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andrespardo

First Thing: get ready for a long summer on lockdown | US news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-for-a-long-summer-on-lockdown

coronavirus corona crisis

shared by andrespardo on 27 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • get ready for a long summer on lockdown
  • New Zealand easing Covid-19 restrictions, but Deborah Birx says Americans can expect social distancing measures for months to come.
  • New Zealand has “won the battle” against widespread, undetected community transmission of the coronavirus, said the country’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, who announced the lifting of some lockdown measures on Monday after just one death and one new confirmed case of Covid-19 was recorded in the preceding 24 hours.
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  • Hospitals in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the pandemic began, have discharged the last coronavirus patients, while some of Europe’s worst-affected countries are preparing for the cautious easing of restrictions.
  • Boris Johnson is back in No 10 after recovering from Covid-19, and once again taking charge of the UK government’s faltering response to the pandemic.
  • xplained his country’s more successful approach, telling Laura Spinney how Angela Merkel rose to the challenge of the pandemic:
andrespardo

Black people four times more likely to die from Covid-19, ONS finds | Society | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...to-die-from-covid-19-ons-finds

coronavirus crisis corona economics race

shared by andrespardo on 07 May 20 - No Cached
  • Black people four times more likely to die from Covid-19, ONS finds
  • Black people are more than four times more likely to die from Covid-19 than white people, according to stark official figures exposing a dramatic divergence in the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in England and Wales. The Office of National Statistics found that the difference in the virus’s impact was caused not only by pre-existing differences in communities’ wealth, health, education and living arrangements.
  • after other pre-existing factors had been accounted for, and females from those ethnic groups were 1.6 times more likely to die from the virus than their white counterparts.
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  • The risk of Covid-19 death for people from Chinese and mixed ethnic groups was found to be similar to that for white people.
  • Guardian research last month confirmed suspicions that minority groups faced the greatest risk from the coronavirus and showed that areas with high ethnic minority populations in England and Wales tended to have higher mortality rates in the pandemic.
  • “We cannot ignore how important racial discrimination and racial inequalities, for example, in housing, are, even among poorer socio-economic groups,” she said. “These factors are important but are not taken into account in most statistical modelling of Covid-19 risk factors.”
  • These groups are more likely to work in frontline roles in the NHS in England: nearly 21% of staff are from ethnic minorities, compared with about 14% of the population of England and Wales. Black, Bangladeshi and Pakistani populations have been shown to face higher levels of unemployment and child poverty than white groups.
  • The authors called for further research on the contribution of occupational risk and whether people from BAME backgrounds were placed at increased risk of exposure and infection.
  • To try to understand how much of the difference in Covid-19 morbidity was to do purely with ethnicity, the statisticians adjusted for age as well as region, rural and urban classification, area deprivation, household composition, socio-economic position, highest qualification held, household tenure, and health or disability as recorded in the 2011 census.
  • After all these factors were accounted for, Indian men and women were less likely than people from Bangladeshi and Pakistani background to die from Covid-19, but were still 1.3 times and 1.4 times more vulnerable than white people.
  • The ONS also checked to see if, within ethnic groups, socio-economic class made a difference. They found that the differences in risk of Covid-19-related death across ethnic groups were of similar magnitudes within all three socio-economic classes.
  • Some groups may be over-represented in public-facing occupations and could be more likely to be infected by Covid-19 . About 12.8% of workers from Bangladeshi and Pakistani backgrounds work in public-facing transport jobs such as bus, coach and taxi driving, compared with 3.5% of white people. The ONS said it plans to conduct further work to identify occupations that are particularly at risk.
  • Like the ONS data, the study found that people of black and Asian backgrounds were at higher risk of death, and it ruled out the idea that this was largely due to higher rates of underlying medical problems in these groups.
  • “It doesn’t have to be like this. As a society that prides itself on justice and compassion, we can and must do better.”
  • The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that people from deprived social backgrounds were also at a higher risk, and again this finding could not be explained by other risk factors.
  • The research accounts for health problems reported by people who filled in the 2011 census, but Hanif said differences in the extent of other underlying diseases in different ethnic groups in Britain – so-called co-morbidities – which have not been accounted for by the ONS, may be significant. For example, in the UK people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent are
  • “We have commissioned Public Health England to better understand the different factors, such as ethnicity, obesity and geographical location that may influence the effects of the virus.”
andrespardo

