Aug 272020
 


Boris Ignatovich Moscow At the Hermitage, Leningrad 1930

 

Hurricane Laura Makes Landfall as Cat. 4 Storm, Moves Inland (WC)
Biden’s Polling Lead Has Collapsed (Palumbo)
Trump Job Approval Rating Hits Record At 52%, Up With Blacks, Even Dems (WE)
DOJ Asks Four States For COVID Data On Nursing Home Deaths (JTN)
Obesity Increases Risk Of COVID19 Death By Almost 50% (G.)
Non-Woven Masks Better To Stop COVID19, Says Japanese Supercomputer (G.)
6 Feet May Not Always Be Enough Distance To Protect From COVID19 (NBC)
The Tragic Hydroxychloroquine Debate and Dr. Fauci’s Denial of Evidence (RCP)
What Is Gilead’s Role In The War On Hydroxychloroquine? (Chaves)
Airlines Threaten October Jobs Massacre Unless they Get 2nd Bailout (WS)
France & Italy Throw Weight Behind Greece As Naval War Games Kick Off (RT)
The New Media Elite Are Rapacious Monopolists, And We Are Their Food (Lewis)
Good News for Birds – and Wind Power (Adler)
Your Dreams Are A Continuation Of Your Reality (RT)

 

 

US new daily cases look sort of okay, as a trendline, when you watch the past 2 months. But they have crossed the 6 million figure now, as global cases are gunning for 25 million, and the trend there is much less positive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We don’t do jobs

 

 

Be safe.

Hurricane Laura Makes Landfall as Cat. 4 Storm, Moves Inland (WC)

Laura is near the extreme southwest Louisiana coast and tracking to the north-northwest at about 15 mph. The hurricane is a Category 4 and steady weakening is now expected through the morning hours. Laura’s maximum sustained winds jumped from 75 mph to 140 mph in the 24 hours ending 1 p.m. CDT Wednesday. That increase in maximum sustained winds easily meets the definition of rapid intensification in a hurricane. Hurricane conditions are ongoing in southwestern Louisiana. More than 9 feet of storm surge is inundating the coast near Cameron, Louisiana. A water level station at Eugene Island, Louisiana reported about 3.2 feet of inundation above ground level early Wednesday afternoon and a wind gust of 45 mph.

A 133 mph gust and an 85 mph sustained wind were measured in Lake Charles early Friday morning. A 127 mph wind gust was measured early Thursday morning at Calcasieu Pass, Louisiana and a sustained wind of 93 mph was recently measured in Cameron, Louisiana. NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center has issued a tornado watch valid until 8 a.m. CDT for parts of Louisiana and southeastern Texas. The watch area includes Baton Rouge, Alexandria, Lake Charles and Beaumont. Laura has prompted hurricane and storm surge warnings for the northwest Gulf Coast.


A storm surge warning is in effect from Freeport, Texas, to the mouth of the Mississippi River in southeast Louisiana, including Galveston Bay and areas inside the Port Arthur, Texas, hurricane flood protection system. This means a life-threatening storm surge is expected in the next 36 hours. Residents in these areas should heed all evacuation orders and instructions from local emergency management and take necessary precautions to protect life and property.

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Rasmussen is changing fast.

Biden’s Polling Lead Has Collapsed (Palumbo)

Just a month and a half ago, Rasmussen Reports had Joe Biden 10-points ahead of President Donald Trump in the polls. Now he’s only ahead by one point, within the margin of error. Even if Biden’s now-slim lead in the polls were to remain frozen as of today, Trump would still have a clear path to an electoral college victory, as Hillary Clinton lead Trump in the popular vote by just over two points in the 2016 election. While it is impossible to know the exact reason (or reasons) for Biden’s polling collapse, it comes as the economy continues to rebound from the coronavirus, riots continue to ravage liberal run cities longer than anyone expected (to no condemnation from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris), and a Democrat National Convention widely viewed to be a snoozefest was held.


It’s hard to imagine how anyone could’ve had their mind changed by the extended Zoom meeting that was the DNC, but the RNC is changing hearts and minds – or at least some. Of note, Rasmussen was among the closest mainstream pollster in approximating the popular vote in the 2016 election. Rasmussen had Hillary Clinton up 1.7 points over Trump on election day 2016, while she ended up winning the popular vote by 2.1 points above him (48.2% vs. 46.1%). The Real Clear Politics average of polls had Hillary up for six points. Unlike the other polls, Rasmussen correctly saw Trump had a path to victory in the electoral college.

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The tables are starting to turn. Is it just the riots? Or should I ask again if Dems really want to win?

Trump Job Approval Rating Hits Record At 52%, Up With Blacks, Even Dems (WE)

Buoyed by blacks and independent voters, as well as urban dwellers shocked by the Black Lives Matter protest violence raging in some cities, President Trump’s approval rating has hit a new high, according to a survey heavy with minority voters. The latest Zogby Analytics poll just shared with Secrets had Trump’s approval at 52%. “The president has recorded his best job approval rating on record,” said pollster Jonathan Zogby. What’s more, his approval rating among minorities was solid and, in the case of African Americans, shockingly high. Zogby said 36% of blacks approve of the president, as do 37% of Hispanics and 35% of Asians. Approval among independent voters is also up, to 44%. And “intriguingly,” said Zogby, 23% of Democrats approve of Trump.

It was the latest to show that Trump’s approval went up during the Democratic National Convention. Rasmussen Reports had it at 51% at the end of the convention. In a shock from past election years, Joe Biden got no convention poll bounce, according to a newly released Reuters/Ipsos poll. The Republican National Convention still has two days to go. Last night’s address by first lady Melania Trump won good reviews. Tonight, Vice President Mike Pence speaks, and Thursday is Trump’s night. Pollsters have been somewhat at a loss to explain the rise of Trump’s approval ratings, considering that there has been little positive news to help his standings other than the peace deal he helped negotiate between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.


Zogby, in his analysis, took a stab at the reasoning. First, he said, his and other polls are confirming that the nation is nearly evenly divided politically and that despite some showing a big Biden lead, the race is extremely close. He suggested that the battle is for the “10%-20%” who haven’t made their minds up on whom to vote for and who likely won’t make up their minds until Election Day, just like in 2016. “We are as polarized a nation, on a level not seen since the Civil War,” said Zogby. He also said that the violence playing out in cities such as Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Portland, Oregon, are pushing urban voters to Trump.

Rasmussen

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This should happen in many countries. Familes have a right to know.

DOJ Asks Four States For COVID Data On Nursing Home Deaths (JTN)

The Justice Department on Wednesday requested COVID-19 data from four states it says required nursing homes to accept residents infected with the coronavirus, policies that may have rendered elderly Americans “unnecessarily put at risk.” The department said in a Wednesday press release that it was seeking “COVID-19 data from the governors of states that issued orders which may have resulted in the deaths of thousands of elderly nursing home residents.” The department named New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan as the states in question.

Data indicate that a significant percentage of all COVID-19 deaths worldwide—possibly approaching half of all fatalities—have been in long-term care facilities, locations where advanced ages and chronic medical conditions make patients much more vulnerable to infectious diseases. The Justice Department notes that in late March New York State ordered that “no resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to [a nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.” “Protecting the rights of some of society’s most vulnerable members, including elderly nursing home residents, is one of our country’s most important obligations,” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Division Eric Dreiband said in the press release.

“We must ensure they are adequately cared for with dignity and respect and not unnecessarily put at risk.” The requests “are not accusations of fault or wrongdoing by the states or any other individual or entity, and the department has not reached any conclusions about these matters,” the department noted. The letters to the four state governors request various types of state-run nursing home-related data, including the number of residents and staff of such homes that contracted COVID-19, the number of deaths at the homes, and “all State-issued guidance, directives, advisories, or executive orders regarding admission of persons to Public Nursing Homes.”

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Keto. Ditch sugar, ditch carbs. Someone open a chain of keto restaurants.

Obesity Increases Risk Of COVID19 Death By Almost 50% (G.)

Obesity increases the risk of dying of Covid-19 by nearly 50% and may make vaccines against the disease less effective, according to a comprehensive study using global data. The findings, which the lead researcher described as “scary”, show that the risks for people with obesity are greater than previously thought. The study, commissioned for the World Bank, will increase pressure on governments to tackle obesity, including in the UK where Boris Johnson has put himself at the head of a drive to reduce the nation’s weight. The prime minister hit out last year at “sin taxes” such as the UK’s sugary drinks levy, but his own spell in intensive care with Covid-19, which he blames on his weight, has convinced him that tough measures are needed to reduce obesity levels.


It is understood that even taxes are no longer off the table. The US and UK have some of the highest obesity rates in the world. US government data shows that more than 40% of Americans are obese. The figure in England is more than 27% of adults. The new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill into the effects of Covid-19 on people with obesity, defined as a BMI over 30, finds they are at greater risk from the virus in every way. Their risk of ending up in hospital with Covid-19 increases by 113%, of needing intensive care by 74%, and of dying of the virus by 48%. The study was led by Prof Barry Popkin, of the department of nutrition at the UNC Gillings Global School of Public Health, who said he was shocked by the findings. The risk of dying of Covid-19 for people with obesity was significantly higher than anyone had thought.

