New York Times Argues Workers Should Get More, but Gets Some Important Facts Wrong
By Dean Baker
I hate to be nitpicky when the New York Times writes a very strong editorial * arguing that we need more money going to ordinary workers and less to the rich, but it is important to get the story right. Unfortunately, the editorial misses much of it.
First and foremost, there has not been a major shift from wages to profits during the period of wage stagnation. Most of the shift from wages to profits took place in the weak labor market following the Great Recession. It was being reversed in the last five years until the recession hit. If we use the data from 2019, the median wage would have been 4.2 percent higher than it actually was if the wage share was back at its 1979 level. This is a bit more than 10 percent of the gap between productivity growth and wage growth over the last four decades.
Rather than going to profits, the upward redistribution went to high end workers like CEOs and other top executives, Wall Street traders and other high flyers in the financial sector, and doctors and other highly paid professionals. If we want to reverse this upward redistribution, these should be the focus of efforts at redistribution.
The piece also implies that stock returns have been extraordinarily high through the last four decades. This is clearly wrong. While returns were very high in the 1980s and 1990s, they actually have been well below long-term averages for the last two decades.
In this vein, the piece also proposes banning share buybacks as a way to reduce returns to shareholders. It is not clear what it hopes this would accomplish. It is hardly better for workers or anyone else if companies pay out money to shareholders through dividends rather than share buybacks. (There are tax issues that make buybacks preferable for shareholders, but since shares turn over frequently, the tax consequences are limited.) For some reason, share buybacks have become a big cause in some circles, but it is difficult to see why the form of payments to shareholders would be a big deal.
The piece also is very modest in suggesting that the minimum wage should be raised to $15 an hour. While this is a good near-term target, if the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity growth since 1968, it would be over $24 an hour today. The country would look very different if the lowest paid worker was getting $24 an hour today. This comes to $48,000 a year for full-time full-year workers. A couple with two full-time minimum wage earners would have an income of $96,000 a year.
In order to be able to raise the minimum wage back to its productivity-adjusted level from 1968, and not see excessive inflation, we would have to take steps to reduce high end wages. This would mean things like fixing the corporate governance structures so CEOs could not ripoff the companies for which they work. This would mean they might get $2 million to $3 million a year, instead of $20 million. We would have to eliminate the waste in the financial sector, thereby ending the exorbitant pay in this sector. We would also have to weaken the importance of patent and copyright monopolies, making it less likely that Bill Gates types could get $100 billion. And, we would have to subject doctors and other highly paid professionals to competition, bringing their pay in line with their counterparts in other wealthy countries.
Anyhow, this is a big agenda, but if we want to bring about real change we have to understand the nature of the problem, and for the most part it is not high corporate profits. Yeah, this is the story in Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer (it’s free). **
The Washington Post is Worried Its Path of Structuring Globalization to Redistribute Income Upward Could be Jeopardized
By Dean Baker
The Washington Post ran a piece on how patterns of globalization may be changed due to the pandemic. It is more than a bit confused in not distinguishing short-term effects from long-term effects and its inability to distinguish between problems caused by fiscal policy and policies caused by the fallout from the pandemic.
The headline for the piece * on the Post’s homepage is “Covid-19 is erasing decades of economic gains achieved through globalization.” The subhead is “The way we travel, work, consume, invest, interact, migrate, cooperate on global problems and pursue prosperity has likely been changed for years to come.”
Literally nothing in the piece supports the claim in the headline and insofar as items in the piece support the subhead it is at least as likely to be positive as negative. The gist of the piece is that we have seen a massive reduction in trade and travel as a result of the pandemic. While some of this may prove to be permanent, the piece gives us no reason to believe that the bulk of trade will not return to normal once the pandemic has been brought under control, either with effective treatments or with a vaccine.
In terms of travel, any enduring effect is likely to be largely positive. An enormous amount of resources is now wasted on business travel and conventions that can be just as effectively performed on-line. This realization will free up a large amount of resources for more productive uses, such as health care, child care, and stopping global warming. Of course, less travel by itself will be a big help in reducing worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, the increased use of telecommuting will allow tens of millions of people to avoid unnecessary trips to their offices, leading to an enormous saving of both time and energy. This will also free up resources for more productive purposes. This change should also help reduce inequality, since so much wealth and income that had been concentrated in major cities like New York and San Francisco will now be dispersed more widely across the country. There will undoubtedly be similar patterns in other countries.
At one point the piece warns of restrictions on foreign investment being considered in Italy and then offers the warning:
“The new restrictions have raised an alarm among Italian industrialists, who say their country’s long-stagnant economy will need more foreign capital, not less, to emerge from this crisis.”
While Italy does need more investment, the problem is that European leaders have chosen to limit the ability of eurozone countries like Italy to finance investment by running budget deficits. The problem here is that Europe’s leaders, most importantly the government of Germany, have insisted on policies to slow investment and growth, not an inherent lack of investment capital in Italy.
Incredibly, while the piece complains repeatedly about protectionism, it does not mention the most important forms of protectionism of all, patent and copyright monopolies. This is especially bizarre in the context of the pandemic, since one of the big questions is whether any treatments or vaccines that are developed will be widely available or whether companies will use government-granted patent monopolies to charge high prices.
If China paves the way in developing a vaccine (it has as many vaccines in Phase III testing as the rest of the world combined) and carries through with its commitment to make any vaccine freely available to the whole world, then this will both be enormously important in and of itself, but also an incredibly valuable precedent. If a vaccine against the coronavirus can be distributed in a free market as a cheap generic, it is reasonable to ask why this should not be the case with all new drugs.
If this were to lead to new mechanisms for financing pharmaceutical research, and a worldwide free market in prescription drugs, it would imply a huge increase in globalization and an enormous gain for developing countries. The gains would be even larger if we moved beyond patent monopoly financing of research in areas like medical equipment, pesticides and fertilizers, and software.
This sort of globalization would be bad news for many U.S. corporations and many highly paid employees of these corporations, which is perhaps why the Washington Post never talks about it. But if we want to seriously discuss prospects for the future in a post-pandemic world, moving beyond patent and copyright monopolies has to be on the agenda.
It just occurred to me: the new COVID deaths may be lower even as the number of cases goes higher — because the cases are more heavily weighted towards younger people who are in less danger …
… the young that die had many more years ahead of them then the elderly — possibly leading to the same number of lost years of human life overall.
This: “It just occurred to me: the new COVID deaths may be lower even as the number of cases goes higher — because the cases are more heavily weighted towards younger people who are in less danger” is not the message you should be promulgating. Besides spreading a plague, contracting Covid causes many other issues to a person besides death.
1. Typically NO ONE dies immediately from Covid, the symptoms typically appear 10 days or so out. At 2 weeks out, the storm inside the body (lungs) increases causing the immune system to react and little can be done to subdue it. Death has been coming as a result of the immune system fighting back.
2. Since they have been lied to by many people politically in authority and many have said using a mask is useless as well as social distancing in addition to being invulnerable to Covid, the young have tossed caution to the wind.
3. Sure they may not dies; however, they may suffer internal damage to organs from contracting Covid. This is something I have popping off at from time to time. This issue has been ignored mostly and as a result, theyoung believe they have little to worry about even if they contract Covid.
The axion field rapidly runs over the potential barriers and eventually begins oscillations when sufficiently slowed down by friction.
In a new study of axion motion, researchers propose a scenario known as “kinetic misalignment” that greatly strengthens the case for axion/dark matter equivalence. The novel concept answers key questions related to the origins of dark matter and provides new avenues for ongoing detection efforts. This work, published in Physical Review Letters, was conducted by researchers at the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Michigan, and UC Berkeley.
The existence of dark matter has been confirmed by several independent observations, but its true identity remains a mystery. According to this study, axion velocity provides a key insight into the dark matter puzzle. Previous research efforts have successfully accounted for the abundance of dark matter in the universe; however certain factors, such as the underproduction of axions with stronger ordinary matter interactions, remained unexplored.