New Zealand 'halfway down Everest' as Ardern plans big easing of Covid lockdown | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...s-big-easing-of-covid-lockdown

coronavirus crisis corona economics

shared by andrespardo on 07 May 20 - No Cached
  • New Zealand 'halfway down Everest' as Ardern plans big easing of Covid lockdown
  • Under level two, the “bar” area of a bar would be off-limits because it has been identified as a transmission hotspot for the virus. This was evidenced by a cluster of dozens of people who went drinking at a pub in Matamata on St Patrick’s day in March.
  • Public spaces such as playgrounds and libraries would be reopened, bars and restaurants would be able to accept patrons, and domestic travel and competitive sport allowed to resume, including the professional leagues, but there will be no stadium crowds for now. Most workers would be allowed to head back to the office, though Ardern urged any who could stay home – or found it more productive – to do so. Widespread social-distancing rules would continue to apply, including patrons being seated two metres apart in public spaces, strangers keeping their distance from one another, and hairdressers, barbers and beauticians being required to wear PPE.
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  • Under the plans outlined by Ardern on Thursday, they would be permitted to see friends, family and even online dates – so long as they keep a log of their movements, and did not participate in indoor or outdoor gatherings of any more than 100. Weddings, funerals and anniversary celebrations would also be permitted.
  • The detailed description of life under level two was greeted with jubilation by Kiwis, many of whom have been desperate for a haircut and a change of company and scene.
  • Hairdressers, bars and competitive sport could be back on the agenda for New Zealanders from next week as the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the country was “halfway down Everest” in its fight against Covid-19. New Zealand has been under strict lockdown restrictions for more than five weeks, but the low number of cases this week – zero for two consecutive days – means restrictions will soon be lifted.
  • Kiwis should be proud of how quickly the country had got on top of the virus, compared with other countries. Less than 1,500 people have contracted the virus so far.
  • but
  • “Every alert level to fight Covid-19 is its own battle. When you win one, it doesn’t mean the war is over,” Ardern said.
  • “There is a much higher level of individual responsibly required at level two to prevent the spread of the virus. Even though the economy will be significantly opened up we still need everyone to remain vigilant and continue to act like you and those around you have the virus. “On Monday 11 May, we will make a decision on whether to move, taking into consideration the best data and advice we can, recognising the impact of restrictions, and ensuring we don’t put at risk all of the gains we have made. “We need to balance the risk of the virus bouncing back against the strong desire to get the economy moving again.”
cartergramiak

Opinion | We Need a G.I. Bill for Essential Workers - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...sential-workers-contracts.html

politics US trump history

shared by cartergramiak on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • For far too many American workers, the pandemic has delivered a one-two punch of hardship. The American Voices Project, a national study of the ongoing crisis brought on by the coronavirus, recently interviewed a 26-year-old essential worker about the pandemic’s first punch: “I was working at a gas station, bringing home enough to get me by,” she said. “And then the corona hit, my hours got cut, I was only working one or two days, sometimes no days, and then I was out of a job. It literally was hell … I was suffocating in bills.”
  • The risks weigh heavily on her: “We have to work and make money, but is it really worth us losing our life?”
  • In another executive order, President Biden has asked the secretary of labor to issue new guidance on workplace safety, including guidance on masks and other protective standards. Although unveiled with little fanfare, these are inspired moves.
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  • In discussing their jobs, face-to-face workers often share their fears, but after doing so they typically catch themselves and issue such correctives as “It’s hard for everyone” and “Everybody’s in the same boat.”
anonymous

