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yehbru

Two New Laws Restrict Police Use of DNA Search Method - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...dna-police-laws.html

US Politics DNA Search Method Police

shared by yehbru on 31 May 21 - No Cached
  • Maryland and Montana have passed the nation’s first laws limiting forensic genealogy, the method that found the Golden State Killer.
  • New laws in Maryland and Montana are the first in the nation to restrict law enforcement’s use of genetic genealogy, the DNA matching technique that in 2018 identified the Golden State Killer, in an effort to ensure the genetic privacy of the accused and their relatives.
  • For one thing, the law states that by 2024, genealogists working on such cases must be professionally certified — a credential that does not yet exist.
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  • The new law, sponsored by Democratic lawmakers, also dictates that the technique be used only for serious crimes, such as murder and sexual assault. And it states that investigators may only use websites with strict policies around user consent.
  • The laws “demonstrate that people across the political spectrum find law enforcement use of consumer genetic data chilling, concerning and privacy-invasive,” said Natalie Ram, a law professor at the University of Maryland who championed the Maryland law
  • “This bill strikes a balance between this very important technology to identify people that do the very worst things to our Marylanders, yet it balances that against the privacy concerns and the trust that we need from the public,” John Fitzgerald, the chief of the Chevy Chase Village Police Department
  • Beginning on Oct. 1, investigators working on Maryland cases will need a judge’s signoff before using the method, in which a “profile” of thousands of DNA markers from a crime scene is uploaded to genealogy websites to find relatives of the culprit
  • Investigators may use only genealogy companies that have explicitly informed the public and their customers that law enforcement uses their databases, and that have asked for their customers’ consent to participate.
  • “We know well that most people do not read these kinds of forms closely,” Ms. Ram said. “This is likely to generate unwitting inclusion rather than actual consent.”
  • Unlike 23andMe and Ancestry, which have kept their immense genetic databases unavailable to law enforcement without a court order, GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA are eager to cooperate
  • Investigators cannot use any of the genetic information collected, whether from the suspect or third parties, to learn about a person’s psychological traits or disease predispositions
  • These searches are “the equivalent of the government going through all of your medical records and all of your family records just to identify you,” said Leah Larkin
rachelramirez

Results From the Democratic Senate Race in Maryland: Chris Van Hollen vs. Donna Edwards... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...479970

senate maryland gender politics US culture policy

shared by rachelramirez on 27 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • How Race and Gender Shaped the Senate Race in Maryland
  • Race and gender are front and center in the Maryland U.S. Senate primary race between Chris Van Hollen and Donna Edwards. Van Hollen, a white man, and Edwards, a black woman, are both Democratic members of Congress from Maryland competing to replace the state’s retiring senator, Barbara Mikulski.
  • No matter who wins, the contest has exposed a rift among Democrats over the relative importance of identity and the extent to which it should be emphasized in politics.
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  • If elected, Edwards would become the second black woman ever to join the Senate.
  • Still, the term “identity politics” is frequently used as a pejorative by conservatives who accuse liberals of provoking division on issues of race and gender for political gain.
katherineharron

Something *very* important for our politics happened on Tuesday - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

maryland

shared by katherineharron on 13 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • While the eyes of the world were focused on the impeachment efforts against President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, Gov. Larry Hogan of neighboring Maryland did something extremely important in beginning the long process of unwinding our current political polarization.
  • The Republican governor announced that via executive order he had created an independent commission he will task with redrawing the state's congressional and legislative lines following the decennial reapportionment later this year.
  • "This commission is the first of its kind in the long history of our state," Hogan said in making the announcement. "Unlike the partisan, backdoor manner in which our state's political power brokers have conducted the state's redistricting process, we want to make sure that this time the people of Maryland are actually the ones drawing these lines—not the politicians or the party bosses."
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  • Only the most ardent political junkies closely follow the re-shuffling and re-drawing of legislative and congressional districts that follow the decennial census. (Guilty, your honor!)
  • In fact, like many things that the general public either knows nothing about or has a decided lack of interest in, how these lines are drawn and by whom has an outsized impact on the sort of government we have -- and what the motivations of our elected officials are.
  • For decades, the line-drawing process has fallen, in most states, to state legislators and governors. What that has meant, in the main, is that when Democrats control the state capitol and, therefore, the line-drawing process, they create districts that are as favorable as possible for their side.
  • The strategy of both sides has been simple: Pack as many of the opposition party's voters into as few districts in the state as possible while spreading out their own voters to make as many districts winnable for their side as they can. Innovations in redistricting software have made this slicing and dicing of people based on their party registration or past voting history an art form -- allowing the line-drawers to literally go street by street when it comes to crafting new districts.
  • The state's congressional districts have regularly changed hands between the parties, with Republicans winning two previously-held Democratic seats in the 2020 election. And generally speaking, three of the four districts in the state -- the exception being the Republican-friendly 4th in western Iowa -- are extremely competitive every two years. Check out the winning percentages for four incoming members of Congress in the state: 62%, 49%, 50% and 51.3%. In the state's 2nd District, the Republican candidate leads the Democrat candidate by six -- SIX! -- votes.
  • The vast majority of members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, represent what we would call "safe" districts -- meaning that their only chance of losing their job would be in a primary, not a general election.
  • In 1956, for example, less than 6 in 10 House incumbents won with 60% of the vote or more, according to Vital Statistics on Congress. By 2002, the first election after the 2001 nationwide redistricting, 85% of all House incumbents seeking reelection won with 60% or higher. In 2014 and 2016, that number hovered in the mid-to-high 70s before dipping to just 63% in the tumultuous 2018 midterm election.
  • The practical, political effect of this trend is simple: Members of Congress have little reason to demonstrate their ability to work across the partisan aisle and every reason to be as partisan and ideological as possible in hopes of staving off any sort of primary challenge.
  • Independent or bipartisan commissions to redraw the maps in states -- as Hogan is trying to do in Maryland -- work to reorient the incentive structure for members by creating districts that are far more competitive between the two parties in general elections.
  • Maps drawn over the past two decades -- by Democrats and Republicans -- in places like North Carolina, Texas and yes, Maryland -- have come under legal scrutiny for using political considerations as the sole motivator in creating legislative and congressional districts. Maps in which one party overreached have, occasionally, led to unpredictable results in which the party in power loses seats they expected to win because they tried to divide up their own voters among too many districts.
  • While bipartisan -- and independent -- line-drawing commissions are on the rise in recent years, the majority of states in the country still rely on politicians to draw lines.
delgadool