By assigning a nonzero initial velocity to the axion field, the team discovered a mechanism—termed kinetic misalignment—producing far more axions in the early universe than conventional mechanisms. The motion, generated by breaking of the axion shift symmetry, significantly modifies the conventional computation of the axion dark matter abundance. Additionally, these dynamics allow axion dark matter to react more strongly with ordinary matter, exceeding the prediction of the conventional misalignment mechanism. …
Two members of the research team, Keisuke Harigaya and Raymond Co, previously explored the concept of axion dynamics in the study “Axiogenesis,” which explained how the excess of matter over antimatter could be due to a nonzero initial velocity of the QCD axion field. This study also provided a framework for generating new insights into the questions surrounding dark matter. …
To date, the axion has proven incredibly versatile. The particle was originally proposed to solve the mystery of why neutrons do not interact with an electric field despite having charged constituents. Former IAS Professor Frank Wilczek, who coined the term axion, published his landmark findings in 1978 in Physical Review Letters while a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Natural Sciences.
Older Workers Targeted in Trump’s Lawsuit to End Obamacare
By DEAN BAKER
The Trump administration is supporting a lawsuit which seeks to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in its entirety. The implication is that a large share of the older workers now able to afford health insurance as a result of the ACA will no longer be able to afford it if the Trump administration wins its lawsuit.
Furthermore, if the suit succeeds it will both end the expansion of Medicaid, which has insured tens of millions of people, and again allow discrimination against people with serious health conditions. Ending this discrimination was one of the major goals of the ACA. The issue is that insurers don’t want to insure people who are likely to have health issues that cost them money. While they are happy to insure healthy people with few medical expenses, people with heart disease, diabetes, or other health conditions are a bad deal for insurers.
Before the ACA, insurers could charge outlandish fees to cover people with health conditions, or simply refuse to insure them altogether. The ACA required insurers to cover everyone within an age bracket at the same price, regardless of their health. If the Trump administration has its way, we would go back to the world where insurers could charge people with health issues whatever they wanted, or alternatively, just deny them coverage.
This would be bad news for anyone with a serious health condition, but it would be especially bad news for the oldest pre-Medicare age group, people between the ages of 55 and 64. This group currently faces average premiums of close to $10,000 a year per person for insurance purchased through the ACA exchanges. Insurers could easily charge people with serious health conditions two or three times this amount if the Trump administration wins its case.
And, since a Trump victory would eliminate the ACA subsidiaries, people in this age group with health conditions could be looking to pay $20,000 to $30,000 a year for insurance, with no help from the government. That will be especially hard since many people with serious health conditions are unable to work full-time jobs, and some can’t work at all.
[Graph]
The 55 to 64 age group will also be hard hit because they are far more likely to have serious health issues than younger people. Just 18 percent of the people in the youngest 18 to 34 age group have a serious health condition, compared to 44 percent of those in the 55 to 64 age group, as shown in the figure above.
The ACA has many inadequacies, but it has allowed tens of millions to get insurance who could not otherwise. Donald Trump wants to take this insurance away.
“It just occurred to me: the new COVID deaths may be lower even as the number of cases goes higher — because the cases are more heavily weighted towards younger people who are in less danger” is not the message you should be promulgating. Besides spreading a plague, contracting Covid causes many other issues to a person besides death.
There is, however, growing evidence that even those who survive Covid-19 can suffer long-term adverse effects: scarred lungs, damaged hearts and perhaps neurological disorders.
… The president and his White House have failed the American public in this pandemic from the very start. Trump downplayed the threat, promoted dangerous and unproven treatments, undermined testing efforts, and abdicated federal responsibility for securing ventilators and personal protective equipment for American hospitals and health care workers. Since then, instead of learning from errors they made earlier in the pandemic, the president and his administration have doubled down on their strategy of denial, assuring abject failure. Trump has not seized the power and responsibility of the Oval Office to address the crisis even as the US death toll has surpassed that of all the world’s nations. The president had a chance at partial redemption, and he squandered it. …
In March, this editorial board wrote that the president had blood on his hands because of his administration’s catastrophic failure to prepare and respond to the pandemic threat as it reached our shores. Now, as the American outbreak has spread and expanded its profound toll on families and our economy, killing more than 125,000 people and putting more than 30 million people out of work, the president has not only demonstrated that he is culpable but that he is callous in his disregard for the loss of American lives and the suffering of American families. The United States was never going to be spared from the pandemic altogether. But as the wealthiest nation on earth, with the most advanced hospitals and highly trained medical personnel, it could have done far, far better. The American people, regardless of political party, deserve markedly more from their president and, come November, should make loud and clear that they demand it.
In March, this editorial board wrote * that the president had blood on his hands because of his administration’s catastrophic failure to prepare and respond to the pandemic threat as it reached our shores….
[ Surely so, but in March the Massachusetts drug company Biogen held an irresponsible conference that allowed coronavirus infections to spread in the state and far beyond and we need to understand why Massachusetts administrators failed to act responsibly in regard to the meeting. We supposedly have many governing centers in this country, so failures in this case need to be studied beyond that of the presidency. ]
Serious coronavirus-linked condition hit 285 U.S. children
At least 285 U.S. children have developed a serious inflammatory condition linked to the coronavirus and while most recovered, the potential for long-term or permanent damage is unknown, two new studies suggest.
The papers, published online Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine, provide the fullest report yet on the condition.
The condition is known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children. It is considered uncommon and deaths are rare; six children died among the 285 in the new studies.
Including cases in Europe, where it was first reported, about 1,000 children worldwide have been affected, a journal editorial said. *
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s case definition includes current or recent COVID-19 infection or exposure to the virus; a fever of at least 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) for at least 24 hours; severe illness requiring hospitalization; inflammatory markers in blood tests, and evidence of problems affecting at least two organs that could include the heart, kidneys, lungs, skin or other nervous system.
Digestive symptoms including nausea and diarrhea are common. Some children may have symptoms resembling Kawasaki disease, a rare condition in children that can cause swelling and heart problems.
At least 35 states have had cases, and they seem to crop up a few weeks after local COVID-19 activity peaks, said Dr. Adrienne Randolph of Boston Children’s Hospital, who is a lead researcher for a multistate study that includes CDC scientists. The second paper involved 99 children in New York state, where the first U.S. cases occurred.
Combined, the papers show 285 cases from March thru mid to late May but Randolph said additional U.S. children have been diagnosed in June.
Most had current or recent COVID-19 infections but had previously been healthy.
About 80 percent of children in the multistate study had heart-related problems, which included coronary aneurysms – a bulge in a heart artery that can be fatal.
“Those need to be followed up,” Randolph said. “This is a life-threatening concern for a lot of patients.”
Most affected children had no other health condition but about 30 percent were obese. The condition also appears to disproportionately affect Latino and Black children and boys.
The average age was eight years old. Researchers don’t know if adults can be affected.
How a Premier U.S. Drug Company Became a Virus ‘Super Spreader’
Biogen employees unwittingly spread the coronavirus from Massachusetts to Indiana, Tennessee and North Carolina.
By Farah Stockman and Kim Barker
The latest figures are a wake-up call: the global Covid-19 crisis isn’t close to over
A coordinated response to the crisis in the Americas, India and Africa must be led by countries that have suppressed the virus
By Adam Tooze – Guardian
It took more than three months for the world to record 1 million cases of Covid-19. The latest 1 million cases were clocked up in a week, taking the total to more than 10 million. On Sunday 28 June, the world recorded more than 190,000 new cases in a single day, a new record.
Don’t fixate on the precise numbers. We are testing more than ever so we find more cases. What matters is the big picture and it is drawn in stark relief: the crisis is not yet over. Far from it. Even as east Asia and Europe begin to experience recovery, the momentum of the disease at the global level is building. Nor is this the famous “second wave”. This is still the first wave spreading out across the world’s 7.8 billion inhabitants.
The question is do we have the political imagination, the sympathy and the grit necessary to grasp this crisis at the world level? Can public opinion and decision-makers in Europe and Asia, where the disease has been more or less effectively suppressed, be rallied to support an adequate global response to the crisis in the rest of the world?
The pandemic poses a profound challenge to the contemporary imagination. It has made real both the degree of our interconnectedness and the extreme difficulty that we, particularly those of us in the west, have in grasping the global forces that are at work.
