Tag: pandemic

More than 200 meat plant workers in the U.S. have died of covid-19. Federal regulators just issued two modest fines.

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Federal regulators knew about serious safety problems in dozens of the nation’s meat plants that became deadly coronavirus hot spots this spring but took six months to take action, recently citing two plants and finally requiring changes to protect workers.

The financial penalties for a Smithfield Foods plant in South Dakota and a JBS plant in Colorado issued last week total about $29,000 — an amount critics said was so small that it would fail to serve as an incentive for the nation’s meatpackers to take social distancing and other measures to protect their employees.

Meat plant workers, union leaders and worker safety groups are also outraged that the two plants, with some of the most severe outbreaks in the nation, were only cited for a total of three safety violations and that hundreds of other meat plants have faced no fines. The companies criticized federal regulators for taking so long to give them guidance on how to keep workers safe. Continue reading.

Trump Pressed for Plasma Therapy. Officials Worry, Is an Unvetted Vaccine Next?

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New details of how the president has demanded faster action from health agencies help explain the intensifying concern that he could demand pre-Election Day approval of a vaccine.

WASHINGTON — It was the third week of August, the Republican National Convention was days away, and President Trump was impatient.

White House officials were anxious to showcase a step forward in the battle against the coronavirus: an expansion of the use of blood plasma from recovered patients to treat new ones. For nearly two weeks, however, the National Institutes of Health had held up emergency authorization for the treatment, citing lingering concerns over its effectiveness.

So on Wednesday, Aug. 19, Mr. Trump called Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the N.I.H., with a blunt message.

“Get it done by Friday,” he demanded. Continue reading.

The deep malevolence that drives Trump’s behavior has now been laid bare

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It figures that Bob Woodward, the man who helped to take down Richard Nixon 45 years ago, would follow up with a big book about Nixon’s natural heir to the presidency, Donald Trump. Just as Nixon was undone by tape recordings he foolishly made to document his own corruption, so too Trump foolishly allowed himself to be recorded by Woodward. That’s what sets Woodward’s book “Rage” apart from all the other Trump books that have come before: We can hear the quotes in Trump’s own voice, so he can’t get away with calling it fake news.

I think most of us who have been observing this surreal presidency for the past four years have wondered whether Trump is more ignorant than malevolent or vice versa. (Obviously, he’s both: It’s just a question of which is dominant.) It’s been especially hard to know during this pandemic catastrophe because the president has made so many ill-informed comments and odious decisions, from the inane hydroxychloroquine campaign to his decision not to implement a national testing program because most of the people dying in the early days were in blue states.

Listening to Trump blithely tell Woodward at the beginning of February that he knew the pandemic was going to kill a whole lot more people than the flu and that it was an airborne disease proves that he is malevolent first and foremost. You can hear it in his voice — so blandly detached and dispassionate as he talks about what he describes as “deadly stuff.” We know he’d been warned about the likelihood of the virus coming to America by this point. Woodward even reports that national security adviser Robert O’Brien had told Trump in January that the virus would be the “biggest national security threat you face in your presidency.” Continue reading.

Here’s how Joe Biden would combat the pandemic if he wins the election

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Joe Biden has created a war-cabinet-in-waiting on the coronavirus pandemic, with major figures from the Obama, Clinton and George H.W. Bush administrations drafting plans for distributing vaccines and personal protective gear, dramatically ramping up testing, reopening schools and addressing health-care disparities.

The effort began six months ago when the campaign consulted David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner under Presidents Bush and Bill Clinton, and Vivek H. Murthy, surgeon general under President Barack Obama, on how to run a presidential campaign during a pandemic.

The pair, along with a growing cadre of volunteer health experts, has been working behind the scenes to craft plans that could take effect Jan. 20, when the next president will take the oath of office, said Jake Sullivan, a senior policy adviser on the Biden campaign. Continue reading.

Minnesota health officials look to avoid ‘twindemic’ of COVID and flu

Severe flu and COVID-19 surges could tax hospitals but COVID-19 safety precautions might reduce flu cases. 

The start of flu season this fall comes with a heightened concern about a “twindemic” — a surge of COVID-19 cases amid a severe flu season.

The fear is that emergency rooms and intensive care units would be stretched to capacity, as both diseases can cause respiratory complications such as pneumonia.

A twindemic is not inevitable, given COVID-19 safety measures and a mild flu season in the southern half of the globe. Continue reading.

Do Jobless Benefits Deter Workers? Some Employers Say Yes. Studies Don’t.

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A $600-a-week supplement that expired in July has been credited with bolstering the economy. Its impact on hiring is central to a political fight.

When Clips & Clamps, a metal forming company in Plymouth, Mich., advertised for a die setter and operator last year, more than a hundred applications came sailing in.

This summer, the company sought to hire another operator, offering $17 to $22 an hour and benefits. After three months, not a single person had responded.

“I received zero applicants,” said Jeff Aznavorian, the company’s president. “I’ve been dumbfounded.” Continue reading.

Coronavirus is hundreds of times more deadly for people over 60 than people under 40

How deadly is SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19? And what are the risks of death for people of different ages and demographics? These have been hard numbers to calculate during this pandemic.

To calculate the true death rate – more accurately called the infection–fatality ratio (IFR) – you would simply divide the total number of coronavirus deaths by the total number of infections. The problem is that with so many asymptomatic cases and limited testing for much of the pandemic, finding the true number of infections has been very difficult.

The easiest way to calculate more accurate infection and death rates is to perform random testing. Continue reading.

Most Americans want to vote before Election Day, a significant shift from previous years, poll finds

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About six in 10 registered voters nationwide say they want to cast their ballots before Election Day, a significant departure from previous years that will force the candidates to reshape how they campaign in the election season’s final weeks, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland pollconducted by Ipsos.

Fear of the coronavirus and doubts about the reliability of mail voting after months of attacks from President Trump are weighing heavily on Americans as they decide how to safely ensure their vote will be counted in this fall’s presidential election, according to the survey. In 2016, about 4 in 10 ballots were cast early.

The likely surge in early voting and mail ballots will test election systems nationwide, many of which are ill-prepared to contend with an unprecedented volume of early votes or help voters who are struggling to learn the rules around mail ballots. Continue reading.

‘Cheerleader’ Trump Tries To Talk His Way Past Woodward Revelations

Donald Trump is defending his decision to downplay the coronavirus outbreak, telling reporters his deception occurred because he is a “cheerleader for this country.”

“I love our country and I don’t want people to be frightened, I don’t want to create panic,” Trump said on Wednesday. “We don’t want to instill panic, we don’t want to jump up and down and start shouting that we have a problem that is a tremendous problem, scare everybody.”

Trump was responding to newly released audio recordings of an interview he gave to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward on Feb. 7, in which he said he already knew by then that the virus was “more deadly” than the flu but that “I wanted to always play it down.” Continue reading.

2 big problems with Kayleigh McEnany’s Bob Woodward response

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White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany faced a characteristically unenviable job in defending President Trump on Wednesday — this time with regard to his newly published comments to legendary Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward about the coronavirus pandemic.

Woodward’s book reveals that Trump internalized the true nature of the threat early on, even as he continued to downplay it publicly. His comments to Woodward indicate he knew the virus was deadlier than the flu in early February, but he continued to compare it to the flu for weeks afterward. He even conceded in mid-March that he “always” sought to downplay the threat.

But two of McEnany’s arguments, in particular, strained credulity. Continue reading.