“That’s a pretty big effect for me,” he said. “It is a 50% increase essentially. That’s a pretty high scary number. All of it is actually, much higher than I ever expected.” The risk of being admitted to hospital for people with obesity was doubled, he said. “That, ICU admission and mortality are really high. They all shocked me, to be honest.” The study, published in the journal Obesity Reviews, is a meta-analysis, bringing together data from many studies carried out around the world, including China, France, Italy, the UK and the US. Obesity is a global problem that no country has yet successfully tackled. People with obesity often have underlying medical conditions that put them at greater risk from the coronavirus, such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Obesity can also cause metabolic changes, such as insulin resistance and inflammation which make it harder for the body to fight off infections.

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“Cotton and polyester masks were slightly less effective, but were still able to block at least 80% of droplets.”

“Polyester and cotton masks allowed up to 40% of the smaller droplets to escape.”

The whole mask thing is made so complex by the “experts” and the media that nobody understands it anymore, so you got all these people walking the steets with masks on, where they serve zero purpose, and people in confined spaces, where they do, wearing none and clamoring about their liberty and birth rights. Some things we can still figure out ourselves. Wear the things where they are appropriate, but only there.

Non-Woven Masks Better To Stop COVID19, Says Japanese Supercomputer (G.)

Face masks made from non-woven fabric are more effective at blocking the spread of Covid-19 via airborne respiratory droplets than other types that are commonly available, according to modelling in Japan by the world’s fastest supercomputer. Fugaku, which can perform more than 415 quadrillion computations a second, conducted simulations involving three types of mask, and found that non-woven masks were better than those made of cotton and polyester at blocking spray emitted when the wearer coughs, the Nikkei Asian Review said. Non-woven masks refer to the disposable medical masks that are commonly worn in Japan during the flu season, and now during the coronavirus pandemic.

They are made from polypropylene, and are relatively cheap to make in large numbers. Woven masks, including those used in the Fugaku simulation, are typically made from fabrics such as cotton, and appeared in some countries after non-woven versions were temporarily in short supply. They can be reused and generally offer more breathability but, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), should be washed in soap or detergent and water of at least 60C at least once a day. The non-woven variety blocked nearly all droplets emitted in a cough, according to experts at Riken, a government-backed research institute in the western city of Kobe.

Cotton and polyester masks were slightly less effective, but were still able to block at least 80% of droplets. Non-woven “surgical” masks were slightly less effective at blocking smaller droplets measuring 20 micrometres or less, with more than 10% escaping through gaps between the edge of the mask and the face, according to the computer model. One micrometre is one millionth of a metre. Polyester and cotton masks allowed up to 40% of the smaller droplets to escape. [..] Makoto Tsubokura, team leader at Riken’s centre for computational science, encouraged people to cover up despite the heatwave gripping large parts of Japan.

“What is most dangerous is not wearing a mask,” Tsubokura said, according to the Nikkei. “It’s important to wear a mask, even a less effective cloth one.” Fugaku, which was named the world’s fastest supercomputer last month, has also run simulations on how respiratory droplets spread in partitioned office spaces and on packed trains when the carriage windows are open. Although it will not be fully operational until next year, experts are hoping the 130bn yen ($1.2bn) supercomputer will help identify treatments for Covid-19 from about 2,000 existing drugs, including those that have yet to reach the clinical trial stage.

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No, you don’t get to change your ideas every other day just because you call yourself an expert.

This has nothing to do with COVID19 specifically. This is a general virus issue, and we could have defined these things well before the pandemic. And some people did.

6 Feet May Not Always Be Enough Distance To Protect From COVID19 (NBC)

The current guidance for safe social distancing may not be enough to stop the spread of COVID-19, a new analysis suggests. In the report, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Oxford say other factors, such as ventilation, crowd size, exposure time and whether face coverings are worn, need to be considered, as well. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the advice has been to keep at least 6 feet away from other people indoors and outdoors. “COVID-19 spreads mainly among people who are in close contact (within about 6 feet) for a prolonged period of time,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, in the report, published Tuesday in The BMJ, the researchers wrote that “physical distancing should be seen as only one part of a wider public health approach to containing the covid-19 pandemic.” Lydia Bourouiba, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT and co-author of the report, said, “It’s not just 6 feet and then everything else can be ignored or just mask and everything else can be ignored or just ventilation and everything else can be ignored.” It’s important to distinguish between high-risk and low-risk exposure, Bourouiba said.

Some evidence suggests that the coronavirus may travel more than 6 feet through activities like coughing and shouting, the researchers wrote. In the highest-risk situations, such as indoors with poor ventilation, large crowds, prolonged contact time and no face coverings, distancing beyond 6 feet should be considered. Locations that fall under this category include bars, stadiums or restaurants. In low-risk scenarios, such as in outdoor spaces with few people nearby, less stringent social distancing should be adequate.

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Nobody is testing HCQ, azithromycin or doxycycline, and zinc (“triple therapy”) appropriately.

The Tragic Hydroxychloroquine Debate and Dr. Fauci’s Denial of Evidence (RCP)

There are well-established criteria for when an observed association can be ascribed to causation, which Dr. Risch meticulously took into consideration. These criteria were originally developed by the pioneering British epidemiologist Sir Austin Hill. Thus Dr. Risch’s scientific inference of the treatment efficacy of administering HCQ, azithromycin or doxycycline, and zinc (“triple therapy”), as early as possible in outpatient settings to people at greatest risk, in order to prevent the SARS-CoV-2 infection from turning into a dangerous life-threatening “florid disease” is sound. In an open letter to Dr. Anthony Fauci, George C. Fareed, MD, of Brawley, California, Michael M. Jacobs, MD, MPH, of Pensacola, Florida, and Donald C. Pompan, MD, of Salinas, California, demonstrate the flaws in the positions adopted by NIH and FDA and give strong support to Dr. Risch. In particular, they criticize the nihilism of demanding proof of efficacy from randomized clinical trials (RCTs), when time is short and when highly suggestive observational proof of the efficacy of these inexpensive drugs exists.

In the past, the FDA has approved many drugs without RCTs; penicillin was so efficacious in the treatment of pneumonia that there was no need for an RCT to have penicillin registered. Perhaps most disturbing is that not a single RCT is designed to test the efficacy of the triple therapy in outpatient settings as early as possible among those most at risk. Nevertheless, the official position is that “the overwhelming evidence from properly conducted RCTs indicates no therapeutic efficacy of HCQ,” though the RCTs are simply designed not to answer the right question: whether the triple therapy prevents deaths among the elderly and those with comorbidities when taken in outpatient settings, even before people are notified about the lab result as to whether they have Covid-19. It cannot be ethical for public health bodies to demand impossible standards of proof for potential lifesaving therapies.

[..] Dr. Fauci’s position seems remarkably similar to that of the famous English statistician Ronald A. Fisher, who, in 1957, denied that tobacco smoking caused lung cancer, despite evidence of the strong statistical relationship. Fisher argued vehemently that observational data cannot prove causality. It is disturbing that Dr. Fauci does not engage in honest scientific debate based on observational evidence but rather resorts to personalized attacks. As Dr. Risch put it: “The pushback has been furious. Dr. Anthony Fauci has implied that I am incompetent, notwithstanding my hundreds of highly regarded, methodologically relevant publications in peer-reviewed scientific literature.”

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Yes, the Lancet screwed up badly.

What Is Gilead’s Role In The War On Hydroxychloroquine? (Chaves)

Is Gilead, the maker of Remdesivir, waging war on HCQ (hydroxychloroquine)? Attacks on the drug have been continuous ever since Dr. Didier Raoult used this quinine derivative to save the lives of COVID-19 patients last March. The first attempt to discredit HCQ was a hastily compiled Veterans’ Administration hospital system study last April. Notably, one of the study’s authors had in the past received numerous grants from Gilead, with one grant in 2018 totaling nearly a quarter of a million dollars. After deep flaws in the V.A. study were exposed, Surgisphere came to the rescue in May with a “15,000 patient” megastudy allegedly compiled from hospitals all over the world.

This strategy succeeded: following its publication in the Lancet and the NEJM, all outpatient use of HCQ was severely restricted in the U.S., Australia, and most of Europe. When the Surgisphere scam was exposed, both articles were quietly retracted, and the editor-in-chief of the Lancet tried to wash his hands of this embarrassing incident by denouncing Surgisphere’s “monumental fraud.” However only a few days earlier, Lancet editors played a major role in persuading the WHO to suspend all trials for HCQ. Who put them up to it? The study’s main author, Mandeep Mehra, also apologized for his reliance on a third party for the data. He may not have known that the data were fabricated, but the hospital he directed was conducting two trials for Remdesivir. Was he under pressure from his sponsors?

These are the stakes: a five-day treatment with Remdesivir costs around $3,000. A five-day supply of generic HCQ costs around $10. Drug companies have every right to recoup their cost of research and development, but lobbying to suppress access to a life-saving treatment that is both cheaper and more effective is a crime against humanity. Progressives mistakenly believe that socialized medicine protects patients from the abuses of big pharma, but the first nation to severely restrict access to HCQ was France. This policy compelled Dr. Raoult to testify against Gilead’s disproportionate leverage over the medical community during a meeting of the French National Assembly last June.

