Americans are desperate for help to stay in their homes and pay their bills as the coronavirus pandemic has kept 30 million Americans from being able to get back to work.
Despite Congress passing a bill to help in May, the bill was never taken up by the Senate and it appears they are about to leave Washington without any progress, CNN.com reported Wednesday.
Last week, Republicans scheduled a vote on a "skinny" stimulus that wouldn't do much to help Americans desperate for unemployment funds and rent and mortgage assistance. The bill didn't pass and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tried to blame Democrats for not passing the near-useless package. Republicans in the Senate are now back at work trying to find a solution.
"South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the second-ranking GOP leader, and Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the Republican who chairs the Appropriations Committee, said Wednesday they are trying to complete action on a House-passed government funding bill this week," said CNN.com.
If McConnell thought the "skinny" bill was enough, other Republicans wouldn't be scrambling to figure out how to get something passed before the leave.
The Brazilian city of Manaus, which was devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, may have suffered so many infections that its population now benefits from "herd immunity," according to a preliminary study.
Published on the website medRxiv, the study analyzed infection data with mathematical modeling to estimate that 66 percent of the population had antibodies to the new coronavirus in Manaus, where the pandemic's passage was as fast as it was brutal.
That may be sufficiently high to have reached the threshold of herd immunity, in which enough members of a population are immune to a disease that it can no longer spread effectively, said the study's authors, a group of 34 Brazilian and international researchers.
"The unusually high infection rate suggests that herd immunity played a significant role in determining the size of the epidemic," they wrote in the study, which has yet to undergo peer review.
"All signs indicate that it was the very fact of being so exposed to the virus that brought about the reduction in the number of new cases and deaths in Manaus," the study's coordinator, University of Sao Paulo medical professor Ester Sabino, told the Sao Paulo State Research Support Foundation (Fapesp), which helped fund the study.
Situated in the Amazon rainforest, Manaus was the scene of gruesome images of overrun hospitals, mass graves and corpses piled in refrigerator trucks when the pandemic was at its peak there in May.
But deaths in the city of 2.2 million people have fallen dramatically in recent weeks, to an average of just 3.6 per day over the past 14 days.
Manaus is now one of the cities reopening fastest from lockdown in Brazil, the country with the second-highest death toll worldwide, after the United States, with nearly 139,000 people killed.
That includes schools, businesses, nightlife and its famed opera house.
However, health experts cautioned that attempting to reach herd immunity was a dangerous path for policy makers.
"Community immunity via natural infection is not a strategy, it's a sign that a government failed to control an outbreak and is paying for that in lives lost," tweeted Florian Krammer, professor of microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
Other experts cautioned that immunity to the virus may be short-lived.
Manaus has registered 2,462 deaths from Covid-19.
If it were a country, it would have the second-highest mortality rate in the world, at 100.7 deaths per 100,000 population.
On Wednesday, Missouri officials announced that Gov. Mike Parson and his wife have tested positive for COVID-19.
"At this time, the Governor feels healthy and is displaying no symptoms, and the First Lady has mild symptoms," said the governor's office in a statement.
Parson, an ally of President Donald Trump, has been an opponent of mask mandates. “I am not anti-mask, what I am is anti-mandates,” he said in July. He has also been a fierce advocate of expediting reopenings and getting kids back to school with or without a public health plan in place, saying if any children contract COVID-19 at their school they will just "get over it."
According to NBC News, at least one person has tested positive for coronavirus in the wake of President Trump's rally in Freeland, Michigan, this September 10.
NBC's Heidi Przybyla points out however that the Michigan Health Department cannot confirm if the person was COVID-positive before the rally or if they contracted it on site.
Some 2,500 students of a prestigious Swiss hospitality school have been placed in quarantine after a major outbreak of coronavirus following private parties there, regional authorities said on Wednesday.
Around 75 percent of the total number of students at EHL Hospitality Management School of Lausanne have been asked to stay at home, or not leave their on-campus accommodation, until September 28, the authorities in Vaud region said in a statement.
"A number of outbreaks have been reported within different departments, making it impossible to introduce a more targeted lockdown than the 2,500 students involved," the statement said.
EHL, consistently ranked as one of the world's best hotel management schools, charges around 150,000 Swiss francs (160,000 dollars/140,000 euros) for its three-year bachelor program for international students.
Switzerland's elite hotel and catering schools draw students from around the globe, although they face increasing competition from cheaper alternatives in Asia and the Middle East.
One or more private student parties -- held shortly before the regional authorities ordered the closure of all discos in Vaud to stem the spread of the virus -- appear to be the source of the outbreaks, the authorities said.
The regional authorities have also banned private gatherings of more than 100 people and made it mandatory to wear masks in all closed public spaces aside from shops with fewer than 10 people.
