| Global Cases Top 1.5 Million; Singapore Numbers Up: Virus Update Posted: 08 Apr 2020 05:42 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Global cases of the coronavirus topped 1.5 million, less than a week after surpassing the 1-million mark. New York, the U.K. and Belgium reported their deadliest days so far. Singapore announced its largest daily increase.The crisis will escalate if countries don't start showing more solidarity, the head of the World Health Organization said, urging the U.S. and China to show "honest leadership" and stop bickering.U.S. Democrats are seeking at least $500 billion in the next stimulus bill, and Hong Kong announced a fresh package valued at about $18 billion. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is stable and responding to treatment at a London hospital.Key Developments:Global cases top 1.5 million; deaths pass 88,000: Johns HopkinsSingapore reported its largest daily increaseFederal medical aid to states falls short, House report saysGenome researchers find most NYC cases came from EuropeU.S. recession model at 100% confirms downturn is already hereSmoking helps open gateway to coronavirus infection, study showsJack Ma Helps Repair China's Image (8:15 a.m. HK)China's richest person is now playing a prominent role in philanthropic efforts that are effectively helping President Xi Jinping improve the country's image overseas after Covid-19 spread around the world, unleashing a devastating human and economic toll. That's a stark turn from just 18 months earlier, when Ma had to publicly dispute speculation that the government had prompted him to step down from the e-commerce giant he founded.Half a Billion People at Risk of Poverty (8:00 a.m. HK)The economic hit from coronavirus threatens to put more than half a billion people into poverty unless countries take action to cushion the blow, according to a report from the charity group, Oxfam. Under the most serious scenario of a 20% contraction in income, the number of people living in poverty could increase by between 434 million and 611 million, said the report, which is based on an analysis by researchers at King's College London and the Australian National University.China Has 63 Cases (7:56 a.m. HK)China had 63 additional confirmed coronavirus cases on April 8, with 61 of them from abroad, according to statement from the country's National Health Commission. There were 56 asymptomatic cases, half of them from overseas.Singapore Numbers Surge (7:30 a.m. HK)The city-state reported its largest daily increase in coronaviruscases on Wednesday, just as the country started a partial lockdown. Authorities said there were 142 new cases, bringing Singapore's total to 1,623. An Indian national who died while awaiting his test result was subsequently confirmed to have the infection, according to the Ministry of Health. Investigations are going on to establish the cause of death, it said. If confirmed, that would be the seventh fatality linked to the disease.Starbucks Sees Six Months of Pain (7:27 a.m. HK)Starbucks Corp. said a sharp slowdown from the coronavirus pandemic will worsen before getting better, with the financial impact extending as far as September. The company based its assessment on the tentative recovery in the Chinese market, its most important along with the U.S. The coffee chain went through social distancing and mandatory closures in the Asian nation earlier in the year, giving it an early glimpse at how the situation would play out in the U.S. and elsewhere.Airlines Squeezed By Delays in U.S. Rescue Package (7:13 a.m. HK)U.S. airlines' desperate bid for $29 billion in government rescue cash is being frustrated by a lengthening process and demands that companies provide more detailed financial information, people familiar with the situation said.Carriers that filed April 3 for the grants intended to help meet payroll costs expected the checks to begin arriving days ago, said people familiar with the aid discussions. Instead, U.S. Treasury officials have asked for another round of data that appears to be more related to a separate loan process instead of the cash grants, further delaying the relief, the people said.California Has $1.4 Billion Plan to Buy Medical Equipment (5:17 p.m. NY)California Governor Gavin Newsom secured a deal to import 200 million masks on a monthly basis for health care workers, grocery store employees and others on the front line of the coronavirus pandemic, part of a $1.4 billion planned investment in personal protective equipment.Some of that equipment could be shared with other states facing shortages, Newsom said at a press briefing Wednesday,"California is just uniquely resourced," Newsom said. It can use "the kind of scale that few other states, few other countries can even resource, so we're pleased to do that and it's our responsibility to do more."Read more hereU.S. Cases Climb 9.6%, Deaths Top 14,000 (4:20 p.m. NY)The growth in U.S. coronavirus cases showed signs of slowing Wednesday, even as deaths accelerated in some of the hardest-hit states.U.S. cases rose 9.6% from the day before to 419,975 as of Wednesday afternoon, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg News. Cases nationally had been climbing an average of 11% a day over the past week. Deaths rose 19% to 14,262.New York had another day of record fatalities, reporting 779 more deaths. The state has lost more than 1,500 to the virus over the past two days, for a total of almost 6,300. Still, Governor Andrew Cuomo said hospitalizations are falling, showing social distancing is working."Nobody is saying we peaked," Cuomo said. "We've flattened the curve for this point of time."New Jersey reported a record 275 deaths. California also had one of its deadliest days, with 68 fatalities. Illinois had 82.Michigan, which has the most infections after New York and New Jersey, saw cases increase 7% to surpass 20,000, according to the state health department. Deaths rose by 114 to 959N.J. Has Record New Deaths (1:36 p.m. NY)New Jersey reported a second day of record new deaths from Covid-19 and a tapering of infections. Cases rose by 7% to 47,437, the fourth straight day of increases of 10% or less. In the last two weeks of March, New Jersey saw daily increases from 20% to 82%. Governor Phil Murphy reported 275 new fatalities since yesterday, the biggest one-day increase since the crisis began.N.Y. Reports Record 779 Daily Deaths (1:36 p.m. NY)New York suffered another day of record fatalities from the coronavirus outbreak, reporting 779 additional deaths even as hospitalizations declined."The number of deaths will continue to rise as those hospitalized for a period of time pass away," Governor Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday at his daily virus briefing. The state has lost more than 1,500 people to the virus in the last two days, for a total of almost 6,300. WHO Says World Must Pull Together (1 p.m. NY)The coronavirus crisis will escalate if countries don't start showing more solidarity, the head of the World Health Organization said, urging the U.S. and China to show "honest leadership" and stop bickering."If you don't want many more body bags, then you refrain from politicizing it," Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing in Geneva Wednesday. "No using Covid-19 to score political points."When asked about President Donald Trump's threat to cut funding and claim that the WHO favors China, Tedros said the WHO tries to treat everyone equally, and the WHO will do an assessment of its successes and failures. He urged the U.S., China, Group of 20 countries and the rest of the world to come together and fight."For God's sake, we have lost more than 60,000 citizens of the world," he said. "Even one person is precious."'Too Early' for Europe to Start Easing Restrictions, Agency Says (12:47 p.m. NY)The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control warned Europe not to rush into lifting restrictions that are helping slow the spread of the pandemic."Based on the available evidence, it is currently too early to start lifting all community and physical distancing measures" in Europe, the agency said in its latest risk assessment. "Sustained transmission of the virus is to be expected if current interventions are lifted too quickly."U.K. Announces New High for Fatalities (12:02 p.m. NY)The U.K. reported a further 938 deaths from the coronavirus on Wednesday, up from yesterday's record daily total of 786.In total 60,733 people have tested positive for the illness, up from 55,242 reported on Tuesday, according to the latest figures from the Department of Heath and Social Care. The day's figures indicate a slight increase in the rate of growth.Some 14,682 tests were conducted in the country on April 7, more than the 14,006 conducted the day before. The U.K. aims to conduct 100,000 tests a day by the end of April, seeking to replicate the mass screening seen in countries such as South Korea and Germany.EU Plans to Prolong External-Border Closure Until May 15 (11:45 a.m. NY)The European Commission proposed prolonging until May 15 a ban on most travel into the European Union. Maintaining the restriction on non-essential travel into the bloc for another 30 days is necessary to contain the spread of the coronavirus, the commission said in a recommendation that needs the approval of member-country governments.EU Braces for Arrival of 8,000 Cruise-Ship Passengers (11:00 a.m. NY)Eleven cruise ships carrying around 8,000 passengers in total will arrive at European Unions ports between April 8 and 11, the European Commission said. The EU laid out guidelines for member nations on handling the travelers, saying ships with passengers known to be infected with the coronavirus should be directed to ports close to hospitals with adequate capacity.De Blasio Says Distancing Eases Ventilator Demand (10:55 a.m. NY)New York City's social-distancing strategy appears to be working, and one result is less demand for ventilators than had been projected, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.The city had estimated that it would need as many as 300 more of the life-saving machines this week to treat coronavirus patients but has needed to add only 100, de Blasio said Wednesday at his daily virus briefing. It has 5,500 in all.Statewide, the infection rate has begun flattening, even as the death count rises.EU Working for Coordinated Ends to Members' Lockdowns (10:40 a.m. NY)The European Commission is trying to coordinate how member states end lockdowns following criticism that the bloc's initial response to the pandemic was chaotic. An internal draft of a memo seen by Bloomberg sets out conditions for easing to begin as well as other steps that be needed, such as expanding testing capacities and using apps to gather data. The adoption of the plan has been pushed back, according to commission spokesman Eric Mamer, who told journalists in Brussels that timing is a "tricky issue" since countries are at different stages of the outbreak.Oktoberfest in Doubt as Germany Sees Lasting Impact (8:59 a.m. NY)Bavaria's state premier cast doubt over the annual Oktoberfest, offering an idea of how long German authorities expect the pandemic to upend social life. Markus Soeder, a political ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, told the Bild newspaper that a decision will be taken in June, but that widespread travel and border openings by then are "very unlikely." The traditional beer festival, which draws millions to the Bavarian capital of Munich, is scheduled to start Sept. 19 and last two weeks. If it takes place at all, "it will be under completely different conditions," Soeder told Bild.India's Most Populous State Seals 15 Districts (8:23 a.m. NY)India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, has sealed off 15 of its districts worst affected by infections. The state has so far recorded 326 infections and three deaths. India has had total infections of 5,360 and 164 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. A 21-day national lockdown ends April 14.Boris Johnson is Stable, Responding to Treatment (7:54 a.m. NY)U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in a stable condition in intensive care and is "responding to treatment" for a severe coronavirus infection, his spokesman said. Johnson was taken into St Thomas' hospital in London on Sunday and moved to the critical care unit on Monday after struggling to shake off the symptoms, including a cough and a fever.Democrats Seek At Least $500 Billion in Next Stimulus Bill (7:36 a.m. NY)Democrats want $250 billion in small business aid, with $125 billion channeled through community-based financial institutions that serve farmers, family, women, minority and veteran-owned cos, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement.Hong Kong Unveils Virus Relief Package (6:33 a.m. NY)Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced a fresh government stimulus package worth about HK$137.5 billion ($17.7 billion) to support the city's deteriorating economy. The spending package will include an HK$80 billion job security program to subsidize 50% of wages for affected workers for six months.WHO Says Lifting Lockdowns May Be Premature (6 a.m. NY)"To think we're close to an endpoint would be dangerous," Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization's regional director for Europe, said at a briefing. Sweden is showing a fresh surge in cases, while the WHO is concerned about a dramatic increase in Turkey, he said. Countries should not lower their guard, he said."We have got to ensure that the public understands we're moving to a new phase," said Bruce Aylward, one of the WHO's top officials who recently led a mission to Spain. Countries need to make sure they're hunting the disease down, because the key to eradication is testing patients, isolating them and tracing their close contacts. Some restrictions may need to continue for some time while others are gradually loosened, he said. "It's not lifting lockdowns and going back to normal. It's a new normal."