Notably in the U.S., a third of the FDA’s budget comes from pharmaceutical user fees, and according to the NIH’s website, eight out of 55 members of the panel responsible for COVID-19 treatment guidelines are currently affiliated with Gilead. These government ties to Gilead more than triple when you include panel members with past associations.

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We need to stop looking in the rear view mirror only. Some things will never return. And the more we try to hold on to them, the harder it gets to replace them with other things.

Airlines Threaten October Jobs Massacre Unless they Get 2nd Bailout (WS)

October 1 and the days that follow are going to be rough in terms of tens of thousands of well-paid service jobs – that’s what airlines are threatening unless they get another $25-billion bailout. Airlines have been trying to shed employees by offering packages that induce employees to depart voluntarily because the $25-billion bailout package under the CARES Act banned “involuntary” furloughs or layoffs through the end of September. The air passenger business is still down roughly 70% in the US, six months after the initial collapse of traffic began, according to TSA airport screenings of air travelers entering into security zones. And demand has hardly improved any since early July, and airlines continue to slash costs and cash-burn to survive:

“It was assumed that by Sept. 30, the virus would be under control and demand for air travel would have returned. That is obviously not the case,” American Airlines CEO Parker and President Robert Isom told employees in a grim message on Tuesday. Under its buyout, early retirement, and long-term leave-of-absence programs, 23,500 employees had already voluntarily departed. But that wasn’t enough. So the executives told employees what the next step would be: 19,000 “involuntary” furloughs on October 1. American, which started the year out with about 140,000 employees, expects to have fewer than 100,000 employees in October. “The one possibility of avoiding these involuntary reductions on Oct. 1 is a clean extension” of the bailout package, they said.


So if given another bailout, American, which received $5.8 billion under the first bailout package, will then not lay off those employees on October 1 – but instead on the date when the second bailout package would expire? In the fourth quarter, American expects to fly only one-fourth of its usual international schedule and less than half of its usual domestic schedule. Last week, it announced that it would pull out of 15 smaller cities in October, “as a result of low demand and the expiration of the air service requirements associated with the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act. This is the first step as American continues to evaluate its network and plans for additional schedule changes in the coming weeks.”

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Greece is not impressed with EU and US support so far.

France & Italy Throw Weight Behind Greece As Naval War Games Kick Off (RT)

France, Italy, Greece and Cyprus are staging a massive maritime exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean, in an apparent veiled nod to Turkey, which recently began researching oil and gas deposits in the area, raising ire in Athens. Codenamed ‘Eunomia’, the aeronautical exercises launched on Wednesday off the southern shores of Cyprus, the host nation of the war games. Athens’ defense minister announced the start of the drills earlier in the day, saying they are to reinforce “the rule of law as part of the policy of de-escalating tensions.” France, in turn, also confirmed the news, having dispatched its ‘Lafayette’ frigate, as well as three Rafale fighter jets. Italian and Cypriot vessels were also said to have joined the exercise in the eastern part of the Mediterranean.


A day prior, separate drills kicked off near the Greek island of Crete, this time involving Hellenic and US armed forces. The string of military exercises appears to be upping the ante in the festering feud between Greece and Turkey. Formally allies within NATO, the two nations have been at loggerheads over a number of issues, from historical discords to overlapping territorial claims in the Eastern Mediterranean. Tensions recently flared up when a trove of gas and oil was discovered in the contentious waters. This week, Ankara announced that its Oruc Reis research vessel will carry on navigating the disputed waters between Cyprus and Crete. The news has caused outrage in Greece which views the research activities as unlawful and considers them an affront to its sovereignty.

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More revolving doors. Just what we needed. Taleb has addressed this.

The New Media Elite Are Rapacious Monopolists, And We Are Their Food (Lewis)

The likes of Facebook & Google are spending tens of millions on lobbying and buying up government insiders. We need to call their bluff and bring in controls over their ever-growing financial and networked empires. In recent weeks, there has been heightened media concern that Facebook is cultivating a close relationship between government and big tech monopolies by poaching and recruiting former senior policy officials. The findings reveal a systematic hiring of government insiders with knowledge of regulation by offering them huge incentives to join. Three senior regulatory staff at the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport are among those who recently joined Facebook. Other policy officials joined from the Cabinet Office, the Home Office and UK Counterterrorism Policing.

And earlier this year, it was revealed that Facebook had recruited Tony Close as their new director of content regulation. Close was Ofcom’s director of content standards, who had been heavily involved with drawing up rules to rein in the tech giants and protect the public. And, of course, do not forget the fact that Facebook recruited former UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg as its vice president for global affairs and communications, who has been leading Facebook’s policy and communications work, as part of a concerted effort to preach and lobby against Big Tech breakups. But it is not only Facebook that is behaving like this. The Times reports that at least 14 special advisers had moved to tech companies, including Uber, Google and Facebook, in the past five years after a stint in ministerial offices.

These officials have had access to departmental chiefs and the policy formation process. In the face of growing concern about online content and antitrust investigations, the monopolistic positions of Silicon Valley’s Big Tech giants have increasingly come under scrutiny. As a result, they have all been ramping up their lobbying capacities by recruiting well-connected insiders. The Wall Street journal revealed that in 2019, Facebook increased its expenditure on lobbying by nearly 25 percent, to $12.3 million, through the first nine months of the year. Amazon notched a 16 percent jump in lobbying outlays, to $12.4 million. Apple boosted its spending by eight percent, and Microsoft by nine percent.

The main goal of this is the protection of their existing and future businesses. When Facebook announced its move into the financial sphere by unveiling plans for a global cryptocurrency, it drew a barrage of trenchant criticism. Undaunted, it hired seven new outside lobbying firms to work on financial issues, including two former aides to the GOP chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Amazon, too, has brought on seven additional outside lobbying shops since the middle of 2018, including former members of Congress and congressional aides who work to influence federal spending.

Taleb Carney

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Got to love the simplicity: “Painting one blade black dramatically reduces bird kills by wind turbines..”

Good News for Birds – and Wind Power (Adler)

Birds have been a problem for wind power. Wind turbines, whatever their other merits, have the tendency to kill birds, and possibly bats. This has been a longstanding problem, particularly because those areas best for wind power are often important for birds, particularly those species that tend to ride on wind currents. The bird problem has meant that environmental organizations have been inconsistent advocates of wind power, endorsing the such carbon-free power in the abstract, but often opposing particular wind power development proposals. I wrote about this problem over twenty years ago in The Weekly Standard, and it has not gone away.


New research suggests that one solution to the bird problem is rather simple: Painting one blade black dramatically reduces bird kills by wind turbines–70 percent in one location under study. This is an important development because the effect appears quite large, and it’s a relatively inexpensive fix. Assuming this research pans out, there is a cheap way to address the biggest environmental drawback of wind power, and that’s a big deal.

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“..everyday life influences what you dream about and vice versa..”

Your Dreams Are A Continuation Of Your Reality (RT)

A groundbreaking new study of over 24,000 dreams has provided the strongest evidence yet that our dreams are a continuation of our waking lives, with certain recurring elements shared between our sleeping and everyday selves. “Most dreams are a continuation of what is happening in everyday life,” say the researchers led by computer scientist Alessandro Fogli from Roma Tre University in Italy. The scientist explained that everyday life influences what you dream about and vice versa. So anxiety in life leads to anxious dreams, while on the positive side, dreaming can help solve problems that present themselves during waking hours.

On the one hand, traditional psychological analysis of dreams dates back to the days of Freud, who posited that the hidden meanings of dreams could be revealed through analysis of their waking experiences in the real world. On the other hand, modern dream analysis looks for symbols, metaphors, structures and characters which might correspond to other parts of a person’s life. Such methodologies include the Hall and Van de Castle system, which codifies all of the aforementioned elements and explores how they interact with each other in the dreamworld. This is, however, an extremely slow and time-consuming process, as evidenced by Christopher Nolan’s film Inception.

Dream scientists have long sought an algorithmic solution to automate the task of sifting through dream reports, the academic equivalent of counting sheep, which is exactly what Fogli and his team undertook to accomplish at scale. The researchers devised a way to track large numbers of dreams at scale, by parsing the language from dream reports of 24,000 dreams contained in a giant public database called DreamBank. More specifically, they honed in on characters, social interactions, and emotional words to search for recurring patterns. These three dimensions are considered the most important aspects of dream interpretation, defining the overall “plot.”

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We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, your support is now an integral part of the process.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

 

 

Zschaepitz USD debasement

 

 

Biden clown. Don’t know who made it, but it’s done well.

 

 

And this is just some stupid fun:

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime.