This was already obvious back in January 2020. No need here to rehash the painful story of delay and prevarication; endless recriminations and postmortems are their own form of parochialism. The point is that the west treated a crisis in Wuhan as a remote and exotic problem, made all the more so by China’s “totalitarian” response. We talked about a “Chernobyl moment” for Xi’s regime, as though this was a crisis happening in the 1980s in an obscure Ukrainian town behind the iron curtain, rather than a highly infectious disease spreading through one of the world’s most dynamic and well-connected conurbations. The model should have been Chicago not Chernobyl.
London and New York, which bask in their status as “world cities”, did not appear to appreciate that a crisis in Wuhan was a matter of the utmost importance. In the US the most critical failures in February and March were not so much in Washington DC but in New York. California locked down. New York did not. We know the results. In New York state at least 31,484 people have died, as of yesterday.
So much for the failures. But even our appreciation of the geography of success is biased. The countries that did get it right were those closest to China, which have had recent experience of infectious disease threats such as Mers. But, again, we tend to exoticise their difference. We pigeonhole them as striving, emerging-market “Asian tigers”, countries with inhuman school regimes, dizzying student scores in Stem subjects, and a relaxed approach to personal privacy.
It is time to look again at the numbers and face the facts. South Korea and Taiwan are no longer “emerging”. They have emerged. Indeed, they have overtaken much of the west in terms of affluence, technological sophistication and the basic public security they offer their fortunate citizens.
Singapore, invoked by Brexiteers as though it were a bargain-basement model of a free-market society, is, in fact, in the super league of affluence, alongside Switzerland and oil-rich Norway. Taiwan’s GDP per capita is on a par with that of the richer European countries – think Germany and Sweden. South Korea is in the range of Spain, the UK and New Zealand. Covid-19 is a wake-up call to adjust our world rankings and our understanding of our place in them.
As the rest of the world has floundered, the problem for the success stories, including China, has been to contain the risk of reinfection from the outside. There was a sense of historical justice in this. Beginning in the 19th century, European states built a global public health regime with the explicit objective of limiting the spread of diseases such as cholera and yellow fever from Asia and Africa to the west. In 2020 Asia feared infection from Europe. But this carnivalesque inversion of historic geographies was short-lived. Now, as the disease spreads to Latin America, Africa and south Asia, a grim new hierarchy threatens. The disease will divide those that are rich, and thus in a position to “cope”, from the rest. Covid-19 may become another of those “poor-country diseases” that kills hundreds of thousands in a regular year. Think malaria or TB, but more infectious and thus requiring more rigorous social distancing.
The implications for our multiethnic, mobile societies are grim. Mexican Americans make up roughly 11% of the US population, Latinos all told 18%. Millions pass back and forth every year. Latin America now accounts for 53% of global mortality. You might think that the rampant spread of Covid-19 south of the US border would be an urgent priority for the US. Trump will of course exploit the disaster for his xenophobic purposes. But what is the progressive answer?
The only reason that the Americas do not entirely dominate the global mortality statistics right now is that the numbers are rising ominously in India and Africa, too. If it continues on its current track, this escalation will pose huge challenges for migrant workers and their families, as quarantine rules restrict travel and surging unemployment cuts off remittance flows.
The poor-country Covid-19 crisis was long foretold. In the spring there was a flurry of activity among institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank. But this was followed by a sense of anticlimax as the disease seemed to slow. The global pandemic is now in full flood. In March the vast majority of the world locked down. It has not been sustained. It would take catastrophic death rates to make a second lockdown politically viable. If Chinese or European-style suppression is off the table, the focus must be on low-cost mass testing and a global push to ensure best practice in treatment, including key drugs for all. The costs are high but eminently affordable. With the US hamstrung by its isolationist president, the question of Covid-19, as on other global challenges such as climate breakdown, is whether Asia and Europe can combine to deliver the necessary leadership.
Adam Tooze is a professor of history at Columbia University.
BOSTON — On the first Monday in March, Michel Vounatsos, chief executive of the drug company Biogen, appeared in good spirits. The company’s new Alzheimer’s drug was showing promise after years of setbacks. Revenues had never been higher.
Onstage at an elite health care conference in Boston, Mr. Vounatsos touted the drug’s “remarkable journey.” Asked if the coronavirus that was ravaging China would disrupt supply chains and upend the company’s big plans, Mr. Vounatsos said no.
“So far, so good,” he said.
But even as he spoke, the virus was already silently spreading among Biogen’s senior executives, who did not know they had been infected days earlier at the company’s annual leadership meeting.
Biogen employees, most feeling healthy, boarded planes full of passengers. They drove home to their families. And they carried the virus to at least six states, the District of Columbia and three countries, outstripping the ability of local public health officials to trace the spread. …
…About 175 executives were expected at the Biogen leadership conference on Feb. 26. Employees from Biogen locations around the United States and the world reunited with colleagues they don’t often get to see.
They greeted each other enthusiastically, with handshakes and hugs, and then caught up over breakfast, picking from plates of pastries and the self-serve hot food bar. They were there for two days of discussions and presentations about the future of the Cambridge-based, multinational biotech firm, which develops therapies for neurological diseases. It was the kind of under-the-radar gathering that happens in this region just about every week.
Within days, though, the Biogen conference would be infamous, identified as an epicenter of the Massachusetts outbreak of Covid-19, with 70 of 92 coronavirus infections in the state linked to the conference as of Tuesday night, including employees and those who came into contact with them. That doesn’t include a cascade of individual cases in Tennessee, North Carolina, Indiana, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Norway, and suspected cases in Germany, Austria, and Argentina.
The virus raced through this two-day conference at a frightening speed that state health officials and company executives were unable to match. As one of the biggest and best-known biotech firms in Massachusetts and public health authorities in one of the nation’s premier medical communities struggled to connect the dots, dozens of Biogen employees were developing symptoms of the dangerous disease — even as they traveled around Boston, the country, and the world.
Concerns about holding large gatherings were already circulating locally at least a week before the Biogen conference. Massachusetts had detected its first coronavirus case on Feb. 1 — a man in his 20s who had flown back from Wuhan, China, where the virus was widespread. …
President Donald Trump and the White House knew earlier than was previously reported about alleged Russian bounties offered to Afghan militants to kill American service members, according to new reports Monday night.
Trump received a written briefing in February about intelligence regarding the alleged bounties, The New York Times reported Monday night, citing two officials with knowledge of the matter.
The Associated Press, citing officials with direct knowledge of the matter, also reported that the White House was aware of the matter much earlier, in early 2019. Then-national security advisor John Bolton told colleagues that he briefed Trump on the matter in March 2019, the AP added.
Bolton has published a tell-all memoir about his time in the White House. The narrative is full of withering condemnations of the president and unflattering anecdotes about him. Trump has slammed the book as full of lies, while the administration unsuccessfully sought to block the book’s publication. Bolton declined to comment on the AP’s report, NBC News reported.
Trump and the White House have denied that the president had been briefed on the intelligence assessment regarding the Russian bounties. The White House had also said that the intelligence underpinning the claim was unverified.
National security advisor Robert O’Brien, in a statement Monday night, condemned the leaks and asserted that the president had not been briefed.
“Because the allegations in recent press articles have not been verified or substantiated by the Intelligence Community, President Trump had not been briefed on the items,” O’Brien said. “Nevertheless, the Administration, including the National Security Council staff, have been preparing should the situation warrant action.” …
(Trump Nat’l Security Advisor says Trump wasn’t briefed. Maybe it’s
plausible. If they told him, he would no doubt explain to Putin how
he knew, and that would reveal deeper secrets & ‘trade craft’.)
The WHO Director-General reconvened the Emergency Committee (EC)…the EC reached consensus and advised the Director-General that the outbreak constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). The Director-General accepted the recommendation and declared the novel coronavirus outbreak (2019-nCoV) a PHEIC.
[ By January 12, the genome of the coronavirus had been identified and made available internationally. A test for the coronavirus was quickly developed by the WHO and was internationally available. ]
“I cannot see in the timeline when health care experts identified that Covid-19 could be spread by persons not yet showing symptoms.”