Maryland Lifts Many Covid Restrictions - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ryland-covid-restrictions.html

politics Pandemic

shared by delgadool on 11 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Across Maryland on Wednesday, mayors, county executives, business owners and public health officials were parsing Gov. Larry Hogan’s surprise Tuesday announcement that he was loosening statewide Covid restrictions.
  • “With the pace of vaccinations rapidly rising and our health metrics steadily improving, the lifting of these restrictions is a prudent, positive step in the right direction and an important part of our economic recovery,” Mr. Hogan said. He was joined at his announcement by Dr. Robert R. Redfield, a former director the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who is now a senior adviser to the governor.
  • “I was shocked, I thought it was a joke,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University and former Baltimore health commissioner.
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  • Baltimore County Executive John A. Olszewski, Jr., said, “leaders across Maryland have been forced to scramble to meet with our legal teams, health officials, and neighboring jurisdictions to understand how this impacts our own executive orders and to determine if and how to use our own local authority moving forward.”
  • Maryland ranks in the middle of states in the percentage of its people who have been given at least one vaccine dose, according to a New York Times database, and somewhat above average in the number of new cases it has been reporting lately relative to its population — 13 per 100,000 residents. All three of the variants of the virus that are being tracked by the C.D.C. have been reported there, but only one in significant numbers: B.1.1.7, which was first identified in Britain and is more transmissible and possibly more lethal than earlier versions of the virus.
Javier E

What American Healthcare Can Learn From Germany - Olga Khazan - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...360133