 

Jul 032020
 


Theodor Horydczak Washington Monument 1933 (soon to be renamed)

 

US Economic Reboot Menaced By Bug In The System (R.)
Florida Shatters Records With Over 10,000 New COVID19 Cases In Single Day (R.)
China Didn’t Alert WHO To Coronavirus Outbreak — The Internet Did (DC)
House Dems, Liz Cheney Restrict Trump’s Planned Troops Withdrawal (Greenwald)
Gilead Is Profiteering Off A COVID Drug We Already Paid For (Sirota)
Ghislaine Maxwell, Longtime Jeffrey Epstein Associate, Arrested (NYP)
Virginia Giuffre, Alan Dershowitz Both Lose In New Court Ruling (NYPost)
The Strategies of Dementia Politics (NR)
FedEx Asks Washington Redskins To Change The Team’s Name (NBC)

 

 

It’s Julian Assange’s birthday today. Light a candle.

 

 

Again, both the world and the US set new highs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Fauci shot his credibility:

 

 

Is a virus a bug?

US Economic Reboot Menaced By Bug In The System (R.)

Like a computer suffering from a pesky virus, the U.S. economy has been shut off and turned back on. This reboot seems to be working. The economy added almost 5 million jobs in June, on top of the roughly 3 million added in May, bringing the unemployment rate down over two percentage points to 11.1%. But as frustrated tech users know, short-term fixes are usually just that. Beyond the decent headline numbers, the labor force participation rate also increased to 61.5%, and around two-fifths of the job gains were in the hard-hit leisure and hospitality sector. Also, the Bureau of Labor Statistics actually revised the net jobs added over the previous two months upwards to 90,000.

But the root source of the economic woes – Covid-19 infections and deaths – is also moving northward. The U.S. reported almost 50,000 new cases on Wednesday, the fifth daily record in a little over a week, according to the New York Times. Texas hit a whopping 8,000 new daily cases. What these relatively decent jobs numbers may actually show is an economy that reopened too quickly. In fact, recent JPMorgan data from around 30 million of its credit- and debit-card holders shows that increased spending in restaurants appeared to be correlated with a rise in new infections three weeks later.

So the fragile recovery could easily crash – or at the very least, freeze. The virus spikes are prompting states and cities to stall or reverse reopenings. Texas has closed bars and limited restaurant occupancy. California shut down bars and indoor dining in 19 counties. And even New York City, which has dramatically reduced infections, decided on Wednesday to delay bringing back indoor dining at restaurants, which had been slated to restart next week.

Ultimately, it’ll be impossible to assess the depth of the lasting economic damage until reopening is mostly complete. In the topsy-turvy world of 2020, jobs numbers are not the best way to predict how the economy will perform. Until the bug is removed from the system, or brought under control, medical statistics will provide perhaps the most important information. With almost 2.7 million confirmed Covid-19 cases and 128,000 deaths, and rising, these numbers aren’t looking good.

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Time for a holiday…

Florida Shatters Records With Over 10,000 New COVID19 Cases In Single Day (R.)

Florida shattered records on Thursday when it reported over 10,000 new coronavirus cases, the biggest one-day increase in the state since the pandemic started, according to a Reuters tally. Outbreaks in Texas, California, Florida and Arizona have helped the United States break records and send cases rising at rates not seen since April. In June, Florida infections rose by 168% or over 95,000 new cases. The percent of tests coming back positive has skyrocketed to 15% from 4% at the end of May. Florida, with 21 million residents, has reported more new daily coronavirus cases than any European country had at the height of their outbreaks.


To contain the outbreak, Florida has closed bars and some beaches but the governor has resisted requiring masks statewide in public or reimposing a lockdown. Only one other state has reported more than 10,000 new cases in a single day. New York recorded 12,847 new infections on April 10, three weeks after the state implemented a strict lockdown that closed most businesses. While the state has relaxed many measures, it requires masks in public and mandates anyone arriving from 16 other U.S. states with high infections self-quarantine for two weeks. Once the epicenter of the U.S. epidemic, New York saw cases rise by about 6% in June – the lowest rate in the entire country.

Read more …

Let’s see how this plays out.

China Didn’t Alert WHO To Coronavirus Outbreak — The Internet Did (DC)

China didn’t alert the World Health Organization (WHO) to the coronavirus outbreak, a new timeline released by the WHO shows. China’s propaganda machine has claimed that China quickly reported the viral outbreak to the WHO, a claim that the WHO’s initial timeline supported. But the WHO found out about the outbreak from the internet, not from Chinese officials contacting them, according to the new timeline. The updated timeline, which was released June 29, says the WHO “picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission from their website” and also picked up a report on an American website, though it doesn’t say in what order those two events occurred.

The WHO doesn’t link to the Wuhan health commission’s media statement that it says tipped the organization off to the outbreak. Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, expressed skepticism that the statement even exists. “Even if the Commission posted something on their website – which we have seen no proof they have – the CCP still did not report the outbreak to the WHO as required by the International Health Regulations,” McCaul said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “As the updated WHO timeline clearly states, WHO staff ‘picked up a media statement…from their website’ – it was not sent to them by any officials in China,” the Texas Republican continued.

“I have repeatedly requested information from the WHO about what they knew and when they knew it, and I would welcome any clarity from them on this. But, so far, they have refused to answer any of those requests,” McCaul added. Dr. Michael Ryan, a top WHO official, previously said in an April 20 news conference that the American website, ProMED, gave the WHO its first indication of the coronavirus outbreak. “On 31st December information on our epidemic intelligence from open-source platform partners, PRO-MED, was received indicating a signal of a cluster of pneumonia cases in China. That was from open sources from Wuhan,” Ryan said.

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As I was saying yesterday. How did we ever come to see such acts as normal? I have no doubt that a vast a majority of Americans want to bring the troops home.

House Dems, Liz Cheney Restrict Trump’s Planned Troops Withdrawal (Greenwald)

Last night, the House Armed Services Committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of an amendment — jointly sponsored by Democratic Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado and Congresswoman Cheney of Wyoming — prohibiting the expenditure of monies to reduce the number of U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan below 8,000 without a series of conditions first being met. The imposed conditions are by no means trivial: for these troop reductions from Afghanistan to be allowed, the Defense Department must be able to certify, among other things, that leaving Afghanistan “will not increase the risk for the expansion of existing or formation of new terrorist safe havens inside Afghanistan” and “will not compromise or otherwise negatively affect the ongoing United States counter terrorism mission against the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and associated forces.”

The Crow/Cheney amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) last night passed by a vote of 45-11. The NDAA was then unanimously approved by the Committee by a vote of 56-0. It authorizes $740.5 billion in military spending — roughly three times more than the world’s second-highest spender, China. President Trump throughout the year has insisted that the Pentagon present plans for withdrawing all troops from Afghanistan prior to the end of 2020. Last week, reports indicated that “the Trump administration is close to finalizing a decision to withdraw more than 4,000 troops from Afghanistan by the fall.” Trump’s plan “would reduce the number of troops from 8,600 to 4,500 and would be the lowest number since the very earliest days of the war in Afghanistan, which began in 2001.”

In February, Trump announced an agreement with the Taliban to end the war completely. Shortly after those White House withdrawal plans were reported, anonymous intelligence officials leaked a series of claims to the New York Times regarding “bounties” allegedly being paid by Russia to Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops. Those leaks emboldened opposition to troop withdrawal from Afghanistan on the ground that it would be capitulating to Russian treachery. It was that New York Times leak that Liz Cheney, along with GOP Congressman Mac Thornberry, cited in a joint statement on Monday to suggest troop withdrawal would be precipitous:

“After today’s briefing with senior White House officials, we remain concerned about Russian activity in Afghanistan, including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces. It has been clear for some time that Russia does not wish us well in Afghanistan. We believe it is important to vigorously pursue any information related to Russia or any other country targeting our forces. Congress has no more important obligation than providing for the security of our nation and ensuring our forces have the resources they need. We anticipate further briefings on this issue in the coming days.”

[..] The NDAA that was approved last night by the Committee also imposed restrictions on Trump’s plan to withdraw troops from Germany. Trump’s plan called for the removal of roughly 9,500 troops from German soil, reducing the number of U.S. troops in this extremely prosperous and rich European nation from 34,500 to 25,000. But by an overwhelming vote of 49-7, the Armed Service Committee approved an amendment to the NDAA that “bans the administration from lowering troop levels below current levels until 180 days after Pentagon leaders present a plan to Congress and certify it will not harm U.S. or allied interests.”

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Never let a crisis go to waste.

Gilead Is Profiteering Off A COVID Drug We Already Paid For (Sirota)

This is a story of cause and effect — a tale of repeated and calculated public policy decisions that have now led to a predictable outcome. This story begins 25 years ago, when the Clinton administration rescinded a rule that required pharmaceutical companies to charge Americans reasonable prices for medicines developed at government expense. Some progressive lawmakers tried to reinstate the rule, but Republicans and Democrats joined together to halt those initiatives. In the ensuing years, the Obama administration refused Democratic lawmakers’ demand to invoke existing federal laws to force down the price of critical medicines.


