Today's News: April 15, 2020

World News

World’s militaries face new enemy

AP – The coronavirus pandemic has forced militaries and militias to adapt to an invisible enemy, even as traditional conflicts grind on.
Armies have had to enforce social distancing rules among troops while helping with national outbreak containment and postponing maneuvers.
On Thursday, Saudi Arabia declared a temporary halt to fighting in Yemen because of the pandemic, while in Libya and Afghanistan conflicts are intensifying despite U.N. appeals for a global cease-fire. An outbreak in poor or war-scarred nations would be particularly devastating.

UK shutdown could remain in place until next year?

Mirror – Our top medic tonight indicated life may not return to normal until a cure for Covid-19 is found.
The Sunday People asked NHS England medical director Stephen Powis if some restrictions might still be needed 18 months from now.
He said: “This was never going to be a sprint of a few weeks. It is going to be a marathon.
“The job of scientists and doctors is to provide the Government with the best possible strategies to manage this virus over the months to come, and probably over longer than months.”
A vaccine is between a year to 18 months away – and there are as yet no successful drugs to combat it.
Prof Powis stressed in a No10 news conference that we are still only in “round one” of the battle.
Sources say advice to work from home and stay in for seven days with symptoms are still likely to be in place next year.
But schools and shops may reopen within weeks with social distancing measures in place.

REPORT: Assange secretly fathered two children inside Ecuadorian embassy with lawyer

Daily Mail – Julian Assange secretly fathered two sons while holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Gabriel, aged two, and his one-year-old brother Max were conceived while their father was hiding out to avoid extradition to America, where he faces espionage charges over the leaking of thousands of classified US intelligence documents.
At the time, Assange, 48, was also wanted in Sweden where he was accused of rape. He has always denied the sex allegations, which have now been dropped.
The boys’ mother is 37-year-old South African-born lawyer Stella Morris, who fell in love with the controversial WikiLeaks founder five years ago while visiting him to work on a legal bid to halt the extraditions.

U.S. News, Politics & Government

Trump announces US will halt funding to World Health Organization over coronavirus response

Fox – President Trump announced at the White House coronavirus news briefing in the Rose Garden on Tuesday that the United States will immediately halt all funding for the World Health Organization (WHO), saying it had put “political correctness over lifesaving measures.”
Also at the briefing, the president said plans to ease the national economic shutdown were being finalized, and that he would be “authorizing governors to reopen their states to reopen as they see fit.” At the same time, Trump made clear that he was not going to put “any pressure” on governors to reopen.
Trump read a long list of names of people in business, health care and sports who will advise him on how to restart the economy. “We have to get our sports back,” Trump remarked. “I’m tired of watching baseball games that are 14 years old.”
In the meantime, Trump declared that the United States would undertake a 60-to-90 day investigation into why the “China-centric” WHO had caused “so much death” by “severely mismanaging and covering up” the coronavirus’ spread, including by making the “disastrous” decision to oppose travel restrictions on China.
The United States is the WHO’s largest single donor, and the State Department had previously planned to provide the agency $893 million in the current two-year funding period. Trump said the United States contributes roughly $400 to $500 million per year to WHO, while China offers only about $40 million. The money saved will go to areas that “most need it,” Trump asserted.
“We have deep concerns over whether America’s generosity has been put to the best use possible,” Trump said, accusing the WHO of failing to adequately keep the international community apprised of the threat of the coronavirus.
“The WHO failed in this duty, and must be held accountable,” Trump went on. He added that the WHO had ignored “credible information” in December 2019 that the virus could be transmitted from human to human.

Judge grants Louisville church’s temporary restraining order against Mayor Fischer to allow drive-in service

