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aprossi

Fauci says he worried Trump's disinfectant comment would make people 'start doing dange... - 0 views

  • Fauci says he worried Trump's disinfectant comment would make people 'start doing dangerous and foolish things'
  • Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, said Monday evening he was extremely worried by former President Donald Trump's dangerous April suggestion that ingesting disinfectant could possibly be used to treat Covid-19.
  • He later falsely claimed he was being sarcastic and that he was prompting officials to look into the effect of disinfectant on hands -- not through ingestion or injection. But the comments prompted cleaning product companies and state health officials to issue warnings about the dangers of their ingestion.
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  • You're going to have people who hear that from the President and they're going to start doing dangerous and foolish thing
  • Fauci recalled Monday evening that Trump had been getting a mix of "good information and bad information" on the pandemic.
  • As a result of his willingness to openly refute Trump, Fauci has faced numerous threats to his personal safety -- something he says has given him a look at "the depth of the divisiveness" in the US.
  • This includes "somebody sending me an envelope with powder that explodes in my face to scare me and my family," Fauci said Monday. And while the substance turned out to be a harmless powder, Fauci explained, "My children were very, very distraught by that."
  • The US Capitol insurrection earlier this month, Fauci assessed, was that same divisiveness "in its ultimate."
katherineharron

Trump's rebuke of Fauci encapsulates rejection of science in virus fight - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Trump broke with Fauci, who has served under six presidents, on Wednesday over the infectious disease expert's warnings that getting businesses and schools back open too quickly would lead to unnecessary suffering and death.
  • The delicate dynamic between Fauci and Trump has been watched for months. Its latest fraying marks the most pronounced clash yet in the tussle between science and politics that has long plagued the administration's fight against the coronavirus.
  • The gulf between Trump's approach and scientific rationality is expected to be further underscored Thursday with House testimony from Dr. Rick Bright, who says he was ousted from his job developing a coronavirus vaccine because he questioned Trump's enthusiasm for hydroxychloroquine, an unproven treatment for Covid-19. Bright will warn, according to his prepared testimony, that the US could face "unprecedented illness" and the "darkest winter in modern history" if it doesn't do a better job of preparing for a second wave of the pandemic.
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  • Ironically, another of Trump's failings, one in which Fauci may be in some ways complicit as a member of the coronavirus task force -- to stand up a comprehensive national testing and tracking system -- may frustrate the President's effort to get the country up and running quickly with no vaccine in sight.
  • He has yet to initiate a serious national conversation about the vital need to get the economy firing again balanced against the level of death and illness that is acceptable to the country given that the pandemic could worsen if states open up too quickly.
  • Trump's use of the world "acceptable" in relation to Fauci's comments is instructive about how he sees subordinates in his administration. The history of his three years in power shows that officials who do not provide the justification and the pretext for his actions or who prefer to act on their own perceptions of the national interest are eventually ousted.
  • In recent weeks, Trump has shifted from an approach rooted in benchmarks for phased state openings based on a waning of the virus to one based on opening the economy whatever the cost.
  • Rising attacks on Fauci have taken their toll on his standing with the President's supporters, even though he is warmly regarded by the rest of the country. In a new CNN/SSRS poll, 84% of Republicans say they trust Trump to give them information on the virus. Only 61% of the same slice of the electorate say they trust Fauci, who has headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984.
  • "I'm a scientist, a physician and a public health official. I give advice, according to the best scientific evidence," he said. "I don't give advice about economic things."
katherineharron

Fauci says calls for his dismissal are 'part of the game' - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, said Monday evening that calls for his dismissal are "part of the game" as he continues to urge Americans to practice social distancing.
  • Fauci has been targeted by critics online who are unhappy with his recommendations to continue social distancing in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
  • "There are people that are going to be disagreeing with me. Some of them, rather violently in many respects, you know, telling me that I am crazy, fire Fauci, do this, do that. That is part of the game," Fauci told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "Cuomo Prime Time."
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  • "I feel I have a moral obligation to give the kind of information that I am giving," he said Monday. "People are going to make their own choices, I cannot -- nor anybody -- force people under every circumstance, to do what you'd think is best.
  • "This was a person's view. Not everybody's happy with Anthony. Not everybody is happy with everybody," he said. "But I will tell you, we have done a job the likes of which nobody has ever done."
aprossi

(2) Fauci says 100 million vaccine doses in Biden's first 100 days is doable - 1 views

