Tag: COVID-19

Here’s Who Got Rich From Trump’s Disastrous Response To The Pandemic

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Now that we’re all unmasking and the economy seems set to roar into the 2020s, what will we remember about how disastrously, how malignantly, the Trump administration behaved as the pandemic took hold? And will anyone be held to account for it?

The instinct to forget pandemics, as I’ve pointed out when it came to the 1918 “Spanish flu,” has historically been strong indeed. In these years, the urge to forget official malfeasance and move on has, it turns out, been at least as strong. Washington’s failure to investigate and bring to account those who led the nation and ultimately the world into the folly of the Iraq War may be the most egregious recent example of this.

In the end, that’s why I wrote my new book Virus — to memorialize a clear and accessible historical record of the deliberate and deadly decision-making that swept us all into a kind of hell. I had the urge to try to stop what happened to us from being instantly buried in the next round of daily reporting or, as appears likely now, relegated to the occasional voluminous government or foundation report on how to do things better. Continue reading.

Many long-haul COVID-19 patients report improvement after vaccination, surprising experts

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Some plagued by COVID-19 symptoms months later are helped, while others are not 

CHICAGO – Wendy French of northwest suburban Lake in the Hills used to run 10 miles a day several times a week before she caught COVID-19 in September, which left her fatigued and suffering from a variety of symptoms for months after the virus was supposedly gone.

The previously healthy 45-year-old stopped running and even began dreading typical household chores such as doing laundry, because it required standing up for so long that she grew tired.

But after French got her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine in mid-April, she described feeling healthy for the first time in more than seven months. The second dose in May brought greater improvement. Continue reading.

We may never know where the virus came from. But evidence still suggests nature.

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Labs like the one in Wuhan are essential to preparing for future pandemics

From the moment the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, emerged in Wuhan, China, scientists and the broader public have sought answers to some fundamental questions: Where did this virus come from? How did the pandemic start? From the early days, experts have considered two possibilities. Either the virus somehow escaped from a laboratory, perhaps the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or, like countless viruses throughout history, it arrived through zoonotic spillover, jumping from animals to humans.

More than a year later, we still don’t know exactly what happened. Though governments and news organizations have focused more attention recently on the notion that the virus leaked from a lab, it’s unclear that we’ll ever identify a theory that satisfies everyone as to how SARS-CoV-2 emerged. Ironically, given the recent prominence of the lab escape theory, the questions the world wants answered about the virus — and the astonishingly fast development of the vaccines that can quash the pandemic — depend entirely on research conducted in labs like the Wuhan Institute of Virology and across the world over the past several decades. This fundamental research underpins our ability to prepare for and respond to pandemics. We need to know what’s out there and what kind of viral threats we face. The only way to do that is to go where the viruses are, with our colleagues who are already there.

More than a year later, we still don’t know exactly what happened. Though governments and news organizations have focused more attention recently on the notion that the virus leaked from a lab, it’s unclear that we’ll ever identify a theory that satisfies everyone as to how SARS-CoV-2 emerged. Ironically, given the recent prominence of the lab escape theory, the questions the world wants answered about the virus — and the astonishingly fast development of the vaccines that can quash the pandemic — depend entirely on research conducted in labs like the Wuhan Institute of Virology and across the world over the past several decades. This fundamental research underpins our ability to prepare for and respond to pandemics. We need to know what’s out there and what kind of viral threats we face. The only way to do that is to go where the viruses are, with our colleagues who are already there. Continue reading.

Why America failed to control the pandemic

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In “The Plague Year,” Lawrence Wright explores the missed opportunities and biggest mistakes.

It’s hard to read Lawrence Wright’s “The Plague Year,” his nonfiction account of how American scientists, doctors, politicians and citizens struggled to confront the coronavirus pandemic, and not think of his April 2020 novel, “The End of October,” which covers, well, much the same thing. In that fictional tale of a deadly virus spreading throughout the globe, the White House oscillates between confusion and indifference, conspiracy theories abound, health officials battle for influence, and economies melt down while self-styled patriots resist lockdowns. Oh, and a hapless president refuses to take responsibility and outsources management of the emergency to the former talk radio host turned vice president — like that would ever happen.

But as I worked my way through “The Plague Year,” an older book of Wright’s came to mind more often: “The Looming Tower,” a masterful journey down the roads that culminated in the 9/11 attacks. There, too, a gathering menace was ignored, experts were sidelined, and action was deferred until an unfathomable calamity was upon us. “The most frightening aspect of this new threat . . . was that no one took it seriously,” Wright wrote in that 2006 book. “It was too bizarre, too primitive and exotic.” It was a peril that seemed unthinkable, “up against the confidence that Americans placed in modernity and technology and their own ideals to protect them from the savage pageantry of history.”