WDRB – In his ruling, Walker blasted the mayor’s decision to prohibit drive-in church services as “beyond all reason” and akin to what one might find only in a dystopian novel. Fischer, however, said that in a global pandemic, he is simply trying to save lives.
On Fire Christian Church filed a lawsuit Friday asking for the order. The church sought to “block (Fischer’s) prohibition on churches holding drive-in services during the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to the First Liberty Institute, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the church.
Representatives from the church said that for weeks they have been hosting in the church parking lot drive-in services that adhere to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines. “Gathering on Easter is critical” for its congregation, the church argued in the lawsuit.
Fischer, when announcing the prohibition, said he couldn’t allow “hundreds of thousands” of people to drive around town this weekend in observance of Easter festivities when they need to be home riding out the pandemic.
However, on Saturday, Walker issued the restraining order, which prevents the city from “enforcing; attempting to enforce; threatening to enforce; or otherwise requiring compliance with any prohibition on drive-in church services at On Fire,” according to court documents.
William Hardy stood with a small group of people waving signs Saturday evening outside the church, while cars driving past on New Cut Road honked to celebrate the ruling.
“I am not a member of this church,” Hardy said, “but I will be here bright and early at 10:30 to worship with them.”
Walker called Fischer’s decision “stunning,” and “beyond all reason, unconstitutional,” according to court documents. “On Holy Thursday, an American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter. That sentence is one that this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel, or perhaps the pages of ‘The Onion,'” he wrote.

Prominent scientists have bad news for the White House about coronavirus antibody tests

CNN – In a phone call last week, some of the nation’s top scientists briefed White House officials about antibody testing, according to two doctors who were on the call.
Much of the news wasn’t very good.
Antibody tests check to see if a person has previously been infected with Covid-19, an indication that they’ve had the virus and now could be immune to it.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, has called such tests “critical.”
The test can help determine if someone is immune to coronavirus, “and that’s going to be important when you think about getting people back into the workplace,” according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the task force.
“The antibody test says you were infected and if you’re feeling well, you’ve very likely recovered,” Fauci said. “As we look forward, as we get to the point of at least considering opening up the country as it were, it’s very important to appreciate and to understand how much that virus has penetrated society.”
Trump administration officials have promised that antibody tests are on their way.
“We have made great progress with the antibody testing, fantastic progress,” Trump said at a media briefing April 5.
Five days later, Vice President Mike Pence said at a media briefing that “very soon we will have an antibody test that Americans will be able to take to determine whether they ever had the coronavirus.”
But on the April 6 phone call, members of the National Academy of Sciences’ Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats told members of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy there are issues with the availability and reliability of the antibody tests in the United States right now.
“In three words: Work in progress,” said Dr. David Relman, a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee who was on the call.
There are several layers of issues with the antibody tests.
First, the US Food and Drug Administration relaxed its rules, and now companies can sell antibody tests without submitting validation data that shows they actually work.
The American Public Health Lab Association says that has resulted in “crappy” tests flooding the market.
“It’s like the wild, wild West out there — or wild East,” said association CEO Scott Becker, a reference to the fact that at least half the companies making these tests are in China.
Becker said that in conference call Tuesday that FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said antibody tests would undergo scientific review by the National Cancer Institute.
There has been concern that some of the tests might confuse the coronavirus causing the current pandemic with one of several coronaviruses that cause the common cold.
“Lots of tests confuse the two,” Relman said.
The tests would then end up telling people they had antibodies to the pandemic coronavirus when they didn’t, and people might think they’re immune when they’re not.
A few days after the phone call, the NAS scientists wrote a letter to the White House frankly apprising them about the quality of antibody tests.
Results from antibody tests “should be viewed as suspect until rigorous controls are performed and performance characteristics described, as antibody detection methods can vary considerably, and most so far have not described well-standardized controls,” according to the letter.

USA gave $3.7M to Wuhan lab at center of coronavirus leak scrutiny.

Daily Mail – The Chinese laboratory at the center of scrutiny over a potential coronavirus leak has been using U.S. government money to carry out research on bats from the caves which scientists believe are the original source of the deadly outbreak.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology undertook coronavirus experiments on mammals captured more than 1,000 miles away in Yunnan which were funded by a $3.7 million grant from the US government.
Sequencing of the COVID-19 genome has traced it back to bats found in Yunnan caves but it was first thought to have transferred to humans at an animal market in Wuhan.
The revelation that the Wuhan Institute was experimenting on bats from the area already known to be the source of COVID-19 – and doing so with American money – has sparked further fears that the lab, and not the market, is the original outbreak source.
Lawmakers and pressure groups were quick to hit out at U.S. funding being provided for the ‘dangerous and cruel animal experiments at the Wuhan Institute’.
US Congressman Matt Gaetz said: ‘I’m disgusted to learn that for years the US government has been funding dangerous and cruel animal experiments at the Wuhan Institute, which may have contributed to the global spread of coronavirus, and research at other labs in China that have virtually no oversight from US authorities.’
On Saturday, Anthony Bellotti, president of the US pressure group White Coat Waste, condemned his government for spending tax dollars in China, adding: ‘Animals infected with viruses or otherwise sickened and abused in Chinese labs reportedly may be sold to wet markets for consumption once experiments are done.’