Switzerland, with a population of some 8.5 million, fared comparatively well in the first coronavirus wave, despite its proximity to Italy, which was the epicenter of the pandemic in Europe for a number of months.
But like several other European countries, it has experienced a resurgence in infections recently.
The Alpine country has reported a total number of infections of 51,000 since the start of the pandemic, 4,800 hospitalizations and 1,772 deaths.
Scientists have been warning for months that the coronavirus could be spread by aerosols – tiny respiratory droplets that people emit when they talk or sneeze and that can linger in the air.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appeared to acknowledge that risk on Sept. 18. It posted guidance on its website listing aerosols among the ways the virus spreads and saying there was growing evidence the airborne particles can remain suspended and travel beyond 6 feet. But three days later, that guidance was gone. A note in its place said a draft had been posted in error and that the CDC was still working on the update.
That kind of shifting by the government can be confusing. In the following five articles recently published in The Conversation, we turned to scientists help explain what aerosols are, how airborne particles can transmit the coronavirus and how to protect yourself.
1. What you need to know about aerosols
When you talk or sing, the rush of air breaks up strands of mucus in your airways, sending droplets of it airborne.
While larger droplets quickly fall, tiny, light ones can linger in the air. If you’re infected, those droplets can contain the coronavirus, and early research suggests it can be viable for many minutes to hours.
Aerosol experts Byron Erath, Andrea Ferro and Goodarz Ahmadi of Clarkson University explained the mechanics of aerosols in a recent article for The Conversation.
They also discussed what people can do to protect themselves. “Wearing face coverings to decrease airborne exposure risk is critical,” they wrote, and “reducing the amount of time you spend in poorly ventilated, crowded areas is a good way to reduce airborne exposure risk.”
2. Is staying 6 feet apart enough?
The common advice for social distancing is to stay 6 feet apart. It’s easy to remember, but it doesn’t account for all aerosol risks – particularly indoors.
Because people infected with SARS-CoV-2 can transmit large amounts of the virus, there is no safe distance in a poorly ventilated room, Erath, Ferro, Ahmadi and their Clarkson University colleague Suresh Dahniyala wrote in a second article. Air currents from a fan or ventilation system can spread respiratory droplets farther than 6 feet. So can speaking loudly or singing, as superspreader events have shown.
The scientists used a smoky room analogy to illustrate the risk and suggested ways to manage it.
“Over time, it won’t matter where you are in the room,” they wrote. “While it’s not a perfect analogy, picturing how cigarette smoke moves through different environments, both indoors and outdoors, can help in visualizing how virus-laden droplets circulate in the air.”
A simulation shows the trajectories of droplets emitted by someone in a room with mixed ventilation. Credit: Goodarz Ahmadi and Mazyar Salmanzadeh / Clarkson University.
3. Airborne particles and superspreaders
A large number of COVID-19 cases have come from “superspreader” events where someone who is highly infectious spreads the virus to dozens of others.
Researchers in Hong Kong recently estimated that about 20% of the people infected there were responsible for 80% of the local coronavirus transmission. Choir practices, church services, nightclubs and a birthday party are just few of the documented superspreader events.
Elizabeth McGraw, who heads Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, explained the evidence and the importance of superspreader events to the virus’s transmission in another article.
“The good news is that the right control practices specific to how pathogens are transmitted – hand-washing, masks, quarantine, vaccination, reducing social contacts and so on – can slow the transmission rate and halt a pandemic,” she wrote.
4. What airborne virus means for reopening
The way the virus spreads in the air is also a challenge for reopening businesses and schools.
Respiratory scientist Douglas Reed of the University of Pittsburgh examined studies that have shown how the virus has spread, including at a call center in South Korea, a restaurant in China and a choir practice in Washington state.
“The evidence strongly suggests that airborne transmission happens easily and is likely a significant driver of this pandemic. It must be taken seriously as people begin to venture back out into the world,” he wrote.
More research has been published since that article came out that also points to the virus spreading through the air. One review found adults who had tested positive for COVID-19 were about twice as likely to have dined at a restaurant than those who tested negative. Another described a large outbreak in one ward of a nursing home with poor ventilation. Two other studies traced how the virus spread during airline flights.
A separate article by Kacey Ernst and Paloma Beamer of the University of Arizona looked at the risks in flying during the pandemic and, for those who must get on an airplane, how to stay as safe as possible.
5. The problem with school buses
With temperatures getting cooler, it’s going to be harder to keep windows open to bring fresh air into enclosed spaces, and that includes public transportation and school buses.
Jesse Capecelatro, a mechanical engineer at the University of Michigan, broke down the risks of the coronavirus spreading inside a school bus and offered eight recommendations.
“Short trips. Masks for everyone. Far fewer passengers than before,” he wrote. “Those are my top recommendations for how America’s school buses should take kids to and from school during the pandemic.”
Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.