  • The latest on the coronavirus pandemic and vaccines
  • Fauci says 100 million vaccine doses in Biden's first 100 days is doable
  • Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Friday morning that "it's quite feasible" the United States can achieve President-elect Joe Biden's goal to distribute 100 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine in his first 100 days of office. Fauci is set to serve as Biden's chief medical adviser.
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  • Right now, even now, we've gone from half a million a day to 750,000 a day.
  • "If we get about 70% to 85% of the people in the country vaccinated, we likely will get to that umbrella of herd immunity,
  • His remarks come a day after he outlined a $1.9 trillion emergency legislative package to fund a nationwide vaccination effort and provide direct economic relief to Americans amid the coronavirus pandemic, telling Americans that "the health of our nation is at stake."
  • 100 million vaccine shots in his initial 100 days in office.
katherineharron

Anthony Fauci: Trump's desire to reopen the country by Easter is an 'aspirational proje... - 0 views

  • Dr. Anthony Fauci said that President Donald Trump was giving an "aspirational projection to give people some hope" when he floated reopening US businesses and getting Americans back to work by Easter, April 12.
  • "He's listening to us when we say we really got to reevaluate it, in real time, and any decision we make has to be based on the data," Fauci said Thursday of the President on CNN's Global Town Hall, "Coronavirus: Facts and Fears."
  • As the 15-day window nears its end, Pence told reporters on Thursday that the task force would be presenting "a range of recommendations and additional guidance for going forward" to the President this weekend.
lucieperloff

Covid-19: How Much Herd Immunity is Enough? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Scientists initially estimated that 60 to 70 percent of the population needed to acquire resistance to the coronavirus to banish it. Now Dr. Anthony Fauci and others are quietly shifting that number upward.
  • It gives Americans a sense of when we can hope to breathe freely again.
  • And last week, in an interview with CNBC News, he said “75, 80, 85 percent” and “75 to 80-plus percent.”
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  • He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.
  • Now that some polls are showing that many more Americans are ready, even eager, for vaccines, he said he felt he could deliver the tough message that the return to normal might take longer than anticipated.
  • We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent.
  • not sure there will be enough voluntary acceptance of vaccines to reach that goal.
  • They also came with a warning: All answers are merely “guesstimates.”
  • Humans move around, so studying disease spread among them is far harder.
  • It took about two months to be certain that there were many asymptomatic people who had also spread the virus.
  • The more transmissible a pathogen, the more people must become immune in order to stop it.
  • Dr. Dean noted that to stop transmission in a crowded city like New York, more people would have to achieve immunity than would be necessary in a less crowded place like Montana.
  • If we can vaccinate almost all the people who are most at risk of severe outcomes, then this would become a milder disease.”
katherineharron

Goldman Sachs issues warning about US unemployment - CNN - 0 views

  • The unemployment rate in the United States will peak at 25%, rivaling the worst period of the Great Depression, Goldman Sachs warned on Wednesday.
  • The unemployment rate spiked to 14.7% in April as the economy lost more than 20 million jobs during the self-imposed shutdown to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Goldman Sachs previously projected the unemployment rate would peak at 15%. The new forecasts are based on government statistics, the first glimpse of the reopening process and new big data sources, the bank said.
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  • Annual data, which go back to 1929, show that the unemployment rate peaked during the Great Depression at an average of 24.9% in 1933.
  • Goldman Sachs warned Wednesday that the real jobless rate will peak at 35%, up from the bank's previous projection for a peak of 29%.
  • , told CNN last week that the real jobless rate could hit 25% before "hopefully" falling following a transition period this summer.
  • Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said Tuesday that the "consequences could be really serious" if states reopen ahead of the guidelines issued by the White House.
  • Goldman also upgraded its GDP forecasts, predicting a "somewhat more V-shaped path" as states relax lockdown orders. The bank now expects rapid annualized growth of 29% in the third quarter, up from 19% previously.
  • And Goldman noted several "serious health risks": "insufficient testing and contact tracing" in some states, reopening high-risk sectors and limited evidence of how effective measures like social distancing and will be.
  • "Prolonged weakness could cause severe scarring effects such as permanent layoffs and business closures that delay the recovery," Goldman Sachs economists wrote.
Javier E