Asymptomatic coronavirus readings were being found in China in the course of contact screenings in January. The procedure followed was quarantine. Zhong Nanshan spoke on Chinese television of the routine and necessary quarantine of asymptomatic persons on February 3.
From April 1, China began publishing daily reports expressly on asymptomatic cases and has continued from then. There have been several mass general testings of population groups, such as the entire population of Wuhan or all passengers arriving from abroad at Chinese airports, with data recorded on asymptomatic cases along with the isolation of these cases and contact tracings carried out.
Renowned expert answers critical questions about new coronavirus
By Guo Meiping
Asymptomatic infection cases
“We don’t have many asymptomatic infection cases,” said Zhong, adding that most of these cases took tests because they had contacted confirmed patients or had been to Wuhan.
“There were reports that some asymptomatic infection cases can self-cure and some are infectious,” the expert said, emphasizing if a person’s nucleic acid test is positive, quarantine is necessary.
“… Although it’s certainly not good news, the positive aspect of the findings, at least so far, are that the genetic mutations do not seem to make the virus more—or less—deadly. …”
(Back in February the current Nat’l Security Advisor said…
he has not “seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything” to get the president re-elected, but also seemed to accept reports that Russia is backing Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.
In response, one senior Democrat slammed the “politicisation of intelligence” by the Trump administration and said Robert O’Brien should “stay out of politics”. …
You might think that right-wingers who scoffed at experts predicting a wave of infections from premature reopening would be chastened when the experts' prediction came true. That is, you might think that if you knew nothing about the modern right https://t.co/7UlVl5OWLW
You might think that right-wingers who scoffed at experts predicting a wave of infections from premature reopening would be chastened when the experts’ prediction came true. That is, you might think that if you knew nothing about the modern right
‘We just need some more optimism’: Rand Paul’s crusade against Anthony Fauci takes a…
Paul has clashed with Fauci before. And despite coronavirus cases surging after states declined to follow Fauci’s advice, he’s back on the case.
‘We just need some more optimism’: Rand Paul’s crusade against Anthony Fauci takes a curious turn
Paul has clashed with Fauci before. And despite coronavirus cases surging after states declined to follow Fauci’s advice, he’s back on the case.
We would expect people at Biogen to be less naive than the general public about what was known, but it may be that their contribution to the early spread was more ironic than irresponsible.
If the administration had not cut the budget for pandemic response, perhaps we would have had scientists with first-hand knowledge of what was going on in Wuhan.
The “bounty” story is another example – at least to me – of a lack of patriotism. And I do not speak of President Trump, but rather the anonymous sources for this story. The story attempts to say that either the President is terribly reckless with the security of our forces or that he has actively sold out the national interest. This source ought to be proud to put his or her name on the story. The power of an attribution would be immense….that is if the story is true. Think about Lt. Col. Vindman a bit. When asked who he spoke with about Trump’s Ukraine phone call, instead of answering, he hid behind his lawyer and Adam Schiff. Where was the “this was so outrageous and dangerous that I spoke with A, B, C and D and here are the specific reasons that it was important to tell them. Go ask them about it.”? Think about Schiff himself….why did he deny that he contacted the whistleblower and then later walk that back if this was a nationally critical situation? ‘This is what I did and this is why I did it’ has enormous credibility advantages over the anonymous and/or deceitful route. It makes no sense to operate as if Trump is an enormous danger to the nation but do so in a manner that will, without any doubt, undercut that message. If this had happened the way that the Times made it out, this would be very powerful. But it already clear that there is no energy coming from anywhere to upset the notion that the intelligence was inconclusive and that is probably a very important reason that the source required anonymity.
In its most severe form, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), leads to a life-threatening pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The mortality rate from COVID-19 ARDS can approach 40% to 50%.1,2 Although the mechanisms of COVID-19–induced lung injury are still being elucidated, the term cytokine storm has become synonymous with its pathophysiology, both in scientific publications and the media. Absent convincing data of their effectiveness in COVID-19, drugs such as tocilizumab and sarilumab, which are monoclonal antibodies targeting interleukin (IL)-6 activity, are being used to treat patients; trials of these agents typically cite the cytokine storm as their rationale (NCT04306705, NCT04322773). A critical evaluation of the term cytokine storm and its relevance to COVID-19 is warranted.
Cytokine storm has no definition. Broadly speaking, it denotes a hyperactive immune response characterized by the release of interferons, interleukins, tumor-necrosis factors, chemokines, and several other mediators. These mediators are part of a well-conserved innate immune response necessary for efficient clearance of infectious agents. Cytokine storm implies that the levels of released cytokines are injurious to host cells. Distinguishing an appropriate from a dysregulated inflammatory response in the pathophysiology of critical illness, however, has been a major challenge. To add further complexity, most mediators implicated in cytokine storm demonstrate pleotropic downstream effects and are frequently interdependent in their biological activity. The interactions of these mediators and the pathways they inform are neither linear nor uniform. Further, although their quantified levels may suggest severity of responses, they do not necessarily imply pathogenesis. This complex interplay illustrates the limitations of interfering in the acute inflammatory response based on single mediators and at indiscriminate time points….
Israel having seemingly brought coronavirus infections under control just weeks ago is unfortunately experiencing a increase in infections in a pattern that looks like that for the United States. Testing has been a weakness for the Israeli healthcare system, and that may be a reason, but the increase in infections looks ominous.
June 28, 2020
New York Times Argues Workers Should Get More, but Gets Some Important Facts Wrong
By Dean Baker
I hate to be nitpicky when the New York Times writes a very strong editorial * arguing that we need more money going to ordinary workers and less to the rich, but it is important to get the story right. Unfortunately, the editorial misses much of it.
First and foremost, there has not been a major shift from wages to profits during the period of wage stagnation. Most of the shift from wages to profits took place in the weak labor market following the Great Recession. It was being reversed in the last five years until the recession hit. If we use the data from 2019, the median wage would have been 4.2 percent higher than it actually was if the wage share was back at its 1979 level. This is a bit more than 10 percent of the gap between productivity growth and wage growth over the last four decades.
Rather than going to profits, the upward redistribution went to high end workers like CEOs and other top executives, Wall Street traders and other high flyers in the financial sector, and doctors and other highly paid professionals. If we want to reverse this upward redistribution, these should be the focus of efforts at redistribution.
The piece also implies that stock returns have been extraordinarily high through the last four decades. This is clearly wrong. While returns were very high in the 1980s and 1990s, they actually have been well below long-term averages for the last two decades.
In this vein, the piece also proposes banning share buybacks as a way to reduce returns to shareholders. It is not clear what it hopes this would accomplish. It is hardly better for workers or anyone else if companies pay out money to shareholders through dividends rather than share buybacks. (There are tax issues that make buybacks preferable for shareholders, but since shares turn over frequently, the tax consequences are limited.) For some reason, share buybacks have become a big cause in some circles, but it is difficult to see why the form of payments to shareholders would be a big deal.
The piece also is very modest in suggesting that the minimum wage should be raised to $15 an hour. While this is a good near-term target, if the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity growth since 1968, it would be over $24 an hour today. The country would look very different if the lowest paid worker was getting $24 an hour today. This comes to $48,000 a year for full-time full-year workers. A couple with two full-time minimum wage earners would have an income of $96,000 a year.
In order to be able to raise the minimum wage back to its productivity-adjusted level from 1968, and not see excessive inflation, we would have to take steps to reduce high end wages. This would mean things like fixing the corporate governance structures so CEOs could not ripoff the companies for which they work. This would mean they might get $2 million to $3 million a year, instead of $20 million. We would have to eliminate the waste in the financial sector, thereby ending the exorbitant pay in this sector. We would also have to weaken the importance of patent and copyright monopolies, making it less likely that Bill Gates types could get $100 billion. And, we would have to subject doctors and other highly paid professionals to competition, bringing their pay in line with their counterparts in other wealthy countries.
