News of the Week for Apr. 19th<\/sup>, 2020<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n South Korea reports more recovered coronavirus patients testing positive again<\/a> New Zealand Had Help Flattening the Curve<\/a> Trump Isn’t Wrong About Investigating WHO<\/a> Why Did Gov. Gavin Newsom Make Hurried $1 Billion Deal With China’s BYD for Masks?<\/a> Planning the Great Escape from House Arrest\u2014and From Communist China<\/a> Pope Francis Calls for ‘Structural’ Change Activists to Take Advantage of Coronavirus Crisis in Easter Letter<\/a> University put student in “solitary confinement” right after baseless sexual assault claim: lawsuit<\/a> Half of coronavirus deaths happen in care homes, data from EU suggests<\/a> An Unnerving Review of Accidents in High-Level Labs Handling Viruses<\/a> New Zealand Had Help Flattening the Curve<\/a> Powerful Americans Were Catastrophically Wrong about China<\/a> Elderly coronavirus patients could be denied critical care under NHS ‘score’ system designed to free up ICU beds for those most likely to recover<\/a> Why Is New York Hardest Hit?<\/a> Virginia Pastor Who Defiantly Held Church Service Dies of New Chinese Coronavirus<\/a> McDonald’s in China Apologizes For Banning Black People From Entering Restaurant<\/a> Ex-Clinton lawyer threatens to sue Nevada unless ballot harvesting permitted<\/a> Taiwan releases December email to WHO showing unheeded warning about coronavirus<\/a> Hmmm: 15% Of Pregnant Women Recently Admitted To NYC Hospital To Give Birth Had Coronavirus \u2014 Nearly All Without Symptoms<\/a> Lessons We Didn’t Learn<\/a> 7 Senators Seek Answers From World Health Organization About Coronavirus “Cover Up” With China<\/a> Welcome, Fairweather Federalists<\/a> Six Principles for Reopening the Economy<\/a> Every Model and Projection Represents a Best Guess . . . with a Lot of Variables<\/a> Coronavirus Update: Slowdown in New Cases and Deaths <\/a> A Quick COVID Research Roundup<\/a> 93-year-old woman using powers of the internet to keep beer stocked during pandemic<\/a> Coronavirus runs roughshod over debt-laden belt and road projects<\/a> Hmmm: 36% At Boston Homeless Shelter Tested Positive For COVID-19, Vast Majority Without Symptoms<\/a> Here’s Why Grocery Store Shelves Are Empty<\/a> Sweden Tops 1,000 Deaths As Criticism Of :Herd Immunity” Strategy Grows<\/a> Comparing the Plagues<\/a> The Coronavirus Forces Countries into a No-Win Situation<\/a> China’s Information about the Virus Wasn’t Six Days Late, More Like Six Weeks Late<\/a> Coronavirus: Higher Case and Death Numbers<\/a> The Problem with New York City’s COVID-19 Death-Rate Estimates<\/a> Nevada stockpiles hydroxychloroquine, potential coronavirus drug, which Sisolak restricted<\/a> Pregnant NHS nurse dies with coronavirus \u2013 but baby saved<\/a> Why NYC Adjusted Its Death Count for COVID-19<\/a> COVID-19 Spreads Faster Through LA’s Homeless Population<\/a> Wuhan virus from Wuhan lab?<\/a> Now Is Exactly the Time to Investigate the WHO’s Catastrophic Public Failures and Internal Rot<\/a> Wuhan Virus Watch: Navy May Reinstate Fired Captain Who Asked for Help with Coronavirus Outbreak<\/a> AP: Internal memos reveal Chinese leaders delayed warning public of coronavirus pandemic<\/a> The Road to Herd Immunity Will Be Long, Slow, and Painful<\/a> The Train Has Left the Station<\/a> After Pennsylvania Closed All Liquor Stores, Residents Crossed State Borders To Buy Booze. Now Ohio Is Shutting Down Out-of-State Sales.<\/a> The World Health Organization Wants to Restrict Access to Adult Beverages and I May Become Violent<\/a> Rubio: Let Me Shoot You Some Hard Truths About Reopening The Country For Business<\/a> Germany to relax coronavirus lockdown measures<\/a> It Is Important to Know This Virus’s Origins<\/a> Unlicensed Haircuts Are Only the Beginning<\/a> Whitmer: You Don’t Need Your Property Rights When It’s Snowing, Or Something<\/a> Hope: Severely Ill Patients At Chicago Hospital Showed Rapid Recovery After Receiving Gilead’s Experimental Antiviral Drug<\/a> Hokkaido, Japan Ended Its Coronavirus State Of Emergency Last Month. This Week It Reimposed It<\/a> Mom selling penis face masks has already raised $56K for charity<\/a> No, we’re not running out of food. It just looks that way.<\/a> Pew Poll: Supermajorities Say They’re Expecting The Worst In COVID-19 Pandemic \u2014 And That Government May Be Rushing Reopening<\/a> Coronavirus ends China’s honeymoon in Africa<\/a> New Bill Would Empower Americans to Sue China for Coronavirus Outbreak<\/a> Chile counts coronavirus deaths as “recovered”<\/a> Recent Reports Confirm: Coronavirus Is China’s Chernobyl<\/a> An Informed Public Will Always Decide on the Virus<\/a> Coronavirus lockdown: Lessons from Hokkaido’s second wave of infections<\/a> Empty dorm rooms to be used as hospital beds, quarantine rooms for med staff<\/a> Ecuador’s death rate soars as fears grow over scale of coronavirus crisis<\/a> Medal of Honor recipient Bennie Adkins, known for Vietnam heroics, dies of coronavirus<\/a> Preliminary Antibody Study: Just 2-3% In Wuhan Have Had The Virus<\/a> Poll: 58% More Worried That Government Will Loosen Restrictions Too Quickly Than Too Slowly, But…<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Newsboy.jpg\" "\\"News")