germany health-care system us comparative

shared by Javier E on 09 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Every German resident must belong to a sickness fund, and in turn the funds must insure all comers. They’re also mandated to cover a standard set of benefits, which includes most procedures and medications. Workers pay half the cost of their sickness fund insurance, and employers pay the rest. The German government foots the bill for the unemployed and for children. There are also limits on out-of-pocket expenses, so it’s rare for a German to go into debt because of medical bills.
  • this is very similar to the health-insurance regime that Americans are now living under, now that the Affordable Care Act is four years old and a few days past its first enrollment deadline.
  • There are, of course, a few key differences. Co-pays in the German system are minuscule, about 10 euros per visit. Even those for hospital stays are laughably small by American standards: Sam payed 40 euro for a three-day stay for a minor operation a few years ago
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  • nearly five million Americans fall into what’s called the “Medicaid gap”
  • In Germany, employees' premiums are a percentage of their incomes, so low-wage workers simply pay rock-bottom insurance rates.
  • Germany actually pioneered this type of insurance—it all started when Otto von Bismarck signed his Health Insurance Bill of 1883 into law. (It’s still known as the “Bismarck model” because of his legacy, and other parts of Europe and Asia have adopted it over the years.)
  • You can think of this setup as the Goldilocks option among all of the possible ways governments can insure health. It's not as radical as single-payer models like the U.K.’s, where the government covers everyone. And it's also not as brutal as the less-regulated version of the insurance market we had before the ACA.
  • Since there are no provider networks in Germany, doctors don’t know what other providers patients have seen, so there are few ways to limit repeat procedures.
  • All things considered, it’s good to be a sick German. There are no network limitations, so people can see any doctor they want. There are no deductibles, so Germans have no fear of spending hundreds before their insurance ever kicks in.
  • There’s also no money that changes hands during a medical appointment. Patients show their insurance card at the doctor’s office, and the doctors' association pays the doctor using money from the sickness funds. "You don’t have to sit at home and sort through invoices or wonder if you overlooked fine print,”
  • That insurance card, by the way, is good for hospital visits anywhere in Europe.
  • of all of the countries studied, Germans were the most likely to be able to get a same-day or next-day appointment and to hear back from a doctor quickly if they had a question. They rarely use emergency rooms, and they can access doctors after-hours with ease.
  • And Germany manages to put its health-care dollars to relatively good use: For each $100 it spends on healthcare, it extends life by about four months, according to a recent analysis in the American Journal of Public Health. In the U.S., one of the worst-performing nations in the ranking, each $100 spent on healthcare resulted in only a couple of extra weeks of longevity.
  • those differences aside, it’s fair to say the U.S. is moving in the direction of systems like Germany’s—multi-payer, compulsory, employer-based, highly regulated, and fee-for-service.
  • The German government is similarly trying to push more people into “family physician” programs, in which just one doctor would serve as a gatekeeper.
  • like the U.S., Germany may see a shortage of primary-care doctors in the near future, both because primary-care doctors there don’t get paid as much as specialists, and because entrenched norms have prevented physician assistants from shouldering more responsibility
  • With limitations on how much they can charge, German doctors and hospitals instead try to pump up their earnings by performing as many procedures as possible, just like American providers do.
  • Similarly, “In Germany, it will always be an operation,” Göpffarth said. “Meanwhile, France and the U.K. tend to try drugs first and operations later.”
  • With few resource constraints, healthcare systems like America's and Germany's tend to go with the most expensive treatment option possible. An American might find himself in an MRI machine for a headache that a British doctor would have treated with an aspirin and a smile.
  • Perhaps the biggest difference between our two approaches is the extent to which Germany has managed to rein in the cost of healthcare for consumers. Prices for procedures there are lower and more uniform because doctors’ associations negotiate their fees directly with all of the sickness funds in each state. That's part of the reason why an appendectomy costs $3,093 in Germany, but $13,000 in the U.S.
  • Now, Maryland is going a step further still, having just launched a plan to cap the amount each hospital can spend, total, each year. The state's hospital spending growth will be limited to 3.58 percent for the next five years. “We know that right now, the more [doctors] do, the more they get paid,” John Colmers, executive director of Maryland’s Health Services Cost Review Commission, told me. “We want to say, ‘The better you do, the better you get paid.’”
  • certain U.S. states have tried a more German strategy, attempting to keep costs low by setting prices across the board. Maryland, for example, has been regulating how much all of the state’s hospitals can charge since 1977. A 2009 study published in Health Affairs found that we would have saved $2 trillion if the entire country’s health costs had grown at the same rate as Maryland’s over the past three decades.
  • “In Germany, there is a uniform fee schedule for all physicians that work under the social code,” Schlette said. “There’s a huge catalogue where they determine meticulously how much is billed for each procedure. That’s like the Bible.”
  • “The red states are unlikely to follow their lead. The notion that government may be a big part of the solution, instead of the problem, is anathema, and Republican controlled legislatures, and their governors, would find it too substantial a conflict to pursue with any vigor.”
  • no other state has Maryland’s uniform, German-style payment system in place, “so Maryland starts the race nine paces ahead of the other 46 states,” McDonough said.
  • the unique spirit of each country is what ultimately gets in its way. Germany’s more orderly system can be too rigid for experimentation. And America’s free-for-all, where hospitals and doctors all charge different amounts, is great for innovation but too chaotic to make payment reforms stick.
  • rising health costs will continue to be the main problem for Americans as we launch into our more Bismarckian system. “The main challenge you’ll have is price control,” he said. “You have subsidies in health exchanges now, so for the first time, the federal budget is really involved in health expenditure increases in the commercial market. In order to keep your federal budget under control, you’ll have to control prices.”
rerobinson03

Biden Inauguration Security: Troops Flood Rattled Washington - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...den-inauguration-security.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 12 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Law enforcement authorities, responding to threats of violence before the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration, will deploy up to 15,000 National Guard troops to the nation’s capital and set up checkpoints in the city to avoid the botched response that helped rioters overrun the Capitol last week.
  • have registered to stage protests in Washington, prompting deep concern among federal officials about an event that has historically been a packed celebration of American democracy. With coronavirus cases soaring and the deadly siege of the Capitol still fresh, the leaders of the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia issued a joint statement asking Americans to stay away from the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and instead tune in virtually.
  • The officials said they were particularly worried about multiple active-shooter situations flaring up simultaneously.
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  • About 6,000 National Guard troops from six states have already arrived in Washington, Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, said Monday; by this weekend, that number is expected to have grown to 10,000.
  • But the inauguration of the 46th president could echo the first inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, whose procession to the half-built Capitol was surrounded by heavily armed cavalry and infantry troops marching through a city on the brink of civil war.
  • Far-right extremist groups continue to plot online. Nearly 400 people had joined a private group online dedicated to what is being billed as the Million Militia March, an event scheduled to take place in Washington on Jan. 20. Commenters have debated bringing baseball bats and body armor.
  • General Hokanson pushed back against complaints from Gov. Larry Hogan, Republican of Maryland, that the Pentagon was slow to respond to his request that Maryland National Guard troops be deployed last Wednesday.
  • General Hokanson insisted that Defense Department officials responded to the Hogan request Wednesday afternoon, and the first of the Maryland troops were not ready until 11 p.m. that day, with the bulk of them not deployed until 9 the next morning.
anonymous