Anyhow, this is a big agenda, but if we want to bring about real change we have to understand the nature of the problem, and for the most part it is not high corporate profits. Yeah, this is the story in Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer (it’s free). **
* https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/opinion/income-wealth-inequality-america.html
** https://deanbaker.net/images/stories/documents/Rigged.pdf
June 28, 2020
The Washington Post is Worried Its Path of Structuring Globalization to Redistribute Income Upward Could be Jeopardized
By Dean Baker
The Washington Post ran a piece on how patterns of globalization may be changed due to the pandemic. It is more than a bit confused in not distinguishing short-term effects from long-term effects and its inability to distinguish between problems caused by fiscal policy and policies caused by the fallout from the pandemic.
The headline for the piece * on the Post’s homepage is “Covid-19 is erasing decades of economic gains achieved through globalization.” The subhead is “The way we travel, work, consume, invest, interact, migrate, cooperate on global problems and pursue prosperity has likely been changed for years to come.”
Literally nothing in the piece supports the claim in the headline and insofar as items in the piece support the subhead it is at least as likely to be positive as negative. The gist of the piece is that we have seen a massive reduction in trade and travel as a result of the pandemic. While some of this may prove to be permanent, the piece gives us no reason to believe that the bulk of trade will not return to normal once the pandemic has been brought under control, either with effective treatments or with a vaccine.
In terms of travel, any enduring effect is likely to be largely positive. An enormous amount of resources is now wasted on business travel and conventions that can be just as effectively performed on-line. This realization will free up a large amount of resources for more productive uses, such as health care, child care, and stopping global warming. Of course, less travel by itself will be a big help in reducing worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, the increased use of telecommuting will allow tens of millions of people to avoid unnecessary trips to their offices, leading to an enormous saving of both time and energy. This will also free up resources for more productive purposes. This change should also help reduce inequality, since so much wealth and income that had been concentrated in major cities like New York and San Francisco will now be dispersed more widely across the country. There will undoubtedly be similar patterns in other countries.
At one point the piece warns of restrictions on foreign investment being considered in Italy and then offers the warning:
“The new restrictions have raised an alarm among Italian industrialists, who say their country’s long-stagnant economy will need more foreign capital, not less, to emerge from this crisis.”
While Italy does need more investment, the problem is that European leaders have chosen to limit the ability of eurozone countries like Italy to finance investment by running budget deficits. The problem here is that Europe’s leaders, most importantly the government of Germany, have insisted on policies to slow investment and growth, not an inherent lack of investment capital in Italy.
Incredibly, while the piece complains repeatedly about protectionism, it does not mention the most important forms of protectionism of all, patent and copyright monopolies. This is especially bizarre in the context of the pandemic, since one of the big questions is whether any treatments or vaccines that are developed will be widely available or whether companies will use government-granted patent monopolies to charge high prices.
If China paves the way in developing a vaccine (it has as many vaccines in Phase III testing as the rest of the world combined) and carries through with its commitment to make any vaccine freely available to the whole world, then this will both be enormously important in and of itself, but also an incredibly valuable precedent. If a vaccine against the coronavirus can be distributed in a free market as a cheap generic, it is reasonable to ask why this should not be the case with all new drugs.
If this were to lead to new mechanisms for financing pharmaceutical research, and a worldwide free market in prescription drugs, it would imply a huge increase in globalization and an enormous gain for developing countries. The gains would be even larger if we moved beyond patent monopoly financing of research in areas like medical equipment, pesticides and fertilizers, and software.
This sort of globalization would be bad news for many U.S. corporations and many highly paid employees of these corporations, which is perhaps why the Washington Post never talks about it. But if we want to seriously discuss prospects for the future in a post-pandemic world, moving beyond patent and copyright monopolies has to be on the agenda.
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/coronavirus-pandemic-globalization/
It just occurred to me: the new COVID deaths may be lower even as the number of cases goes higher — because the cases are more heavily weighted towards younger people who are in less danger …
… the young that die had many more years ahead of them then the elderly — possibly leading to the same number of lost years of human life overall.
Denis:
This: “It just occurred to me: the new COVID deaths may be lower even as the number of cases goes higher — because the cases are more heavily weighted towards younger people who are in less danger” is not the message you should be promulgating. Besides spreading a plague, contracting Covid causes many other issues to a person besides death.
1. Typically NO ONE dies immediately from Covid, the symptoms typically appear 10 days or so out. At 2 weeks out, the storm inside the body (lungs) increases causing the immune system to react and little can be done to subdue it. Death has been coming as a result of the immune system fighting back.
2. Since they have been lied to by many people politically in authority and many have said using a mask is useless as well as social distancing in addition to being invulnerable to Covid, the young have tossed caution to the wind.
3. Sure they may not dies; however, they may suffer internal damage to organs from contracting Covid. This is something I have popping off at from time to time. This issue has been ignored mostly and as a result, theyoung believe they have little to worry about even if they contract Covid.
(In further Dark Matter news…)
Case for Axion Origin of Dark Matter Gains Traction
June 26, 2020
The axion field rapidly runs over the potential barriers and eventually begins oscillations when sufficiently slowed down by friction.
In a new study of axion motion, researchers propose a scenario known as “kinetic misalignment” that greatly strengthens the case for axion/dark matter equivalence. The novel concept answers key questions related to the origins of dark matter and provides new avenues for ongoing detection efforts. This work, published in Physical Review Letters, was conducted by researchers at the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Michigan, and UC Berkeley.
The existence of dark matter has been confirmed by several independent observations, but its true identity remains a mystery. According to this study, axion velocity provides a key insight into the dark matter puzzle. Previous research efforts have successfully accounted for the abundance of dark matter in the universe; however certain factors, such as the underproduction of axions with stronger ordinary matter interactions, remained unexplored.
By assigning a nonzero initial velocity to the axion field, the team discovered a mechanism—termed kinetic misalignment—producing far more axions in the early universe than conventional mechanisms. The motion, generated by breaking of the axion shift symmetry, significantly modifies the conventional computation of the axion dark matter abundance. Additionally, these dynamics allow axion dark matter to react more strongly with ordinary matter, exceeding the prediction of the conventional misalignment mechanism. …
Two members of the research team, Keisuke Harigaya and Raymond Co, previously explored the concept of axion dynamics in the study “Axiogenesis,” which explained how the excess of matter over antimatter could be due to a nonzero initial velocity of the QCD axion field. This study also provided a framework for generating new insights into the questions surrounding dark matter. …
To date, the axion has proven incredibly versatile. The particle was originally proposed to solve the mystery of why neutrons do not interact with an electric field despite having charged constituents. Former IAS Professor Frank Wilczek, who coined the term axion, published his landmark findings in 1978 in Physical Review Letters while a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Natural Sciences.
The published article is available here .
June 30, 2020
Older Workers Targeted in Trump’s Lawsuit to End Obamacare
By DEAN BAKER
The Trump administration is supporting a lawsuit which seeks to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in its entirety. The implication is that a large share of the older workers now able to afford health insurance as a result of the ACA will no longer be able to afford it if the Trump administration wins its lawsuit.
Furthermore, if the suit succeeds it will both end the expansion of Medicaid, which has insured tens of millions of people, and again allow discrimination against people with serious health conditions. Ending this discrimination was one of the major goals of the ACA. The issue is that insurers don’t want to insure people who are likely to have health issues that cost them money. While they are happy to insure healthy people with few medical expenses, people with heart disease, diabetes, or other health conditions are a bad deal for insurers.
Before the ACA, insurers could charge outlandish fees to cover people with health conditions, or simply refuse to insure them altogether. The ACA required insurers to cover everyone within an age bracket at the same price, regardless of their health. If the Trump administration has its way, we would go back to the world where insurers could charge people with health issues whatever they wanted, or alternatively, just deny them coverage.
This would be bad news for anyone with a serious health condition, but it would be especially bad news for the oldest pre-Medicare age group, people between the ages of 55 and 64. This group currently faces average premiums of close to $10,000 a year per person for insurance purchased through the ACA exchanges. Insurers could easily charge people with serious health conditions two or three times this amount if the Trump administration wins its case.