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Trump’s ‘Friend’ Jack Ma Helps Repair China’s Image After Virus Posted: 08 Apr 2020 05:15 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Jack Ma's influence in the world has gotten bigger since he stepped down as chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.China's richest person is now playing a prominent role in philanthropic efforts that are effectively helping President Xi Jinping improve the country's image overseas after Covid-19 spread around the world, unleashing a devastating human and economic toll. That's a stark turn from just 18 months earlier, when Ma had to publicly dispute speculation that the government had prompted him to step down from the e-commerce giant he founded.New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Saturday became one of the latest to thank Ma, as well as Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai and the Chinese government, for the delivery of 1,000 ventilators to the state. Asked about the donation, President Donald Trump -- who had earlier blamed Beijing for failing to provide enough information about what he had called the "Chinese virus" -- said Ma was "a friend of mine" and "we appreciate it very much."Ma has now donated at least 18 million masks, testing kits and other supplies to more than 100 countries worldwide, from Africa and Europe to the U.S. and Russia. The donations have helped build goodwill for China's government, whose official offers of assistance have been met with more suspicion.The European Mayor Who Doesn't Want China's Help With VirusWhile wealthy Westerners such as Bill Gates regularly conduct large-scale philanthropic efforts and win praise from politicians, in China it's a relatively new phenomenon. The Communist Party has an uneasy relationship with billionaires, viewing them as both a necessary evil of private sector-led growth needed to boost incomes and a potential threat if they become too powerful."For a long time China has relied on official propaganda and massive investment overseas as major instruments for promoting its soft power," said Zhiqun Zhu, chair of the department of international relations at Bucknell University who was written and edited books on China's foreign policy. "Billionaire philanthropy is a new approach. Of course, for businesses, it is also a public relations opportunity."Ma declined a request for an interview sent to the press office of Alibaba, which also declined to comment to emailed questions. The billionaire joined Twitter on March 16, just as tensions were rising between the U.S. and China over who was to blame for the virus as Beijing faced criticism for muzzling doctors who called early attention to the mysterious disease. In his first tweets, he began promoting his foundation's shipments of aid, posting "all the best to our friends in America" with an emoji of praying hands.Ma has since repeatedly called for the world to unite in the fight against the virus, using the phrase "One world, one fight!" and "Together, we can do this!" In a Weibo post on April 1, Ma denounced "online rumors" that his foundation's donations were rejected by some recipients and defended the quality of its medical supplies. "Charity is not for praise or acknowledgement, and we are not afraid of criticism or accusations," he wrote.Other Chinese tech giants also showed their philanthropy. Xiaomi Corp., co-founded by Lei Jun, pledged coronavirus relief for India, where the communications-equipment maker generates lots of revenue. The Globe and Mail reported that Huawei Technologies Co., founded by billionaire Ren Zhengfei, sent more than 1 million masks to Canada, where his daughter -- Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou -- has been fighting extradition to the U.S. since her arrest in 2018. She has denied wrongdoing.Xiaomi said it has donated medical supplies to 15 countries and emphasizes its activities in India because it wants to spur more donations there. In an email, Huawei said "it will do what it can" to donate to governments and communities after taking care of its employees, and said that those decisions have "no link to executives' personal choices.""Prominent Chinese entrepreneurs would not make these gestures without permission from the Communist Party," said Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor emeritus who introduced the concept of soft power in the 1980s. "China has used a government-sponsored propaganda campaign and aid programs to promote the theme that China's behavior had been benign, and to restore its soft power."China's foreign ministry has promoted Ma's donation of face masks, testing kits and other materials in Africa: In South Sudan, the Chinese ambassador last month posed in photos with local officials and thanked Xi for his painstaking efforts to control he outbreak. State-run media organizations have also prominently covered the donations, particularly those by Ma.'Friendly Sentiments'"We appreciate the kind donation made by Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation, which vividly illustrates the friendly sentiments of the Chinese people toward the African people," foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a March 23 press briefing in Beijing. He added that China would "continue to coordinate and encourage Chinese enterprises and private institutions to actively provide support to African countries."During his time at Alibaba, Ma regularly met with heads of state, including in 2016 at the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou -- the city near Shanghai where Alibaba is based and Xi once served as party secretary of Zhejiang province. After Trump's election in 2016, Ma promised to create a million jobs in the U.S. by linking small businesses with Chinese online buyers.Ma, a member of the Communist Party, has also been a vocal backer of Xi's policies in recent years. In 2016, Ma proposed that the nation's top security bureau use big data to prevent crime, endorsing the government's effort to build unparalleled online surveillance of the world's most-populous nation. He has also said China benefits from the stability of its one-party system and spoke out in favor of the country's strict online censorship.'Wings Melt'In a speech at Alibaba headquarters in September 2018, Ma denied that he was pushed aside."I got rumors from outside China saying 'It's because the government wants to push you down.' Nobody can." He said he'd been planning his exit for a decade, and wanted to lead the way for Chinese entrepreneurs in passing on a major company to professionals, rather than creating another family dynasty."Fly too close to the sun, your wings melt," said Duncan Clark, author of "Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built," which was translated into about 30 languages. "He has to set the right altitude to beat his competitors, stay ahead, but not incur the wrath of the government. He's just so much better at soft power than the government, in part because in this case he isn't tied up with the whole 'original sin' question about the origins of the virus."While the U.S. and China have sparred throughout the crisis, some European politicians have also been critical of China -- particularly over test kits they found to be inaccurate. The European Union's chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, warned in a blog post last month that a geopolitical "struggle for influence" is hidden behind the "politics of generosity."Hua Chunying, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry, denied on Twitter that China engages in "mask propaganda," saying that the donations are to "reciprocate kindness and help others to the best of our ability."David Shambaugh, who once worked at the U.S. National Security Council and is now a professor at George Washington University heading the China Policy Program, said "the more masks the better -- it doesn't matter where they come from."Still, Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at SOAS University of London, said the philanthropy from China's billionaires is accompanied by a "highly orchestrated propaganda operation." While it's hard to know what really motivates billionaires like Ma, he said, it can't be separated from other reasons like "supporting China's foreign policy and currying favor with the party and Xi.""Most people in most democracies do not know much about China, or of what their own governments and philanthropists had done in terms of offering medical supplies to China previously," Tsang said. "And so many will be impressed by the apparent generosity."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| WHO director-general implores world leaders not to politicize the coronavirus pandemic Posted: 08 Apr 2020 05:06 PM PDT  Without directly naming President Trump, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday asked global leaders to refrain from politicizing the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.On Tuesday, Trump said he will "strongly consider" ending U.S. funding to WHO, the United Nations health agency. He said WHO "called it wrong" on the pandemic and claimed they "minimized the threat very strongly." WHO declared a global pandemic on March 11, a little more than a week after Trump said the coronavirus would "disappear" like a "miracle."More than 83,000 people have died worldwide from COVID-19, and at least 1.4 million people have been infected. When asked about Trump's comments, Tedros said, "Why would I care about being attacked when people are dying? I know that I am just an individual. Tedros is just a dot in the whole universe." The most important thing now is to save lives, he said, and there is "no need to use COVID to score political points. You have many other ways to prove yourself. If you don't want many more body bags, then you refrain from politicizing it."More stories from theweek.com Dr. Anthony Fauci cautiously predicts kids will return to school next fall, 'but it's going to be different' The coming backlash against the public health experts Body of Robert Kennedy's 8-year-old great-grandson recovered from Chesapeake Bay
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| UN delivers 90 tons of COVID-19 aid to Venezuela Posted: 08 Apr 2020 04:19 PM PDT  A plane carrying 90 tons of UN health, water and sanitation aid arrived in Venezuela on Wednesday to help the cash-strapped country fight the coronavirus pandemic. The shipment includes 28,000 Personal Protective Equipment kits for health workers, oxygen concentrators, pediatric beds, water quality control products and hygiene kits, the UN said. "This is the first United Nations humanitarian shipment in support of the Venezuela COVID-19 outbreak," said Peter Grohmann, the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Venezuela.
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| Coronavirus in Africa: Emergency laws v individual rights Posted: 08 Apr 2020 04:11 PM PDT  Security forces in several states have allegedly abused their powers during the Covid-19 crisis.
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| Trump scapegoating of WHO obscures its key role in tackling pandemic Posted: 08 Apr 2020 03:53 PM PDT  The World Health Organization has a tiny budget – for which the US is in arrears – but experts have praised its response to the coronavirus crisis * Coronavirus – live US updates * Live global updates * See all our coronavirus coverageDonald Trump has blamed the World Health Organization for failures in the initial response to the coronavirus pandemic, even threatening to cut its funding, but most health experts say it has performed well with limited resources.Accusing the WHO of giving bad advice, being "China-centric" and even withholding information, Trump claimed to have stopped US funding in a press briefing on Tuesday, only to claim a few minutes later that he was just considering it, pending a review of its performance.In fact, the US is already about $200m in arrears in assessed contributions (national membership fees). It has given more in donations, and was the biggest single donor in 2019 – certainly far more than China, which gives a paltry amount given the size of its economy.But the US is far from providing the majority of the WHO's funds, as Trump claimed, and its voluntary contributions have largely been tied to specific projects. WHO's total annual budget is about $2.5bn, and contributions from member states have not significantly increased over three decades."The WHO's budget is around the equivalent of a large US hospital, which is utterly incommensurate with its global responsibilities," said Lawrence Gostin, a public health law professor at Georgetown University. "So, if the US president were a global health leader, he'd be leading a call to at minimum double the WHO budget in the face of this pandemic."Global health experts have generally given the WHO good marks for its transparency and the speed with which it has responded to the coronavirus, under its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. It is universally seen as much better than its sluggish, error-strewn response to the Ebola outbreak in west Africa in 2014, three years before Tedros took over."I have been a longstanding critic and I've described their performance on Ebola as catastrophic. But I think overall their performance on this outbreak has been, not perfect, but pretty good," Ashish Jha, a public health professor at Harvard, said."They've been very transparent as much as they have known the data. They have had daily calls, they have been very clear about the severity of this illness, and how the global community has to respond."Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, took part in WHO conference calls about coronavirus from 7 January, according to sources familiar with the conversations.Tedros declared a "public health emergency of international concern" on 30 January, calling on governments to pursue containment and testing efforts. The declaration was criticised by some as coming several days too late, but others say the organisation's awareness of the dangers was held back by China's government, which initially suppressed information about the initial outbreak in Wuhan, and refused entry to WHO experts.On the same day Trump was confidently predicting the coronavirus did not present a serious threat to the US, assuring Americans: "It's going to have a very good ending."Gavin Yamey, the director of Duke University's center for policy impact in global health, said: "If the United States had followed the WHO's very clear advice on identifying cases, isolating cases and conducting contact tracing, then it wouldn't be in the appalling situation that it is in today."Despite its declaration, the WHO did not advocate travel restrictions of the sort imposed by Trump a day later on non-American travellers arriving from China. The president has pointed to this as an example of bad advice. But Gostin, who is director of the WHO centre on global health law, said that the organisation cannot generally call for travel bans under international law – and such bans can be counterproductive, leading countries to withhold vital information for fear of economic isolation."To blame the WHO for acting on the basis of international law and science in ways that are entirely consistent with what WHO practices have been for decades is the height of hypocrisy," he said.Trump claimed that his ban "shut down" intercontinental transmission of the virus, but an ABC television investigation found that there were 3,200 flights from China to the US in the critical period between December and March.By the time Trump's ban was announced, it was far too late to stop the virus entering the US. It was already rampant in US communities, but Trump continued to tell Americans that the outbreak would not affect them, and wholesale US testing failed to get off the ground for another six weeks.The US president's accusations that the WHO is "China-centric" have more resonance with public health scholars. The WHO has largely excluded Taiwan from its discussions, and dodged questions about the Taiwanese response, which has been one of the most effective. But because of pressure from Beijing – which sees Taiwan as an integral part of its territory and opposes any form of recognition – the blindspot is a UN-wide phenomenon.Tedros also praised Chinese transparency and its national response, lauding President Xi Jinping for his "political leadership", even though Beijing had tried to hide the seriousness of the situation in Wuhan for several critical weeks,."I think the effusive praise for China, in the early days, was probably unnecessary," Jha said.Other say that a certain amount of diplomatic flattery was necessary to coax Xi into allowing in WHO experts and sharing information.Amanda Glassman, the executive vice-president and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, said a deeper problem is the WHO's low budget and relatively toothless structure. Unlike the nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has no redress against governments that do not cooperate."It operates in countries at the pleasure and permission of the host country governments. So in the case of China, to be allowed to enter China, it was a negotiation to get there," Glassman said.She added that the real challenge for the WHO has yet come, when the pandemic really hits poorer countries with fragile, underfunded health services, who rely heavily on the organisation.Unlike the Ebola outbreak in 2014, the US will not be there to take the lead, and it will be up to the WHO to coordinate scarce resources and expertise."Can they do that in 40 countries at once?" Glassman asked. "That is the part that remains to be tested."