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<\/a>Corona Virus<\/h1>\n
\nSouth Korea reported on Monday that at least 116 people initially cleared of the new coronavirus had tested positive again, although officials suggested they would soon look at easing strict recommendations aimed at preventing new outbreaks.<\/p>\n
\nAn international perspective is useful in assessing America\u2019s response to the coronavirus, both in retrospect and in understanding what works going forward, and what doesn’t. But international comparisons have a way of ignoring important differences between societies. The Washington Post and CNN have hyped New Zealand’s response, with the Post breathlessly headlining its report, “New Zealand isn’t just flattening the curve. It’s squashing it.” New Zealand\u2019s draconian lockdowns can tell us something, but its leaders also had advantages that many other countries could not replicate.<\/p>\n
\nA right-wing stunt to pin the blame for Covid-19 on the World Health Organization actually contains a useful notion.<\/p>\n
\nCalifornia relaxed its standards, noting KN95 masks \u2018may be an acceptable alternative’ due to the supply shortage<\/p>\n
\nAs the northern hemisphere begins to emerge from the worst of the pandemic, political punditry is focusing on two issues: how to reopen the economy and how to decouple from China. The two subjects are related because a large part of the Western economy is joined at the hip with Beijing. To a substantial degree, China produces what America consumes. Each country’s holdings in the other are enormous. They are bound by innumerable contracts, deals, projects and cross-posted personnel that are not easily severed.<\/p>\n
\nOn Easter Sunday, Pope Francis sent a letter to leaders of social movements promoting “structural changes” to the “economy of exclusion and inequality.” Among other things, he encouraged these activists to use the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to spur radical change and launch a “humanistic and ecological conversion.” He also endorsed the idea of a universal basic income (UBI), championed by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.<\/p>\n
\nAccuser’s details don’t match up with “video evidence”<\/p>\n
\nFigures from Italy, Spain, France, Ireland and Belgium suggest UK may be underestimating care sector deaths<\/p>\n
\nTwo facilities in the city of Wuhan were researching coronaviruses in bats \u2014 the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n
\nAn international perspective is useful in assessing America’s response to the coronavirus, both in retrospect and in understanding what works going forward, and what doesn’t. But international comparisons have a way of ignoring important differences between societies. The Washington Post and CNN have hyped New Zealand’s response, with the Post breathlessly headlining its report, “New Zealand isn’t just flattening the curve. It’s squashing it.” New Zealand’s draconian lockdowns can tell us something, but its leaders also had advantages that many other countries could not replicate.<\/p>\n
\nOn the menu today: why so many Americans have a hard time talking about China in an honest and direct manner; why it’s extremely unlikely that the bad cold or flu that you had early in winter was the coronavirus; and why some high-ranking U.S. government officials have grown skeptical of the lab-accident theory.<\/p>\n
\nCoronavirus patients over 65 will be ranked out of 10 based on age and frailty<\/p>\n
\nAs everyone knows, New York City is the main center of COVID-19 infection and fatality in the U.S., with something like 40% of all American deaths. The reasons why shouldn’t be a mystery.<\/p>\n
\nIn his last known in-person service on March 22, Bishop Gerald O. Glenn told his congregation at Richmond\u2019s New Deliverance Evangelistic Church to stand up. He wanted to show the entire world that they were defying the warnings against gatherings of more than 10 people. “I firmly believe that God is larger than this dreaded virus,” he thundered. While his congregants clapped, the pastor then said that at his church, “people are healed,” not made sick.<\/p>\n
\nThe Chinese industrial city of Guangzhou has become unsafe for black people. Visitors and workers from Africa were recently kicked out of their hotels and apartments because of the rumors that the coronavirus was sweeping through the black community. There have also been several racial incidents in the city as African nations and blacks in America have sounded an alarm about the racism.<\/p>\n