And, since a Trump victory would eliminate the ACA subsidiaries, people in this age group with health conditions could be looking to pay $20,000 to $30,000 a year for insurance, with no help from the government. That will be especially hard since many people with serious health conditions are unable to work full-time jobs, and some can’t work at all.
[Graph]
The 55 to 64 age group will also be hard hit because they are far more likely to have serious health issues than younger people. Just 18 percent of the people in the youngest 18 to 34 age group have a serious health condition, compared to 44 percent of those in the 55 to 64 age group, as shown in the figure above.
The ACA has many inadequacies, but it has allowed tens of millions to get insurance who could not otherwise. Donald Trump wants to take this insurance away.
Run:
“It just occurred to me: the new COVID deaths may be lower even as the number of cases goes higher — because the cases are more heavily weighted towards younger people who are in less danger” is not the message you should be promulgating. Besides spreading a plague, contracting Covid causes many other issues to a person besides death.
[ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/opinion/obamacare-coronavirus-republicans.html
There is, however, growing evidence that even those who survive Covid-19 can suffer long-term adverse effects: scarred lungs, damaged hearts and perhaps neurological disorders.
— Paul Krugman ]
America deserves better
via @BostonGlobe – June 30
… The president and his White House have failed the American public in this pandemic from the very start. Trump downplayed the threat, promoted dangerous and unproven treatments, undermined testing efforts, and abdicated federal responsibility for securing ventilators and personal protective equipment for American hospitals and health care workers. Since then, instead of learning from errors they made earlier in the pandemic, the president and his administration have doubled down on their strategy of denial, assuring abject failure. Trump has not seized the power and responsibility of the Oval Office to address the crisis even as the US death toll has surpassed that of all the world’s nations. The president had a chance at partial redemption, and he squandered it. …
In March, this editorial board wrote that the president had blood on his hands because of his administration’s catastrophic failure to prepare and respond to the pandemic threat as it reached our shores. Now, as the American outbreak has spread and expanded its profound toll on families and our economy, killing more than 125,000 people and putting more than 30 million people out of work, the president has not only demonstrated that he is culpable but that he is callous in his disregard for the loss of American lives and the suffering of American families. The United States was never going to be spared from the pandemic altogether. But as the wealthiest nation on earth, with the most advanced hospitals and highly trained medical personnel, it could have done far, far better. The American people, regardless of political party, deserve markedly more from their president and, come November, should make loud and clear that they demand it.
In March, this editorial board wrote * that the president had blood on his hands because of his administration’s catastrophic failure to prepare and respond to the pandemic threat as it reached our shores….
* https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/30/opinion/president-unfit-pandemic/
[ Surely so, but in March the Massachusetts drug company Biogen held an irresponsible conference that allowed coronavirus infections to spread in the state and far beyond and we need to understand why Massachusetts administrators failed to act responsibly in regard to the meeting. We supposedly have many governing centers in this country, so failures in this case need to be studied beyond that of the presidency. ]
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-30/Serious-coronavirus-linked-condition-hit-285-U-S-children-RKeWiwlfWw/index.html
June 30, 2020
Serious coronavirus-linked condition hit 285 U.S. children
At least 285 U.S. children have developed a serious inflammatory condition linked to the coronavirus and while most recovered, the potential for long-term or permanent damage is unknown, two new studies suggest.
The papers, published online Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine, provide the fullest report yet on the condition.
The condition is known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children. It is considered uncommon and deaths are rare; six children died among the 285 in the new studies.
Including cases in Europe, where it was first reported, about 1,000 children worldwide have been affected, a journal editorial said. *
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s case definition includes current or recent COVID-19 infection or exposure to the virus; a fever of at least 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) for at least 24 hours; severe illness requiring hospitalization; inflammatory markers in blood tests, and evidence of problems affecting at least two organs that could include the heart, kidneys, lungs, skin or other nervous system.
Digestive symptoms including nausea and diarrhea are common. Some children may have symptoms resembling Kawasaki disease, a rare condition in children that can cause swelling and heart problems.
At least 35 states have had cases, and they seem to crop up a few weeks after local COVID-19 activity peaks, said Dr. Adrienne Randolph of Boston Children’s Hospital, who is a lead researcher for a multistate study that includes CDC scientists. The second paper involved 99 children in New York state, where the first U.S. cases occurred.
Combined, the papers show 285 cases from March thru mid to late May but Randolph said additional U.S. children have been diagnosed in June.
Most had current or recent COVID-19 infections but had previously been healthy.
About 80 percent of children in the multistate study had heart-related problems, which included coronary aneurysms – a bulge in a heart artery that can be fatal.
“Those need to be followed up,” Randolph said. “This is a life-threatening concern for a lot of patients.”
Most affected children had no other health condition but about 30 percent were obese. The condition also appears to disproportionately affect Latino and Black children and boys.
The average age was eight years old. Researchers don’t know if adults can be affected.
* https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2023158
Referencing the Massachusetts Biogen coronavirus spread:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/us/coronavirus-biogen-boston-superspreader.html
April 12, 2020
How a Premier U.S. Drug Company Became a Virus ‘Super Spreader’
Biogen employees unwittingly spread the coronavirus from Massachusetts to Indiana, Tennessee and North Carolina.
By Farah Stockman and Kim Barker
June 30, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 2,704,289)
Deaths ( 129,170)
India
Cases ( 585,792)
Deaths ( 17,410)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/30/covid-19-global-health-crisis-solutions-americas-india-africa
June 30, 2020
The latest figures are a wake-up call: the global Covid-19 crisis isn’t close to over
A coordinated response to the crisis in the Americas, India and Africa must be led by countries that have suppressed the virus
By Adam Tooze – Guardian
It took more than three months for the world to record 1 million cases of Covid-19. The latest 1 million cases were clocked up in a week, taking the total to more than 10 million. On Sunday 28 June, the world recorded more than 190,000 new cases in a single day, a new record.
Don’t fixate on the precise numbers. We are testing more than ever so we find more cases. What matters is the big picture and it is drawn in stark relief: the crisis is not yet over. Far from it. Even as east Asia and Europe begin to experience recovery, the momentum of the disease at the global level is building. Nor is this the famous “second wave”. This is still the first wave spreading out across the world’s 7.8 billion inhabitants.
The question is do we have the political imagination, the sympathy and the grit necessary to grasp this crisis at the world level? Can public opinion and decision-makers in Europe and Asia, where the disease has been more or less effectively suppressed, be rallied to support an adequate global response to the crisis in the rest of the world?
The pandemic poses a profound challenge to the contemporary imagination. It has made real both the degree of our interconnectedness and the extreme difficulty that we, particularly those of us in the west, have in grasping the global forces that are at work.
This was already obvious back in January 2020. No need here to rehash the painful story of delay and prevarication; endless recriminations and postmortems are their own form of parochialism. The point is that the west treated a crisis in Wuhan as a remote and exotic problem, made all the more so by China’s “totalitarian” response. We talked about a “Chernobyl moment” for Xi’s regime, as though this was a crisis happening in the 1980s in an obscure Ukrainian town behind the iron curtain, rather than a highly infectious disease spreading through one of the world’s most dynamic and well-connected conurbations. The model should have been Chicago not Chernobyl.
London and New York, which bask in their status as “world cities”, did not appear to appreciate that a crisis in Wuhan was a matter of the utmost importance. In the US the most critical failures in February and March were not so much in Washington DC but in New York. California locked down. New York did not. We know the results. In New York state at least 31,484 people have died, as of yesterday.
So much for the failures. But even our appreciation of the geography of success is biased. The countries that did get it right were those closest to China, which have had recent experience of infectious disease threats such as Mers. But, again, we tend to exoticise their difference. We pigeonhole them as striving, emerging-market “Asian tigers”, countries with inhuman school regimes, dizzying student scores in Stem subjects, and a relaxed approach to personal privacy.
It is time to look again at the numbers and face the facts. South Korea and Taiwan are no longer “emerging”. They have emerged. Indeed, they have overtaken much of the west in terms of affluence, technological sophistication and the basic public security they offer their fortunate citizens.
