Coronavirus

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      'The numbers floored me': hunger in Pennsylvania hits highest level since pandemic's start

      by

      [embedded content]
      Charles Bennicoff hasn’t worked since last winter. He’s an experienced landscape gardener but the mom-and-pop business he worked for in Allentown, Pennsylvania, cut its staff after losing most of their contracts during the pandemic.
      Bennicoff, 50, now relies on a food pantry for a few bags of groceries every couple of weeks to supplement the food stamps and social security his mentally ill wife receives. He still picks up the occasional odd job but doesn’t qualify for unemployment benefits because the landscaping job was cash in hand.
      It’s the first time the couple have needed food aid since recovering from drug addiction and homelessness about 20 years ago, and Bennicoff is struggling to stay positive.
      “Covid has taken a toll, emotionally and financially. There’s a thousand people dying every day because of the president’s lies, and I can’t just shrug that off. I have tears in my eyes every night,” said Bennicoff.
      Hunger is rising in Pennsylvania, with the demand for food aid at its highest level since the start of the pandemic, according to new figures obtained by the Guardian. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      US sets world record for coronavirus cases in 24 hours

      by

      [embedded content]
      The US has set a world record for coronavirus cases in 24 hours, according to one count with just over 100,000 new infections recorded.
      The daily caseload of 100,233 – as counted by Reuters – surpassed 97,894 cases reported by India on a single day in September.
      The news came three days before the presidential election, and as Donald Trump continued to stage large-scale events at which Covid mitigation measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing are not enforced. The president himself, the first lady, senior aides and Republican leaders contracted the virus after attending such events.
      Trump, who spent time in hospital, has insisted the US is “rounding the corner” in the fight to contain the pandemic. This week his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr, a key campaign surrogate, said deaths from Covid-19 were “almost nothing”.
      According to Johns Hopkins University – which counted nearly 99,000 US cases on Friday – nearly 230,000 of more than 9m US cases of Covid-19 have resulted in death.
      The president and his campaign have sought to present a contrast to Democratic challenger Joe Biden’s promise to implement another lockdown if necessary.
      On Saturday, Biden said in a statement: “President Trump still has no plan to address Covid-19. He quit on you, on your family, on America. He just wants us to grow numb to the horrors of the death toll and the pain. We cannot afford another four years of his failed leadership.”
      On Friday, scientists at Stanford University released a study which said recent Trump rallies produced more than 30,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and “likely led to more than 700 deaths”.
      The authors set out to “investigate the effects of large group meetings on the spread of Covid-19 by studying the impact of 18 Trump campaign rallies” over “up to 10 post-rally weeks for each event”.
      “Our estimate of the average treatment effect across the 18 events,” they wrote, “implies that they increased subsequent confirmed cases of Covid-19 by more than 250 per 100,000 residents.
      “Extrapolating this figure to the entire sample, we conclude that these 18 rallies ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 incremental confirmed cases of Covid-19. Applying county-specific post-event death rates, we conclude that the rallies likely led to more than 700 deaths (not necessarily among attendees)”.
      The US has exceeded its previous single-day record, of 77,299 cases registered in July, five times in the past 10 days. The number of daily infections reported in the last two days suggests the country is reporting more than one new case every second.
      Despite the overall figure, the US has a rate of about 28,100 cases per million people, which places it about 14th in the world for prevalence.
      Many states experiencing surges in case numbers are re-instituting social restrictions. In New York on Saturday, Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters most people arriving in the state must now quarantine for at least three days before taking a coronavirus test. If that test comes back negative, the traveler can leave quarantine.
      The requirements will not apply to residents of “contiguous” states, Cuomo told reporters, and there will be different requirements for New Yorkers who leave the state for less than 24 hours.
      The governor named Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey as examples of contiguous states, home to many commuters to New York City. But it was unclear if neighbouring Vermont and Massachusetts would also be exempt. Cuomo’s office did not reply to questions seeking clarification on Saturday. More