\nA prominent Democratic lawyer who represented Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is threatening to sue the state of Nevada unless it immediately suspends prosecutions for ballot harvesting before the June 9 primary, among a slew of other demands, according to a letter obtained by Fox News on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\nThe World Health Organization is under fire after Taiwan released the contents of a December email inquiring about the person-to-person spread of COVID-19, which it says was ignored by the organization and further denied to provide adequate information about how to fight the virus.<\/p>\n
\nA tantalizing data point for the central mystery of the epidemic: How many people have had the disease and how many of those never had symptoms?<\/p>\n
\nOn the menu today: a giant scoop related to safety measures at the Wuhan Institute of Virology; the widely forgotten \u2014 or perhaps never-learned \u2014 lessons from the last SARS outbreak in 2002\u20132003; and one particularly ominous possible scenario.<\/p>\n
\nSeven Republican senators are demanding answers from the World Health Organization surrounding its “role in helping the Chinese Communist Party cover up information regarding the threat of the Coronavirus.”<\/p>\n
\nIt’s quite heartening to see a sudden deference to federalism among our political media<\/p>\n
\nThe debate over reopening the economy has heated up. Good. We need to reopen soon.<\/p>\n
\nOur Robert VerBruggen lays out a bunch of good news in the fight against the virus. Health experts think we’re nearing the peak of the outbreak, the daily death count has stabilized, and the evidence suggests social distancing has had the desired impact \u2014 the virus is spreading much more slowly than a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n
\nCoronavirus case and death numbers are showing positive signs this week. The number of new coronavirus cases nationally has registered daily declines since Friday. Yesterday, 25,000 new coronavirus cases were confirmed in the U.S., the smallest increase in over a week.<\/p>\n
\nA few items of note, mostly from the new batch of work put out through the National Bureau of Economic Research<\/p>\n
\nA 93-year-old Pittsburgh-area woman is using the powers of the internet to keep a stock of beer while doing her part to “flatten the curve” on the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n
\nDeveloping countries’ “hidden debts” to China totalled US$380 billion well before the global health and economic crisis, analysts estimate<\/p>\n
\nThat’s two days in a row with a study suggesting greater prevalence of coronavirus within a particular population than one might expect. Yesterday doctors in a NYC hospital reported that 15 percent of women who gave birth in their care during late March and early April tested positive for the virus. Of that number, 88 percent had no symptoms.<\/p>\n
\nThere is no shortage of food, according to food industry leaders, yet there are empty shelves in grocery stores. Why is that? The reason goes beyond the fact that people began to hoard items last month. There is also a problem with distribution and the fact that Americans are cooking at home instead of going out to eat.<\/p>\n
\nI write post after post here about how the U.S. should remain locked down as long as possible, until more testing and contact tracing is in place, but I find myself weirdly glad that Sweden is conducting its highly risky experiment with herd immunity. It’s the only way we’ll know whose approach to the disease was the correct one, the cautious “shut it all down” contingent or the more fatalistic “everyone’s getting infected eventually” group of one, i.e. Sweden.<\/p>\n
\nI have wondered how our experience of this pandemic \u2014 saturated as it is with competing models, charts, and technical experts \u2014 compares to that of the average person who survived either of the two major medieval outbreaks of the bubonic plague. In some ways, the two experiences are not so different. They had their clerics; we have ours. We struggle to complete funerary rituals in an age of social distancing; the medievals could hardly keep up with the sheer number of the deceased. <\/p>\n
\nAs mentioned yesterday, the general sense is that several Asian nations have handled the threat of the coronavirus more effectively than the United States has, through a variety of different decisions: an earlier response, much more widespread testing, much more widespread use of masks, strict home quarantines, and cell-phone tracking and other invasive tracking measures that some Americans would likely oppose.<\/p>\n