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| The United Nations goes missing Posted: 08 Apr 2020 03:18 PM PDT |
| Biden vs. Trump: General election battle is now set Posted: 08 Apr 2020 03:12 PM PDT  Barring unforeseen disaster, Joe Biden will represent the Democratic Party against President Donald Trump this fall, the former vice president's place on the general election ballot cemented Wednesday by Bernie Sanders' decision to end his campaign. "I'm confident because Joe Biden's values reflect the values of the majority of the American people that we can win." In Biden and Trump, voters will choose between two white septuagenarians with dramatically different prescriptions for health care, climate change, foreign policy and leadership in an era of extreme partisanship.
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| Wuhan Is Returning to Life. So Are Its Disputed Wet Markets Posted: 08 Apr 2020 02:00 PM PDT |
| Fears of coronavirus outbreak reportedly lead to ceasefire in Yemen Posted: 08 Apr 2020 01:38 PM PDT  Fears of the COVID-19 coronavirus are reportedly bringing about a ceasefire in Yemen.The Saudi-led coalition fighting against the Houthi rebels in Yemen are set to announce a suspension of military operations across the country at midnight Wednesday, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The decision answers a United Nations call to halt combat.There are likely many reasons why the U.N. is pushing for a ceasefire, but the argument that seemingly stuck is that a lack of fighting decreases the chances of a COVID-19 outbreak in Yemen, which so far has not reported any confirmed cases of the disease. Staving off an outbreak is crucial, especially considering Yemen is already steeped in the world's largest humanitarian crisis.It's unclear if the Houthi opposition will follow in the coalition's footsteps, but a spokesman said the group sent the U.N. a plan to end the war, which began in 2014. Read more at Reuters.More stories from theweek.com Dr. Anthony Fauci cautiously predicts kids will return to school next fall, 'but it's going to be different' The coming backlash against the public health experts Body of Robert Kennedy's 8-year-old great-grandson recovered from Chesapeake Bay
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| Editorial Roundup: US Posted: 08 Apr 2020 01:27 PM PDT |
| Doctor's death highlights limits of coronavirus death count Posted: 08 Apr 2020 01:12 PM PDT  As the coronavirus bore down on New York, Dr. Doug Bass' family begged him to work from home. "He said he was on the front lines and they needed him," his brother, Jonathan Bass, told The Associated Press. It happened so quickly he was never tested for COVID-19, but his brother believes he was among the hundreds of undiagnosed cases that, for weeks, have been excluded from the official coronavirus death toll.
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| Outcry over racial data grows as virus slams black Americans Posted: 08 Apr 2020 12:54 PM PDT  As the coronavirus tightens its grip across the country, it is cutting a particularly devastating swath through an already vulnerable population — black Americans. Democratic lawmakers and community leaders in cities hard-hit by the pandemic have been sounding the alarm over what they see as a disturbing trend of the virus killing African Americans at a higher rate, along with a lack of overall information about the race of victims as the nation's death toll mounts. Among the cities where black residents have been hard-hit: New York, Detroit, New Orleans, Chicago and Milwaukee.
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| Saudi-led coalition to begin Yemen ceasefire on Thursday -Saudi officials Posted: 08 Apr 2020 12:33 PM PDT |
| Some doctors moving away from ventilators for virus patients Posted: 08 Apr 2020 11:52 AM PDT  As health officials around the world push to get more ventilators to treat coronavirus patients, some doctors are moving away from using the breathing machines when they can. The reason: Some hospitals have reported unusually high death rates for coronavirus patients on ventilators, and some doctors worry that the machines could be harming certain patients. Mechanical ventilators push oxygen into patients whose lungs are failing.
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| Trump Slammed the WHO Over Coronavirus. He's Not Alone. Posted: 08 Apr 2020 11:46 AM PDT  President Donald Trump unleashed a tirade against the World Health Organization on Tuesday, accusing it of acting too slowly to sound the alarm about the coronavirus. It was not the first time in this pandemic that the global health body has faced such criticism.Government officials, health experts and analysts have in recent weeks raised concerns about how the organization has responded to the outbreak.In Japan, Taro Aso, the deputy prime minister and finance minister, recently noted that some people have started referring to the World Health Organization as the "Chinese Health Organization" because of what he described as its close ties to Beijing. Taiwanese officials say the WHO ignored its early warnings about the virus because China refuses to allow Taiwan, a self-governing island it claims as its territory, to become a member.Critics say the WHO has been too trusting of the Chinese government, which initially tried to conceal the outbreak in Wuhan. Others have faulted the organization and its leader, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, for moving too slowly in declaring a global health emergency.The WHO, a U.N. agency, has defended its response, saying Wednesday that it alerted the world to the threat posed by the virus in a timely manner and that it was "committed to ensuring all member states are able to respond effectively to this pandemic."The agency's defenders say that its powers over any individual government are limited, and that it has done the best it can in dealing with a public health threat with few precedents in history.There will be time later to assess successes and failings, "this virus and its shattering consequences," the United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, said Wednesday in a statement praising the WHO as "absolutely critical" to vanquishing COVID-19.Here's why the WHO is coming under attack.The WHO has not pushed China on early missteps.When cases of a mysterious viral pneumonia first appeared in Wuhan in December, Chinese health officials silenced whistleblowers and repeatedly played down the severity of the outbreak.Even as late as mid-January, as the virus spread beyond China's borders, Chinese officials described it as "preventable and controllable" and said there was no evidence it could be transmitted between humans on a broad scale.The WHO endorsed the government's claims, saying in mid-January, for example, that human-to-human transmission had not been proved.Critics say the organization's repeated deference to Beijing exacerbated the spread of the disease. A group of international experts was not allowed to visit Wuhan until mid-February."They could have been more forceful, especially in the initial stages in the crisis when there was a cover-up and there was inaction," said Yanzhong Huang, a global health expert specializing in China at Seton Hall University.Huang noted that during the SARS epidemic in 2002 and 2003, which killed more than 700 people worldwide, the WHO pushed the Chinese government to be more transparent by publicly criticizing it for trying to conceal the outbreak.At one point during the SARS epidemic, officials at hospitals in Beijing forced SARS patients into ambulances and drove them around to avoid their being seen by a visiting delegation of WHO experts, according to reports at the time.WHO officials were slow to declare a public health emergency, critics say.Even as the virus spread to more than half a dozen countries and forced China to place parts of Hubei province under lockdown in late January, the WHO was reluctant to declare it a global health emergency.WHO officials said at the time that a committee that discussed the epidemic was divided on the question of whether to call it an emergency but concluded that it was too early. One official added that they weighed the impact such a declaration might have on the people of China.After the United States announced a ban on most foreign citizens who had recently visited China, the WHO again seemed to show deference to Chinese officials, saying that travel restrictions were unnecessary. The group officially called the spread of the coronavirus a pandemic March 11.Some experts argue that the institution's delay in making such declarations deprived other countries of valuable time to prepare hospitals for an influx of patients."It reinforced the reluctance to take early strong measures before the catastrophe had actually landed on other shores," said François Godement, senior adviser for Asia at Institut Montaigne, a nonprofit group in Paris. "The WHO's tardiness or reluctance to call out the problem in full helped those who wanted to delay difficult decisions."The WHO defended its actions, saying Wednesday that it had "alerted member states to the significant risks and consequences of COVID-19 and provided them with a continuous flow of information" ever since Chinese officials first reported the outbreak Dec. 31.Guterres of the United Nations said, "It is possible that the same facts have had different readings by different entities." He added in his statement: "Once we have finally turned the page on this epidemic, there must be a time to look back fully to understand how such a disease emerged and spread its devastation so quickly across the globe and how all those involved reacted to the crisis."China's influence at the WHO is growing.China's leader, Xi Jinping, has made it a priority to strengthen Beijing's clout at international institutions, including the WHO, seeing the U.S.-dominated global order as an impediment to his country's rise as a superpower.China contributes only a small fraction of the WHO's $6 billion budget, while the United States is one of its main benefactors. But in recent years, Beijing has worked in other ways to expand its influence at the organization.The government has lobbied the WHO to promote traditional Chinese medicine, which Xi has worked to harness as a source of national pride and deployed as a soft-power tool in developing countries, despite skepticism from some scientists about its effectiveness.Last year, the WHO offered an endorsement of traditional Chinese medicine, including it in its influential medical compendium. The move was roundly criticized by animal welfare activists, who argued that it could contribute to a surge in illegal trafficking of wildlife whose parts are used in Chinese remedies.China has sought to promote traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of symptoms of the coronavirus both at home and abroad. Last month, the WHO was criticized after it removed a warning against taking traditional herbal remedies to treat the coronavirus from its websites in mainland China.China's role at the WHO will probably continue to grow in the coming years, especially if Western governments retreat from the organization, as Trump has threatened."This is part of China's efforts to more actively engage in international institutions," said Huang, the global health expert. "It will not please every country or every actor, but it's going to affect the agenda of the WHO."