How the leading coronavirus vaccines made it to the finish line - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • If, as expected in the next few weeks, regulators give those vaccines the green light, the technology and the precision approach to vaccine design could turn out to be the pandemic’s silver linings: scientific breakthroughs that could begin to change the trajectory of the virus this winter and also pave the way for highly effective vaccines and treatments for other diseases.
  • Vaccine development typically takes years, even decades. The progress of the last 11 months shifts the paradigm for what’s possible, creating a new model for vaccine development and a toolset for a world that will have to fight more never-before-seen viruses in years to come.
  • Long before the pandemic, Graham worked with colleagues there and in academia to create a particularly accurate 3-D version of the spiky proteins that protrude from the surface of coronaviruses — an innovation that was rejected for publication by scientific journals five times because reviewers questioned its relevance.
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  • Messenger RNA is a powerful, if fickle, component of life’s building blocks — a workhorse of the cell that is also truly just a messenger, unstable and prone to degrade.
  • . In 1990,
  • That same year, a team at the University of Wisconsin startled the scientific world with a paper that showed it was possible to inject a snippet of messenger RNA into mice and turn their muscle cells into factories, creating proteins on demand.
  • If custom-designed RNA snippets could be used to turn cells into bespoke protein factories, messenger RNA could become a powerful medical tool. It could encode fragments of virus to teach the immune system to defend against pathogens. It could also create whole proteins that are missing or damaged in people with devastating genetic diseases, such as cystic fibrosis.
  • In 2005, the pair discovered a way to modify RNA, chemically tweaking one of the letters of its code, so it didn’t trigger an inflammatory response. Deborah Fuller, a scientist who works on RNA and DNA vaccines at the University of Washington, said that work deserves a Nobel Prize.
  • messenger RNA posed a bigger challenge than other targets.“It’s tougher — it’s a much bigger molecule, it’s much more unstable,”
  • Unlike fields that were sparked by a single powerful insight, Sahin said that the recent success of messenger RNA vaccines is a story of countless improvements that turned an alluring biological idea into a beneficial technology.
  • “This is a field which benefited from hundreds of inventions,” said Sahin, who noted that when he started BioNTech in 2008, he cautioned investors that the technology would not yield a product for at least a decade. He kept his word: Until the coronavirus sped things along, BioNTech projected the launch of its first commercial project in 2023.
  • “It’s new to you,” Fuller said. “But for basic researchers, it’s been long enough. . . . Even before covid, everyone was talking: RNA, RNA, RNA.”
  • All vaccines are based on the same underlying idea: training the immune system to block a virus. Old-fashioned vaccines do this work by injecting dead or weakened viruses
  • ewer vaccines use distinctive bits of the virus, such as proteins on their surface, to teach the lesson. The latest genetic techniques, like messenger RNA, don’t take as long to develop because those virus bits don’t have to be generated in a lab. Instead, the vaccine delivers a genetic code that instructs cells to build those characteristic proteins themselves.
  • They wanted the immune system to learn to recognize the thumb tack spike, so McLellan tasked a scientist in his laboratory with identifying genetic mutations that could anchor the protein into the right configuration. It was a painstaking process for Nianshuang Wang, who now works at a biotechnology company, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. After trying hundreds of genetic mutations, he found two that worked. Five journals rejected the finding, questioning its significance, before it was published in 2017.
  • That infection opened Graham’s eyes to an opportunity. HKU1 was merely a nuisance, as opposed to a deadly pneumonia; that meant it would be easier to work with in the lab, since researchers wouldn’t have to don layers of protective gear and work in a pressurized laboratory.
  • Severe acute respiratory syndrome had emerged in 2003. Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) broke out in 2012. It seemed clear to Graham and Jason McLellan, a structural biologist now at the University of Texas at Austin, that new coronaviruses were jumping into people on a 10-year-clock and it might be time to brace for the next one.
  • Last winter, when Graham heard rumblings of a new coronavirus in China, he brought the team back together. Once its genome was shared online by Chinese scientists, the laboratories in Texas and Maryland designed a vaccine, utilizing the stabilizing mutations and the knowledge they had gained from years of basic research — a weekend project thanks to the dividends of all that past work.
  • Graham needed a technology that could deliver it into the body — and had already been working with Moderna, using its messenger RNA technology to create a vaccine against a different bat virus, Nipah, as a dress rehearsal for a real pandemic. Moderna and NIH set the Nipah project aside and decided to go forward with a coronavirus vaccine.
  • On Jan. 13, Moderna’s Moore came into work and found her team already busy translating the stabilized spike protein into their platform. The company could start making the vaccine almost right away because of its experience manufacturing experimental cancer vaccines, which involves taking tumor samples and developing personalized vaccines in 45 days.
  • At BioNTech, Sahin said that even in the early design phases of its vaccine candidates, he incorporated the slight genetic changes designed in Graham’s lab that would make the spike look more like the real thing. At least two other companies would incorporate that same spike.
  • If all goes well with regulators, the coronavirus vaccines have the makings of a pharmaceutical industry fairy tale. The world faced an unparalleled threat, and companies leaped into the fight. Pfizer plowed $2 billion into the effort. Massive infusions of government cash helped remove the financial risks for Moderna.
  • But the world will also owe their existence to many scientists outside those companies, in government and academia who pursued ideas they thought were important even when the world doubted them
  • Some of those scientists will receive remuneration, since their inventions are licensed and integrated into the products that could save the world.
  • As executives become billionaires, many scientists think it is fair to earn money from their inventions that can help them do more important work. But McLellan’s laboratory at the University of Texas is proud to have licensed an even more potent version of their spike protein, royalty-free, to be incorporated into a vaccine for low and middle income countries.
  • “They’re using the technology that [Kariko] and I developed,” he said. “We feel like it’s our vaccine, and we are incredibly excited — at how well it’s going, and how it’s going to be used to get rid of this pandemic.”
  • “People hear about [vaccine progress] and think someone just thought about it that night. The amount of work — it’s really a beautiful story of fundamental basic research,” Fauci said. “It was chancy, in the sense that [the vaccine technology] was new. We were aware there would be pushback. The proof in the pudding is a spectacular success.”
  • The Vaccine Research Center, where Graham is deputy director, was the brainchild of Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It was created in 1997 to bring together scientists and physicians from different disciplines to defeat diseases, with a heavy focus on HIV.
  • the pandemic wasn’t a sudden eureka moment — it was a catalyst that helped ignite lines of research that had been moving forward for years, far outside the spotlight of a global crisis.
jmfinizio