    • 150 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Obama lends a hand as Biden and Trump launch final campaign blitz

      by

      [embedded content]
      America was on edge on Saturday as Donald Trump and Joe Biden launched a final campaign blitz amid a surging pandemic, record early voting and gnawing uncertainty over when the outcome of the presidential election will be known.
      Trailing in the polls, Trump began a frenzied schedule of 14 rallies in three days, even as the coronavirus scythed through the country. The US recorded more than 99,000 cases on Friday, its biggest ever single-day total. Many of the worst outbreaks are in the battleground states where the president is travelling.
      Biden campaigned with Barack Obama at drive-in rallies in Flint and Detroit, predominantly Black cities where strong turnout will be essential in the fight for Michigan. Stevie Wonder was to perform in Detroit.
      In Flint, Obama decried Trump as a president “who goes out of his way to insult people just because they don’t support them”.
      “With Joe and Kamala at the helm,” he said, “you’re not going to have to think about them every day. You’re not going to have to argue with your family about him every day. It won’t be so exhausting. You’ll be able to get on with your lives.”
      Obama also went after Trump’s idea of masculinity, saying that being a man once meant “taking care of other people”, rather than “strutting and showing off, acting important, bullying people”.
      Following the former president on stage, Biden briefly slipped back into much-criticised attack lines against Trump, who he has previously said he would like to fight. “When you were in high school wouldn’t you have liked to take a shot?” he asked, before apparently remembering to keep to the high road.
      “That’s a different story … but anyway. [Trump is] macho man.”
      Both men repeated Biden’s vow to get the coronavirus pandemic under control. But with record numbers of infections, and record numbers of voters casting ballots early, the dominant narratives of 2020 were still hurtling towards a potentially destabilising climax. There was intense anxiety over whether Tuesday will deliver a clear verdict or a prolonged, agonising vote count, over days or even weeks.
      More than eight in 10 Americans (86%) are somewhat or very worried there will be violent protests following the election, the Public Religion Research Institute found. Businesses in New York, Washington and other cities were boarding up in case of trouble.
      Trump has spent months claiming, without evidence, that he can only lose if it the vote is rigged. He has threatened to challenge the outcome and refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. In rural Pennsylvania on Saturday, the president told supporters they should scrutinise polls in Philadelphia, a Democratic city, on election day.
      Democrats have called for massive turnout, to put the result beyond doubt.
      The election comes after a year that has seen an impeachment trial, an economic crisis and a reckoning over racial injustice. But Covid-19 remains the defining issue and the candidates’ closing arguments could not be more different.
      Biden has been driving home the message that Trump mismanaged a pandemic that has infected 9 million and killed 229,000. “He’s doing nothing,” the former vice-president said this week. “We’re learning to die with it. Donald Trump has waved the white flag, abandoned our families and surrendered to the virus.”
      In Florida on Thursday, the president, who spent three nights in hospital after becoming infected, said: “You know the bottom line, though? You’re gonna get better. You’re gonna get better. If I can get better, anybody can get better. And I got better fast.”
      On Friday, he baselessly claimed: “Our doctors get more money if someone dies from Covid. You know that, right? I mean, our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, ‘I’m sorry but everybody dies of Covid.’”
      The president was to hold four rallies in Pennsylvania on Saturday, then five on Sunday and five on Monday across Iowa, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Observing mostly maskless supporters crammed together, critics have branded such rallies “super-spreader events”.
      Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist who advised Al Gore and John Kerry, said: “Trump is frantically flying around the country in Air Force One giving these rally speeches, which I think motivate his base but also alienate a lot of other voters because they look at the pictures where people are cheek by jowl and there’s no masking.”
      Noting an outbreak among Vice-President Mike Pence’s staff, Shrum added: “You have just had Covid invade the White House for a second time, so I think it adds to the sense that that he can’t handle Covid.”
      Polls show Biden with a consistent lead nationally and up by smaller margins in the states that will decide the electoral college. Democrats could also win a majority in the Senate, potentially ending years of gridlock.
      But few are complacent. The final Fox News poll in 2016 showed Hillary Clinton leading Trump 48% to 44%; the final Fox News poll this year has Biden up 52%-44%. Analysts say that if polls are off by the same margin, Biden will still win.
      Bob Woodward, author of two bestselling books about Trump, said: “It looks like Biden’s going to win but I would not bet more than a dollar on it. I think it’s quite possible that Trump will win.” More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      US Congress hopeful Nancy Goroff: 'We need more scientists in public office'