Stacy Morford, General Assignments Editor, The Conversation
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
Johnson & Johnson said Wednesday it was entering the final Phase 3 stage of its Covid-19 vaccine clinical trial following positive results in earlier stages.
The trial will seek to enroll up to 60,000 volunteers across more than 200 sites in the US and around the world, the company and the US National Institutes for Health (NIH), which is providing funding, said.
With the move, J&J becomes the tenth maker globally to conduct a Phase 3 trial against Covid-19, and the fourth in the US.
The company, which is developing the vaccine on a not-for-profit basis through its subsidiary Janssen, said it anticipated the drug would be ready for emergency approval by early 2021 if proven safe and effective.
"As COVID-19 continues to impact the daily lives of people around the world, our goal remains the same -- leveraging the global reach and scientific innovation of our company to help bring an end to this pandemic," said Alex Gorsky, the company's chairman and CEO.
Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, added: "Four COVID-19 vaccine candidates are in Phase 3 clinical testing in the United States just over eight months after SARS-CoV-2 was identified."
"This is an unprecedented feat for the scientific community made possible by decades of progress in vaccine technology and a coordinated, strategic approach across government, industry and academia."
The US has given J&J about $1.45 billion in funding under Operation Warp Speed.
The vaccine is based on a single dose of a cold-causing adenovirus, modified so that it can no longer replicate, combined with a part of the new coronavirus called the spike protein that it uses to invade human cells.
J&J used the same technology in its Ebola vaccine which received marketing approval from the European Commission in July.
The company said it was poised to imminently publish the results from an earlier stage of the trial on a medical preprint site.
Pre-clinical testing on rhesus macaque monkeys that were published in the journal Nature showed it provided complete or near-complete protection against virus infection in the lungs and nose.
Like several other Phase 3 trials that are underway, its primary objective is to test whether the vaccine can prevent symptomatic Covid-19.
A new analysis out Wednesday reveals that the Federal Reserve bond purchasing program meant to prevent workers from losing their jobs amid the Covid-19 pandemic instead bolstered companies who laid off more than one million workers while paying massive dividends to shareholders—a finding escalating concerns that the central bank's behavior is "contributing to an economic recovery that benefits wealthy executives and investors but leaves behind American workers."
The report put forth by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis —titled "Prioritizing Wall Street" (pdf)—examines individual corporate bonds purchased through the Fed's Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF), a lending system supported by funds from the CARES Act but which lacks taxpayer and worker protections included in other programs backed by the legislation passed earlier this year.
For corporations hoping to become eligible to issue bonds purchased by the Fed, the SMCCF "imposes no conditions requiring companies to save jobs or limit payments to executives or shareholders," the report notes.
The central bank has purchased corporate bonds issued by approximately 500 large companies since June. Subcommittee staff compared those transactions to public data on layoffs, dividend payouts, and illegal conduct.
"Fed Chair Jerome Powell testified in June that 'the intended beneficiaries of all of our programs are workers,'" the report states. "In May, he justified purchasing corporate bonds that had been downgraded to junk status since the start of the coronavirus crisis by stating that, because of the Fed's intervention, 'those companies have been able to go out and finance themselves. They've been able to avoid big layoffs. That is the point of all this.'"
However, the analysis shows that several of the companies whose bonds were purchased by the Fed conducted substantial layoffs, "suggesting that the primary beneficiaries of the program have been corporate executives and investors, not workers."
According to the report, nearly 140 of the companies that issued bonds purchased by the Fed have carried out furloughs or layoffs since March, affecting over one million workers.
The analysis notes several key instances of corporate opportunism. For example:
Boeing turned down a CARES Act loan, which would have imposed job retention requirements, limitations on executive pay, and restrictions on payouts to shareholders. Instead, it issued a massive corporate bond offering following the Fed's announcement of its corporate credit facilities, thanking the Fed for its intervention in the market. Boeing then laid off more than ten percent of its workforce, totaling about 16,000 employees.
The report also reveals that 383 of the roughly 500 companies whose bonds were purchased by the Fed have paid out dividends to their shareholders since April.
Ninety-five of these companies paid dividends and simultaneously laid off employees, "prioritizing their shareholders over their workers in the midst of the pandemic."
In addition, Subcommittee staff found that the Fed purchased bonds issued by 227 companies accused of lawbreaking since 2017, "including violations of workplace safety and environmental standards, as well as allegations of defrauding the government."
Tyson Foods is a beneficiary of the Fed's bond purchasing program even though the "multinational food processing company has been cited by the Department of Labor for at least 35 workplace safety or health violations since 2017 and at least five environmental violations from the EPA." Furthermore, the company "also failed to take adequate precautions to protect workers from the spread of the coronavirus," and "outbreaks in its facilities have led to the deaths of more than 24 employees and over 7,000 infections."