Opinion | We Need a G.I. Bill for Essential Workers - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...sential-workers-contracts.html

Politics

shared by anonymous on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • America must do right by the people who have risked their lives during the pandemic.
  • or far too many American workers, the pandemic has delivered a one-two punch of hardship. The American Voices Project, a national study of the ongoing crisis brought on by the coronavirus, recently interviewed a 26-year-old essential worker about the pandemic’s first punch: “I was working at a gas station, bringing home enough to get me by,” she said. “And then the corona hit, my hours got cut, I was only working one or two days, sometimes no days, and then I was out of a job. It literally was hell … I was suffocating in bills.”
  • Because of her growing debt, she used her certification as a nursing assistant to land a job in one of the riskiest settings around: a nursing home. The job entails constant face-to-face interaction. “I’m given a group of people that I have to care for,” she said. “I’ll have to pass out breakfast or lunch trays, or they’re incontinent, so I’d be giving towels. It’s basic care.”
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  • This is a textbook description of what some philosophers and social scientists call a noxious contract. Because there are bills to pay, and because the downturn means that alternatives are in short supply (punch one), she had little alternative but to accept a contract that comes with real risk (punch two). Although noxious contracts are as old as market economies, the pandemic has put them on steroids. The key problem: We’ve suddenly created a vast group of risky occupations and thrust them on a labor force with fewer options.
  • Although the first G.I. Bill ended up reinforcing inequalities and didn’t live up to its promise, that only means that we now have an obligation to do it again and do it right. If ever there were a time to step up in this way, it would be precisely now, when the country is emerging from one of its biggest challenges since the original G.I. Bill was signed.
hannahcarter11

He Is Israel's 'Prince of Torah.' But to Some, He Is the King of Covid. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rael-virus-rabbi-orthodox.html

israel Prince of Torah covid judaism

shared by hannahcarter11 on 11 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Yet despite his seeming detachment from worldly life, Rabbi Kanievsky has become one of the most consequential and controversial people in Israel today.
  • The spiritual leader of hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews, Rabbi Kanievsky has landed at the center of tensions over the coronavirus between the Israeli mainstream and its growing ultra-Orthodox minority.
  • Throughout the pandemic, the authorities have clashed with the ultra-Orthodox over their resistance to antivirus protocols, particularly their early refusal to close schools or limit crowds at religious events
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  • Twice, during the first and second waves of the pandemic in Israel, he rejected state-imposed antivirus protocols and would not order his followers to close their yeshivas, independent religious schools where students gather in close quarters to study Jewish Scripture.
  • If anything, he said, the pandemic made prayer and study even more essential.
  • Both times he eventually relented, and it is unlikely that he played as big a role in spreading the virus as he was accused of, but the damage was done.
  • Many public health experts say that the ultra-Orthodox — who account for about 12 percent of the population but 28 percent of the coronavirus infections, according to Israeli government statistics — have undermined the national effort against the coronavirus.
  • Ultra-Orthodox society is not monolithic, and other prominent leaders were far quicker to comply with antivirus regulations. Ultra-Orthodox leaders say the majority of their followers have obeyed the rules although their typically large families, living in tight quarters under what is now the third national lockdown, have inevitably contributed to the spread of the contagion.
  • But he has contributed to one of the biggest-ever showdowns between the Israeli mainstream and the ultra-Orthodox, also known as Haredim.
  • In the past, he said, ultra-Orthodox leaders have tried to avoid direct confrontation with the state.
  • His pedigree adds to his prestige: His father and uncle were legendary spiritual leaders. But it is his relentless Torah study that gives the rabbi his authority — his followers believe his encyclopedic knowledge of Jewish teachings endows him with a near-mystical ability to offer religious guidance.
  • It is this devotion to religious study that made Rabbi Kanievsky — sometimes nicknamed the ‘Prince of Torah’ — so reluctant to tell his followers to close their yeshivas at the start of the pandemic.
  • “There is now a great epidemic in the world, a disease called corona and it affects many people,” one grandson shouted in the rabbi’s ear last year, following a question from a visitor, according to a video of the conversation. “He asks what they should take upon themselves so this disease does not get to them and there are no problems.”
  • Several weeks into the pandemic, the rabbi ordered his followers to obey social distancing guidelines, even equating scofflaws to murderers. In June, he said face masks were a religious obligation. In December, he gave his blessing to the vaccine, not long after recovering from the virus himself. In recent days he condemned a group of Haredi youths who clashed with police officers trying to enforce coronavirus regulations.
  • It is usually Yanki who shapes the way questions are put to the rabbi, potentially influencing the way that he might answer them.
  • But without speaking to the rabbi directly, it is hard to know exactly what he thinks.
tsainten