Meanwhile, the GOP also blocked legislation to let Medicare use its purchasing power to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs All of that reflected the lobbying, campaign contributions and indomitable bipartisan power of the pharmaceutical industry in Washington. And it led to a result that this newsletter has been warning about, as Gilead just announced that it will charge privately insured Americans more than $3,000 each for a 5-day COVID treatment that was developed with financial support from the government. That’s a $3,000 price tag for a government-sponsored drug treatment that experts say the company could offer at $10 and still make a profit.

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Wonder what happened to make it happen at this particular time. She seemed safe holed up in Paris.

Bookmakers are now taking your bets on her suicide.

Ghislaine Maxwell, Longtime Jeffrey Epstein Associate, Arrested (NYP)

Longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested Thursday on a six-count indictment charging her with grooming young girls for sex. The British socialite, 58, was arrested by the FBI in New Hampshire around 8:30 a.m., authorities said. The just-unsealed indictment charges stem from Maxwell’s role “in the sexual exploitation and abuse of multiple minor girls by Jeffrey Epstein” as early as 1994, court papers say. “The victims were as young as 14 years old when they were groomed and abused by Maxwell and Epstein, both of whom knew that certain victims were in fact under the age of 18,” the indictment says.


She is specifically accused of grooming three underage victims for sex with Epstein in places including his Upper East Side townhouse, Florida, New Mexico and London. Maxwell is charged with six counts — conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, enticement of a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity and two counts of perjury. Prosecutors also accuse Maxwell — a one-time girlfriend of Epstein’s — of repeatedly lying about her involvement in the financier’s sex trafficking ring during a 2016 deposition.

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From Wednesday, before Ghislaine was arrested. I’m thinking there is probably a connection, but I don’t know which.

There’s a curious line in here:

“The 13-page ruling said Cooper & Kirk “has not, from what the Court can tell, been actively working on the case.”

She has to destroy all the evidence because her lawyers were not working? What?

Virginia Giuffre, Alan Dershowitz Both Lose In New Court Ruling (NYPost)

Attorneys for alleged Jeffrey Epstein “sex slave” Virginia Roberts Giuffre were ordered Wednesday to destroy evidence from her case against Ghislaine Maxwell — as lawyer Alan Dershowitz was also denied access to the potentially explosive information. Manhattan federal Judge Loretta Preska said she was “troubled” to learn during oral arguments last week that Giuffre’s lawyers, from the firm of Cooper & Kirk, had been given sealed records from her since-settled suit against Maxwell, who Giuffre claims recruited her to have sex with Epstein and his pals while she was underage.

The other men allegedly include Dershowitz, whom Giuffre is suing for defamation over his public denials of her accusations, including calling her a “certified, complete, total liar,” and who is counter-suing Giuffre for causing “serious harm … to his reputation, his business and his health.” “As a practical matter, the Court would be surprised — shocked, even — if Cooper & Kirk was not in some sense ‘using’ the Maxwell discovery in its representation of Ms. Giuffre in her action against Mr. Dershowitz,” the judge wrote.

Preska also rejected claims by Giuffre’s lawyers that they were entitled to the evidence, obtained from her former attorneys at Boies Schiller Flexner, because they’d been hired to represent her in the Maxwell case. The 13-page ruling said Cooper & Kirk “has not, from what the Court can tell, been actively working on the case.” Preska directed the Cooper & Kirk lawyers to destroy the evidence, along with “any material, including work product, derived from” it, and to submit an affidavit afterward.

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I know I’m not supposed to quote right wing media, but this is just too funny. And it raises a valid point: they can’t keep Biden hidden from view forever, and now when he does come out, he’ll be nervous.

The Strategies of Dementia Politics (NR)

Stoke chaos, obstruct economic recovery, and hide Biden in the basement till Election Day.

Joe Biden is tragically suffering a mental eclipse and sliding away at a geometric rate. Understandably, his handlers have kept him out of sight. He stays off the campaign trail on the pretext of the virus and his age-related susceptibility to COVID-19 morbidity. I say “pretext” without apology. Quarantine should not have otherwise stopped Biden over the past three months from doing daily interviews, speeches, and meetings. But each occasion, however scripted, rehearsed, and canned, would only have offered further daily proof that Biden is cognitively unable to be president or indeed to hold any office. Often Biden cannot finish a sentence. Names are vague eddies in his mind’s river of forgetfulness.

He is in a far more dire mental state than a physically failing FDR was in his 1944 campaign for a fourth term. The earlier career of a healthy Biden illustrates that he was not especially sharp even when in control of most of his faculties. We recall the former sane/nutty Biden of Neal Kinnock plagiarism, his “put y’all in chains” demagoguery, the studied racism of Biden’s riffs about a “clean” and well-spoken Obama, and the sane/insane Corn Pop stories. All are the trademark of a once fool Joe Biden, who was at least alert when compared with his current catalepsy. If Donald Trump can be ungrammatical, Biden is agrammatical — he simply streams together half-thoughts without syntax and then abandons the sentence entirely.

If Trump repeats vocabulary, Biden increasingly searches for words, any noun, whatever its irrelevance to the point he is making. Biden seems to suffer dyscognitive seizures, in which for moments he has no idea what he is doing or saying or where he is — a tragic, nearly epileptic condition. In scary episodes, the pale, scaly, and frozen visage of Biden appears almost reptilian, like a lizard freezing and remaining stationary as it struggles to process signals of perceived danger. Inserting memorized answers into rehearsed questions, as if the entire con was spontaneous, only reveals how his once episodic dementia has become chronic as he loses his prompt and place. It was understandable that his handlers saw opportunity in secluding Biden during Trump’s tweeting, alongside the contagion, the lockdown, the recession, and the rioting that in voters’ minds had equated fear of chaos with the culpability of the current commander in chief.

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Redskins was always a problem. But while you’re toppling Washington statues, you want to keep his name linked to the team, the city? Can anyone explain the logic?

FedEx Asks Washington Redskins To Change The Team’s Name (NBC)

FedEx has asked the Washington Redskins to officially change their name, long condemned as an anti-Indigenous slur. The shipping company has communicated to the team a request that it change its name, FedEx confirmed Thursday in a statement to NBC News. FedEx owns the naming rights to the Maryland field where the team plays, and its chief executive, Fred Smith, owns a minority stake in the team. FedEx’s request comes a day after Adweek reported that 87 investment firms and shareholders worth $620 billion sent a letter urging FedEx, Nike and PepsiCo to stop doing business with the team until the name is changed.


In 2017, the Supreme Court struck down part of a law that bans offensive trademarks, which helped the team get the Redskins trademark back in 2018. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board had canceled the registration as offensive to American Indians. [..] Mayor Muriel Bowser said last month on Washington radio station WTEM that the name has been an obstacle in getting the city its own stadium. “I think it’s past time for the team to deal with what offends so many people,” Bowser said. “And this is a great franchise with a great history that’s beloved in Washington, and it deserves a name that reflects the affection that we’ve built for the team.” [..] Dan Snyder, the team’s majority owner, told USA Today in 2013 that he would “never change the name.” “It’s that simple. NEVER — you can use caps,” he said.

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Support the Automatic Earth in virustime.

 

Mar 262020
 

 

 

1/4 of $2 Trillion Stimulus Bill Devoted to Useless Accounting Gimmick (Tankus)
At Least 13 Patients Die From Coronavirus In One Day At New York Hospital (CNN)
Worker At NYC Hospital Where Nurses Wear Trash Bags As Protection Dies (NYP)
UK Coronavirus Mass Home Testing To Be Made Available ‘Within Days’ (G.)
NHS Could Soon Exceed Capacity – Chief Medical Officer (Ind.)
How Did Spain Get Its Coronavirus Response So Wrong? (G.)
Bahrain, Belgium Report Hydroxychloroquine Treatment Is Working For Patients (JTN)
Gilead Sciences Backs Off Monopoly Claim For Promising Coronavirus Drug (IC)
How Big Science Skipped Clinical Trials After Past Coronavirus Outbreaks (JTN)
Trump’s Deadly Mistake In Comparing Coronavirus To Flu (IC)
Cairo, The City That Never Sleeps, Shuts For Coronavirus Night-Time Curfew (R.)
Crisis Daddy Cuomo Uses Coronavirus For New York Bail Reform Rollback (IC)
California Sees 1 Million Unemployment Claims In Less Than Two Weeks (CNBC)
Pentagon Orders A Stop-Movement For All Overseas Troops (JTN)
Judge Refuses To Release Julian Assange Over Coronavirus Risk (Ind.)
US High Court Rejects Call To Free 736 Detainees At Risk From Coronavirus
Time’s Up Said It Could Not Fund #MeToo Allegation Against Joe Biden (IC)

 

 

And we just keep goig. The US had about 53,000 cases 24 hours ago, it is now at 68,000. Not enough to get to 100,000 by tomorrow, but still much faster than China ever was, apart from the day when Beijing did a major calculating correction.

The world will reach 500,000 cases today, little more than one day after 400,000 was passed.

Be very careful out there!