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Eight U.K. Doctors Died From Coronavirus. All Were Immigrants. Posted: 08 Apr 2020 11:46 AM PDT  LONDON -- The eight men moved to Britain from different corners of its former empire, all of them doctors or doctors-to-be, becoming foot soldiers in the effort to build a free universal health service after World War II.Now their names have become stacked atop a grim list: the first, and so far only, doctors publicly reported to have died after catching the coronavirus in Britain's aching National Health Service.For a country ripped apart in recent years by Brexit and the anti-immigrant movement that birthed it, the deaths of the eight doctors -- from Egypt, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Sudan -- attest to the extraordinary dependence of Britain's treasured health service on workers from abroad.It is a story tinged with racism, as white, British doctors have largely dominated the prestigious disciplines while foreign doctors have typically found work in places and practices that are apparently putting them on the dangerous front lines of the coronavirus pandemic."When people were standing on the street clapping for NHS workers, I thought, 'A year and a half ago, they were talking about Brexit and how these immigrants have come into our country and want to take our jobs,'" said Dr. Hisham el-Khidir, whose cousin Dr. Adil el-Tayar, a transplant surgeon, died March 25 from the coronavirus in western London."Now today, it's the same immigrants that are trying to work with the locals," said el-Khidir, a surgeon in Norwich, "and they are dying on the front lines."By Tuesday, 7,097 people had died in British hospitals from the coronavirus, the government said Wednesday, a leap of 938 from the day before, the largest daily rise in the death toll.And the victims have included not just the eight doctors but a number of nurses who worked alongside them, at least one from overseas. Health workers are stretched thin as hospitals across the country are filled with patients, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who this week was moved into intensive care with the coronavirus.Britain is not the only country reckoning with its debt to foreign doctors amid the terror and chaos of the pandemic. In the United States, where immigrants make up more than a quarter of all doctors but often face long waits for green cards, New York and New Jersey have already cleared the way for graduates of overseas medical schools to suit up in the coronavirus response.But Britain, where nearly a third of doctors in National Health Service hospitals are immigrants, has especially strong links to the medical school systems of its former colonies, making it a natural landing place.That was true for el-Tayar, 64, the oldest son of a government clerk and a housewife from Atbara, Sudan, a railway city on the Nile.He had 11 siblings, and one left a special impression: Osman, a brother, who became ill as a child and died without suitable medical treatment. Though el-Tayar rarely spoke of his brother's death, he gave the same name to his oldest son."In my mind, I think that's what led him to medicine," el-Khidir said. "He didn't want anyone else in his family to feel that."After graduating from the University of Khartoum, el-Tayar decided to help address a tide of kidney disease sweeping across sub-Saharan Africa. So he moved to Britain in the early 1990s to train as a specialist transplant surgeon. He returned to Sudan around 2010 and helped set up a transplant program there.But the deteriorating political situation in Sudan and the recent birth of a son persuaded el-Tayar to settle back in Britain, where he went to work once again for the health service. Having lost his status as a senior doctor when he left for Sudan, he had taken up work filling in at a surgical assessment unit in Herefordshire, northwest of London, examining patients coming through the emergency room.It was there that his family believes el-Tayar, working with only rudimentary protective gear, contracted the virus. Sequestered in the western London home where he loved sitting next to his 12-year-old son, he became so short of breath recently that he could not string together a sentence. While on a ventilator, his heart failed him.Had the health service started screening hospital patients for the virus sooner or supplied doctors with better protective gear, el-Tayar might have lived, said his cousin, el-Khidir."In our morbidity analyses, we go through each and every case and ask, 'Was it preventable? Was it avoidable?' " he said. "I'm trying to answer this question with my cousin now. Even with all the difficulties, I've got to say the answer has to be yes."Analysts warn that doctor shortages across countries ravaged by the coronavirus will worsen as the virus spreads. While ventilators may be the scarcest resource for now, a shortage of doctors and nurses trained to operate them could leave hospitals struggling to make use even of what they have.By recruiting foreign doctors, Britain saves the roughly $270,000 in taxpayer money that it costs to train doctors locally, a boon to a system that does not spend enough on medical education to staff its own hospitals. That effectively leaves Britain depending on the largess of countries with weaker health care systems to train its own workforce.Even so, the doctors are hampered by thousands of dollars in annual visa fees and, on top of that, a $500 surcharge for using the very health service they work for.Excluded from the most prestigious disciplines, immigrant doctors have come to dominate so-called Cinderella specialties, like family and elderly medicine, turning them into pillars of Britain's health system. And unlike choosier Britain-born doctors, they have historically gone to work in what one lawmaker in 1961 called "the rottenest, worst hospitals in the country," the very ones that most needed a doctor.Those same places are now squarely in the path of the virus."Migrant doctors are architects of the NHS -- they're what built it and held it together and worked in the most unpopular, most difficult areas, where white British doctors don't want to go and work," said Dr. Aneez Esmail, a professor of general practice at the University of Manchester. "It's a hidden story."When el-Tayar moved to Britain in the 1990s, he was following a pipeline laid by the family of another doctor who has now died after contracting the coronavirus: Dr. Amged el-Hawrani, 55.An ear, nose and throat specialist, el-Hawrani was about 11 when his father, a radiologist, brought the family in 1975 from Khartoum to Taunton, a town in southwestern England, and then Bristol, a bigger city nearby.Many Sudanese doctors at the time were burnishing their skills in Britain before returning home or moving to Persian Gulf countries for higher wages. But el-Hawrani's family turned their home into a staging post for Sudanese doctors interested in longer-term stays, hosting their families during exams or house hunts."The more the merrier," said Amal el-Hawrani, a younger brother of el-Hawrani. "My mum always liked that."Being British-Sudanese in the 1980s was not easy. Race riots flared in cities across the country. Mosques were scarce. Amged el-Hawrani went to school almost exclusively with white British classmates.The young doctor quietly stood up for his family: When someone once tried to kill a 100-year-old fern in their garden by cutting out a ring of bark, el-Hawrani snapped off branches and nailed them across the gap so that nutrients could get across.Still, discrimination bothered him. When it came time to follow his father into medicine, el-Hawrani told his brother that he "wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon but felt that maybe because of certain prejudices he didn't get it."His resolve only grew stronger after an older brother, Ashraf, a fellow doctor, died at 29 of causes related to asthma. Amged el-Hawrani discovered his brother's body.Before el-Hawrani's death, on March 28, he had finally come around to the idea that his only son, Ashraf, named in his brother's memory, would study English instead of the family trade. Ashraf said in a statement that his father "was dedicated towards his family.""Now he has to make his decisions about which university to go to on his own," Amal el-Hawrani said of Ashraf. "He was expecting to have his father's help."The coronavirus has taken a devastating toll on migrant doctors across Britain, leaving at least six others dead: Dr. Habib Zaidi, 76, a longtime general practitioner from Pakistan; Dr. Alfa Sa'adu, 68, a geriatric doctor from Nigeria; Dr. Jitendra Rathod, 62, a heart surgeon from India; Dr. Anton Sebastianpillai, in his 70s, a geriatric doctor from Sri Lanka; Dr. Mohamed Sami Shousha, 79, a breast tissue specialist from Egypt; and Dr. Syed Haider, in his 80s, a general practitioner from Pakistan.Barry Hudson, a longtime patient of Zaidi in southeastern England, recalled their exam table conversations about England's cricket team."He was a big figure in the community," Hudson said. "He had a proper doctor's manner. He didn't rush anybody."For families that love to gather, grieving at a distance has been wrenching.El-Tayar was buried beside his father and grandfather in Sudan, as he had wanted. But because only cargo planes were flying there, his wife and children could not accompany the coffin.At el-Hawrani's burial, an imam said a prayer before a small, spread-out crowd, and the doctor's four living brothers and son lowered his coffin into the ground. Then they dispersed.His brother, Amal el-Hawrani, permitted himself a single intimacy: a hug with his mother, because "I couldn't turn that away," he said.Then she returned to her home in Bristol, along with a son who had visited Amged el-Hawrani in the hospital. Fearful of passing on the virus, he had to forbid her from his room to keep her from bringing in food.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Saudi officials announce Yemen cease-fire amid pandemic Posted: 08 Apr 2020 11:24 AM PDT  The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen announced Wednesday that its forces would begin a cease-fire starting Thursday, a step that could pave the way for the first direct peace talks between the two sides that have been at war for more than five years. In a statement carried by Saudi Arabia's official state news agency, a Saudi military spokesman, Col. Turki al-Malki, said that the ceasefire would last two weeks and that it comes in response to U.N. calls to halt hostilities amid the coronavirus pandemic. There was no immediate reaction from Houthi leaders or Yemen's internationally recognized government to the coalition's statement.
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| Dems debate how to hit Trump on virus, economy amid crisis Posted: 08 Apr 2020 11:21 AM PDT  Democrats are wrestling over how best to assail President Donald Trump for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the economy's shutdown, even as the country lurches into an unpredictable campaign season during its most devastating crisis in decades. Trump has provided Democrats with plenty of political fodder, including leading a slow-footed federal response to an outbreak that has caused profound economic, health and social disruption. Democrats are already using reams of video of Trump denying and playing down a crisis now killing hundreds of Americans daily, erasing millions of jobs and closing countless businesses.
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| Ecuador struggles to bury coronavirus dead; some bodies lost Posted: 08 Apr 2020 10:06 AM PDT  Alfonso Cedeño died at a crowded hospital in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil, where the only bed doctors could offer was an ambulance stretcher. Two weeks later, his family doesn't know where his body is. "My uncle is nowhere to be found," Alfonso Mariscal said Tuesday.
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| After Trump criticism, U.N. chief says now not the time to assess virus response Posted: 08 Apr 2020 10:06 AM PDT |
| Louisiana responds to coronavirus with rare bipartisanship Posted: 08 Apr 2020 09:49 AM PDT  A simple gift from a bitter political rival — a medical mask emblazoned with Louisiana's state seal — has helped Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards pound home a bipartisan plea for people to stay at home and avoid spreading the new coronavirus. The token from Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry — and Landry's pledge to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with Edwards in the fight against the pandemic — marked a jaw-dropping truce in a state known for cantankerous politics. Before his recent demonstrations of support, Landry had been at odds with the governor over policy and political turf since both took office in 2016, while Edwards' more than four years in office had been marked by ugly budget battles with a Republican-dominated Legislature.
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| Airlines must refund flights cancelled because of coronavirus- EU Posted: 08 Apr 2020 09:36 AM PDT |
| Germany Joins Italy in Starting Debate Over an End to Lockdowns Posted: 08 Apr 2020 09:29 AM PDT |
| UN health agency on defensive after Trump slams it on virus Posted: 08 Apr 2020 09:12 AM PDT  In a heartfelt plea for unity, the World Health Organization's chief sought Wednesday to rise above sharp criticism and threats of funding cuts from U.S. President Donald Trump over the agency's response to the coronavirus outbreak. The vocal defense from the WHO director-general came a day after Trump blasted the U.N. agency for being "China-centric" and alleging that it had "criticized" his ban of travel from China as the COVID-19 outbreak was spreading from the city of Wuhan. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, an Ethiopian and the WHO's first African leader, projected humility and minimized his personal role while decrying invective and even racist slurs against him amid the organizaiton's response to the disease.
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| Full Steam Ahead: Property Rescue Looks at The Impact of HS2 on the Property Market Posted: 08 Apr 2020 09:06 AM PDT  Incredibly, the debate about HS2 has been discussed for longer than Brexit, and yet the government are yet to confirm whether it can fully go ahead.