Finally, the report shows that oil, gas, and coal companies have benefited disproportionately from the Fed's actions. While fossil fuel companies employ only 2% of workers at large companies, they accounted for more than 10% of bond purchases.
Subcommittee staff wrote that "BlackRock—which executes the bond purchases on behalf of the Fed—has recognized that 'climate risk is investment risk'." Nevertheless, despite the exacerbation of the climate crisis and the declining status of the dirty energy sector, "the Fed, acting on behalf of U.S. taxpayers," has invested heavily in the fossil fuel industry.
On Wednesday, Chairman Powell testified before the Select Subcommittee on the Fed's response to Covid-19. Watch below:
During a Senate hearing this Wednesday, Sen. Robert Casey Jr. (D-PA) tore into Republicans and President Trump as America reached the "grim milestone" of 200,000 dead from coronavirus, saying the the virus could possibly be considered a pre-existing condition "just as the Affordable Care Act could be struck down by the Supreme Court in early November."
According to the Senator, the Trump administration has "no effective strategy" to the reduce the number of senior citizens dying in nursing homes from the virus.
"This is an American tragedy," Casey said. "There's no excuse for these numbers to keep going up."
"Now, the majority in the Senate could be doing something about this," he continued. "The majority in the Senate has been obsessed with confirmation votes, all kinds of confirmation votes all summer long ... now the Senate majority is obsessed with getting a confirmation vote on the Supreme Court justice. I just have one question for the majority: when will Senate Republicans and the Trump administration become obsessed -- yes, obsessed -- with reducing nursing home deaths?"
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) clashed with infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci on Wednesday during a Senate hearing on the novel coronavirus.
Paul questioned whether lockdowns were an effective strategy to combat the spread of COVID-19. Later, he criticized Fauci for praising New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
"You've lauded New York for their policy. New York has had the highest death rate in the world -- how can we be jumping up and down saying Cuomo did a great job?" Paul said.
"You've misconstrued that, senator, and you've done that repetitively in the past," Fauci fired back. "They got hit very badly. They made some mistakes. Right now, if you look at what's going on right now, the things that are going on in New York to get their test positivity 1% or less is because they are looking at the guidelines that we have put together from the task force."
Paul countered that New York might be in better shape because of "community immunity."
"I challenge that, senator," Fauci responded. "I would like to be able to do this because this happens with Senator Rand the all the time. You are not listening to what the director of the CDC said that in New York it's about 22%. If you believe 22% is herd immunity, I believe you're alone in that."
On Wednesday, The Daily Beast reported that the Nevada-based company that was fined for improperly holding an indoor Trump rally in defiance of state public health restrictions is trying to profit off of the COVID-19 pandemic — selling people a technology to protect them from the virus even while facilitating events likely to spread it.
"Along with inviting the Trump campaign to use one of its warehouses for a rally 100 times larger than the current Nevada limit of 50 people for public gatherings, Xtreme Manufacturing has been producing and marketing a walk-through enclosure that delivers a decontaminating mist," reported Michael Daly. "'The Xtreme Opti-Clean Cube will help reduce cross-contamination risks and alleviate the spread of viruses for those entering any building, construction site or public venue,' says a video posted by the very company that put more than 5,600 people at risk."
Xtreme Manufacturing faced harsh criticism for organizing the recent indoor rally in Henderson, Nevada. The company ultimately faced a $3,000 fine for holding the event, which is illegal under public health guidelines.
The event was Trump's first major indoor campaign gathering since his controversial rally in Tulsa. Following that event, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt tested positive for the virus, and businessman Herman Cain died of the disease, although there is no definitive proof they contracted the virus at the rally.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday publicly called on the Food and Drug Administration to fast-track approvals of coronavirus vaccines after a fourth American drug company's COVID-19 vaccine entered the final clinical trials stage. The call came just one day after the U.S. saw its 200,000 coronavirus death.
"Big news," Trump tweeted. "Numerous great companies are seeing fantastic results. @FDAmust move quickly!"
Trump then retweeted other tweets praising the Johnson & Johnson drug trial.
Many see Trump's actions as inappropriate pressure on what is supposed to be an independent, non-partisan federal agency, and some see them as dangerous.
A Washington Post reporter noted the FDA on Tuesday said it was raising the bar on coronavirus vaccine approvals.
But Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Monday issued a draconian order hamstringing the FDA and requiring all moves to be approved by him.
Here's former Obama Under Secretary of State Richard Stengel, issuing a warning:
People who are exposed to a COVID-19 patient but feel fine don’t necessarily need to get tested, the nation’s top public health agency declared in August — only to drop that advice last Friday.The same day, it declared that the coronavirus could spread beyond the 6-foot social distancing threshold, borne by “aerosol” particles that remain aloft for minutes.But this week the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took down that update, too, saying it shouldn’t have been posted without review.The reversals have alarmed veterans of the public-health community, warning that they could fue...