Trump and Biden Spar From Afar at Town Halls - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...presidential-town-halls.html

Corona Election Trump Biden politics US

shared by tsainten on 16 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Mr. Biden has made the full embrace of strict public health guidelines the centerpiece of his candidacy, while Mr. Trump has continued to defy even the recommendations of his own government on matters as basic as the use of masks — a pattern that persisted in their opposing events on Thursday.
  • Mr. Trump repeatedly declined to disavow QAnon, a pro-Trump internet community that has been described by law enforcement as a potential domestic terrorism threat.
  • “I denounce white supremacy, OK?” he replied
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  • in the health crisis and urged people to “use the word ‘cure’” in reference to emerging therapies to treat the virus, even though no treatment has emerged that meets that description.
  • “On the masks, you have two stories,” Mr. Trump said, claiming falsely that most people who wear masks contract the virus.
  • Perhaps notably, Mr. Trump said he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the election — a promise he declined to make in the first debate — though he quickly added the qualification that he would insist on an “honest election” and raised unsubstantiated theories about voter fraud
Javier E

'Christianity Will Have Power' - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...licals-trump-christianity.html

evangelical trump support history

shared by Javier E on 09 Aug 20 - No Cached
  • From the start it appeared an impossible contradiction. Evangelicals for years have defined themselves as the values voters, people who prized the Bible and sexual morality — and loving your neighbor as yourself — above all.
  • Donald Trump was the opposite. He bragged about assaulting women. He got divorced, twice. He built a career off gambling. He cozied up to bigots. He rarely went to church. He refused to ask for forgiveness.
  • t is a contradiction that has held for four years. They stood by him when he shut out Muslim refugees. When he separated children from their parents at the border. When he issued brash insults over social media. When he uttered falsehoods as if they were true. When he was impeached.
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  • Evangelicals did not support Mr. Trump in spite of who he is. They supported him because of who he is, and because of who they are. He is their protector, the bully who is on their side, the one who offered safety amid their fears that their country as they know it, and their place in it, is changing, and changing quickly.
  • White straight married couples with children who go to church regularly are no longer the American mainstream. An entire way of life, one in which their values were dominant, could be headed for extinction. And Mr. Trump offered to restore them to power, as though they have not been in power all along.
  • “You are always only one generation away from losing Christianity,” said Micah Schouten, who was born and raised in Sioux Center, recalling something a former pastor used to say. “If you don’t teach it to your children it ends. It stops right there.”
  • “The one group of people that people felt like they could dis and mock and put down had become the Christian. Just the middle-class, middle-American Christians,” Ms. Burg said. “That was the one group left that you could just totally put down and call deplorable. And he recognized that, You know what? Yeah, it’s OK that we have our set of values, too. I think people finally said, ‘Yes, we finally have somebody that’s willing to say we’re not bad, we need to have a voice too.’”
  • “I feel like on the coasts, in some of the cities and stuff, they look down on us in rural America. You know, we are a bunch of hicks, and don’t know anything. They don’t understand us the same way we don’t understand them. So we don’t want them telling us how to live our lives.”
  • “You joke that we don’t get it, well, you don’t get it either. We are not speaking the same language.”
  • Those in the town, though, ultimately heard something else entirely. What mattered was not just what Mr. Trump said. It was where he said it. And to whom.
  • Mr. Driesen spoke of the policies that were important to him, all the usual conservative issues. Small government. Ending abortion. Judges who share his political views. “Traditional families,” he said.“Unfortunately, there’s just more divorce than there used to be,” he said. “There’s more cohabitating. I think it is detrimental to the family. I just think kids do better in a two-parent home, with a mom and a dad.”
  • “The religious part is huge for us, as we see religious freedoms being taken away,” Ms. Driesen said. “If you don’t believe in homosexuality or something, you lose your business because of it. And that’s a core part of your faith. Whereas I see Trump as defending that. He’s actually made that executive order to put the Bibles back in the public schools. That is something very worrisome and dear to us, our religious freedom.”