Opinion | How Many Women Have to Die to End 'Temptation'? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...a-shooting-women-violence.html

shared by anonymous on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • After the attack on three Georgia spas on Tuesday, which took the lives of eight people, Robert Aaron Long, the 21-year-old charged with the slayings, told the police that the women murdered were “temptations” he needed to “eliminate.”
  • For too long, women have been punished and killed because of men’s inability to deal with issues around rejection, desire and shame. Women of color are especially at risk; they’re disproportionately attacked and more likely to be blamed for the violence perpetrated against them.
  • Thanks to decades of academic and activist work, we know more than ever about why men lash out at women in this way and how we can curb the violence. Still, the occurrence of mass killings targeting women shows no sign of stopping.
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  • The story has become a horribly familiar one: A young man, bemoaning his virginity or singleness or his anger, sets out to slaughter women (though men also lose their lives in these rampages).
  • In 2019, Christopher Wayne Cleary was arrested in Denver before he could carry out his plan to kill “as many girls as I see.”
  • In part, these attacks are a predictable outcome of extremist online sexism. Young, mostly white men seek community and commiseration in violent forums. There they are radicalized to believe women are to blame for all their problems, especially those around sex.
  • Mr. Long’s views on sexuality, for example, appear to stem from his religious upbringing. Reportedly, he didn’t own a smartphone because he was afraid he would be tempted by online pornography. He is said to have felt ashamed of masturbating and was suicidal over his belief that his habit of visiting sex workers meant he was “living in sin.”
  • This kind of purity culture has a reach far beyond religion. Abstinence-only education classes taught in over half the states across the country tell young people that the onus is on girls not to tease or tempt boys, whose sexual compulsions, they say, are near uncontrollable.
  • These ideas are so pervasive that they can also be found in school dress codes, which almost exclusively target young women, explicitly telling them that the way they dress distracts their male classmates and teachers.
  • The National Women’s Law Center has also found that Black female students are more likely to be cited for dress code violations than their white peers — another indication of how girls and women of color are hypersexualized and punished.
  • After a Maryland high school student shot 16-year-old Jaelynn Willey in the head, The Associated Press initially described him as a “lovesick teen.”
  • Across culture and institutions, the message is the same: Male sexual violence is to be expected. It becomes harder and harder to treat these crimes as aberrations when the values that drive them are so clearly normalized.
  • There are countless ways to curb massacres like the one in Georgia: Editors could take a closer look at the way they cover sexualized violence; pop culture creators could rethink their objectification of women, especially women of color; schools could teach comprehensive sex education that dismantles gender stereotypes and myths about desire and consent.
lmunch

Opinion: As you celebrate pandemic hope on the horizon, remember those for whom it is t... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

covid crisis culture loss

shared by lmunch on 12 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • I promise that if you or someone you love has survived Covid-19, I rejoice for you.Likewise, if you or a loved one are among the fortunate who have received the vaccine that can protect the body from this devastating disease, I am truly happy about that. My father, Gary D. Respers Sr., was not so fortunate.
  • Two days before the viewing for my father at a local funeral home, the governor of Maryland, my home state and where my parents have always lived, announced that 40% of Marylanders ages 65 and older had received Covid-19 vaccines.My folks were not among that number.
  • Mom and I had frantically searched for appointments for her and dad. They fell ill right after her doctor's office had scheduled her to receive her first dose and we were continuing our search for dad. "We were so close to getting them vaccinated," I sobbed after the hospital called to inform me my father didn't make it.
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  • I am grateful not only to my CNN colleagues for how they have rallied so incredibly around me and my family, but also for the stories that helped me be a better advocate for my parents when they got sick.Those stories now are increasingly focusing more on how there seems to be an end in sight to this nightmare, which has kept friends and family apart for a year.It kept me from being able to travel home to bid my daddy farewell because I am high risk. Other family members had also tested positive and my mother cried to me, "I can't take one more person catching this."
  • Now my prayers are for my mom, who is recovering physically but left shattered emotionally. And I pray for all the families like ours who are left to wonder what could have been if the coronavirus had been handled differently from the onset. I also pray for those of you who are survivors -- either of the virus or the fear that comes with watching someone you love battle it and come out alive. In the midst of my grief, I'm grateful that you don't have to endure what my loved ones and those of more than a half a million fellow Americans are going through. I only ask that you pray for and remember us as well.
saberal

FBI agent charged in off-duty shooting of man on subway | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...duty-shooting-of-man-on-subway