Elaborate underground doomsday bunker on sale for $18M in Las Vegas

New York Post – Doomsday preppers are finally cashing in thanks to coronavirus fears.
A huge, elaborate underground house in Las Vegas has just hit the market for a cool $18 million.
“It’s not just a house, it’s a subterranean 15,000 sqft concrete & steel rectangular-shaped doomsday bunker,” the listing on redfin notes.
The bunker comes complete with a 5,000 square foot house with an underground “pool, spa, waterfall, trees, guest house, BBQ, fountain and 500 linear feet of floor to ceiling illuminated murals of landscapes of wide open spaces simulating day, dusk, dawn and night modes.”
Centrally located and just blocks away from the (above ground) Kindred Hospital, the compound, complete with four full bathrooms and two half baths, was built as a nuclear bunker in 1978 — and looks like it.
Acting as a time capsule, the furnishings are straight out of a movie set, with drapes that match the furniture in the living room, a pink-tiled kitchen with matching cabinets and patio furniture surrounding the grill, which is artfully hidden inside a large, fake, painted rock.

Economy & Business

CDC director says some U.S. states may be ready to reopen May 1

Reuters – The director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday he believes 19 or 20 U.S. states have had limited impact from the new coronavirus and their governors believe they may be ready to reopen by President Donald Trump’s May 1 target date.
“There are a number of counties within this country that have not experienced really any coronavirus despite testing,” Robert Redfield said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“There are a number of states – 19, 20 states – that really have had limited impact from it. So I think we will see some states that are, the governors feel that they’re ready, we’re poised to assist them with that reopening,” Redfield said.
Trump said at his daily White House briefing Monday evening that he was close to completing a plan for ending America’s coronavirus shutdown, which has thrown millions out of work, and may forge ahead with restarting the battered U.S. economy in some parts of the country even before May 1.

Angry shoppers slam new rules preventing Walmart, Target, and Costco stores from selling ‘nonessential’ items such as toys and clothing in certain parts of the US

Business Insider – Big-box stores and grocery chains in parts areas of the US are being banned from selling nonessential items by local governments to reduce foot traffic and prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Vermont and Michigan states are among those to have enforced such rules.
While some shoppers are celebrating these new restrictions, different opinions over what is deemed as essential versus nonessential is creating confusion and irritation among other consumers.
It’s no longer possible to shop the entirety of your local big-box store in some parts of the US.
This is because local governments are increasingly taking the stance that stores such as Costco, Walmart, and Target, which have been allowed to stay open during the lockdown because they sell “essential” items such as groceries, shouldn’t be allowed to sell nonessential items during the coronavirus pandemic.
This is both to prevent shoppers from spending unnecessary time browsing the store, and thereby limiting their possible exposure to coronavirus, and also to make it fairer to other stores that sell mostly nonessential items and have been forced to close during this time.
Vermont and Michigan states are among the local governments to have rolled out new regulations preventing big-box stores from selling “nonessential” items.
Under Vermont’s new regulation, these retailers must “cease in-person sales” of the following products: “arts and crafts, beauty, carpet and flooring, clothing, consumer electronics, entertainment (books, music, movies), furniture, home and garden, jewelry, paint, photo services, sports equipment, and toys,” it said.
In Michigan State, meanwhile, any big-box store that is over 50,000 square feet is required to rope off its carpet or flooring, furniture, and paint departments along with its garden centers and plant nurseries.
While some shoppers have welcomed these new restrictions, others are criticizing local governments and the stores themselves for not allowing them to shop freely. Moreover, varying opinions over what should be deemed as essential versus nonessential is also creating confusion.