\nThis morning, the Associated Press unveiled a deep dive into the response of the Chinese government to the coronavirus outbreak, and the article is sufficiently damning. But the headline \u201cChina didn\u2019t warn public of likely pandemic for 6 key days\u201d somewhat soft-pedals it, focusing on January 14 to January 20, after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, and the city of Wuhan hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people and millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations.<\/p>\n
\nThe death toll from coronavirus in New York City jumped by nearly 4,000 on Tuesday, to a cumulative total of more than 10,000. Health officials revised previous numbers to account for presumed cases: individuals who had died with symptoms of the virus but not tested positive for it. The revisions highlight the difficulty of interpreting official health figures in the fog of the pandemic. Nations and localities have some discretion in determining cause of death, which may cause discrepancies in the data.<\/p>\n
\nMore on the continuing saga (see here, here, here and here) of the COVID-19 mortality rate \u2014 specifically, on why it is so hard to get accurate statistics, notwithstanding that these statistics are essential to decisions about reopening the economy.<\/p>\n
\nJust days after Gov. Steve Sisolak banned non-hospital doctors from prescribing hydroxychloroquine, the Nevada Department of Corrections took steps to stockpile the drug.<\/p>\n
\nChannel 4 News has learned that “fabulous” 28-year-old nurse Mary Agyeiwaa Agyapong passed away on Sunday<\/p>\n
\nPlease note: because this piece is specifically about COVID-19, it goes to all subscribers, paid and unpaid. I just simply cannot bring myself to try to make money off sharing COVID-19 information. Paid subscribers will get a separate and exclusive piece later today about the situation with China. But everyone needs to read this one.<\/p>\n
\nThe deadly coronavirus is now spreading faster through Los Angeles’ homeless population, outreach workers tell the NBC4 I-Team. Sources say at least 23 more homeless people have tested positive for COVID-19, with fears an explosion of cases is not far behind.<\/p>\n
\nFirst we were instructed that it was racist to refer to the origin of the COVID-19 virus in Wuhan or China as racist. Then we were instructed that the thought it might have derived from a Wuhan virology lab as a right-wing conspiracy theory. The Wuhan virus from a Wuhan lab? Doubleplusungood. So bad it can’t even be thought.<\/p>\n
\nPresident Trump made precisely the right call in suspending U.S. funding to the World Health Organization, pending a review of its role in “severely mismanaging and covering up the coronavirus.” Trump is doing an important service not only to America, but to the world, with his demands that the WHO clean up its abysmal and misleading act, and stop kowtowing to China.<\/p>\n
\nTrump threatens to adjourn Congress. Oxford University vaccine trials start next week. Significant coronavirus mutations discovered. Most NYC kids may already have the virus.<\/p>\n
\nNew information also indicates coronavirus may originated in Wuhan virology lab.<\/p>\n
\nI’m as eager to see the economy start to reopen as the next guy. As noted in yesterday’s Morning Jolt, the Saint Louis Federal Reserve president estimates the United States is losing $25 billion in lost output every day. Unemployment could hit 15 percent or higher, and Goldman Sachs calculates the global damage as being four times worse than the Great Recession.<\/p>\n
\nNew York City Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Feb. 2: “I want to assure New Yorkers that there is no reason for anyone to change their holiday plans, avoid the subway, or certain parts of the city because of #coronavirus.”<\/p>\n
\nBorder counties are now prohibited from selling to anyone without proof of residency. <\/p>\n
\nWe are learning things about ourselves during our coronapocalypse shutdown aren\u2019t we, dear readers? Forced to stay inside and find ways to occupy ourselves, most of us have found ways to cope and sometimes even flourish.<\/p>\n
\nAn effective clip, albeit something that would have been much more useful coming from Trump. Rubio has something to say to both sides here. To the “we’re not ready” camp: We can’t stay locked down for much longer. The unemployment numbers are gruesome. Yes, more people will die once we reopen, but that’s a price we’ll have to bear. Our goal should be to minimize the number of deaths after we restart economic activity.<\/p>\n
\nMany shops and schools will reopen as chancellor warns success in slowing spread is “fragile”<\/p>\n
\nOn the menu today: one long deep dive into the Fox News report that unnamed “sources” are increasingly confident that the origin of this virus is an accidental release or infection from a laboratory, and how every possible transmission path paints the Chinese government as incredibly reckless and unconcerned about the risk to human life around the world.<\/p>\n