US politics

shared by saberal on 02 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • An FBI agent has been charged with attempted murder in the off-duty shooting of another man on a Metro subway train last year in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., according to court records unsealed Tuesday.
  • The charges stem from a Dec. 15 shooting on a train near Medical Center Station in Bethesda. Police for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority said in a Dec. 18 statement that the agent fired multiple shots after the man had approached him that morning and they exchanged words.
  • When the man asked Valdivia for money on the train, the agent said no and the man muttered expletives while walking away, Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Robert Hill said during Tuesday’s hearing. Valdivia told the man, "Watch your mouth," and the man turned around and approached Valdivia, who told him to back up multiple times. Valdivia shot the man from 2 to 3 feet away, Hill said, and did not identify himself as an agent until after the shooting. The man had part or all of his spleen, colon and pancreas removed during surgery after the shooting.
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  • In a statement Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Baltimore field office said the bureau was aware of the charges and is fully cooperating with the investigation.
  • In a 911 call released in January, a witness said the agent had warned the man to back away, but the man ignored the command and instead prepared to fight him, the Washington Post reported.
Javier E

Lawsuits' Lurid Details Draw an Online Crowd - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ails-draw-an-online-crowd.html

legal justice system internet public information public opinion

shared by Javier E on 23 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • “I don’t think any of us had any idea what the words ‘going viral’ meant when we rolled this out 10 or 12 years ago,” said James Robertson, a retired federal judge in Washington who helped guide the introduction of the federal electronic filing system.
  • In interviews, several plaintiffs’ lawyers said the current online environment was already deterring potential clients from filing suit. Now a Google search can forever portray even a successful litigant as “the complainer, or the slut who allegedly slept with the boss,” as Danielle Citron, a University of Maryland law professor, put it. Those who have suffered privacy violations, like nude pictures posted online, risk making the original damage worse if they sue, since courts are generally reluctant to allow plaintiffs to file anonymously.
  • Leigh Goodmark, another Maryland law professor, said the online boom of gender-related court documents was a harbinger of a future in which virtually no legal document — an eviction notice, a divorce pleading with embarrassing details — would be safe from public consumption.
redavistinnell

Judge Declares Mistrial of Baltimore Cop in Freddie Gray Case - NBC News - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...-cop-freddie-gray-case-n481296

judge baltimore cop freddie gray nbc case

shared by redavistinnell on 17 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Judge Declares Mistrial of Baltimore Cop in Freddie Gray Case
  • In what is a perceived legal blow for prosecutors, the jury was hung and the judge declared a mistrial in the trial of Baltimore police Officer William Porter in connection with Freddie Gray's death after he sustained injuries while in custody. Maryland circuit Judge Barry G. Williams indicated that he expected prosecutors to retry Porter.
  • Prosecutors considered Porter's case key to strengthening the case against Caesar Goodson Jr., who was driving the van. It was also seen as a signal of how the trials of the five other officers could go.
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  • The judge scheduled conferences Thursday to "discuss a new trial date," indicating that he expects prosecutors to try Porter again. Williams gave Porter the option to appear Thursday, but he declined.
  • During arguments, prosecutors focused on what they said was Porter's failure to take care of Gray while he was in custody by not getting him medical care or buckling his seatbelt.
  • Porter, who took the stand in his defense, said that Gray was "unable to give me a reason for a medical emergency" and that it was not his duty to fasten the seatbelts of people who have been arrested in the van.
  • "In the coming days, if some choose to demonstrate peacefully to express their opinion, that is their constitutional right," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said. "In the case of any disturbance in the city, we are prepared to respond. We will protect our neighborhoods, our businesses and the people of our city."
  • And in the meantime, Baltimore worked to rebuild and remember.
  • "With the eyes of the world on Baltimore City, we must ensure that any protests that take place are peaceful, and we must ensure that the process of healing our community continues. We must continue to channel our emotions into strong, positive change, so that, as a city, we truly see our young men of color before it is too late," Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, said in a statement. "This is the road to more equal justice in our community."
  • "I think it went botched, I don't feel as if the prosecution was at tight as it needed to be by virtue of the fact that the jury still had a whole lot of unanswered questions," he said. "To be clear that they were deadlocked on all four charges and got no clarity or consensus on any of them. So I hope that in this retrial they'll be more clear about how it is they present the case."
  • ers should remain calm. He described the mistrial as "a bump on the road to justice."
brookegoodman

Coronavirus vaccine: when will it be ready? | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-vaccine-when-will-it-be-ready