Singapore, invoked by Brexiteers as though it were a bargain-basement model of a free-market society, is, in fact, in the super league of affluence, alongside Switzerland and oil-rich Norway. Taiwan’s GDP per capita is on a par with that of the richer European countries – think Germany and Sweden. South Korea is in the range of Spain, the UK and New Zealand. Covid-19 is a wake-up call to adjust our world rankings and our understanding of our place in them.
As the rest of the world has floundered, the problem for the success stories, including China, has been to contain the risk of reinfection from the outside. There was a sense of historical justice in this. Beginning in the 19th century, European states built a global public health regime with the explicit objective of limiting the spread of diseases such as cholera and yellow fever from Asia and Africa to the west. In 2020 Asia feared infection from Europe. But this carnivalesque inversion of historic geographies was short-lived. Now, as the disease spreads to Latin America, Africa and south Asia, a grim new hierarchy threatens. The disease will divide those that are rich, and thus in a position to “cope”, from the rest. Covid-19 may become another of those “poor-country diseases” that kills hundreds of thousands in a regular year. Think malaria or TB, but more infectious and thus requiring more rigorous social distancing.
The implications for our multiethnic, mobile societies are grim. Mexican Americans make up roughly 11% of the US population, Latinos all told 18%. Millions pass back and forth every year. Latin America now accounts for 53% of global mortality. You might think that the rampant spread of Covid-19 south of the US border would be an urgent priority for the US. Trump will of course exploit the disaster for his xenophobic purposes. But what is the progressive answer?
The only reason that the Americas do not entirely dominate the global mortality statistics right now is that the numbers are rising ominously in India and Africa, too. If it continues on its current track, this escalation will pose huge challenges for migrant workers and their families, as quarantine rules restrict travel and surging unemployment cuts off remittance flows.
The poor-country Covid-19 crisis was long foretold. In the spring there was a flurry of activity among institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank. But this was followed by a sense of anticlimax as the disease seemed to slow. The global pandemic is now in full flood. In March the vast majority of the world locked down. It has not been sustained. It would take catastrophic death rates to make a second lockdown politically viable. If Chinese or European-style suppression is off the table, the focus must be on low-cost mass testing and a global push to ensure best practice in treatment, including key drugs for all. The costs are high but eminently affordable. With the US hamstrung by its isolationist president, the question of Covid-19, as on other global challenges such as climate breakdown, is whether Asia and Europe can combine to deliver the necessary leadership.
Adam Tooze is a professor of history at Columbia University.
June 30, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 2,710,176)
Deaths ( 129,298)
India
Cases ( 585,792)
Deaths ( 17,410)
UK
Cases ( 312,654)
Deaths ( 43,730)
Mexico
Cases ( 220,657)
Deaths ( 27,121)
Germany
Cases ( 195,781)
Deaths ( 9,051)
Canada
Cases ( 104,144)
Deaths ( 8,591)
Sweden
Cases ( 67,667)
Deaths ( 5,310)
China
Cases ( 83,531)
Deaths ( 4,634)
(On March 1, who knew? We’ve learned how bad it was over the past
several months, and it’s far from over, but back then we were ignorant.)
How a Premier US Drug Company Became a Virus ‘Super Spreader’
NY Times – April 12
BOSTON — On the first Monday in March, Michel Vounatsos, chief executive of the drug company Biogen, appeared in good spirits. The company’s new Alzheimer’s drug was showing promise after years of setbacks. Revenues had never been higher.
Onstage at an elite health care conference in Boston, Mr. Vounatsos touted the drug’s “remarkable journey.” Asked if the coronavirus that was ravaging China would disrupt supply chains and upend the company’s big plans, Mr. Vounatsos said no.
“So far, so good,” he said.
But even as he spoke, the virus was already silently spreading among Biogen’s senior executives, who did not know they had been infected days earlier at the company’s annual leadership meeting.
Biogen employees, most feeling healthy, boarded planes full of passengers. They drove home to their families. And they carried the virus to at least six states, the District of Columbia and three countries, outstripping the ability of local public health officials to trace the spread. …
How the Biogen leadership conference in Boston spread the coronavirus
via @BostonGlobe – March 10
…About 175 executives were expected at the Biogen leadership conference on Feb. 26. Employees from Biogen locations around the United States and the world reunited with colleagues they don’t often get to see.
They greeted each other enthusiastically, with handshakes and hugs, and then caught up over breakfast, picking from plates of pastries and the self-serve hot food bar. They were there for two days of discussions and presentations about the future of the Cambridge-based, multinational biotech firm, which develops therapies for neurological diseases. It was the kind of under-the-radar gathering that happens in this region just about every week.
Within days, though, the Biogen conference would be infamous, identified as an epicenter of the Massachusetts outbreak of Covid-19, with 70 of 92 coronavirus infections in the state linked to the conference as of Tuesday night, including employees and those who came into contact with them. That doesn’t include a cascade of individual cases in Tennessee, North Carolina, Indiana, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Norway, and suspected cases in Germany, Austria, and Argentina.
The virus raced through this two-day conference at a frightening speed that state health officials and company executives were unable to match. As one of the biggest and best-known biotech firms in Massachusetts and public health authorities in one of the nation’s premier medical communities struggled to connect the dots, dozens of Biogen employees were developing symptoms of the dangerous disease — even as they traveled around Boston, the country, and the world.
Concerns about holding large gatherings were already circulating locally at least a week before the Biogen conference. Massachusetts had detected its first coronavirus case on Feb. 1 — a man in his 20s who had flown back from Wuhan, China, where the virus was widespread. …
Trump was briefed on Russian bounties earlier than thought, reports say
(No he wasn’t – Nat’l Security Advisor)
CNBC – April 29
President Donald Trump and the White House knew earlier than was previously reported about alleged Russian bounties offered to Afghan militants to kill American service members, according to new reports Monday night.
Trump received a written briefing in February about intelligence regarding the alleged bounties, The New York Times reported Monday night, citing two officials with knowledge of the matter.
The Associated Press, citing officials with direct knowledge of the matter, also reported that the White House was aware of the matter much earlier, in early 2019. Then-national security advisor John Bolton told colleagues that he briefed Trump on the matter in March 2019, the AP added.
Bolton has published a tell-all memoir about his time in the White House. The narrative is full of withering condemnations of the president and unflattering anecdotes about him. Trump has slammed the book as full of lies, while the administration unsuccessfully sought to block the book’s publication. Bolton declined to comment on the AP’s report, NBC News reported.
Trump and the White House have denied that the president had been briefed on the intelligence assessment regarding the Russian bounties. The White House had also said that the intelligence underpinning the claim was unverified.
National security advisor Robert O’Brien, in a statement Monday night, condemned the leaks and asserted that the president had not been briefed.
“Because the allegations in recent press articles have not been verified or substantiated by the Intelligence Community, President Trump had not been briefed on the items,” O’Brien said. “Nevertheless, the Administration, including the National Security Council staff, have been preparing should the situation warrant action.” …
(Trump Nat’l Security Advisor says Trump wasn’t briefed. Maybe it’s
plausible. If they told him, he would no doubt explain to Putin how
he knew, and that would reveal deeper secrets & ‘trade craft’.)
Fred Dobbs:
On March 1, who knew? We’ve learned how bad it was over the past
several months, and it’s far from over, but back then we were ignorant.
[ Do read the timeline and understand that “we” should have known before the beginning of March. We were willfully ignorant:
https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/08-04-2020-who-timeline—covid-19
April 12, 2020
WHO Timeline – COVID-19
This statement is updated on an ongoing basis, in response to evolving events and common media queries.
31 Dec 2019
China reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province. A novel coronavirus was eventually identified. ]
Do read this comprehensive timeline and understand that “we” should have known before the beginning of March.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-04/06/c_138951662.htm
April 6, 2020
China publishes timeline on COVID-19 information sharing, int’l cooperation
anne:
I am wondering what you did. You misspelled gmail. The site is sensitive to errors even though you are a regular. Sorry . . .
Good grief, Gmail does not have an “n.”
Thanks as always.
https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/08-04-2020-who-timeline—covid-19
April 12, 2020
WHO Timeline – COVID-19
30 January 2020
The WHO Director-General reconvened the Emergency Committee (EC)…the EC reached consensus and advised the Director-General that the outbreak constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). The Director-General accepted the recommendation and declared the novel coronavirus outbreak (2019-nCoV) a PHEIC.