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| As a tabloid editor, I covered Trump – and his ego. He hasn't changed a bit Posted: 08 Apr 2020 09:00 AM PDT  As Trump ad libs his way through the crisis, it's shocking to realize he's the same vain, bullying chancer we indulged all those years agoRunning one of the biggest and most important newspapers in America and New York made it impossible to avoid Donald J Trump.His sex life, his money, his businesses – whether they succeeded or failed – his narcissistic branding of city landmarks and his investment in football teams and ice skating rinks made him constant fodder for gossip columnists, investigative teams and sports writers.Whether planting complimentary stories or raging about unfavorable coverage, Trump ensured New York could not ignore him. Newspapers, magazines and TV stations were there to be used to enhance the Trump name.He had no shame in using the media and we had no qualms about capitalizing on his headline-generating power. For decades the competition centered on which tabloid could out-Trump the other. In a city where business leaders are hailed as celebrities, Trump became the undisputed master manipulator – the man who understood that the only thing worse than being written about was not being written about.Stories about him could be lurid. "Best sex I ever had" proclaimed Marla Maples, Trump's second wife, on the front page of the New York Post in 1990 – a headline and story engineered by Trump, furious that his first wife was engendering sympathy in rival gossip columns.Or stories could be potentially damaging, exposing Trump's dubious business practices. The Daily News' relentless coverage of lawsuits against the so-called Trump University filled acres of newsprint and earned me and other executives raging phone calls from the man himself.But there was no denying that his five-letter surname in a headline could sell newspapers. In their book Scandal: A Manual, legendary Daily News gossip columnists George Rush and Joanna Molloy recount how the maids and taxi drivers they met across the city all admitted to a fascination with stories about Trump.> Having masterminded coverage of him for more than a decade, I'm not laughing any moreFor Trump, facts were malleable. The only thing that mattered was column inches. We used Trump and he used us. It was a shameless, but, it seemed, harmless, relationship.All the time, however, Trump was learning the media world – developing a cunning understanding of how a quote or sound bite can be picked up across America, rebroadcast on TV and radio and make its way around the world; understanding how fame and a complete lack of self-censorship were a powerful combination.In those days, much of the backwards and forwards was fun. A ranting phone call from Trump Tower was viewed as a badge of honor, not something to fear; Trump's anger was something to laugh about as soon as the phone went down.Having masterminded coverage of him for more than a decade, I'm not laughing any more. The very things that brought him headlines are now the behavior that is costing America in ways unimaginable a few months ago.The president's nightly, often rambling, performances in front of the White House and world's press have developed a sad, deep, morbid fascination. It is unconscionable that even in the depth of one of the world's most deadly crises, Trump displays the same unfiltered – and frequently uneducated – outbursts that typified his relationship with his hometown press in the 1980s and 1990s.Instead of being the authoritative, inspiring voice that the nation so desperately needs in its darkest hour, Trump shows much of the same bullying, self-satisfied characteristics he learned in his dealings with the media in New York. In fact, Trump was more comfortable and coherent discussing gossip items as he is trying to inspire a frightened country.It's frightening enough that, with few exceptions, he surrounds himself with fawning acolytes who massage his ego with an obsequiousness that would bring shame in North Korea. It's shocking to witness that the vocabulary of the supposedly most powerful man in the world extends only as far as "incredible," "great" and "amazing", mostly in reference to himself. And it's disgraceful to witness him publicly berate journalists and governors who he feels don't treat him with due deference, as opposed to the respect with which his predecessors were treated. Alone those things make his press briefings excruciatingly embarrassing.What is more unforgivable is watching a president playing loose and fast with facts; a man who lives in an echo chamber of soundbites and quips – whether appropriate or not – shamefully adding to confusion and fear with every mixed message he utters.At a time when the country craves someone of balance and intellect, someone to reassure and calm, someone who can admit mistakes and rectify them, someone who can lead, we're sadly left with a man who craves attention and affirmation at any cost.As America watches its leader stammer, misspeak and ad lib his way through the coronavirus crisis, it's shocking to realize that Trump hasn't changed at all. He's that same person who would say anything for a headline in the tabloids.And it's heartbreaking to look back and realize how we feted and indulged him, never considering that with each headline, we were feeding the monster of his ego and enhancing his public profile – a profile that allowed him to eventually take control of the country.When Trump teased journalists with hints of dalliances and bragged of business dealings all those years ago, the price of being beaten was newspaper bragging rights in the morning. Now the price of his uncontrollable narcissism is far more serious, and it's being paid in American lives. * Martin Dunn is the former editor-in-chief of the New York Daily News. He is now a film-maker based in New York
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| Saudi Arabia’s World Is Coming Undone Posted: 08 Apr 2020 09:00 AM PDT  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Saudi Arabia is having a regular week: Facing off against Russia, taking phone calls from the U.S. president and supposedly cobbling together a plan to save the (oil) world. On Thursday, it will preside over an emergency meeting of OPEC+; the next day, a virtual gathering of G20 energy ministers.As opportunities to strut the global stage go, this one comes at a big cost: Like most oil exporters, the country faces a cataclysmic drop in demand. But this isn't just about the money. A new book lays out why the Covid-19 crisis offers a taste of a far-bigger problem: Saudi Arabia's world is coming apart. "Disunited Nations," by geopolitics analyst Peter Zeihan, is a typically engaging read, but it is not a happy book. Zeihan contends the postwar global order that rested largely on U.S. sponsorship (or attention, at least) is unraveling. After seven decades of America suppressing humanity's tendency toward general mayhem, more or less, with a muscular commitment to free trade and blanket security guarantees, a more Hobbesian future beckons.Few countries have been shaped by the Pax Americana quite like Saudi Arabia, which gets its own chapter. A sparsely populated, largely desert kingdom that emerged from clan warfare amid the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, it would have been a geopolitical backwater — except for its vast reserves of a certain vital commodity. Even then, that would have made it more a target for bigger powers to swoop in than an independent actor. But it just so happened that Saudi Arabia's emergence as both a country and a major oil producer coincided quite closely with World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. As Zeihan puts it:The Saudis lucked into a world in which their absolute security was a prerequisite for European security and East Asian security and American security. Now those twin pillars that defined the first nine decades of Saudi Arabia's existence — the oil market and American protection — are crumbling. Long-term growth in global oil demand is no longer a given, and Covid-19 is like a fever dream of all the worst aspects of that. Meanwhile, U.S. ambivalence toward the Middle East has been supercharged by the debacle in Iraq and the shale boom. Even if "energy dominance" has succumbed to its own inanity, U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil has diminished, not least in terms of feeling the need to keep it flowing to nominal allies. While America's continued enmity with Iran is welcome, the shrug given to September's attack on the Abqaiq oil-processing facility was a reminder the world has changed nonetheless.Saudi Arabia is trying to adapt. Doing so would have been easier with oil at $100 rather than $30. Oil provides about two-thirds of the government's revenue, and it has been running deficits for six years already. According to Saudi Arabian Oil Co.'s accounts, royalties, income tax and dividends to the state added up to about $208 billion last year. This year's take may drop by more than $100 billion, even with jacked-up oil production.(4)Against this stands the Saudi stash: almost $700 billion of net foreign assets.(1)This buys time, but not immunity. Financial markets notice sovereigns (and companies) cannibalizing their balance sheets long before the money runs out. It's hard to overstate the economic overhaul required. Two-thirds of the national workforce (as opposed to ex-pats) is employed by the government, with wages accounting for about 40% of public spending (which makes budget cuts tough to propose and even tougher to execute).(2)As it often does, oil has brought enormous wealth, but at the price of economic dynamism. One of the most striking aspects of this is how fuel subsidies have distorted Saudi Arabia's own energy consumption. This does not look like a healthy, modern economy entering a more carbon-constrained world.(5) A recent study of the fiscal models of Gulf Cooperation Council members published by the International Monetary Fund concluded that getting onto a more sustainable path would require an immediate adjustment equivalent to almost a third of the non-oil-and-gas economy on average(3). In other words, these countries are writing checks their future generations can't cash.At the same time, American backing is diminishing. It isn't that the U.S. has withdrawn altogether; more that, as threatening letters from senators have demonstrated once again, it can't be depended upon. In that light, the attempt to rope the U.S. into a brave new market-management scheme — call it OPEC-doubleplusungood — can be seen as an effort to preserve a much broader, but disintegrating, constellation of forces.Far from prompting greater caution, Zeihan expects Saudi Arabia to respond to all this with aggression. Sporting a relatively weak military and surrounded by the proxies of arch-rival Iran, Saudi Arabia's strategy will be to exploit its primary adversary's over-extension, using its wealth to fund opposing proxies of its own. The idea being to light enough fires elsewhere in the region in order to avoid a direct, and likely devastating, war. Zeihan calls this "the geopolitics of arson."Like I said, it's not a happy book. But while that remains a scenario for now, it isn't pure conjecture. Saudi Arabia has long experience meddling in other conflicts from Afghanistan to Syria. And it has already adopted a more aggressive foreign policy in Yemen and with regards to Qatar under the de facto leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.The emergence of MBS, as he is called, represents a jump from the ruling family's old generation to its millennial incarnation. The ensuing centralization of power in his hands makes that far more than just a symbolic break. One of the most interesting aspects of this to emerge is his apparent embrace of populism, with his, ahem, anti-corruption round-up of fellow princes and easing of some restrictions on women being early examples of this.In a fascinating recent article, Kristin Diwan of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington puts these moves in the context of a broader shift toward a more overt nationalism as a means of legitimizing the state. This came to the fore in the recent IPO of Aramco, which ended up being more of an exercise in national pride than mere fundraising. Having encouraged citizens to borrow to buy the shares, the government has, Diwan writes:… effectively multiplied the public's exposure to oil risk, amplifying the cost of the current downturn. Still, it may not be the last sacrifice the Saudi state demands of its citizens. If the economic situation further declines, the Saudi government is likely to lean further on the new nationalist narrative promoting a strong work ethic and greater self-reliance.It's fair to say a headstrong ruler lacking institutional checks and fostering nationalist fervor to offset economic hardship is not a model that tends toward mellow outcomes. It does, on the other hand, dovetail all too neatly with Zeihan's vision of global fracture. Oil bulls banking on Saudi Arabia to save the day this week should ponder what that means for the health of their market when this current crisis has passed.(1) This is based on a simple valuation tool I put together for Saudi Aramco's IPO. Main assumptions for 2020 include net margins for downstream and chemicals operations of $1 per barrel and $100 per tonne and 95% and 90% utilization, respectively. Includes $2.1 billion of free cash flow from Saudi Basic Industries Corp., based on the consensus forecast and assuming 70% ownership for two-thirds of the year. Assumes natural gas production of 10 billion cubic feet per day and output of other liquids and ethane of 2.3 million barrels a day. Upstream costs per barrel of oil equivalent, including depreciation, at $6.(2) Net foreign assets were $679 billion as of 3Q 2019 (source: Bloomberg Intelligence).(3) "Public Wage Bills in the Middle East and Central Asia", International Monetary Fund, 2018.(4) For more on this, see Jim Krane's book "Energy Kingdoms" (Columbia University Press, 2019).(5) "The Future of Oil and Fiscal Sustainability in the GCC Region", International Monetary Fund, January 2020. Thisanalysis uses the Permanent Income Hypothesis. This estimates each country's total wealth and then modelslimiting expenditure to the estimated annuity value of that wealth while saving a significant portion of oil receipts in revenue-generating assets whose dividend income is meant to replace oil revenue in the future. The authors found that, on average, the GCC countries would require an immediate fiscal adjustment equivalent to 32% of their non-hydrocarbon economy in order for future generations to equally share the existing level of wealth.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy, mining and commodities. He previously was editor of the Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column and wrote for the Financial Times' Lex column. He was also an investment banker.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| AP PHOTOS: As Wuhan reopens, people begin to venture outside Posted: 08 Apr 2020 08:40 AM PDT  Some people couldn't wait to leave town. Chinese authorities ended the lockdown of Wuhan on Wednesday, allowing people to move about and leave the city for the first time in 76 days. It still killed more than 2,500 people in Wuhan, by far the highest death toll in China, and grew into a pandemic.
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| Coronavirus: Nigeria's mega churches adjust to empty auditoriums Posted: 08 Apr 2020 08:39 AM PDT  With worshippers banned from congregating, pastors are adapting to coronavirus restrictions.
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| Putin orders bonuses for 'frontline' Russia virus medics Posted: 08 Apr 2020 08:35 AM PDT  Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday announced bonuses to health care workers on "the frontline" of the country's fight against the coronavirus. "For most people, to be inside four walls is dreary and miserable," he acknowledged during a video call with regional governors. The country is realising how crucial the work of nurses and doctors is "for the first time in decades", said Putin, promising 10 billion rubles ($132 million) for monthly bonuses to health care staff nationwide.
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| Trump Is Right to Block IMF Aid for Iran Posted: 08 Apr 2020 08:30 AM PDT |
| Trump Is Right to Block IMF Aid for Iran Posted: 08 Apr 2020 08:30 AM PDT |
| Sanders drops 2020 bid, leaving Biden as likely nominee Posted: 08 Apr 2020 08:28 AM PDT  Sen. Bernie Sanders ended his presidential bid on Wednesday, making Joe Biden the presumptive Democratic nominee to challenge President Donald Trump in a general election campaign that will be waged against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic. Sanders initially exceeded sky-high expectations about his ability to recreate the magic of his 2016 presidential bid, and even overcame a heart attack last October. "The path toward victory is virtually impossible," Sanders told supporters Wednesday.