crisis

shared by brookegoodman on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Even at their most effective – and draconian – containment strategies have only slowed the spread of the respiratory disease Covid-19. With the World Health Organization finally declaring a pandemic, all eyes have turned to the prospect of a vaccine, because only a vaccine can prevent people from getting sick.
  • This unprecedented speed is thanks in large part to early Chinese efforts to sequence the genetic material of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. China shared that sequence in early January, allowing research groups around the world to grow the live virus and study how it invades human cells and makes people sick.
  • Coronaviruses have caused two other recent epidemics – severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in China in 2002-04, and Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), which started in Saudi Arabia in 2012. In both cases, work began on vaccines that were later shelved when the outbreaks were contained. One company, Maryland-based Novavax, has now repurposed those vaccines for Sars-CoV-2, and says it has several candidates ready to enter human trials this spring. Moderna, meanwhile, built on earlier work on the Mers virus conducted at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland.
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  • All vaccines work according to the same basic principle. They present part or all of the pathogen to the human immune system, usually in the form of an injection and at a low dose, to prompt the system to produce antibodies to the pathogen. Antibodies are a kind of immune memory which, having been elicited once, can be quickly mobilised again if the person is exposed to the virus in its natural form.
  • Cepi’s original portfolio of four funded Covid-19 vaccine projects was heavily skewed towards these more innovative technologies, and last week it announced $4.4m (£3.4m) of partnership funding with Novavax and with a University of Oxford vectored vaccine project. “Our experience with vaccine development is that you can’t anticipate where you’re going to stumble,” says Hatchett, meaning that diversity is key. And the stage where any approach is most likely to stumble is clinical or human trials, which, for some of the candidates, are about to get under way.
  • An illustration of that is a vaccine that was produced in the 1960s against respiratory syncytial virus, a common virus that causes cold-like symptoms in children. In clinical trials, this vaccine was found to aggravate those symptoms in infants who went on to catch the virus. A similar effect was observed in animals given an early experimental Sars vaccine. It was later modified to eliminate that problem but, now that it has been repurposed for Sars-CoV-2, it will need to be put through especially stringent safety testing to rule out the risk of enhanced disease.
  • Once a Covid-19 vaccine has been approved, a further set of challenges will present itself. “Getting a vaccine that’s proven to be safe and effective in humans takes one at best about a third of the way to what’s needed for a global immunisation programme,” says global health expert Jonathan Quick of Duke University in North Carolina, author of The End of Epidemics (2018). “Virus biology and vaccines technology could be the limiting factors, but politics and economics are far more likely to be the barrier to immunisation.”
  • Because pandemics tend to hit hardest those countries that have the most fragile and underfunded healthcare systems, there is an inherent imbalance between need and purchasing power when it comes to vaccines. During the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, for example, vaccine supplies were snapped up by nations that could afford them, leaving poorer ones short. But you could also imagine a scenario where, say, India – a major supplier of vaccines to the developing world – not unreasonably decides to use its vaccine production to protect its own 1.3 billion-strong population first, before exporting any.
  • • This article was amended on 19 March 2020. An earlier version incorrectly stated that the Sabin Vaccine Institute was collaborating with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi) on a Covid-19 vaccine.
andrespardo

'How do you fall for the Bernie Sanders scam?' Martin O'Malley on the Democrats and Iow... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-iowa-democrats-martin-omalley

politics US election

shared by andrespardo on 07 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • He volunteered for Gary Hart, the Colorado senator who was the party frontrunner for 1988 until scandal brought him down. Entering elected politics himself, O’Malley was the mayor of Baltimore from 1999 to 2007 and the governor of Maryland from 2008 to 2015. He aimed at the White House as a happy warrior, a guitar-playing politico with a record of progressive policy achievement.
  • A few days before Iowa votes again, O’Malley walks a few blocks from his Washington office. The room is quiet, the table discreet. The national stage is not. Over at the Capitol, in the impeachment trial, Donald Trump is on his way to acquittal.
  • never
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  • “Bernie’s still being given a bit of a free pass by the national media,” he says. “I do not believe that he would be a strong candidate for our party in the fall. And, except for three months out of every four years, he’s not even of our party.”
  • Here’s a guy who has been a kind of stalwart of the National Rifle Association, a man who said immigrants steal our jobs right up until he ran for president,
  • Of course, much of the energy that delivered such victories was determinedly progressive, akin to or directly supportive of Sanders and his transformative effect on the liberal cause. But O’Malley is as much a pillar of the party as Sanders is not.
  • e smiles. “Do you want me to speak more frankly?”
  • Some such stories, he says, feature in another manuscript, written with the guidance of the late Richard Ben Cramer, the author of What It Takes, “the definitive book about the 1988 presidential race” in which Hart flew so high then fell. Its title is Baltimore: A Memoir and a piece of it is out there on the web. Some want O’Malley to rewrite it, he says, to tie his own story more closely to the idea he was the model for the mayor of Charm City played by Aidan Gillen in The Wire, David Simon’s groundbreaking HBO series. He’s not keen.
  • Such focus seems timely: with the federal government in Trump’s sclerotic grip, cities in particular have begun to take a lead. On climate change, for example, some US mayors have reacted to Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris deal by saying they will simply pursue its aims themselves.
  • The Gonzaga gathering, O’Malley says, is a friendly one, a chance for the old boys “to ask, ‘Hey, how are you doing? How’s your wife? How’s your kids? What are you up to?’
  • “We recognized each other from the Sunday shows and having served together. We shook hands … but it was not a moment for me to simply say, ‘Hey, how’s work?’ I know how work is with him.
  • om Perez, once the Maryland secretary of labor, ended up in the role but O’Malley supported a young mayor from the Republican heartlands: Pete Buttigieg, now a challenger in the presidential primary.
  • But in an echo of the frustrations of 2016, O’Malley criticises the way the DNC has run the primary, particularly the way debate qualifications based on polling data and donor numbers – changed this week – have kept the likes of the former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick (“a friend” to whom O’Malley has donated) and the Montana governor Steve Bullock firmly out of the spotlight.
  • I was out there rattling the tin cup, from county square to county square.”
  • “All of that’s part of the process. But at the end of the day, we have to nominate someone who can defeat him and who can bring our country together and govern.”
katherineharron