[ By January 12, the genome of the coronavirus had been identified and made available internationally. A test for the coronavirus was quickly developed by the WHO and was internationally available. ]
June 30, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 2,726,773)
Deaths ( 130,102)
Anne,
I cannot see in the timeline when health care experts identified that Covid could be spread by persons not yet showing symptoms.
“I cannot see in the timeline when health care experts identified that Covid-19 could be spread by persons not yet showing symptoms.”
Asymptomatic coronavirus readings were being found in China in the course of contact screenings in January. The procedure followed was quarantine. Zhong Nanshan spoke on Chinese television of the routine and necessary quarantine of asymptomatic persons on February 3.
From April 1, China began publishing daily reports expressly on asymptomatic cases and has continued from then. There have been several mass general testings of population groups, such as the entire population of Wuhan or all passengers arriving from abroad at Chinese airports, with data recorded on asymptomatic cases along with the isolation of these cases and contact tracings carried out.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-02-03/Renowned-expert-answers-critical-questions-about-new-coronavirus-NM4JnwVGVO/index.html
February 3, 2020
Renowned expert answers critical questions about new coronavirus
By Guo Meiping
Asymptomatic infection cases
“We don’t have many asymptomatic infection cases,” said Zhong, adding that most of these cases took tests because they had contacted confirmed patients or had been to Wuhan.
“There were reports that some asymptomatic infection cases can self-cure and some are infectious,” the expert said, emphasizing if a person’s nucleic acid test is positive, quarantine is necessary.
China began daily reporting of new asymptomatic Covid-19 cases from April 1:
Chinese mainland new asymptomatic cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-01/Chinese-mainland-reports-three-new-COVID-19-cases-all-in-Beijing-RLizqvqYLe/img/3ab70fe4b8da4d4abdf08fc59668ac2e/3ab70fe4b8da4d4abdf08fc59668ac2e.jpeg
Me: “On March 1, who knew? We’ve learned how bad it was over the past
several months, and it’s far from over, but back then we were ignorant.”
Anne: Do read the timeline and understand that “we” should have known before the beginning of March. We were willfully ignorant:
I would say more naive than ‘willfully ignorant’.
The infectivity of covid-19 is extraordinary, and the fatality
rate is unusually high. Higher than anyone would imagine.
Then there is this:
Mutated COVID-19 Viral Strain in U.S. and Europe 10 Times More Contagious than Original Strain
“… Although it’s certainly not good news, the positive aspect of the findings, at least so far, are that the genetic mutations do not seem to make the virus more—or less—deadly. …”
(Back in February the current Nat’l Security Advisor said…
he has not “seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything” to get the president re-elected, but also seemed to accept reports that Russia is backing Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.
In response, one senior Democrat slammed the “politicisation of intelligence” by the Trump administration and said Robert O’Brien should “stay out of politics”. …
Trump security adviser slammed for ‘politicizing intelligence’ on Russian meddling
I would say more naive than ‘willfully ignorant’.
[ Yes, I agree with and appreciate this necessary correction. ]
Paul Krugman @paulkrugman
You might think that right-wingers who scoffed at experts predicting a wave of infections from premature reopening would be chastened when the experts’ prediction came true. That is, you might think that if you knew nothing about the modern right
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/30/we-just-need-some-more-optimism-rand-pauls-crusade-against-anthony-fauci-take-curious-turn/
‘We just need some more optimism’: Rand Paul’s crusade against Anthony Fauci takes a…
Paul has clashed with Fauci before. And despite coronavirus cases surging after states declined to follow Fauci’s advice, he’s back on the case.
7:18 AM · Jul 1, 2020
Clarifying:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/30/we-just-need-some-more-optimism-rand-pauls-crusade-against-anthony-fauci-take-curious-turn/
‘We just need some more optimism’: Rand Paul’s crusade against Anthony Fauci takes a curious turn
Paul has clashed with Fauci before. And despite coronavirus cases surging after states declined to follow Fauci’s advice, he’s back on the case.
[ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-23/senators-question-exposure-to-covid-19-after-paul-tests-positive
March 23, 2020
Rand Paul Defends Roaming Capitol Before Virus Results Returned
By Laura Litvan ]
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/nyregion/Coronavirus-hospitals.html
July 1, 2020
Why Surviving the Virus Might Come Down to Which Hospital Admits You
In New York City’s poor neighborhoods, some patients have languished in understaffed hospitals, with substandard equipment.
We would expect people at Biogen to be less naive than the general public about what was known, but it may be that their contribution to the early spread was more ironic than irresponsible.
If the administration had not cut the budget for pandemic response, perhaps we would have had scientists with first-hand knowledge of what was going on in Wuhan.
The “bounty” story is another example – at least to me – of a lack of patriotism. And I do not speak of President Trump, but rather the anonymous sources for this story. The story attempts to say that either the President is terribly reckless with the security of our forces or that he has actively sold out the national interest. This source ought to be proud to put his or her name on the story. The power of an attribution would be immense….that is if the story is true. Think about Lt. Col. Vindman a bit. When asked who he spoke with about Trump’s Ukraine phone call, instead of answering, he hid behind his lawyer and Adam Schiff. Where was the “this was so outrageous and dangerous that I spoke with A, B, C and D and here are the specific reasons that it was important to tell them. Go ask them about it.”? Think about Schiff himself….why did he deny that he contacted the whistleblower and then later walk that back if this was a nationally critical situation? ‘This is what I did and this is why I did it’ has enormous credibility advantages over the anonymous and/or deceitful route. It makes no sense to operate as if Trump is an enormous danger to the nation but do so in a manner that will, without any doubt, undercut that message. If this had happened the way that the Times made it out, this would be very powerful. But it already clear that there is no energy coming from anywhere to upset the notion that the intelligence was inconclusive and that is probably a very important reason that the source required anonymity.
Another way coronavirus can be most dangerous:
Cytokine storm. An overreaction of the body’s immune system…
Is a “Cytokine Storm” Relevant to COVID-19?
JAMA – June 30
In its most severe form, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), leads to a life-threatening pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The mortality rate from COVID-19 ARDS can approach 40% to 50%.1,2 Although the mechanisms of COVID-19–induced lung injury are still being elucidated, the term cytokine storm has become synonymous with its pathophysiology, both in scientific publications and the media. Absent convincing data of their effectiveness in COVID-19, drugs such as tocilizumab and sarilumab, which are monoclonal antibodies targeting interleukin (IL)-6 activity, are being used to treat patients; trials of these agents typically cite the cytokine storm as their rationale (NCT04306705, NCT04322773). A critical evaluation of the term cytokine storm and its relevance to COVID-19 is warranted.
Cytokine storm has no definition. Broadly speaking, it denotes a hyperactive immune response characterized by the release of interferons, interleukins, tumor-necrosis factors, chemokines, and several other mediators. These mediators are part of a well-conserved innate immune response necessary for efficient clearance of infectious agents. Cytokine storm implies that the levels of released cytokines are injurious to host cells. Distinguishing an appropriate from a dysregulated inflammatory response in the pathophysiology of critical illness, however, has been a major challenge. To add further complexity, most mediators implicated in cytokine storm demonstrate pleotropic downstream effects and are frequently interdependent in their biological activity. The interactions of these mediators and the pathways they inform are neither linear nor uniform. Further, although their quantified levels may suggest severity of responses, they do not necessarily imply pathogenesis. This complex interplay illustrates the limitations of interfering in the acute inflammatory response based on single mediators and at indiscriminate time points….
Cytokine storms:
The Coronavirus Patients Betrayed by Their Own Immune Systems
NY Times – April 1
Coronavirus Can Set Off a ‘Cytokine Storm.’ These Drugs May Calm It.
NY Times – June 11
Israel having seemingly brought coronavirus infections under control just weeks ago is unfortunately experiencing a increase in infections in a pattern that looks like that for the United States. Testing has been a weakness for the Israeli healthcare system, and that may be a reason, but the increase in infections looks ominous.