 

 

Cases 486,702 (+ 52,134 from yesterday’s 434,568)

Deaths 22,021 (+ 2,959 from yesterday’s 19,062)

 

 

 

From Worldometer yesterday evening (before their day’s close)

 

 

From Worldometer -NOTE: mortality rate for closed cases is at 16% !! Still up 1% per day-

 

 

From SCMP:

 

 

From COVID2019Live.info:

 

 

From COVID2019.app:

 

 

 

 

There can be only one conclusion: the US is no longer capable of passing appropriate legislation even in a crisis. Money for the poor? Only if the rich get 1000x as much.

This is an interesting piece. Way beyond the scope of the MSM.

1/4 of $2 Trillion Stimulus Bill Devoted to Useless Accounting Gimmick (Tankus)

Earlier this week I wrote about the Trillion dollar platinum coin. Using the coin to fund government spending is often dismissed as an “accounting gimmick”. Yet, accounting gimmicks are already at the center of the Stimulus Bill being debated in congress tonight. 454 billion of the reported 2 Trillion dollars is going to “make loans and loan guarantees to, and other investments in, programs or facilities established by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System”. This is an accounting gimmick. Yet Larry Kudlow (director of the National Economic Council) points to it as one of the most important provisions in the bill.

“And finally, I want to mention, the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Refund. That will be replenished. It’s important, because that fund opens the door for Federal Reserve firepower to deal a broad-based way throughout the economy for distressed industries, for small businesses, for financial turbulence. You’ve already seen the Fed take action. They intend to take more action. And in order to get this, we have to replenish the Treasury’s Emergency Fund. It’s very, very important; not everybody understands that. That fund, by the way, will be overseen by an oversight board and an inspector general. It will be completely transparent.”

Why does he think it’s important? It’s not exactly clear but it seems that the Trump administration along with the Federal Reserve believe that they do not have the authority to launch the facilities they’ve been launching (partially described in the last post) without special purpose vehicles created by the Treasury. That doesn’t explain why they need money put into a Treasury fund under the discretion of secretary Mnuchin though. Why do they think they need the money? This isn’t clear either but it almost certainly has to do with the Federal Reserve’s net worth. It is a common trope of mainstream economists that it is very important for the central bank to have a positive net worth. If their net worth goes negative, then it should be “recapitalized” by the federal government.

[..] the argument that the net worth of the Federal Reserve matters don’t hold up to very much scrutiny, especially when one is familiar with the legal structure of the Federal Reserve. Yet, this is likely the motivation behind the nearly 500 billion dollars the “stimulus bill” provides the Treasury to support Federal Reserve lending programs. There is no statute, court case or any other binding legal constraint (as far as I can tell at least) that requires the Federal Reserve to have a positive net worth. In fact, it has control over its own accounting rules and as part of its own rules can book its obligation to pay remittances from net income to the Treasury as a “negative liability” (and thus effectively an asset) if its net income falls below zero.

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First corona case in New York was on March 1. This hasn’t even begun.

At Least 13 Patients Die From Coronavirus In One Day At New York Hospital (CNN)

At least 13 patients have died from Covid-19 at Elmhurst Hospital in New York, a statement from a spokesman said, as one of the hardest hit states sees a surge in cases. The deaths of the patients took place over the last 24 hours, but NYC Health and Hospitals/Elmhurst said in a statement that number is consistent with the number of Intensive Care Unit patients being treated there. “Staff are doing everything in our power to save every person who contracts Covid-19,” the statement said. New York has more than 30,000 of the nation’s more than 65,000 coronavirus cases, and 285 of its residents have died from the virus. The state has called for tens of thousands more ventilators, hospital beds and intensive care beds to meet the needs of their hospitals.

Elmhurst is at the center of the crisis, the statement said, and staff is working to overcome the overwhelming numbers. “The frontline staff are going above and beyond in this crisis, and we continue surging supplies and personnel to this critical facility to keep pace with the crisis,” the statement said. “We are literally increasing the effective capacity of the hospital on a daily basis by sending more doctors, nurses, ventilators and PPE to meet demand.” New York has ordered residents to stay at home to curb the spread of the virus and hopefully ease pressures on healthcare systems. And though Gov. Andrew Cuomo pointed to Westchester County — home to the state’s first severe outbreak in New Rochelle — as a marker for the effectiveness of social distancing, cases continue to climb.

Estimates from Sunday showed coronavirus hospitalizations were doubling every 2 days, he said. But Monday’s estimates showed hospitalizations were doubling every 3.4 days, and Tuesday’s estimates showed hospitalizations were doubling every 4.7 days.

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Welcome to Bergamo, Lombardy.

Worker At NYC Hospital Where Nurses Wear Trash Bags As Protection Dies (NYP)

The shortage of safety gear at one Manhattan hospital is so dire that desperate nurses have resorted to wearing trash bags — and some blame the situation for the coronavirus death of a beloved colleague. A stunning photo shared on social media shows three nurses at Mount Sinai West posing in a hallway while clad in large, black plastic trash bags fashioned into makeshift protective garb. One of them is even holding the open box of 20 Hefty “Strong” 33-gallon garbage bags they used to cloak themselves. “NO MORE GOWNS IN THE WHOLE HOSPITAL,” the caption reads. “NO MORE MASKS AND REUSING THE DISPOSABLE ONES…NURSES FIGURING IT OUT DURING COVID-19 CRISIS.”

The caption includes such hashtags as #heftytotherescue, #riskingourlivestosaveyours and #pleasedonateppe, with the “ppe” referring to “personal protective equipment.” Meanwhile, staffers at the hospital near Columbus Circle on Wednesday tied the lack of basic supplies there to the death of assistant nursing manager Kious Kelly, who tested positive for coronavirus about two weeks ago. Kelly, 48, was admitted to Mount Sinai’s flagship hospital on the Upper East Side on March 17 and died Tuesday night, the workers said. “Kious didn’t deserve this,” one nurse said. “The hospital should be held responsible. The hospital killed him.”

Another nurse described “issues with supplies for about a year now,” during which it got “to the point where we had to hide our own supplies and go to other units looking for stuff because even the supply room would have nothing most of the time.” “But when we started getting COVID patients it became critical,” the nurse said. The nurse sources said they were using the same PPE between infected and non-infected patients and, because there were no more spare gowns in the hospital, they took to wearing trash bags to stop the spread of infection.


Nurses at Mount Sinai West, where Kelly worked, are being forced to wear trash bags due to the lack of protective gear there.

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Hot air only?

UK Coronavirus Mass Home Testing To Be Made Available ‘Within Days’ (G.)

Thousands of 15-minute home tests for coronavirus will be delivered by Amazon to people self-isolating with symptoms or will go on sale on the high street within days, according to Public Health England (PHE), in a move that could restore many people’s lives to a semblance of pre-lockdown normality. [..] The UK government has bought 3.5m tests, which the health secretary, Matt Hancock, mentioned on Tuesday with no suggestion that they would be available to the public so quickly, and is ordering millions more. Asked if they would be available in days rather than weeks or months, Peacock said: “Yes, absolutely.” If there was a charge for them, she thought it would be minimal, she said.


Widespread availability of a fingerprick test that produces results in 10 to 15 minutes is a game-changer. NHS doctors and nurses with symptoms will know immediately whether they have – or have recovered from – Covid-19, enabling them to get back to work sooner. The UK is not the only country ordering in the antibody tests. “Tests are being ordered across Europe and elsewhere and purchased in south-east Asia. This is widespread practice. We are not alone in doing this,” said Peacock.

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Could=will.

NHS Could Soon Exceed Capacity – Chief Medical Officer (Ind.)

It will be a “close run thing” whether the NHS capacity will be exceeded over the coming weeks because of the coronavirus outbreak, chief medical officer Chris Whitty has said. At a press conference in 10 Downing Street, Prof Whitty said that there was not currently “enormous” pressure on critical care beds within the health service, despite a total of more than 8,000 patients testing positive for coronavirus across the UK. But he said that he could not guarantee that bed spaces would not run out within the next three weeks. The NHS has more than 4,000 critical care beds in normal times and efforts are under way to accommodate the expected surge in additional coronavirus patients by using private sector facilities and discharging patients able to go home.

The ExCel exhibition centre in east London is being converted into a field hospital which will eventually be able to take 4,000 patients during the outbreak. Prof Whitty said: “The NHS is increasing supply by a combination of pushing out in time things which can be postponed and increasing the critical care and particularly the ventilated bed capacity over the next weeks.” But he added: “This is going to be a close run thing, we all know that. “And anybody who looks around the world can see this is going to be difficult for every health system.”

Prof Whitty said that the lockdown announced by prime minister Boris Johnson on Monday, requiring people to stay at home as much as they can and avoid social contact, should help relieve pressure on bed spaces by reducing the rate of infection, while the NHS works rapidly to increase capacity. “That is the way that we will narrow this down to the smallest possible gap over the next three weeks,” he said.

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Time to look at different strains of the virus. Just to be sure. Also, nnext week in the same Guardian: “How Did Britain Get Its Coronavirus Response So Wrong?”.

How Did Spain Get Its Coronavirus Response So Wrong? (G.)