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| The U.K.'s pandemic response shows the U.S. what it's missing Posted: 08 Apr 2020 08:24 AM PDT  It should come as no surprise that when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's coronavirus symptoms worsened over the weekend, he was taken to a National Health Service (NHS) hospital in London. Despite the fact that President Trump two years ago declared the NHS "broke and not working," the universally free, taxpayer-funded health service has become the U.K.'s practical and emotional front line during the COVID-19 national crisis. Indeed, no British politician would allow themselves to be treated anywhere else at such a time. The outpouring of support for the NHS has been one of the defining features of the country's coronavirus experience.U.K. citizens care deeply about their free-at-the-point-of-use, state-funded health-care behemoth. As a British person, and a diabetic since childhood, so do I. It's a system in which no one is refused medical care because they lack insurance, and no one has to worry about whether seeking care for their symptoms will result in bankruptcy. More than 750,000 people volunteered to carry out tasks to ease the coronavirus burden the NHS currently shoulders, delivering food and medicine, driving patients to appointments, and manning virus phone lines. They continue to emerge from their lockdowns in huge numbers every Thursday evening at 8 to show their appreciation by clapping for the NHS carers.The pandemic has also shone a light on the reality of multiculturalism in Britain. Amged El-Hawrani, Adil El Tayar, Habib Zaidi, Jitendra Rathod, Alice Kit Tak Ong, Areema Nasreen — just some of those who have died treating the infected. Brexit exposed a petty vein of nativism in U.K. society, to which these names are the ultimate rebuke. Already, the 2,800 foreign doctors, nurses, and paramedics who sustain the NHS have been granted an automatic one-year visa extension. Now, campaigns are under way to grant them the right to stay indefinitely — their families alongside them. There's nothing like a crisis to change perceptions of where tribes begin and end.The NHS is not the only British institution to vivify during the pandemic. Moments before the news of Johnson's hospitalization broke, the country took to its collective sofa to watch Queen Elizabeth II deliver only the fifth televised address — apart from her annual Christmas message — of her near-70-year reign. A hollow anachronism, Britain's monarchy survives primarily as nationally-funded soap opera, but on Sunday the 93-year-old Queen brought her unparalleled experience to bear, delivering a speech of poise, subtlety, and power.Likewise the BBC — the sick man of the U.K.'s media landscape, beset by shrinking budgets and an increasing sense of being left behind by digital progress — has been a source of succor for people locked in their homes, craving information they can trust. Sixty-four percent of Britons now consider it the most reliable source of information about COVID-19, while 53 percent say they are using BBC News more than before the pandemic began.The contrast with America's handling of the coronavirus is notable. Every night at 7, the streets of New York City resound with applause, echoing the U.K.'s Thursday cacophony. At a national level though, the same solidarity has not been shown. This is partly a function of the country's health-care setup, in which power is devolved to states, and also of the pandemic's progress, which is yet to hit the rest of the country like it has New York.This, however, is a crisis that calls for strong centralized leadership, and, despite his daily podium performances, such leadership is not being provided by President Trump. Nearly every country to suffer a sizable blow from COVID-19 has responded with draconian measures implemented by the central government — a necessary step, the argument goes, to bring the decisive, collective response from the populace required to combat the contagion. Trump has declined to take this kind of activist role. Perhaps his reasoning is political: With November's election approaching, taking real control of the situation risks him being held responsible for the outcomes.With the president reluctant to lead, the response to the pandemic will continue to be piecemeal. States will continue to compete with each other and the federal government for medical supplies and ventilators. The absence of a universal health-care system will only exacerbate this discord.Johnson is in intensive care battling COVID-19, and while he's certainly not out of the woods, the latest reports suggest his condition is currently stable. On Tuesday, many Britons stood outside their homes to clap for their ailing prime minister. That's not to say that the bitter divisions that have characterized British politics for the last few years have suddenly evaporated because of Johnson's misfortune — many of those who declined to clap cited political grievances — but whatever people's opinion of him, Johnson's sudden vulnerability gives Britons pause. Humans are storytellers, after all, and the country's plight now feels personified in its prime minister.As the British people rally around their shared institutions, they have been revealed as both sentimental and as valuing the linchpins of their social democracy: equal access to neutral, trusted information, and to free, high-quality health care. In times of threat, people move to protect the things they hold dear. It remains to be seen, as the virus continues to spread in the U.S., what values or people Americans will rally around.Last week, the family of a New Yorker a few degrees of separation from me had been scouring the city, looking for the medication she needed, without success. A Mexican immigrant in her late 80s, she had no insurance, and there had been a coronavirus run on her usual medication. Her blood sugar levels were dangerously high. My neighbor contacted me, asking for my advice, but there was only one course of action — it was an emergency, I gave her some of my insulin. This is a scary thing to do during a lockdown, as diabetics need a steady supply of the drug to live. I couldn't avoid the thought: This would never happen in the U.K.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com Dr. Anthony Fauci cautiously predicts kids will return to school next fall, 'but it's going to be different' The coming backlash against the public health experts Body of Robert Kennedy's 8-year-old great-grandson recovered from Chesapeake Bay
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| More than half of Americans think China should pay coronavirus reparations, poll shows Posted: 08 Apr 2020 08:08 AM PDT  Americans have turned some of their bipartisan ire amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic toward Beijing, a new Harris Poll survey released Wednesday shows.Per the poll, nearly 90 percent of Republicans believe China, where the coronavirus originated, is responsible for the spread while two-thirds of Democrats surveyed said the same. There's a little more discrepancy across party lines when it comes to how Chinese President Xi Jinping and his government should reckon with their role in exacerbating crisis, but more than half of Americans believe Beijing should pay some form of reparations to other countries.> NEW: > > -77% blame China for coronavirus including more than two-thirds (67%) of Democrats> > -71% say American companies should pull back manufacturing in China> > -69% support Trump's tougher trade policies with China> > -54% say China should pay reparationshttps://t.co/ExK5hf0Lrd> > — Alberto E. Martinez (@albertemartinez) April 8, 2020Among GOP voters, 71 percent think China has a responsibility to compensate other countries for the damage the pandemic has caused. Fewer than half of Democrats agree with that sentiment, but the 41 percent who do is not an insignificant amount.The Harris Poll was conducted online between between April 3-April 5. A nationally representative sample of 1,993 U.S. adults was surveyed. No margin of error was reported. Read more at The Washington Post and take a look at the full poll results here.More stories from theweek.com Dr. Anthony Fauci cautiously predicts kids will return to school next fall, 'but it's going to be different' The coming backlash against the public health experts Body of Robert Kennedy's 8-year-old great-grandson recovered from Chesapeake Bay
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| Cats, dogs, Quillie the hedgehog source of comfort in crisis Posted: 08 Apr 2020 07:47 AM PDT  Lala, a 3-month-old black Lab, romped into Ufuoma George's life a few weeks ago, just as she retreated into her New York apartment in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Whether it's a dog, a cat or, yes, a hedgehog named Quillie Nelson, pets are proving to be unexpected heroes in lockdown. Laura Evans, her husband and their three kids brought 12-week-old Zoe to their Bethesda, Maryland, home after the pandemic hit.
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| Putin Urges Russians to Stick to Self-Isolation, Offers More Aid Posted: 08 Apr 2020 07:47 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- President Vladimir Putin offered more aid to beleaguered Russians and businesses as he urged them to maintain a shutdown and warned the country is nearing a critical point in the coronavirus epidemic."The next 2-3 weeks will be key" to reining in Covid-19, Putin said Wednesday in a televised address to the nation during a meeting of the government's task force for managing the health crisis. "For most, being constantly confined by four walls is the definition of dreary and nauseating. But there is no choice now."He announced new measures to assist those affected by the shutdown to stop the spread of the infection, including a monthly payment of 3,000 rubles ($40) per child to families whose breadwinners have lost their jobs. He also promised state aid to companies which refrain from lay-offs, and pledged government support to those who do lose their jobs.Authorities in Moscow on March 30 required the capital's almost 13 million inhabitants to stay at home apart from essential workers. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin quickly told other Russian regions to follow suit. Putin last week extended an order for most Russians to observe a non-working period until April 30, though on Tuesday he asked his scientific advisers whether he could shorten its length.The assistance Putin has announced to date pales in comparison to some spending packages around the globe, with ING Bank estimating that his support measures only amount to about 2% of gross domestic product. Sergei Guriev, the former chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, said Russia should be spending around 10% of GDP.Russia on Wednesday recorded 1,175 new cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 8,672, with 63 fatalities, according to official data. While the numbers of those infected are far below the worst-afflicted countries, such as the U.S., France, Italy and Spain, Covid-19 continues to spread rapidly."Self-isolation is a test that we must withstand," Putin told Russians in his address. "Achieving the turning point in our fight against the infection depends on our discipline and responsibility, and we must succeed."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Watchdog: Syrian air force responsible for chemical attacks Posted: 08 Apr 2020 07:18 AM PDT  The global chemical weapons watchdog issued a report Wednesday blaming the Syrian air force for a series of chemical attacks using sarin and chlorine in late March 2017 on the central town of Latamneh. The report marks the first time the Investigation and Identification Team, set up in 2018 by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, has apportioned blame for an attack in Syria and will likely lead to fresh calls for accountability for the regime of President Bashar Assad. OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias said it is now up to the organization, "the United Nations Secretary-General, and the international community as a whole to take any further action they deem appropriate and necessary."
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| What you need to know today about the virus outbreak Posted: 08 Apr 2020 06:11 AM PDT  The Chinese city at the heart of the global pandemic, Wuhan, reopened Wednesday after 76 days in lockdown. It recorded 731 new coronavirus deaths, its biggest one-day jump yet, for a statewide toll of nearly 5,500. Here are some of AP's top stories Wednesday on the world's coronavirus pandemic.
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| Mayor says virus has hit black, Hispanic New Yorkers hard Posted: 08 Apr 2020 06:05 AM PDT  New data shows New York City's death toll from COVID-19 has been disproportionately high in black and Hispanic communities. New York City's death toll from the coronavirus has been disproportionately high in black and Hispanic communities, and the city is starting an outreach campaign for those residents, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday. "We're seeing folks who have struggled before really being hit particularly hard," de Blasio said at a City Hall briefing.