Opinion: UK decision to delay second Covid-19 vaccine dose is dubious - CNN - 0 views

  • The second dose of both vaccines can now be given up to 12 weeks after the first dose
  • Similar proposals about delaying the second dose have been discussed in the US,
  • the FDA does not support changing the vaccine administration protocol initially set forth
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  • how can the public trust the right decisions were made
  • how can the public trust the right decisions were made
  • How can knowledgeable independent healthcare professionals endorse those decisions when they are not privy to the process?
  • Pfizer vaccine to have a 90% short term efficacy, and a single dose of the Oxford vaccine to have a 70% short term efficacy.
  • Would confidence in the vaccine be reduced by multiple reports of vaccine failures among at-risk individuals
  • Perhaps the UK could consider instead other ways to conserve vaccine supplies that may be safer than the delayed second dose option.
  • Also, for people who have recovered from Covid-19 a single vaccine dose may indeed be sufficient to boost their antibodies to high levels
aprossi

US Coronavirus: Now that new Covid-19 variants are circulating everyday activities are ... - 0 views

  • Everyday activities are more dangerous now that new Covid-19 variants are circulating
  • (CNN)Health officials are "extremely" worried about the new Covid-19 variants that have been detected in the US and what they could mean over the coming months, one expert said Monday night.
  • CDC officials have also said another variant -- called B.1.1.7 and first spotted in the UK -- has been detected in more than 20 states.
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  • with 42 states reporting downward trends
  • Moderna says its vaccine protects against some variants
  • The good news, Fauci told CNN in a separate interview Monday, is that current Covid-19 vaccines are likely to be effective against the new variants.
  • Moderna said Monday its vaccine created antibodies that neutralized Covid-19 variants first found in the UK and South Africa
  • So far, about 19 million people -- nearly 6% of the US population -- have received at least the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, according to CDC data. More than 3.3 million are fully vaccinated.
  • 100 million shots administered in the President's first 100 days in office.
  • Kentucky has used about 88% of their first doses
Javier E

Mutated virus may reinfect people already stricken once with covid-19, sparking debate ... - 0 views