It is one of the darkest and most dramatic moments in recent Spanish history. In the chilling table of daily dead from the coronavirus pandemic, Spain has taken top position from Italy – with 738 dying over 24 hours. Spain is now the hotspot of the global pandemic, a ghoulish title that has been passed from country to country over four months – starting in Wuhan, China, and travelling via Iran and Italy. As it moves west, we do not know who will be next. What went wrong? Spain had seen what happened in China and Iran. It also has Italy nearby, just 400 miles across the Mediterranean and an example of how the virus can spread rapidly and viciously inside Europe.

Yet Spaniards cannot blame that proximity. There are no land borders with Italy, while France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia – all countries that are doing much better – do have them. This may, in fact, be one of the reasons for the country’s late response. Spain thought it was far enough away. “Spain will only have a handful of cases,” said Dr Fernando Simón, the head of medical emergencies in Madrid, on 9 February. Six weeks later he gives out daily figures of hundreds of deaths. The number of dead per capita is already three times that of Iran, and 40 times higher than China. On 19 February, 2,500 Valencia soccer fans mixed with 40,000 Atalanta supporters for a Champions League game in Bergamo which Giorgio Gori, mayor of the Italian city, has described as “the bomb” which exploded the virus in Lombardy.

In Spain, Valencia players, fans and sports journalists were amongst the first to fall ill. The main reason for the quick spread through Spain may be completely mundane. It has been an unusually mild, sunny Spring. In late February and early March, with temperatures above 20C (68F), Madrid’s pavement cafes and bars were heaving with happy folk, doing what Madrileños like best – being sociable. That means hugging, kissing and animated chatter just a few inches from someone else’s face. On 8 March, just a week before the country was closed down, sports events, political party conferences and massive demonstrations to mark International Women’s Day all took place. Three days later, about 3,000 Atlético de Madrid fans flew together for another Champions League match in Liverpool.

[.] The virus has laid bare, too, deep faults in the Spanish care system. Private old people’s homes must turn a profit while charging people prices they can afford – which may be a basic pension of just over 9,000 euros. As a result, these were understaffed, unprepared and quickly overwhelmed, with death rates of up to 20%. The army was sent in, and found some people lying dead in their beds. Spain has a magnificent primary care system, but its hospitals have been hit by a decade of austerity since the financial crisis. It has only a third of the hospital beds per capita that are provided by Austria or Germany. Yet that is still more than the UK, New Zealand or the US.

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How much of the recent bad rap is coming from Big Pharma, which can’t make a dime on the stuff?

Bahrain, Belgium Report Hydroxychloroquine Treatment Is Working For Patients (JTN)

Bahrain and Belgium report their hospitals are successfully treating coronavirus patients with the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine touted by President Trump as a possible breakthrough in the pandemic. The Kingdom of Bahrain’s Supreme Council of Health chairman said his country was among the first to use the drug and that its impact has been “profound,” according to the Bahrain News Agency. Dr. Shaikh Mohamed, who leads the National Taskforce for Combating COVID-19, was also quoted by the news agency as saying hydroxychloroquine was administered according to the same regimens as those used in China and South Korea. The first COVID-19 case in Bahrain was reported on Feb. 21, and hydroxychloroquine was first administered to patients showing virus symptoms on Feb. 26.


Bahrain has 419 deaths as a result of the virus, behind Croatia with 442 deaths worldwide, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center. Hydroxychloroquine is used to prevent and treat malaria and is administered to patients with rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. Meanwhile in Europe, another U.S. ally, Brussels, is reporting similar early success with the same drug and is taking steps to ensure its availability for the sickest coronavirus patients. “Using the limited stocks of these medicines for unnecessary or unjustified preventive treatments jeopardizes the availability of these medicines for patients who need them: chronic patients and hospital patients seriously affected by Covid-19,” Belgium’s Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products said this week.

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What a bit of bad publicity won’t do…

Gilead Sciences Backs Off Monopoly Claim For Promising Coronavirus Drug (IC)

Gilead Sciences on Wednesday announced that it has submitted a request to the Food and Drug Administration to rescind the exclusive marketing rights it had secured for remdesivir, an antiviral drug that shows promise in treating Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. As The Intercept reported on Monday, the FDA had awarded Gilead seven years of exclusive marketing rights to the drug through the Orphan Drug Act, even though the statute was designed to induce pharmaceutical companies to make treatments for rare diseases that affect fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. Although the new coronavirus will almost certainly infect that many people, Gilead had exploited a loophole that grants orphan drug status if a company files for it before the official number of cases hits 200,000.


As of Wednesday afternoon, there were more than 438,000 confirmed cases worldwide, with more than 59,000 in the United States. After a public outcry, Gilead issued a press release stating: “Gilead has submitted a request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to rescind the orphan drug designation it was granted for the investigational antiviral remdesivir for the treatment of Covid-19 and is waiving all benefits that accompany the designation. Gilead is confident that it can maintain an expedited timeline in seeking regulatory review of remdesivir, without the orphan drug designation. Recent engagement with regulatory agencies has demonstrated that submissions and review relating to remdesivir for the treatment of Covid-19 are being expedited.”

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It’s all about money, and only about money. Even at this point.

How Big Science Skipped Clinical Trials After Past Coronavirus Outbreaks (JTN)

Equally alarming was the lack of followup after early drug studies found some promising treatments that worked anecdotally during the SARS outbreak in 2003, two smaller coronavirus outbreaks in 2004-05, and MERS in 2012. The anti-malarial drug known as chloroquine was one of a handful flagged as a potential treatment. One such study in 2005 found “chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-Cove infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are observed when the cells are treated with the drug either before or after exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage.” The 2005 study concluded: “Chloroquine is effective in preventing the spread of SARS CoV in cell culture. Favorable inhibition of virus spread was observed when the cells were either treated with chloroquine prior to or after SARS CoV infection.”

Similarly, in 2009 the University of Leuven in Belgium published “Antiviral Activity of Chloroquine against Human Coronavirus OC43 Infection in Newborn Mice,” which warned of a failure to follow up on possible treatments. “Although coronaviruses have been recognized as human pathogens for about 50 years, no effective treatment strategy has been approved,” the authors wrote. “This shortcoming became evident during the SARS-CoV outbreak and was the start of numerous studies. Nevertheless, 5 years after the outbreak, we are still lacking an effective, commercially available drug. Chloroquine is a clinically approved drug effective in malaria, and it is known to elicit antiviral effects against several viruses.” Such promise and warnings never translated into action, and as a result more detailed clinical trials that could validate or rule out treatments were never carried out.

To understand why, former Health and Human Service Secretary Tom Price said, one must understand the economics and psychology of private and government medical research. One-time treatments that have no long-term commercial market don’t excite pharmaceutical companies in the business of making profits. And federal scientists always like jumping to the next big viral fire instead of finishing work on an earlier outbreak that fizzled like SARS, he explained. “One would think that those studies would have been completed before now,” said Price, a doctor himself and a former congressman. “However, the extent of SARS was relatively small and short-lived. Once the threat passed, there was no economic incentive for pharmaceutical companies to complete human trials, and governmental attention, research and inertia moved in a different, seemingly more urgent, direction.”

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That’s literally what I said last week: “Comparing Covid-19 and flu numbers is a classic case of apples to oranges, according to public health experts and epidemiologists.”

Still, if this is Trump’s deadly mistake, he shares that feat with about a billion other people.

Trump’s Deadly Mistake In Comparing Coronavirus To Flu (IC)

The President of the United States compared the coronavirus to the flu this week, and the new virus that has already stricken more than 55,000 people and killed more than 800 across the country came out looking relatively innocuous. “We have a lot of people dying from the flu, as you know,” Donald Trump told reporters at the White House, as his attorney general, William Barr, stood far less than 6 feet behind him. “It looks like it could be over 50,000,” he said about the current flu season, later clarifying that he was referring to deaths from the flu, “not cases, 50,000 deaths, which is a lot.” But the number Trump cited does not reflect people dying from verified cases of the flu. According to data from the CDC, 7,428 deaths from the flu were confirmed by a lab test for that virus in 2019.


If you add in the 3,771 test-confirmed deaths already tallied in 2020, the total number of deaths that can be definitively tied to the flu is 11,199. The much higher number Trump used comes from the possible range of deaths attributable to flu this season — 23,00 to 59,000 — a number that the CDC estimates in part by including people who die from pneumonia even if they weren’t tested for the flu virus. Trump contrasted the high flu numbers — along with automobile accidents, which he said were “far greater than any numbers we’re talking about” — to the number of Covid-19 cases in part to emphasize his administration’s success in responding to the deadly virus. “I think we’re doing a very good job of it,” he said, going on to describe the number of cases in the U.S. as “pretty amazing.”

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Maybe some cities should sleep a bit more?

Cairo, The City That Never Sleeps, Shuts For Coronavirus Night-Time Curfew (R.)

Egypt and its capital Cairo, a mega-city home to some 20 million people, shut down on Wednesday evening as authorities launched a night-time curfew to tackle the spread of the coronavirus. In a city that never sleeps where restaurants and cafes are usually open until the wee hours, shop owners were closing shutters and commuters rushing home before the start of the 7 p.m. curfew that runs until 6 a.m. Policemen were posted on key roads to stop any violators. Many streets were already almost deserted by 6:30 p.m. “This is a disease, not a joke. People must stay at home, and should not leave their houses after curfew hours,” Mohamed El-Gabaly, a Cairo resident, told Reuters, as he stood in a major street with little traffic just before the curfew.