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| How Delays and Unheeded Warnings Hindered New York's Virus Fight Posted: 08 Apr 2020 05:19 AM PDT  A 39-year-old woman took Flight 701 from Doha, Qatar, to John F. Kennedy International Airport in late February, the final leg of her trip home to New York City from Iran.A week later, on March 1, she tested positive for the coronavirus, the first confirmed case in New York City of an outbreak that had already devastated China and parts of Europe. The next day, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, appearing with Mayor Bill de Blasio at a news conference, promised that health investigators would track down every person on the woman's flight. But no one did.A day later, a lawyer from New Rochelle, a New York City suburb, tested positive for the virus -- an alarming sign because he had not traveled to any affected country, suggesting community spread was already taking place.Although city investigators had traced the lawyer's whereabouts and connections to the most crowded corridors of Manhattan, the state's efforts focused on the suburb, not the city, and de Blasio urged the public not to worry. "We'll tell you the second we think you should change your behavior," the mayor said March 5.For many days after the first positive test, as the coronavirus silently spread throughout the New York region, Cuomo, de Blasio and their top aides projected an unswerving confidence that the outbreak would be readily contained.There would be cases, they repeatedly said, but New York's hospitals were some of the best in the world. Plans were in place. Responses had been rehearsed during "tabletop" exercises. After all, the city had been here before -- Ebola, Zika, the H1N1 virus, even Sept. 11."Excuse our arrogance as New Yorkers -- I speak for the mayor also on this one -- we think we have the best health care system on the planet right here in New York," Cuomo said on March 2. "So, when you're saying, what happened in other countries versus what happened here, we don't even think it's going to be as bad as it was in other countries."But now, New York City and the surrounding suburbs have become the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, with far more cases than many countries have. More than 138,000 people in the state have tested positive for the virus, with nearly all of them in the city and nearby suburbs.On Tuesday, Cuomo announced that 731 more people had died of the virus, the state's highest one-day total yet. The overall death toll in New York is 5,489 people.Epidemiologists have pointed to New York City's density and its role as an international hub of commerce and tourism to explain why the coronavirus has spread so rapidly. And it seems highly unlikely that any response by the state or city could have fully stopped it.From the earliest days of the crisis, state and city officials were also hampered by a chaotic and often dysfunctional federal response, including significant problems with the expansion of coronavirus testing, which made it far harder to gauge the scope of the outbreak.Normally, New York would get help from Washington in such a time, as it did after Sept. 11. But President Donald Trump in February and early March minimized the coronavirus threat, clashing with his own medical experts and failing to marshal the might of the federal government soon after cases emerged in the United States.As a result, state and city officials often had to make decisions early on without full assistance from the federal government.Even so, the initial efforts by New York officials to stem the outbreak were hampered by their own confused guidance, unheeded warnings, delayed decisions and political infighting, The New York Times found."Flu was coming down, and then you saw this new ominous spike. And it was COVID. And it was spreading widely in New York City before anyone knew it," said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and former commissioner of the city's Health Department. "You have to move really fast. Hours and days. Not weeks. Once it gets a head of steam, there is no way to stop it."Frieden said that if the state and city had adopted widespread social-distancing measures a week or two earlier, including closing schools, stores and restaurants, then the estimated death toll from the outbreak might have been reduced by 50% to 80%.But New York mandated those measures after localities in states including California and Washington had done so.San Francisco, for example, closed schools on March 12 when that city had 18 confirmed cases; Ohio also closed its schools the same day, with five confirmed cases. De Blasio ordered schools in New York to close three days later when the city had 329 cases.Then seven Bay Area counties imposed stay-at-home rules on March 17. Two days later, the entire state of California ordered the same. New York state's stay-at-home order came on the 20th, and went into effect on March 22."New York City as a whole was late in social measures," said Isaac B. Weisfuse, a former New York City deputy health commissioner. "Any after-action review of the pandemic in New York City will focus on that issue. It has become the major issue in the transmission of the virus."Interviews with more than 60 people on the front-lines of the unfolding crisis -- city and state officials, hospital executives, health care workers, union leaders and emergency medical workers -- revealed how the virus overwhelmed the city's long-standing preparations, leaving officials to improvise. Many spoke on the record; others spoke anonymously to describe private meetings and conversations without fear of losing their jobs."Everything was slow," said Councilman Stephen T. Levin, D-Brooklyn, who had called for City Hall to take swifter action as the outbreak spread. "You have to adapt really quickly, and nothing we were doing was adapting quickly."Both Cuomo and de Blasio have focused intensely in recent days on vastly expanding the ability of the health care system to treat coronavirus patients as the outbreak nears its peak. The state and city have set up new hospital wards, scoured the world for ventilators and protective gear, and aggressively recruited doctors and nurses around the country.Cuomo has been praised for his informative daily news conferences, where he not only focuses on the facts of the pandemic but also seeks to rally the public's support for efforts to curb the spread. De Blasio has also made outreach a priority.Still, Cuomo has at times acknowledged the difficulties in fighting the outbreak. "I am tired of being behind this virus," he said March 31. "We've been playing catch-up. You don't win playing catch-up."The governor's aides said he was referring to the country as a whole, not New York.The governor and the mayor emphasized that they had no misgivings about their initial handling of their response. They said that their efforts spurred the Trump administration to act more decisively to curb the outbreak. New York was the first state to obtain federal approval for its own coronavirus testing."Every action I took was criticized at the time as premature," Cuomo said in an interview. "The facts have proven my decisions correct."De Blasio said in a statement, "We're dealing with a virus that's only months old and science that changes by the day," adding that "hindsight is a luxury none of us have in the heat of battle."Confidence and ConfusionFrom the start, de Blasio and Cuomo projected as much concern about panic as they did about the virus."We can really keep this thing contained," de Blasio said at a news conference about virus preparations in late February.That tone continued even after the first positive case was announced March 1."Everybody is doing exactly what we need to do," said Cuomo, seated with de Blasio, at a news conference on March 2. "We have been ahead of this from day one."Hospitals also expressed confidence in their plans for responding to a pandemic, with the Healthcare Association of New York State declaring on March 2 that its members were "prepared for an influx of patients caused by COVID-19."But few, if any, appeared to have made significant efforts before the virus hit to greatly increase supplies of ventilators or protective gear, looking instead to draw on emergency government stockpiles.Officials seemed to speak and act based on the assumption that the virus had not arrived in the state until that first case -- the woman traveling from Iran. State and local officials now acknowledge that the virus was almost certainly in New York much earlier.Infectious disease specialists had known for weeks before any positive test had occurred that many of the early cases would be missed because of significant flaws in federal testing.Bruce Farber, the chief of infectious diseases for two hospitals within Northwell Health, the largest hospital system in New York, said that by late January, it was apparent that cases would soon begin appearing in the United States. He said he and his colleagues realized, as they reviewed the strictly limited federal testing criteria during a Feb. 7 meeting, that many infected people would not be identified.Only those with a fever severe enough to require hospitalization and who had traveled to China in the previous 14 days could get tested, Farber told them, reading from the CDC guidelines."It was that moment that I think everybody in the room realized, we're dead," Farber said.For both city and state, the initial plan was to trace, isolate and contain each case. Cuomo promised that they would go further than necessary to find every connection to the woman who arrived from Iran."Out of an abundance of caution we will be contacting the people who were on the flight with her from Iran to New York," he said.But no one ever did that work. Local officials could only request an investigation from the CDC, and the agency did not perform one because they believed at the time she had not been contagious during the flight, officials said. Neither Cuomo nor de Blasio publicly mentioned finding the plane passengers again.That's because new cases in the area kept emerging: the lawyer in New Rochelle who worked in Manhattan but had no connection to the first case and had not traveled to countries affected by the virus. Then two more people in New York City tested positive, also unconnected to the affected countries and, more ominously, to each other.New York City, at the start of the outbreak, relied on 50 disease detectives to trace the rapidly rising cases of unconnected infected people, city officials said.By comparison, in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic began, more than 9,000 such workers were deployed. New York City added to its original 50 only after the outbreak began to accelerate.Because of the limits on testing, said the mayor's press secretary, Freddi Goldstein, "all the detectives in the world would have been useless."By March 5, de Blasio seemed to acknowledge the virus had spread beyond control. "You have to assume it could be anywhere in the city," he said.Still, not wanting to cause undue alarm, he told New Yorkers to go on with their normal lives, which left many confused about the danger they faced.The city's health commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, had sought to reassure commuters, in early February, that "this is not something that you're going to contract in the subway or on the bus." The mayor reiterated the point several times in early March.But there seemed to be little basis for that confidence.The CDC in early February said it was "unclear" if the virus could be transferred on surfaces and, by March, said that it might "be possible" for someone to get infected by touching a contaminated surface and then touching their face. The virus mainly spreads between people in close contact, the agency has said, such as occurs on a crowded subway.State and city officials blamed the confusing messages on shifting guidance from the federal government.But by the second week in March, as the virus continued to spread widely, de Blasio also clashed over messaging with his own Health Department.The mayor wanted widespread testing, but senior Health Department officials believed it was a waste of limited resources. They urged instead a public awareness campaign to tell people with mild symptoms to stay home and not infect others, or themselves, by going to testing centers.City Hall blocked the department from releasing that message to the public, until the mayor eventually backed down in the third week in March.Alarm Behind the ScenesNew York City's system for detecting infectious diseases was flashing danger.While only about 100 cases of the coronavirus had been confirmed in the whole state, the city's surveillance system was, by the end of the first week in March, signaling a spike in influenza-like illnesses at emergency rooms. A few days later, the number of police officers calling out sick jumped noticeably, as did calls to 911 for fever and cough.The governor and the mayor began taking limited steps to restrict people's activities, but even those were met with resistance.Locals complained when the governor ordered a porous "containment area" for New Rochelle, where a cluster had emerged. It meant closing schools and gathering places in a 1-mile radius of a synagogue at the center of the outbreak, while allowing movement in and out.But the biggest and most prolonged battle centered on closing the city's school system, with its 1.1 million students. Doing so would amount to a virtual shutdown of the city.The mayor and his aides worried about the effect on the poorest and most vulnerable New Yorkers. For de Blasio, whose progressive political identity has been defined by his attention to the city's have-nots, the crisis presented a stark and unwelcome choice to harm some New Yorkers in order to save others."If you suddenly in one day close down the schools, how do you make sure that you are providing for these kids and their parents?" said Emma Wolfe, a top aide to de Blasio. "We're not in the suburbs. We can't tell people to stay at home and play around in your yard."Behind the scenes, top health officials were growing increasingly alarmed. Demetre Daskalakis, the city's head of disease control, threatened to quit if the schools were not closed, a city official said.And Barbot -- who at the start of the outbreak had insisted that "New Yorkers remain at low risk" -- gave a far scarier assessment to a closed-door meeting of business executives in City Hall on March 12: Up to 70% of city residents could become infected.The time for containment was over, she added. De Blasio, seated beside her at the meeting, stared daggers as she spoke."Why don't you shut down restaurants now?" a chief executive who attended the meeting recalled someone asking the mayor."I'm really concerned about restaurateurs; I'm really concerned about jobs," the mayor responded, the executive recalled. De Blasio had urged New Yorkers to start social distancing and work from home where possible.The following weekend, even though de Blasio and Cuomo had ordered occupancy limits for restaurants and bars, much of the city's nightlife appeared to continue apace.Governor vs. Mayor, AgainState and city officials believed they were doing everything possible to confront the outbreak, moving from big decision to big decision so quickly that each day, they said, felt like a year. They blamed the spread in New York on the federal government, which they say dragged its feet on testing. For weeks, Trump brushed aside concerns that the outbreak would damage the country."We have it totally under control," Trump said in late January. A month later, he advised Americans to "view this the same as the flu."But local officials did have control over closing schools and businesses. While they waited on making a decision, other major cities were moving toward shutdowns.In California, Los Angeles followed San Francisco's lead and closed its schools on March 13, after 40 cases of the virus had been confirmed. On that same day, there were nearly four times as many confirmed cases in New York, but the city's schools remained open.Even as aides to the mayor and governor, both Democrats, worked closely together on the response, old rivalries crept in. Though the two leaders put up a unified front at the outset of the outbreak, it was clear by the middle of March that a high-stakes version of their long-standing political battles was playing out. The March 2 news conference has been their only appearance together.First, Cuomo sought to force the mayor's hand on the schools, state officials said.In a series of calls during the second weekend in March, the governor worked with the Greater New York Hospital Association, a powerful hospital lobby, to address the question of child care for health care workers in the event that schools closed. That had been a sticking point for those workers' union, 1199 SEIU, which has deep ties to City Hall. The hospital association volunteered to raise funds.The union, which had questioned the need to close schools on that Friday, was by Sunday calling for closure.That Sunday morning, March 15, Health Department officials gave de Blasio some chilling forecasts of the number of possible dead if more restrictions were not imposed. Closing schools was necessary, and most businesses too. By then, the city had a plan to create centers for the children of health care workers, as well as emergency medical workers.Finally, de Blasio was persuaded.As the city prepared an announcement to close the schools, Cuomo announced the shutdown during a television appearance. De Blasio made it official that evening, and then announced restaurants and bars would be closed for everything but takeout and delivery.After the decision on schools, the mayor became more assertive in suggesting major changes in daily life.New Yorkers would probably soon have to be kept at home for all but the most necessary needs, he said on March 17 -- a "shelter-in-place" order similar to what had already been implemented in the Bay Area of California.This time, Cuomo was the one who resisted. He favored a more gradual shutdown."I'm as afraid of the fear and the panic as I am of the virus, and I think that the fear is more contagious than the virus right now," the governor said when asked two days later about the mayor's comments.He chastised the mayor for a poor communication strategy.But then California moved first: Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide order for residents to stay at home. The state had 675 confirmed cases of the virus.That same day, March 19, New York had more than 4,152.That night, roughly 20 prominent New York leaders -- including local members of Congress, two borough presidents, City Council members and civic and religious figures -- joined a conference call convened by the state attorney general, Letitia James."I was growing very frustrated over the schism between the mayor and the governor," said one person on the call, who captured the sentiment. After the call, a participant conveyed those feelings to the governor's office.Melissa DeRosa, the governor's top aide, said Cuomo decided on his plan to "pause" New York during an afternoon meeting with his health commissioner, before the call or Newsom's order.The governor had been reviewing disturbing projections about the spread of the virus since 4:30 a.m., she said."OK, let's shut it down," she recalled the governor saying. He announced it the next day.By that point, March 20, the state had more than 7,000 confirmed cases.The City ReelsLeaders of the New York Police Department now start each day with a review of how many of its 36,000 uniformed officers are sick. By early April, it was around 19%."It's been a struggle," said the police commissioner, Dermot F. Shea. Only the fact of a shutdown city has helped.No parades or protests. No calls to schools. Fewer calls for police in general. The calls to 911, instead, are mostly for ambulances. First it was 5,000 a day. Then 6,000. A record almost daily.That New York City, mammoth and interconnected, would be hit hard by the pandemic may have been inevitable. But Washington, and then New York, had options. The state's leaders had power over key decisions.Their aides argue they moved as fast as possible given the flawed information they had from the federal government and in the midst of a fast-moving crisis on a scale none had seen before."This is an enemy that we have underestimated from day one," Cuomo said Monday. "And we have paid the price dearly."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Passover in isolation dampens holiday mood in Israel Posted: 08 Apr 2020 04:47 AM PDT  As a modern pandemic afflicts the globe, Israeli Jews are being forced to scale back or cancel beloved traditions and rituals marking Passover, the holiday celebrating Israelites' freedom from Egyptian bondage and referencing biblical plagues. Families are turning to videoconferencing in hopes of capturing a small slice of the holiday spirit. "There's a lot of families, a lot of seniors, a lot of singles who will be having Seder alone, and that's very challenging because this is really the family holiday," said Rabbi Kenneth Brander, president of Ohr Torah Stone, a network of 27 modern Orthodox institutions.