Miami doctor who gives homeless virus tests detained

Miami Hearald – A doctor who has been testing the homeless in downtown Miami for COVID-19, the deadly infection associated with the coronavirus, said he was handcuffed by police outside his Miami home Friday morning — for no reason that he can discern — while he was placing old boxes on the curbside for pickup.
Dr. Armen Henderson, who was highlighted in a Miami Herald story two weeks ago for his work with the homeless during the pandemic, said the officer released him from the handcuffs and went on his way after the doctor screamed for his wife, who came outside with identification.
Henderson, who works for the University of Miami Health System, said the officer told him he was patrolling the area after receiving complaints of people dumping trash. He told the cop he was just unloading his van, he said. He was handcuffed when he didn’t show him identification and turned back toward his van, Henderson said.
“He said ‘you should refer to me as sir, or sergeant when talking to me.’ I never said I was a doctor. But I didn’t cuss. He just grabbed my arms and cuffed me,” Henderson said.
The doctor said he was wearing a mask during the confrontation and the officer was not.
It wasn’t immediately clear if any paperwork was available from Friday’s interaction between Henderson and police. Miami police, informed of the doctor’s claims, said Henderson had not called the department to complain but that they were sending an investigator to the house to look into what happened.

Florida inmates will start making masks. Only guards will get them

Miami Herald – As the number of positive coronavirus cases among inmates at Florida’s prisons continues to climb, some inmates who remain in good health are being assigned to make masks to prevent the spread of the virus.
But not for each other, at least not at first. The guards get dibs.
“I think it’s ironic that you would make the sick inmates make masks for the guards,” said one woman whose son is locked up at Blackwater River Correctional Facility near Pensacola, a private prison experiencing a coronavirus outbreak. “I’m just thankful that at this point my son is not sick.”
Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises Inc., a St. Petersburg-based manufacturing company staffed by state prisoners, will be transitioning to making cloth face masks, the Florida Department of Corrections announced Saturday.

Energy & Environment

Catastrophe ‘a matter of time’: Spring brings more fears for Missouri River flooding

USA Today – The forecast is a veritable index of meteorological plagues: above-normal rainfall; greater than normal spring runoff; thoroughly saturated soils; and an aging system of nearly a thousand levees where nobody knows how many were damaged last year and in previous floods or how many were repaired.
The 855 levee systems throughout the Missouri River basin protect at least half a million people and more than $92 billion in property. Yet a USA TODAY Network analysis of Army Corps of Engineers’ records found at least 144 levee systems haven’t been fully repaired and that only 231 show an inspection date.
Of those, nearly half were rated “unacceptable,” which means something could prevent the levee from performing as intended or a serious deficiency was not corrected. Only 3.5% were deemed acceptable; the rest were found to be “minimally acceptable.”
In the Army Corps’ Kansas City district, for example, about 70 projects, spanning 119 levees that requested repair assistance, are eligible for funding, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be ready if the waters rise like they did last year.
“Some of them have been repaired, but from a total system perspective, I don’t think any of them are whole,” said Jud Kneuvean, the district’s chief of emergency management, who expects full levee rehabilitation and repair to take at least another year.

Science & Technology

Surveillance State Thrives During Pandemic

Can we take government officials at their word that they’ll eventually abandon their new powers?
Reason – From cellphone tracking to drone eyes in the sky, perused health records, and GPS ankle bracelets, an epidemic of surveillance-state measures is spreading across the world. It’s all done in the name of battling the spread of COVID-19, of course, since every crisis is used to justify incursions into our liberty. But long after the virus has done its worst and moved on, we’re likely to be stuck with these invasions of our privacy—unless we push back, hard.
The rationales for surveillance are easy to understand, within certain limits. Public health authorities battling the pandemic want to know who is spreading the virus, which people they may have infected, and the movements of those potentially carrying the bug.
China, where the COVID-19 outbreak began, leveraged its already deeply intrusive system of social control to force people to install cellphone apps that assigned them a code according to (allegedly) their perceived risk of spreading contagion. Permission to travel or enter public spaces depended on that code even as the software also tracked their whereabouts and shared data on users’ phones with the authorities.
Democratic South Korea didn’t go as far as China, but it still tracked people’s cellphones and credit card usage. Officials also used surveillance cameras to monitor the movements of those suspected of being infected.
Emulating a Chinese tactic, Spanish authorities turned to aerial drones to detect unauthorized gatherings of people—already a cringe-worthy concept for those of us disinclined to ask permission to meet with friends. Loudspeakers on the drones then ordered violators to return home.
Here in the U.S., government officials joined with tech companies to paw through the location data that most of us share with cellphone apps. The idea is to determine if people are staying at home as ordered; if not, the information detects where we’re clustering.
Privacy rules have also been relaxed to allow easier sharing of patients’ medical records with government health officials.
And some government agencies are attaching GPS ankle monitors to COVID-19 patients and those suspected of exposure lest they go for a walk in the country or pick up groceries from a curbside.
In most cases, Big Brother-ish tactics have been sold as temporary measures intended to battle very real danger from the COVID-19 pandemic. The surveillance is intended to enforce social distancing and track carriers of the new coronavirus so we can end the health crisis and return to normal. But can we take government officials at their word that they’ll eventually abandon their new powers?
“Government demands for new high-tech surveillance powers are all too familiar,” warns Adam Schwartz, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “This includes well-meaning proposals to use various forms of data about disease transmission among people. Even in the midst of a crisis, the public must carefully evaluate such government demands, because surveillance invades privacy, deters free speech, and unfairly burdens vulnerable groups.”