Maryland and Virginia governors unveil road maps to recovery but say states aren't read... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 26 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Hogan, a Republican, said that the state plans to follow the federal guidelines issued by President Donald Trump last week, which call for states to meet specific metrics before considering lifting restrictions, including a 14-day downward trend in key numbers. He warned that the state has not yet hit its peak for coronavirus cases and deaths,.
  • The Democrat explained that phase one of reopening will require downward trends in new cases and hospitalizations for 14 days, increased testing and contact tracing and a sustainable supply of hospital beds and personal protective equipment. The specifics for the second and third phases have not yet been unveiled.
  • The first stage would begin by lifting the state's stay-at-home order. It would include reopening many small businesses, including certain retail shops and golf courses, and restarting many lower-risk community activities, like recreational boating and fishing, tennis and outdoor religious activities, along with outdoor fitness and gym classes. It would also include the resumption of elective outpatient surgeries and procedures in certain counties with lower concentrations of cases.
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  • The second stage would see a larger number of businesses would reopen, nonessential workers who cannot telework return to work and other public activities return. Indoor religious gatherings could resume with limited capacity and physical distancing measures. It would include raising the limits on the number of people in social gatherings. Stage two could also see more normal public transit schedules and opening of restaurants and potentially bars with significant safety restrictions.
  • The third and final stage would reinstitute higher-risk activities, such as larger social gatherings, events, religious gatherings and activities at entertainment venues and a further lessening of restrictions at hospitals and eventually nursing homes.
katherineharron

Novel coronavirus cases in the United States are nearing 1 million - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

crisis

shared by katherineharron on 27 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • A new week in the coronavirus pandemic is beginning with a United States case count approaching 1 million and several cities and states preparing to loosen stay-at-home restrictions.
  • There have been 54,883 coronavirus deaths reported nationally and more than 965,000 cases of the virus in the US.
  • While states from Hawaii to Texas and Michigan to Alaska are loosening restrictions on certain businesses and outdoor recreation, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that his state is still weeks away from reopening.
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  • "We are going to do everything in a smart way," DeSantis said in a news conference Sunday. "I am less concerned about the date and more concerned about getting it right."
  • Maryland has received hundreds of calls from people asking if they can effectively combat coronavirus by injecting or ingesting disinfectants, Gov. Larry Hogan told Margaret Brennan on "Face the Nation" on Sunday.
  • Tennessee's poison control center has seen a jump in the number of people hospitalized from exposure to hydrogen peroxide, a common ingredient in disinfectants, according to the Tennessean newspaper.
  • "All I know is this, when the person with the most powerful position on the planet is encouraging people to think about disinfectants whether it was serious or not, people listen,"
  • And while final results are not expected until mid-to-late May, preliminary results for a clinical trial of the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir could come out in a week or two,
draneka

D.C. and Maryland AGs: Trump 'flagrantly violating' emoluments clause - The Washington ... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...7-be25-3a519335381c_story.html

shared by draneka on 13 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • Democratic state attorneys general, a chief roadblock to some of President Trump’s most controversial policies, escalated their campaign against him Monday, alleging in a lawsuit that payments by foreign governments to Trump’s businesses violate anti-corruption clauses in the Constitution.
mimiterranova

House Poised To Pass Biden's $1.9 Trillion COVID-19 Relief Bill This Week : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ovid-19-relief-bill-on-tuesday

house biden relief bill Politics US

shared by mimiterranova on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • House Democrats are expected to pass the final version of a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package on Tuesday or Wednesday, thus delivering on Democrats' campaign promises and cementing a major legislative victory for the Biden administration.
  • "Democrats are delivering on our promise to take action to defeat this virus and provide the assistance the American people need until our economy can reopen safely and fully," the Maryland Democrat added.
  • mimiterranova on 12 Mar 21
     
    House Democrats are expected to pass the final version of a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package on Tuesday or Wednesday, thus delivering on Democrats' campaign promises and cementing a major legislative victory for the Biden administration. "Democrats are delivering on our promise to take action to defeat this virus and provide the assistance the American people need until our economy can reopen safely and fully," the Maryland Democrat added.
katherineharron