  • it appears a vaccine is better than natural infection in protecting people, calling it “a big, strong plug to get vaccinated” and a reality check for people who may have assumed that because they have already been infected, they are immune.
  • In the placebo group of the trial for Novavax’s vaccine, people with prior coronavirus infections appeared just as likely to get sick as people without them, meaning they weren’t fully protected against the B.1.351 variant that has swiftly become dominant in South Africa.
  • “The data really are quite suggestive: The level of immunity that you get from natural infection — either the degree of immunity, the intensity of the immunity or the breadth of immunity — is obviously not enough to protect against infection with the mutant,” Fauci said.
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  • She and others emphasized the apparent lack of severe health repercussions from reinfection — and the lack of evidence that reinfection is common.
  • Nearly 4 percent of people who had a previous infection were reinfected, an almost identical rate to those with no history of infection.
  • “Basically, it’s saying vaccination actually needs to be better than natural immunity. But vaccination is better than natural immunity.”
  • The study backs up recent laboratory data from South African researchers analyzing blood plasma from recovered patients. Nearly half of the plasma samples had no detectable ability to block the variant from infecting cells in a laboratory dish
  • The good news is that vaccine trials from Johnson & Johnson and Novavax show that vaccines can work — even against the B.1.351 variant, and particularly in preventing severe illness.
  • Novavax did not provide a breakdown of mild, moderate and severe cases, but severe cases of covid-19 were rare in the trial, suggesting that reinfection is unlikely to send people to the hospital.
  • “It is not surprising to see reinfection in individuals who are convalescent. And it would not be surprising to see infection in people who are vaccinated, especially a few months out from vaccine,”
  • “The key is not whether people get reinfected, it’s whether they get sick enough to be hospitalized.
  • “If the data holds true, it means we will need to walk the public back on the idea of how close we are to the finish line for ending this pandemic.”
  • Projections created by data scientist Youyang Gu — whose pandemic models have been cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — suggest that about 65 percent of America’s population will reach immunity by June 1. But built into that 65 percent is roughly 20 percent having immunity from past infections only.
  • In a separate study, scientists at Rockefeller University in New York took blood plasma from people who had been vaccinated and found that vaccine-generated antibodies were largely able to block mutations found on the B.1.351 variant.
  • I think the fact that we … now have data from two vaccines indicating that we can prevent serious disease, even against the new variant, is hopeful,”
  • A future concern needing close monitoring is whether the reformulation of vaccines to keep up with the evolving virus could drive the virus to continue evolving.
  • There is also a concern that subpar immunity could allow new resistant variants to emerge. That possibility, Nussenzweig said, is one reason that people should get both doses of a vaccine, on time.
katherineharron

Donald Trump made 33 false claims about the coronavirus crisis in the first two weeks o... - 0 views

  • Trump made 50 false claims from March 2 through March 8, then 21 false claims from March 9 through March 15. Of those 71 false claims, 33 were related to the coronavirus. That is on top of some additional misleading claims from Trump about the coronavirus (we only count the false claims here), plus some false and misleading claims from members of his administration.
  • Trump is now averaging about 57 false claims per week since we started counting at CNN on July 8, 2019. From that date through March 15, he has made 2,062 false claims in all.
katherineharron

In race for coronavirus vaccine, hurled insults and the wisdom of Spider-Man - CNN - 0 views