  • They want the Christian education for their children “so we don’t have to have them indoctrinated with all these different things,” he said. “We are free to teach them our values.”
  • “Silly things. Just let the boys go in the boys’ bathroom and the girls go in the girls’,” he said. “It’s just something you’d think is never going to happen, and nowadays it could. And it probably will.”“Just hope nobody turns it upside down,” he said.“But we feel like we are in a little area where we are protected yet,” she said. “We are afraid of losing that, I guess.”
  • She paused. “It’s almost like it is a reverse intolerance. If you have somebody that’s maybe on the liberal side, they say that we are intolerant of them. But it is inverse intolerant if we can’t live out our faith.”
  • “Trump’s an outsider, like the rest of us,” he said. “We might not respect Trump, but we still love the guy for who he is.” “Is he a man of integrity? Absolutely not,” he went on. “Does he stand up for some of our moral Christian values? Yes.” The guys agreed. “I’m not going to say he’s a Christian, but he just doesn’t attack us,” his friend Jason Mulder said.
  • “I do not love Trump. I think Trump is good for America as a country. I think Trump is going to restore our freedoms, where we spent eight years, if not more, with our freedoms slowly being taken away under the guise of giving freedoms to all,” she said. “Caucasian-Americans are becoming a minority. Rapidly.”
  • None of them said they had wanted to vote for Mr. Trump, but they did — “When he was the last option,”
  • But they agreed it would be easier to vote for him this time. Before, it was hard to know what he would be like as president. Now they knew, and they liked the results: Supreme Court justices, conservative judges
  • “Obama wanted to take my assault rifle, he wanted to take out all the high-capacity magazines,” Mr. Schouten said. “It just —” “— felt like your freedoms kept getting taken from you,”
  • “We have life very easy, it is laid back, it is like-minded people. And it’s just, I like the bubble,” she said. “I like not worrying about sending them outside to play, or whose house they are going to if they are going to the neighbors a few houses down, they might not go to the same church, they might not hold all the same beliefs, but I trust them. I don’t know, maybe that is naïve.”
  • The years of the Obama presidency were confusing to her. She said she heard talk of giving freedoms to gay people and members of minority groups. But to her it felt like her freedoms were being taken away. And that she was turning into the minority.
  • The Trump era has revealed the complete fusion of evangelical Christianity and conservative politics, even as white evangelical Christianity continues to decline as a share of the national population.
  • She explained what she meant. “If you are a hard-working Caucasian-American, your rights are being limited because you are seen as against all the races or against women,” she said. “Or there are people who think that because we have conservative values and we value the family and I value submitting to my husband, I must be against women’s rights.”
  • “People in my circles, you don’t really hear about racism, so I guess I don’t know too much about it,” Mr. Driesen said of the protests. “When I see the pictures, I thought they all should be at work, being productive citizens.”
  • “We are making this huge issue of white versus Black, Black Lives Matter. All lives matter,” she said. “There are more deaths from abortion than there are from corona, but we are not fighting that battle.”
  • “We are picking and choosing who matters and who doesn’t,” she said. “They say they are being picked on, when we are all being picked on in one shape or form.”
  • After the election of President Barack Obama, the country seemed to undergo a cultural shift, she said. “It was dangerous to voice your Christianity,” she said. “Because we were viewed as bigots, as racists — we were labeled as the haters and the ones who are causing all the derision and all of the problems in America. Blame it on the white believers.”
  • There are some signs of fraying at the edges of the coalition, among some women and young people. If even a small fraction turns away from Mr. Trump, it could make the difference to his re-election.
  • even if he loses in November, mainstream evangelical Christianity has made plain its deepest impulses and exposed where the majority of its believers pledge allegiance.
  • There is a straight line from that day at Dordt four years ago to a recent scene at a chapel in Washington, where armed officers tear-gassed peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square and shot them with rubber pellets. They were clearing the way for Mr. Trump to march from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church and hold up a Bible, a declaration of Christian power.
  • “To me it was like, that’s great. Trump is recognizing the Bible, we are one nation under God,” Mr. Schouten said. “He is willing to stand out there and take a picture of it for the country to see.”He added: “Trump was standing up for Christianity.”
andrespardo