Fauci says Covid guidelines 'will be much more liberal' by July 4 if US cases drop - CN... - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

covid

shared by katherineharron on 14 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Federal Covid-19 guidelines "will be much more liberal" by the Fourth of July if US cases drop as more Americans are vaccinated, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday.
  • "If by the time we get to the Fourth of July, with the rollout of the vaccine, we get the level of infection so low -- I'm not going to be able to tell you exactly what the specific guidelines of the (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) are, but I can tell you for sure (guidelines) will be much more liberal than they are right now about what you can do," the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union."
  • people fully vaccinated against Covid-19 can safely visit with other vaccinated people and small groups of unvaccinated people in some circumstances.
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  • The agency is still urging unvaccinated Americans to socially distance from people who don't live in their home, wear masks and avoid crowds, measures that have been critical to slowing the spread of the deadly virus over the last year.
  • Fauci also warned that the US could see a situation similar to that in Italy, where a surge in cases due to new variants and other issues caused the government to announce a new lockdown starting Monday
  • "They had a diminution of cases. They plateaued and they pulled back on public health measures," he said. "They've opened restaurants. They've opened some of the bars. The younger people particularly stopped wearing masks. All of a sudden you have a surge that went right back up."
  • And pressed by Tapper on research that suggests no significant difference in coronavirus spreading in schools where students were six feet apart versus three feet apart, Fauci said the findings do indicate to him that three feet of distancing is good enough and that the CDC is aware of the new data.
  • Appearing later on the program, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, weighed in on the slow pace of his state's vaccine rollout, telling Tapper that Maryland can meet Biden's plan to order states to allow all adults to receive vaccines by May 1 only if they receive more doses from the federal government.
  • In announcing his plan last week, Biden laid out new steps the administration believes makes the May 1 timeline realistic, including expanding the types of professionals who are able to administer vaccine shots. Dentists, veterinarians and paramedics will all be included in the new approved list.
ethanshilling

House Approves D.C. Statehood, but Senate Obstacles Remain - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...dc-statehood-vote.html

US washington politics

shared by ethanshilling on 22 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • The House voted along party lines on Thursday to grant statehood to Washington, D.C., as Democrats moved to use their congressional majority to accomplish a long-held goal that has become a central plank in the party’s push to expand voting rights and address racial inequity.
  • The legislation would establish a 51st state called Washington, Douglass Commonwealth — in honor of Frederick Douglass, the Black emancipation and civil rights leader — while leaving the National Mall, Capitol Hill, the White House and some other federal property under congressional control.
  • The new state would have a single voting representative in the House and two senators representing its more than 700,000 residents, most of whom are people of color.
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  • “Congress has both the moral obligation and the constitutional authority to pass H.R. 51,” said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting House delegate, using the legislation’s symbolic designation to reflect the new state.
  • The vote in the House was 216 to 208. The White House confirmed President Biden’s support for the measure this week, with the Office of Management of Budget issuing a statement of administration policy declaring that making the District of Columbia a state would “make our union stronger and more just.”
  • But even with Democrats now in control of a 50-to-50 Senate, prospects for the measure remain dim. A few Senate Democrats have not publicly endorsed the proposal, and advancing it would most likely require at least 10 Republicans to vote in support, while none have said they would.
  • A group of House Democrats gathered for a news conference on Thursday to call on their Senate counterparts to abolish the filibuster, as many of their legislative ambitions are doomed to fall short of the 60-vote supermajority threshold needed to advance bills.
  • “Statehood for the District of Columbia is about showing respect for our democracy, for the American people and for our Constitution,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said on the House floor on Thursday.
  • Republicans have mounted a fierce campaign against the legislation, insisting it was not about equal representation, but ensuring that Democrats would secure three reliable votes — two in the Senate and one in the House — and pad their slim margins in both chambers.
  • Other Republicans have pushed for retroceding the nation’s capital into Maryland as a solution to ensure representation, a suggestion that has been repeatedly rejected by both Washingtonians and Marylanders.
  • Some proponents of statehood have begun pushing for the bill to be incorporated in sweeping legislation to expand voting rights and overhaul national elections, which Democrats have staked out as a top priority.
  • Backlash over the violent removal of protesters outside the White House during demonstrations against police brutality galvanized the movement. A decision to treat the District of Columbia as a territory when initially distributing state pandemic relief in 2020 also shortchanged the local government more than $700 million, local officials have said.
  • They are continuing to send legislative priorities to the Senate’s doorstep, in a bid to ramp up pressure on moderate Democrats who remain reluctant to do away with the blocking tactic.
ethanshilling

Those 16 or Older in NJ Will be Eligible for a Vaccine on April 19 - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ey-covid-vaccine-eligible.html

US vaccine

shared by ethanshilling on 06 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • All New Jersey residents 16 or older will be eligible for Covid-19 vaccination beginning on April 19, Gov. Philip D. Murphy said on Monday.
  • Mayor Muriel Bowser of the District of Columbia joined the group of leaders expanding vaccine eligibility, saying on Twitter on Monday that all Washington residents 16 or older would be eligible on April 19.
  • In Maryland, those 16 or older are eligible to get a shot on Tuesday at state mass vaccination sites, Gov. Larry Hogan said on Monday. On April 12, he said, all Maryland residents 16 or older will be eligible at the other vaccine providers in the state.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • It is an announcement that heeds President Biden’s call for states to speed up their timelines for all adults to be eligible, as most other states already have.
  • But even as the rollout of vaccinations continues to pick up pace, federal health officials and public health experts have been warning that the country could face a possible fourth surge in coronavirus cases.
  • Last week, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pleaded with Americans to “hold on a little while longer.”
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