“The Plague Year” does not reach the heights of “The Looming Tower” — few books do — but a global pandemic is an even deadlier threat in that savage pageantry of history, one for which the United States could have been far better prepared. Wright’s new book is most effective at detailing the missed opportunities to keep things from going so wrong. “Tens of thousands of people were bound to perish,” he writes. “But perhaps not hundreds of thousands.” This is the story of how we got that extra zero. Continue reading.

Here’s What We Know (And Don’t Know) About Long COVID

While most individuals sickened by COVID-19 will recover, other ‘long-haulers’ may still suffer from symptoms months after their infection.

Even as more people get vaccinated and the U.S. inches back toward normalcy, long COVID isn’t going away anytime soon. The post-COVID condition, recognized by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is defined by a wide-range of symptoms of illness weeks or months after an initial coronavirus infection. In the past year, research has grown in this area and patients with long COVID have formed support groups and lobbied on Capitol Hill for answers and funding for more research.

Here’s what to know:

What is long COVID? 

Long COVID is a condition that occurs when individuals sickened by COVID-19 don’t recover fully after a few weeks or manage to recover, only to have symptoms reappear weeks or months later. It can affect anyone who has had COVID, even if they had mild or no symptoms. Continue reading.

Stimulus Checks Substantially Reduced Hardship, Study Shows

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Researchers found that sharp declines in food shortages, financial instability and anxiety coincided with the two most recent rounds of payments.

WASHINGTON — Julesa Webb resumed an old habit: serving her children three meals a day. Corrine Young paid the water bill and stopped bathing at her neighbor’s apartment. Chenetta Ray cried, thanked Jesus and rushed to spend the money on a medical test to treat her cancer.

In offering most Americans two more rounds of stimulus checks in the past six months, totaling $2,000 a person, the federal government effectively conducted a huge experiment in safety net policy. Supporters said a quick, broad outpouring of cash would ease the economic hardships caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Skeptics called the policy wasteful and expensive.

The aid followed an earlier round of stimulus checks, sent a year ago, and the results are being scrutinized for lessons on how to help the needy in less extraordinary times. Continue reading.

Feds say employers can require vaccines and offer incentives

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The federal government said Friday that it is legal for companies to require workers to get coronavirus vaccines. Companies can also offer unlimited rewards to workers to get vaccinated, as long as the employer doesn’t administer the vaccine.

Why it matters: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission finally cleared legal questions tied to how employers can increase the country’s vaccination rates. View the post here.

Troubled Vaccine Maker and Its Founder Gave $2 Million in Political Donations

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Emergent BioSolutions faces scrutiny in Congress for ruining Covid-19 vaccines and securing lucrative federal contracts. Executives will appear before some lawmakers who benefited from the company’s spending.

WASHINGTON — When Fuad El-Hibri, founder and executive chairman of Emergent BioSolutions, appears Wednesday before a House subcommittee to explain how the company’s Baltimore plant ruined millions of doses of coronavirus vaccine, he will be questioned by lawmakers he and his employees spent tens of thousands of dollars helping to elect.

Since 2018, federal campaign records show, Mr. El-Hibri and his wife, Nancy, have donated at least $150,000 to groups affiliated with the top Republican on the panel, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, as well as Mr. Scalise’s campaigns. At least two other members of the subcommittee received donations during the 2020 election cycle from the company’s political action committee, which has given about $1.4 million over the past 10 years to members of both parties.

Mr. El-Hibri and his wife have made additional donations totaling more than $800,000 over the same period, with the majority going to Republican candidates and organizations. Continue reading.

Anti-vaxxers are now convinced they’ll inherit the earth as lone survivors after vaccines kill everyone else

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Some users on the TikTok social media app seem to think they’ll be left with the world to themselves after vaccinated people die off.

The videos, hashtagged with “#unvaccinated” and other high-interest terms designed to appear on users’ “For You” recommendations, have been viewed thousands and thousands of times, and are just a fraction of the misinformation spread on the platform, reported Vice.

“I am Optimus Prime,” says one video, using audio from the 2007 movie “The Transformers,” “and I send this message to any surviving Autobots taking refuge among the stars. We are here. We are waiting.” Continue reading.

State vaccine rates fall along red, blue divide

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The U.S. vaccine map looks a lot like a map of how states vote in presidential elections, with most blue states vaccinating at levels well above the national average and GOP states bringing up the rear.

The politics of COVID-19 have been partisan from almost the onset of the pandemic, and polls consistently show that Republicans, particularly men, are more hesitant than Democrats to get vaccinated.

The deep-blue state of Vermont has the highest share of its population with at least one vaccine dose, at 65 percent, according to data compiled by The New York Times, followed by Massachusetts, Hawaii, New Hampshire and Connecticut. Continue reading.