The US doctors taking Trump's lead on hydroxychloroquine - despite mixed results | US news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...e-trump-us-doctors-coronavirus

crisis corona economics coronavirus

shared by andrespardo on 24 May 20 - No Cached
  • The US doctors taking Trump’s lead on hydroxychloroquine – despite mixed results
  • Among the most ardent proponents of these claims is the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a fringe group of less than 5,000 doctors. The group was recently cited by Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, to explain the president’s stunning announcement that he is taking the drug hydroxychloroquine in an attempt to protect himself against Covid-19 despite a lack of evidence of its effectiveness.
  • Yet Dr Jane Orient, executive director of AAPS, told the Guardian she believed the drug “should be prescribed more often”, and in a statement based on a flawed database claimed the drug offered “about 90% chance of helping Covid-19 patients”.
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  • This group is lobbying on behalf of what they believe to be right, but invariably experts would disagree on their stance on hydroxychloroquine John Ayers
  • “They’re aligned with the Trump administration, that doesn’t believe in science, doesn’t believe in fact. They’re completely compatible with the Trump White House.”
  • “I don’t want to have a target put on my back … which could result in somebody wanting to scrutinize my entire practice,” Orient said.
  • As far as the president’s pronouncements, Ayers said: “We don’t know if he’s actually even taking it.” Even as Trump said he was tak
  • Massachusetts general hospital, another world-renowned academic medical center, is giving priority to remdesivir, a drug developed by Gilead, although hydroxychloroquine is provided on a case-by-case basis.
  • But Orient argued that masks “are not free of side-effects” and that they “retard oxygen” to the brain. She later added: “I think one jogger even dropped dead.” One man in China reportedly suffered a collapsed lung while wearing a mask, though a doctor in the report said there was “no clear evidence” the mask caused the injury.
  • Orient also voiced her support for lifting stay-at-home orders. “They are destroying the economy, they are destroying people’s lives, there is really no evidence they work,” she said. The economic and social impacts of the lockdowns have been devastating.
  • The view of AAPS, he added, is “that doctors should be basically free to do whatever they want to do, regardless of the level of evidence, and that’s a dangerous perspective for medical practitioners to have in the 21st century”.
  • Nevertheless, Orient argues hydroxychloroquine should be available over the counter. Concerns from scientists have “nothing to do with concerns about safety and concerns about science”, she argued. Her view that lockdowns are “despotic, tyrannical and completely unwarranted”, and will probably also cause consternation in many circles.
Javier E