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| Iran says coronavirus deaths near 4,000 Posted: 08 Apr 2020 04:23 AM PDT  Iran on Wednesday reported 121 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, bringing its overall number of fatalities to 3,993. In the past 24 hours, 1,997 new cases of COVID-19 infection were detected in Iran, state news agency IRNA quoted health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour as saying. Iran, which announced its first COVID-19 cases on February 19, is by far the worst hit by the pandemic in the Middle East, according to official tolls.
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| Saudi Arabia halts parental visitation rulings to curb virus Posted: 08 Apr 2020 03:54 AM PDT  The Saudi king suspended final rulings and judicial orders on visitation rights of children of separated parents in the latest effort to try and curb the spread of the novel coronavirus among households, according to state media reports Wednesday. The state-run Saudi Press Agency said parents were notified of the changes by text message, the latest measure by the kingdom to stem the rising number of new infections as a nearly nationwide 24-hour curfew takes place. Saudi Arabia has more than 2,900 confirmed cases of the virus, including 41 deaths.
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| German Economy Seen Shrinking 10% This Quarter Due to Virus Posted: 08 Apr 2020 02:35 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Germany's economy will shrink this quarter at more than twice the pace recorded at the height of the financial crisis, leading research institutes forecast, adding to evidence of the heft of the blow to European economies due to the coronavirus pandemic.German output is expected to slump 9.8% in the April-June period, the most since records for quarterly data began in 1970, and is on course for a 4.2% contraction this year, five of the country's top institutes said in twice-yearly projections. Thanks to fiscal aid, the economists expect a strong rebound next year, with expansion of 5.8%.Their forecasts come as data painted an equally bleak outlook elsewhere in Europe, where measures to limit the spread of the outbreak have shuttered businesses. The French economy shrank the most since World War II at the start of this year, and the nation's central bank said prospects for the rest of 2020 are souring significantly.While the region's governments have pledged hundreds of billions of euros to support their economies, they've failed so far to come up with a joint response. Finance ministers couldn't agree on a 500 billion-euro ($543 billion) package last night, prolonging a paralysis that casts doubt over the bloc's ability to weather the crisis."The recession will have a profound impact on the labor market and public finances," Timo Wollmershaeuser, head of business-cycle analysis and forecasts at the Ifo institute, said about the pandemic's impact on Germany. Unemployment in Europe's largest economy will likely rise to 5.9% this year, he added.The institutes cautioned that there are "considerable downside risks" to their projections, including a slower than expected weakening in the spread of the virus, problems with reviving the economy after the shutdown eases or a new wave of infections.The forecasts, which form the basis of the government's economic outlook, are prepared by the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin, the Halle Institute for Economic Research, the Ifo Institute in Munich, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and the RWI-Leibniz Institute for Economic Research in Essen.Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has moved swiftly to mitigate the effects of the virus on Europe's biggest economy, and on Monday announced a new "limitless" loan program for Germany's small- and medium-sized companies, which form the backbone of the economy. That's on top of a slew of other measures to counter what Merkel has called Germany's biggest challenge since World War II.The number of new coronavirus infections in Germany rose the most in three days, according to data Wednesday from Johns Hopkins University, bringing the total to 107,663 in Europe's fourth-most extensive outbreak. The number of fatalities climbed to 2,016.(Updates with Bank of France outlook in third paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Wuhan Shows the World Its Post-Coronavirus Future Posted: 08 Apr 2020 01:48 AM PDT  HONG KONG—Trains are leaving Wuhan for the first time since January 23, carrying 55,000 people out of the city in one day. Long-haul buses are moving passengers across provinces. Planes are taking off at the airport again. Roadblocks on outbound highways have been removed, and cars have been streaming through since midnight. The lockdown of the first epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic—after doctors who flagged the unusual virus were gagged by authorities—was lifted at midnight local time on Wednesday. U.S. Eyes Second Coronavirus Outbreak in ChinaIt's difficult to look back at the lockdown without feeling like it was an 11-week internment. More than 3,300 people reportedly have died in China due to COVID-19, including nearly 2,600 in the city of Wuhan alone. (The official tallies are deemed by medical professionals in China and abroad to be much lower than the actual count.) Intensive care units were, of course, where the most recorded deaths occurred; the mortality rate in Wuhan's ICUs was between 25 and 30 percent, according to Dr. Peng Zhiyong, who led two ICU teams in the city and maintained the lowest rates of fatalities and hospital transmissions at the facilities where he worked.Now, after daily—hourly, constant—checks on the epidemic curve, there is an uneasy mixture of relief and apprehension as life in Wuhan crawls back to a normal pace and Hubei province reconnects with the rest of the country.There are lessons here for the hard-hit United States, where to date almost four times as many people have died as in China, judging by official numbers. But, sadly, those lessons are limited. Other countries may benefit more from what has been learned in Wuhan.In the United States, the Trump administration apparently expects 50 states to compete with each other, and with the federal government, for vital resources. In China, the all-powerful Chinese Communist Party poured everything it could into Wuhan and Hubei after the very strict province-wide lockdown. It flew in medical workers from all over the country, military assistance, construction workers to build hospitals, and others to enforce the quarantines while enhancing survival rates.For two and a half months, Hubei's 60 million people—roughly the population of Italy—have been confined to their homes. To venture out in public for crucial supply runs, they had to pass through checkpoints manned by private security guards, neighborhood-level Chinese Communist Party custodians, or police officers. The population's material needs were taken care of, but there was a constant air of uncertainty about what might happen next. Might there be a surge in infection numbers and deaths the next day? Could one's neighbor, parent, friend fall ill and fail to find medical assistance at the packed hospitals? What if the pandemic does not end?Today, the physical signs of those weeks of worry remain present. Barbed wire still runs along the tops of walls surrounding some residential complexes, installed to prevent people from leaping over the barriers to cure their cabin fever. Many older buildings—those with only two or three floors—are still boarded up.So far, it hasn't been a smooth transition for Wuhan. There were plenty of dead car batteries. Social distancing was difficult to achieve on public transportation. Frequent temperature checks and pauses to disinfect slowed down movement across the city—although few were in a rush to begin with.Even at the beginning of the week, Wuhan and the rest of Hubei were coming back to life slowly. Some restaurants lit their stove fires again—patrons couldn't always dine in, but they placed orders and waited patiently for their takeout, standing five or six feet apart from each other. Sounds and smells of human activity were returning. You could spot people strolling along the quiet waterfront—just a handful, but enough to give the impression that things could go back to normal, that maybe not all of spring was lost. Now, across mainland China, it's common enough to see people wearing latex gloves and plastic goggles when they are outside of their homes. Masks are mandatory in public areas, meant to limit significantly the virus' spread in case you are a carrier. This curtails the footprint of the coronavirus—a particularly important act because medical professionals believe that many people who carry the virus are asymptomatic, meaning they may not even realize that they can cause severe illness in others.When much of China was still under lockdown, people spoke of "revenge spending," a term that harks back to the spike in consumption after the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, now appropriated to outline the urge to splurge after shops reopen when the COVID pandemic subsides. But while businesses in Wuhan, Hubei, and the rest of the country have spun up operations again, consumers have been cautious about their expenditures. Many have drained significant chunks of their savings, and the likelihood of a second wave of infections hitting later this year has people worrying that they will have to hunker down again, this time with even tighter purse strings.China Hijacked This American Mom's Tweets for Coronavirus PropagandaIn the first three months of this year, nearly half a million businesses in China went belly up. More are expected to declare bankruptcy in the coming weeks. Companies that ship goods to other countries are being hit hard as foreign clients seek delays in shipments or are canceling orders altogether.Firms involved in mass-scale surveillance, however, are more active than ever. Throughout China, smartphone-based tracking measures are now used to indicate a person's health status and location history. Whip out your phone and call up your assigned QR code—if it's green, then you can access public transportation, as well as facilities like shopping malls, restaurants, and parks. The same tools are used to determine whether a person can travel throughout the country. The exception is the capital, Beijing, where all arrivals must commit to 14 days of quarantine.This isn't a policy that is unique to China. Around the world, at least 24 countries are tracking their citizens' locations using applications that went online during the COVID-19 pandemic, and at least 14 nations have rolled out apps for contact tracing or as part of quarantine protocols, according to information compiled by Human Rights Watch, Privacy International, and more than 100 other organizations.Yet even with a digital dragnet over the country, our lack of understanding of the coronavirus and COVID-19 brings about intense uneasiness. It is still unclear how common asymptomatic transmission is, but classified Chinese documents seen by reporters of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post suggest that up to one-third of people who test positive could be carrying the virus without showing any symptoms. People I spoke to in Wuhan, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou were all anxious about how every human body—including their own—has the potential to become a walking bio-bomb that could kill a friend or loved one. It's a distressing thought that is compounded when a nation is being steered by its central government to return to the tempo from three months ago.The weekend was a reminder that the pandemic has left indelible imprints on China—and the rest of the world. Last Saturday was a day of mourning for those who died in China due to COVID-19. At 10:00 a.m., people stopped what they were doing to observe three minutes of silence. Sirens wailed. Drivers sounded their vehicles' horns. Flags flew at half-mast. In every city, town, and village, tears fell. Chinese Communist Party leaders, including President Xi Jinping, gathered at Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of the CCP and central government in the capital, where a banner reading "deeply mourn for martyrs and compatriots" now hangs. The party has claimed every casualty as one of its own.Yet none of this implies that China is on the other side of this viral calamity. Last week, Zeng Guang, the chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the country "has not reached the end [of the pandemic], but is merely entering a new phase." The main worry, for now, is that asymptomatic carriers will infect others as people travel across the country to get back to work, ultimately negating the months-long containment efforts that have placed life on hold for many millions of people.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. 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| Nigeria visa firm owned by man on fraud charges Posted: 07 Apr 2020 11:51 PM PDT  Mahmood Ahmadu was allegedly involved in a fake recruitment drive, which saw 16 die in a stampede.
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| Italy, Spain ICU pressures decline, but emotional toll rises Posted: 07 Apr 2020 11:42 PM PDT  Maddalena Ferrari lets herself cry when she takes off the surgical mask she wears even at home to protect her elderly parents from the coronavirus that surrounds her at work in one of Italy's hardest-hit intensive care units. In the privacy of her own bedroom, where no one can see, the nursing coordinator peels away the mask that both protects her and hides her, and weeps for all the patients lost that day at Bergamo's Pope John XXIII Hospital. "We're losing an entire generation," Ferrari said at the end of one of her shifts.
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| Making plans, defiantly, amid the chaos and madness Posted: 07 Apr 2020 11:34 PM PDT  As owners of a wedding and event-planning business, Karina Lopez and Curtis Rogers have always known how the best-laid plans can go awry. If you're hunkered down at home, suddenly Friday doesn't seem like Friday because the weekend hardly feels different.
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