  • Ethicists and physicians are concerned that, amid a desire to put an end to the Covid-19 pandemic, developers of drugs and vaccines have become overly enthusiastic about the chances their products will work.
  • Oxford has recently walked back some of its optimism, but for months, it set a tone that its vaccine was the most promising, without any solid evidence that this was based in fact.
  • Third, one leader in the Oxford team has gone so far as to denigrate other teams trying to get a Covid vaccine on the market, calling their technology "weird" and labeling it as merely "noise." Such name-calling is highly unusual and aggressive among scientists.
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  • "At this point, the Oxford researchers have no idea whether they have something or not," Offit said. "You just get so tired of this 'science by press release.' "
  • There are currently 10 vaccines in human clinical trials worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Four of the teams are in the United States: Moderna, Pfizer, Inovio and Novavax.
  • Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel referred to the results as "positive interim Phase 1 data" and that "the Moderna team continues to focus on moving as fast as safely possible to start our pivotal Phase 3 study in July."
  • Moderna is collaborating on its vaccine development with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of NIAID, said while Moderna's numbers were limited, "it was good news" and he was "cautiously optimistic" about the vaccine.
  • Inovio and Moderna have said they expect their large-scale clinical trials, known as Phase 3 trials, to last around six months. Pfizer hasn't given a timetable for its Phase 3 trial.
  • "I've not seen anyone wrap up a Phase 3 trial in a month to six weeks," said Dr. Saad Omer, a Yale University infectious disease expert who's done clinical trials on polio, pertussis and influenza vaccines. "We need to benchmark this against realistic expectations."
  • "As vaccine researchers like to say, mice lie and monkeys exaggerate," Offit said.
  • One big stumbling block for any vaccine trial is that Covid-19 infection rates in many areas of the world are flattening out or declining.
  • The Oxford vaccine uses what's called an adenovirus vector. Adenoviruses cause the common cold, but in this case, the adenoviruses are weakened and modified to deliver genetic material that codes for a protein from the novel coronavirus. The body then produces that protein and, ideally, develops an immune response to it.
  • "Compared to previous vaccines, this method is more robust, more versatile, and yet, equally efficient," according to the blog, which notes that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation invested $53 million in a German biotech company that specializes in RNA vaccines.
  • Inovio's technology uses a brief electrical pulse to deliver plasmids, or small pieces of genetic information, into human cells. Inovio says those cells then produce the vaccine, which leads to an immune response.
  • On April 19, the BBC's Andrew Marr said he asked Gilbert "if it's guaranteed that a workable vaccine can actually be produced."
  • "Nobody can be absolutely sure it's possible. That's why we have to do trials. We have to find out. I think the prospects are very good, but it's clearly not completely certain,"
  • "It certainly worked in monkeys," Oxford's Hill told CNN's Burnett May 15. "That was quite an impressive impact and that was our first try, if you like, with a standard dose, a single dose of vaccine."
  • "I buy that this is a pandemic and we may need to show progress and show steps, and I'm OK with making forecasts if decision makers want that, but do it with a level of uncertainty, because that's what's warranted," said Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health.
  • "Now researchers can't wait to step out to the microphone -- and there are so many microphones out there -- to say, 'I've got it! This looks really good!' " Offit said.
katherineharron

Trump takes his war on face masks to new lows - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • The simple act of wearing a mask to protect others during a pandemic is now a political and cultural flashpoint, underscoring the polarization afflicting every corner of American life.
  • Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, stood firm in his recommendation that people wear masks, telling CNN's Jim Scuitto Wednesday morning he wears a mask "for people to see that's the kind of thing you should be doing."
  • A political storm over a piece of cloth appears even more trivial since it comes at a moment when the United States, after one of the world's most mismanaged coronavirus responses, is on the cusp of passing the threshold of 100,000 deaths with the pandemic worsening in 17 states.
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  • Trump and his White House are mocking presumptive Democratic 2020 rival Joe Biden for wearing a mask in public as conservative commentators brand the practice as elite liberal fear-mongering. Biden, in his first in-person interview since the stay-at-home orders, lashed back at Trump in reply, telling CNN's Dana Bash that the President's "macho" and "falsely masculine" behavior was "stoking deaths" in comments that will only deepen national estrangement on the issue.
  • Many Republican governors who strongly support Trump in most areas are beseeching their fellow citizens to wear masks as they try to balance reopening with a desire to avoid a spike in Covid-19 cases.
  • The battle over masks may inject another heated note into Virginia politics. Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam said Tuesday that anyone within a public indoor space or who is on public transport in the state would be required to wear a mask.
  • Talk show titan Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday warned that masks have become a "required symbol on the left to promote fear, to promote indecision, to promote the notion that we're nowhere near out of this."
  • In a Quinnipiac University poll last week, 64% of Americans said everyone should be required to wear masks in public. But while 90% of Democrats said Trump should mask up, only 38% of Republicans agreed.
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends "wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission." It has not recommended Americans wear masks in their homes.
katherineharron

Social distancing: White House finalizing updated coronavirus guidelines ahead of 15-da... - 0 views

  • Administration officials were still working Friday to finalize a list of options to present President Donald Trump concerning the next phase of national guidelines on coronavirus as he continues to push for reopening parts of the country.
  • Trump issued guidelines on social distancing meant to prevent the spread of novel coronavirus on March 16, but has said this week that he believes at least some Americans are ready to return to work amid a spike in jobless claims. The initial guidelines had a 15-day time frame, which will be reached early next week.
  • "We'll be sitting down on Monday or Tuesday, depending on which is best for everybody, and we'll be making that determination," Trump said, pointing to "brilliant" Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, and saying he'd hear out their options.
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  • "We want to flatten the curve," Trump went on, adding: "I certainly want to get it open as soon as possible."
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