'They feel invincible': how California's coronavirus plan went wrong | US news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...irus-outbreak-cases-went-wrong

california pandemic response

shared by Javier E on 05 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • The Newsom administration’s four-phase plan to reopen slowly, while encouraging Californians to remain vigilant about wearing face coverings and maintaining distanceto stop the spread of disease seemed “perfectly good and smart”, Watchter said.
  • what I think we didn’t get right was the national political scene,” he said. California, despite its reputation as a progressive state, wasn’t immune to a growing conservative movement that rejects face masks as muzzles on independence and vilifies public health officials as enemies of the people.
  • In Orange county, where more than 15,000 people have been infected, health director Nichole Quick resigned in mid-June after being confronted with a banner depicting her as a Nazi, protests outside her house and personal threats. Quick had issued an order requiring residents to wear masks in public, which the county sheriff insisted he wouldn’t enforce. After she became the third high-level health official in Orange county to quit, the county quickly reversed Quick’s order – recommending, but not insisting that residents wear masks.
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  • “People began to fixate on individual liberties without understanding that one of the most fundamental civil liberties in the US is the right to health – the right to stay alive.”
  • Demographic data suggests that younger people, between the ages of 18 and 50, are fueling the current wave of infections, accounting for nearly 60% of cases statewide. “Maybe they feel invincible, so they go out to bars, they gather in big groups,” Riley said. “But then they can spread the virus to their grandmas and grandpas, their parents, their buddies with asthma or diabetes, who are more vulnerable.”
  • Among the hardest-hit regions are rural counties in the south and the Central Valley, where farmworkers have been toilin
  • The vast majority – more than 90% – of farmworkers in California are Latinx, working in precariously crowded environments. More than 60% of workers involved in food preparation are Latinx as well
  • Latinx, Black and other minority groups are disproportionately infected with and dying of Covid-19, according to a tracking tool designed by UCLA, and early metrics suggest that the state’s reopening has exacerbated disparities. Devastating outbreaks in California’s prisons and homeless shelters have further fueled inequities.
  • the state rushed its reopening plan. Initially, officials had set two weeks of declining as a benchmark for advancing through each phase of reopening. “We wanted to not only flatten the curve but see a downturn,” he said. “Then we began seeing the anti-lockdown protests, basically egged on with a wink and a nod from Donald Trump, and the governor faced increasing pressure to move faster.”
  • the governor’s recent orders pausing the California’s reopening, and his statewide mandate requiring residents to wear masks, are laudable, he said. “Still, we’re only successful if people follow the order – and right now, they’re not doing it.”
andrespardo

Can you catch coronavirus twice? What we know about Covid-19 so far | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-we-know-about-covid-19-so-far

covid corona coronavirus pandemic

shared by andrespardo on 27 May 20 - No Cached
  • But we do have some clues. “We know from ‘normal’ coronavirus studies done in the past you can infect people after about a year following an initial infection,” said Dr Ben Killingley, consultant in acute medicine and infectious diseases at University College London hospital.
  • “I have yet to see a definitive case of reinfection reported in the scientific literature [to date]. To truly prove reinfection, and discriminate from prolonged viral shedding related to the first infection, would require sequencing of both the first and second viruses and demonstration that the two viruses are genetically different,” he said, adding it will also be important to look at symptoms and how long reinfection lasts.
  • What happened in South Korea, where patients tested positive after having recovered from Covid-19?
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  • That’s because the PCR (or “have-you-got-it”) test is based on detecting genetic material from the virus – on its own it does not reveal whether that virus is active, and infectious, or not.
  • Experts say it is unlikely. “I know some have discussed ‘reactivation’ of virus, but this seems unhelpful and unsupported to me,” said Altmann. “It’s a term that’s borrowed from other viruses, especially the herpes virus family, that can hide in the body in a latent state to reactivate years later. [There is] no evidence of that at all for coronaviruses.”
  • “[We are] at the beginning of describing what may be a complex picture of chronic disease that may ensue from the initial infection – coming and going in relapsing waves, sometimes almost like a kind of chronic fatigue syndrome,” he said. “[These cases] may reflect examples of virus not fully cleared, or alternatively, some kind of damaging post-hoc disturbance to immune or inflammatory function,” he said.
  • “In some persons they begin to feel well again and signs and symptoms including fever decrease, but some then go on to develop respiratory distress and must be provided oxygen in hospital,” said David Heymann, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “It appears to be a delayed immune response that is more serious in some persons and that reacts to remaining virus in various organs.”
  • How long are people with Covid-19 infectious for? A recent study of 60 coronavirus patients in China showed 10 patients tested positive for Covid-19 after discharge from hospital. However, once again, experts say this could be down to the test picking up genetic material from inactive virus, with other studies, including work in South Korea, suggesting those who test positive with Covid-19 after recovering from the disease are not infectious.
  • “It’s not uncommon to find virus in the nose or throat for up to four weeks after initial infection, but tests to establish whether this is live infectious virus – as opposed to just genetic material detection – are not normally positive for much longer than a week,” said Killingley, adding: “I haven’t come across relapse cases whereby the initial infection acquired weeks ago reignites itself into an infectious case.”
andrespardo