Health

How Hunt for Coronavirus Vaccine Could Go Horribly Wrong

Daily Beast – Scientists are racing to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, and anti-vaxxers are waiting in the wings.
COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, is killing hundreds of Americans every day. So it was reason for optimism on Monday when Inovio Pharmaceuticals became the second U.S company to move a vaccine candidate into clinical trials, following Moderna, a biotech company which started clinical trials in mid-March.
“Getting [Moderna’s candidate] into phase one in a matter of months is the quickest that anyone has ever done literally in the history of vaccinology,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified before Congress last month.
Naturally, the global movement of vaccine opponents and skeptics—who organize under banners of “choice” and “informed consent”—reacted differently. In recent weeks, they’ve been raising the alarm over expedited development. Larry Cook, one of the top anti-vaccine activists on Facebook, has called COVID-19 a “plandemic” that governments are using to “usher in mandatory testing, tracking, and vaccination.” #ResistThePlan, he’s urged his followers.
Activists like Cook have amassed considerable political power over the last several decades, and scientists say their propaganda is a major reason the U.S. has seen a recent resurgence of measles. In 2019, the World Health Organization ranked “vaccine hesitancy” as one of the top 10 global health threats, and earlier this year Gallup found 84 percent of Americans said it was important for parents to vaccinate their children, down from 94 percent in 2001.
Dr. Fauci has said a vaccine could be ready for public distribution in the next year and a half or less, though the estimate may prove too optimistic. Typically vaccine clinical trials take 10 to 15 years, and require a significantly higher safety bar to clear than other drugs, since vaccines are injected into healthy people.
Urgent as the need is, public health leaders warn, moving too quickly could have disastrous consequences not only for reining in COVID-19, but for vaccines more broadly. If a vaccine is released that doesn’t work well or yields dangerous side effects—especially in the face of an historic pandemic—it could empower anti-vaccine activists and reduce support for other longstanding vaccines that have gone through rigorous and exhaustive testing.

Obesity Ups Odds for Severe COVID-19 in Younger Patients

Newsmax – It’s clear that age and chronic disease make bouts of the pandemic coronavirus more severe — and even deadly — but obesity might also put even younger people at higher risk, a pair of new studies suggest.
The researchers suspect that inflammation throughout the body linked to obesity could be a powerful factor in the severity of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
And, they added, it could even be more significant than heart or lung disease.
“This has relevance in the U.S., where 40% of Americans are obese, and will no doubt contribute to increased morbidity and likely mortality, compared to other countries,” said Dr. Jennifer Lighter, co-author of one of the studies. Lighter is an assistant professor of pediatric infectious diseases at NYU School of Medicine in New York City.
Though people under age 60 are generally considered at low risk for COVID-19, her team found that those who are obese are twice as likely to be hospitalized for the disease.
And, compared to patients whose weight is normal, those who are morbidly obese are twice as likely to need acute care and three times more likely to be confined to the intensive care unit, the study found.
Though patients studied were obese, none had diabetes or heart disease, Lighter said, but they might be on the verge of them.
“They have higher rates of obstructive sleep apnea, asthma, restrictive lung disease reflux that may be affecting the respiratory system, which takes a hit from an infection like coronavirus,” she said.
Younger people who are obese are at high risk, she added. So, they should be reminded to wash hands frequently, practice social distancing and wear a face mask when they go out, Lighter said.