Egypt has stepped up measures aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus – closing airports and gyms, as well as suspending classes at schools and universities until mid-April. Restaurants are restricted to just delivering food. Shops other than supermarkets and pharmacies will be required to close at 5 p.m. on weekdays, two hours earlier than the previous curfew, as well as on weekends. Egypt, a country of 100 million, has reported 456 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 21 deaths.

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Andrew the Jailer.

Crisis Daddy Cuomo Uses Coronavirus For New York Bail Reform Rollback (IC)

As the coronavirus pandemic grips the United States, prosecutors, sheriffs, and public officials have raced to reduce the populations held in local jails, where it is next to impossible to protect elderly and otherwise vulnerable incarcerated people. In New York, however, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is bucking this trend, pushing for a new law that would roll back newborn bail reforms that went into effect in January and instead expand judges’ power to put defendants in jail. Cuomo has backed this agenda for years, but his evident insistence on including it in the state’s budget negotiations amid a public health crisis is nonetheless remarkable.

“Every other elected official across the country is thinking about how they can reduce their jail and prison population,” Rena Karefa-Johnson, the New York state director for criminal justice reform for the advocacy group FWD.us, said in an interview. “But in New York, we have elected officials still trying to change legislation that would put thousands more people back in jail and slowing up an emergency budget process to do it. It’s wildly out of step with what’s happening across the country, and it’s wildly at odds with this narrative of New York taking Covid-19 seriously and keeping people safe. It’s bonkers.” The governor’s move comes as his power is ascendant. Cuomo has always wanted to be a crisis governor, engaging in well-documented disaster heroics whenever roadways get slippery.

But that instinct, risible in peacetime, is playing differently in the pandemic. People in New York and around the country are terrified, and the erratic federal response under President Donald Trump has been far from reassuring. Cuomo’s sober, authoritative daily briefings have filled the vacuum. In the last weeks, Cuomo has become America’s Governor, its crisis daddy. In recent days the hashtag #PresidentCuomo has been trending on Twitter. With his popularity soaring, and his constituents preoccupied with looming mass fatalities as the coronavirus threatens to overwhelm the state’s health care capabilities, Cuomo is well positioned to drive through his preferred agenda with hardly anyone noticing.

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This, too, has only just begun.

California Sees 1 Million Unemployment Claims In Less Than Two Weeks (CNBC)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that the state has seen 1 million unemployment claims in less than two weeks as the coronavirus pandemic has led to businesses being shut down across the state. “We just passed the 1 million mark, in terms of the number of claims, just since March 13,” Newsom said. Newsom’s announcement comes one day before a key national data release on new jobless claims for the United States, which some have projected to be in the multimillions. The initial claims data has never before surpassed 1 million, and it was 285,000 last week.

The San Francisco area was the first region in the country to install a “shelter-in-place” order, on March 16. Newsom signed a “stay-at-home” order for the whole state three days later. The governor praised the proposed Senate relief bill to help fight the coronavirus pandemic. California provides up to $450 per week for unemployment insurance, Newsom said, and the proposed Senate bill would add $600 per week for up to four months. “This bill will be very helpful, and it’s very timely,” Newsom said. California and its cities will get $10 billion from a block grant portion of the proposed relief bill in the Senate, not including the benefits to workers and individuals, Newsom said.

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But don’t be surprised if they invade Iran or Venezuela tomorrow morning. And they call this message a great tactical move.

Pentagon Orders A Stop-Movement For All Overseas Troops (JTN)

The Pentagon on Wednesday issued a stop-movement order for all overseas military personnel and civilians for the next 60 days. The measure, designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, follows a previous order that puts a hold on troop movements within the United States. The newly issued order is meant to protect U.S. personnel, and preserve operational readiness, the Pentagon said. The order will interrupt scheduled exercises, deployments, and other overseas activities. “Approximately 90,000 Service Members slated to deploy or deploy over the next 60 days will likely be impacted by this stop movement order,” the statement read. The order includes exceptions for some personnel, including those who currently are traveling. The order is not expected to interfere with the drawdown of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, according to the statement.

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When the judge is a murderer.

Judge Refuses To Release Julian Assange Over Coronavirus Risk (Ind.)

A judge has refused to release Julian Assange from prison over the coronavirus outbreak. The Wikileaks founder’s lawyers had applied for him to be freed on bail because he was “vulnerable” to the virus inside HMP Belmarsh. He is being held there while awaiting potential extradition to the US on charges relating to the 2010 Wikileaks publications over the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Mr Assange at Westminster Magistrates’ Court by video-link on Wednesday and was represented by Edward Fitzgerald QC, who wore a surgical mask. The court heard that despite coronavirus being confirmed in other jails, there were not yet an known cases in HMP Belmarsh. But Mr Fitzgerald said that 100 prison officers were off work, adding: “We say there’s a very real problem, a very real risk and the risk could be fatal.”


District judge Vanessa Baraitser refused the bail application, telling the court: “As matters stand today, this global pandemic does not of itself yet provide grounds for Mr Assange’s release.” Supporters of Mr Assange said he had a previously reported lung complaint and was in an “already weakened medical condition”. Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor in chief of Wikileaks, said: “To expose another human being to serious illness, and to the threat of losing their life, is grotesque and quite unnecessary. This is not justice, it is a barbaric decision.” American and British authorities class Mr Assange as a flight risk because he skipped bail over Swedish sexual assault allegations to flee to London’s Ecuadorian embassy in 2012.

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At least 2 prisoners have already died from the virus in UK jails. 350 have been released.

US High Court Rejects Call To Free 736 Detainees At Risk From Coronavirus

The high court has rejected calls to free hundreds of immigration detainees who, lawyers and human rights activists say, are at risk from Covid-19 while behind bars. The ruling, following a hearing over Skype on Wednesday, was handed down in response to an urgent legal challenge from Detention Action. The legal action asked for the release of hundreds of detainees who are particularly vulnerable to serious illness or death if they contract the virus because of particular health conditions, and also for the release of those from about 50 countries to which the Home Office is currently unable to remove people because of the pandemic. The two judges – Dame Victoria Sharp, president of the Queen’s Bench division, and Mr Justice Swift – came down strongly on the side of the Home Office and highlighted the range of measures already being implemented by the home secretary, Priti Patel.


These included the release of more than 300 detainees last week, ongoing assessments of the vulnerability of individual detainees to the virusand a range of “sensible” and “practical” steps the Home Office is taking to make detention centres safer, such as single occupancy rooms and the provision of face masks for detainees who wish to wear them. “It seems likely that the arrangements already in place by the secretary of state will be sufficient to address the risks arising in the majority of cases,” the judges said, adding that “the present circumstances are exceptional”. The court hearing on Wednesday heard that 736 people are still being detained in the UK, while 350 have been released in recent days. It was also confirmed that detainees in three detention centres have displayed symptoms of Covid-19.

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#MeToo, but not you.

Time’s Up Said It Could Not Fund #MeToo Allegation Against Joe Biden (IC)

Last April, Tara Reade watched as a familiar conversation around her former boss, Joe Biden, and his relationship with personal space unfolded on the national stage. Nevada politician Lucy Flores alleged that Biden had inappropriately sniffed her hair and kissed the back of her head as she waited to go on stage at a rally in 2014. Biden, in a statement in response, said that “not once” in his career did he believe that he had acted inappropriately. But Flores’s allegation sounded accurate to Reade, she said, because Reade had experienced something very similar as a staffer in Biden’s Senate office years earlier.

After she saw an episode of the ABC show “The View,” in which most of the panelists stood up for Biden and attacked Flores as politically motivated, Reade decided that she had no choice but to come forward and support Flores. She gave an interview to a local reporter, describing several instances in which Biden had behaved similarly toward her, inappropriately touching her during her early-’90s tenure in his Senate office. In that first interview, she decided to tell a piece of the story, she said, that matched what had happened to Flores — plus, she had filed a contemporaneous complaint, and there were witnesses, so she considered the allegation bulletproof. The short article brought a wave of attention on her, along with accusations that she was doing the bidding of Russian President Vladimir Putin. So Reade went quiet.

[..] As the campaign went on, Reade [..] began to reconsider staying silent. She thought about the world she wanted her daughter to live in and decided that she wanted to continue telling her story and push back against what she saw as online defamation. To get legal help, and manage what she knew from her first go-around would be serious backlash, she reached out to the organization Time’s Up, established in the wake of the #MeToo movement to help survivors tell their stories. The Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund was the recipient of an outpouring of donations over the past two-plus years, and is set up as a 501(c)3 nonprofit housed within the National Women’s Law Center. It was launched in December 2017 and was the most successful GoFundMe in the site’s history, raising more than $24 million.

[..] By February, she learned from a new conversation with Time’s Up, which also involved Director Sharyn Tejani, that no assistance could be provided because the person she was accusing, Biden, was a candidate for federal office, and assisting a case against him could jeopardize the organization’s nonprofit status.

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