Coronavirus US live: cases still increasing in two dozen states amid push to reopen | US news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ump-100000-latest-news-updates

coronavirus corona epidemic

shared by andrespardo on 27 May 20 - No Cached
  • Dr Anthony Fauci said he thought it was too soon to say whether the presidential nominating conventions will be able to safely take place in person this summer.
  • “I think we need to reserve judgment right now because we’re still a few months from there,”
  • The infectious disease expert said the country would have to see a signficant decline in cases in order to safely move forward with the conventions.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • “Hopefully we will see that diminution [of coronavirus cases],” Fauci said. “If we don’t, then as I’ve said before, I would have significant reservations about that.”
  • Realistically, as Fauci’s comments indicate, no governor can actually make that guarantee right now
  • Republicans could hold their convention at full capacity in August.
  • In contrast, Trump said Monday he wanted a “guarantee”
  • Republican governors of Georgia and Florida from offering up their states to replace North Carolina as the convention site.
Javier E

Opinion | On Masks and Covid, I Finally Found Common Ground. In Germany. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...id-germany-masks-vaccines.html

germany response pandemic crisis Culture politics history policy

shared by Javier E on 12 Oct 21 - No Cached
  • You see it everywhere here in Germany, day in and day out: People taking the subway or bus or train put masks on as they prepare to board. And when they arrive at their stop or station and disembark, nearly all of them take the mask off, almost in unison.
  • For someone who arrived here after spending the first year and a quarter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, it is a remarkable sight: a communal, matter-of-fact approach to mitigation, turning what has become such an intensely charged symbol for Americans into a mere practicality.
  • Throughout 2020 and the first part of 2021, I traveled across the United States reporting stories, and wondered why it was so hard for the country to arrive at a sensible middle ground on Covid-19 measures.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • All or nothing, nothing or all.
  • it was not hard to discern what was happening: Reports of Trump supporters refusing to wear masks in big-box stores or indoor campaign events seemed to make liberals more inclined to wear masks even when outdoors with few people around; seeing mask wearing turned into a political statement, more partisan talisman than necessary tool, in turn made many conservatives less likely to mask up indoors when the circumstances justified it.
  • No, it seems to me that the likelier explanation for the less polarized approach to virus mitigation behavior is that Germany is, well, much less polarized. Politics are so consensus-driven here that for the past eight years Germany has had a governing coalition consisting of the two largest parties.
  • It might be tempting to chalk up the uniformity of Germans’ behavior to their penchant for rule-following
  • The difference between the share of Germans on the ideological right and left who thought there should have been fewer restrictions on public activity was 20 percentage points, a Pew survey found early this summer. In the United States, the difference between right and left on that question was a whopping 45 points, by far the largest gap of any country surveyed
  • The overall effect is of an environment set at a lower temperature, far closer to normalcy, where the public space is not forever on the verge of flaring into a divisive battleground of signaling, judgments and resistance.
  • Mr. Scholz invoked the unity and sense of purpose that Germany had demonstrated during the pandemic as his model for bringing the country together to confront other challenges, such as climate change. “We saw in this corona crisis that we can hold together, that solidarity is possible in this country,” he said.
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