tools of oppression as the faraway problems of more fragile democracies. But the people working to reelect Trump understand the power of these tactics. They may use gentler terminology—muddy the waters; alternative facts—but they’re building a machine designed to exploit their own sprawling disinformation architecture.

Central to that effort is the campaign’s use of micro-targeting—the process of slicing up the electorate into distinct niches and then appealing to them with precisely tailored digital messages. The advantages of this approach are obvious: An ad that calls for defunding Planned Parenthood might get a mixed response from a large national audience, but serve it directly via Facebook to 800 Roman Catholic women in Dubuque, Iowa, and its reception will be much more positive. If candidates once had to shout their campaign promises from a soapbox, micro-targeting allows them to sidle up to millions of voters and whisper personalized messages in their ear.

Parscale didn’t invent this practice—Barack Obama’s campaign famously used it in 2012, and Clinton’s followed suit. But Trump’s effort in 2016 was unprecedented, in both its scale and its brazenness. In the final days of the 2016 race, for example, Trump’s team tried to suppress turnout among black voters in Florida by slipping ads into their News Feeds that read, “Hillary Thinks African-Americans Are Super Predators.” An unnamed campaign official boasted to Bloomberg Businessweek that it was one of “three major voter suppression operations underway.” (The other two targeted young women and white liberals.)

The weaponization of micro-targeting was pioneered in large part by the data scientists at Cambridge Analytica. The firm began as part of a nonpartisan military contractor that used digital psyops to target terrorist groups and drug cartels. In Pakistan, it worked to thwart jihadist recruitment efforts; in South America, it circulated disinformation to turn drug dealers against their bosses.

The emphasis shifted once the conservative billionaire Robert Mercer became a major investor and installed Steve Bannon as his point man. Using a massive trove of data it had gathered from Facebook and other sources—without users’ consent—Cambridge Analytica worked to develop detailed “psychographic profiles” for every voter in the U.S., and began experimenting with ways to stoke paranoia and bigotry by exploiting certain personality traits. In one exercise, the firm asked white men whether they would approve of their daughter marrying a Mexican immigrant; those who said yes were asked a follow-up question designed to provoke irritation at the constraints of political correctness: “Did you feel like you had to say that?”

Christopher Wylie, who was the director of research at Cambridge Analytica and later testified about the company to Congress, told me that “with the right kind of nudges,” people who exhibited certain psychological characteristics could be pushed into ever more extreme beliefs and conspiratorial thinking. “Rather than using data to interfere with the process of radicalization, Steve Bannon was able to invert that,” Wylie said. “We were essentially seeding an insurgency in the United States.”

Cambridge Analytica was dissolved in 2018, shortly after its CEO was caught on tape bragging about using bribery and sexual “honey traps” on behalf of clients. (The firm denied that it actually used such tactics.) Since then, some political scientists have questioned how much effect its “psychographic” targeting really had. But Wylie—who spoke with me from London, where he now works for H&M, as a fashion-trend forecaster—said the firm’s work in 2016 was a modest test run compared with what could come.




“What happens if North Korea or Iran picks up where Cambridge Analytica left off?” he said, noting that plenty of foreign actors will be looking for ways to interfere in this year’s election. “There are countless hostile states that have more than enough capacity to quickly replicate what we were able to do … and make it much more sophisticated.” These efforts may not come only from abroad: A group of former Cambridge Analytica employees have formed a new firm that, according to the Associated Press, is working with the Trump campaign. (The firm has denied this, and a campaign spokesperson declined to comment.)

After the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, Facebook was excoriated for its mishandling of user data and complicity in the viral spread of fake news. Mark Zuckerberg promised to do better, and rolled out a flurry of reforms. But then, last fall, he handed a major victory to lying politicians: Candidates, he said, would be allowed to continue running false ads on Facebook. (Commercial advertisers, by contrast, are subject to fact-checking.) In a speech at Georgetown University, the CEO argued that his company shouldn’t be responsible for arbitrating political speech, and that because political ads already receive so much scrutiny, candidates who choose to lie will be held accountable by journalists and watchdogs.