\nAmid a pandemic, states are cutting back the red tape that kept health-care workers out.<\/p>\n
\nNothing quite captures the smug elitism of petty tyranny better than this short clip of Gretchen Whitmer laughing off concerns about civil rights. Why should anyone care, Whitmer says, that she has taken a valid and exigent public-health emergency to arbitrarily infringe on activities that pose no threat \u2014 such as planting seeds on one’s own land to grow food, or traveling between their homes without coming into contact with others?<\/p>\n
\nThe happiest I’ve been in six weeks was reading this story.<\/p>\n
\nJapan’s northern island of Hokkaido is home to about 5 million people. When the coronavirus began spreading around the world in February, Hokkaido was the first place in Japan to declare a state of emergency. And that early decision appeared to work. The number of new cases dropped and the emergency order was lifted. When the emergency ended, Hokkaido Gov. Naomichi Suzuki said, “There was no surge of infected patients that led to the collapse of the medical environment. We overcame without the fearful circumstance.”<\/p>\n
\nThe Utah mom whose penis-covered social distancing face masks went viral has now sold 5,400 of the garments \u2014 and raised $56,000 for charity, according to a report Thursday.<\/p>\n
\nPanic buying at supermarkets spiked in the first weeks of COVID-19 lockdowns. But the food supply chain has since adjusted, making further shortages unlikely. <\/p>\n
\nFederal and state governments continue to shift their talk from restrictions to reopening, hoping to rescue a reeling private sector and save jobs. According to a new survey from Pew Research, that optimism hasn\u2019t yet reached most Americans. While discussions of peaks and downslopes have dominated the news of late, almost three-quarters of Americans think that the COVID-19 pandemic crisis will get worse before it gets better<\/p>\n
\nBeijing has spent billions to win friends and influence politics in Africa. But the virus is threatening to upend years of careful work.<\/p>\n
\nAmericans will be able to take the Chinese Communist Party to court for its lies and omissions about the Chinese Wuhan coronavirus from the Middle Kingdom under a new bill proposed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas). The bill would strike down immunity for foreign countries like China in the specific case of the coronavirus, enabling Americans to sue for damages in U.S. courts.<\/p>\n
\nChile is counting those who have died due to the coronavirus as “recovered” because they no longer show symptoms, the country’s top health official said this week.<\/p>\n
\nOn April 26, 1986, a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, starting a tremendous fire. Both the explosion and the fire resulted from structural damages caused by negligence during the construction of the plant which were known for more than a decade but never acted upon. Radioactive fallout spread over approximately 39,000 square miles, hitting Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and various regions across Europe \u2014 only the Iberian Peninsula escaped the fallout completely. The first evidence of a major release of radioactive material came from Sweden. The Soviet Union covered up the disaster, which made it harder to contain.<\/p>\n
\nA number of NRO writers have offered today some valuable cautionary data about antibody testing and herd immunity.<\/p>\n
\nIt was once seen as something of a success story – a region that worked to contain, trace and isolate the virus – leading to a huge drop in numbers. But Hokkaido is in the spotlight again as it struggles to deal with a second wave of infections.<\/p>\n
\nAmerican universities are offering up their vacated dorm rooms to fight the coronavirus.<\/p>\n
\nMortalities in one province leap from 3,000 to 11,000 in six weeks, with health and mortuary services overwhelmed<\/p>\n
\nMedal of Honor recipient Bennie Adkins, who was given the nation\u2019s highest military honor for heroically fighting off enemies and saving wounded soldiers in Vietnam, died April 17 from complications caused by the coronavirus.<\/p>\n
\nIf you find these numbers suspiciously low for the global epicenter of the disease, and if you’re inclined to distrust any and all COVID data that comes from China: Well, me too.<\/p>\n
\nA reminder courtesy of this new WSJ\/NBC poll that the protests in Michigan and elsewhere this past weekend don’t yet reflect majority opinion. But that’s changing. Public opinion on this question is inevitably a moving target. With each new gruesome unemployment report and each new data set showing slowing growth in the number of COVID-19 deaths, the balance will shift towards reopening sooner. In fact, there’s evidence that it already is.<\/p>\n