      by

      Nancy Goroff will be the first female research scientist to serve in the US Congress if she is elected this November. The Democratic candidate is running for one of Long Island’s seats in the House of Representatives against incumbent Republican, Lee Zeldin, an ardent President Trump supporter who has described her as a “radical professor”. Facing a tight race with issues such as the coronavirus pandemic and climate change looming large, Goroff, a professor of chemistry at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is stressing her science credentials.
      You’ve worked at Stony Brook University for more than two decades developing new organic molecules for solar cells and eco-friendly lighting in your lab. What made you decide to run for Congress?I decided in late 2018, when the issues top of mind were climate change, the environment and healthcare. It came from being frustrated and infuriated with the denigration of science and expertise by the Trump administration. I’ve always advocated causes that I believe in – I sit on the Union of Concerned Scientist’s National Advisory Board – but it just didn’t seem like enough any more. I couldn’t stand by.
      Given the pandemic and climate emergency, is this election a referendum on whether politicians should listen to scientific advice?It seems to be. We hear from voters that they’re frustrated with politicians for not paying attention to the science and leading us to where we are now. Biden has said he is going to be a big proponent of science.
      We need to use facts to guide us through the coronavirus pandemic. The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) testified recently that the most important thing we can do to get ahead of the pandemic – more important than a vaccine – is to have everyone wear masks. That didn’t fit Trump’s narrative, so he said the CDC director misspoke. Rather than contradicting the CDC, he should be amplifying its message. That [Trump] won’t wear a mask and denigrates people for wearing masks is just unconscionable to me.
      What would the fallout for science be if Trump was re-elected?There would be a lot of pain and suffering. The pandemic will last much longer. I also worry about a continued lack of action on climate change, lack of concern about providing healthcare to people and the further undermining of experts in every government agency. People have been pushed out and there is a huge amount of work to do to rebuild that expertise.
      You’re not specifically supporting the Green New Deal, the progressive environmental package introduced last year by two Democrats including New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It sets an aggressive goal of developing a carbon neutral economy in 10 years. If elected, what would you do instead?There are many different versions of the Green New Deal. If I say I’m for the Green New Deal, the Republicans will decide that I’m for the most extreme version. I am for the US aiming to be carbon neutral in our energy production by 2035 and carbon neutral overall, including all sources, as soon after as we can. To achieve that we need to deploy the renewable energy technologies we have as quickly as possible and invest in research to develop new ones.
      I want to make sure Covid-19 stimulus spending is focused on investment in clean energy infrastructure. That will bring jobs and move us closer to a carbon neutral future. Then – I’m a scientist, I am well versed in the data – I want my office to be a resource for every member of Congress on scientific questions.
      You are backed by 314 Action, a Democratic committee whose mission is to get scientists elected to public office. Why do we need more scientists in Congress and does gender matter?We need more scientists, regardless of gender. We have a lot of lawyers and business people and that’s fine, but you want people from diverse backgrounds when you are trying to make complicated policy decisions. So many of our big challenges as a country have a scientific or technical component. There is only one research scientist in Congress now [Bill Foster, a Democratic physicist from Illinois]. As a woman in science, I know what it means to be an underrepresented group and I think that will be helpful for making sure my constituents get their voices amplified. More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Markets plunge in uncertainty about a second term and a second wave

      by

      Stock market investors are braced for a bumpy ride this week as the likelihood of further dramatic increases in Covid-19 cases across the world collide with the final days of the US presidential election campaign.
      Last week, shares in the US and Europe slumped at their fastest rate since March and analysts said there would be worse to come, after France and Germany imposed strict lockdowns and US states came under pressure to tackle the rising number of deaths.
      “New lockdowns across Europe are being harshly repriced by markets,” said Barclays equity strategist Emmanuel Cau.
      “There is a huge nervousness about a second wave,” added Gabriel Sterne, head of global macro research at consultancy Oxford Economics. “With some government finances beginning to be stretched, the threat of further lockdowns is causing a large degree of anxiety.”
      Heightened levels of concern about the path of the virus began to affect markets three weeks ago. From New York to Paris, London and Tokyo, investors sold heavily from 13 October onwards as each day brought news of higher infection rates and growing numbers of deaths.
      Stricter measures to limit households mingling began to take effect and government ministers of all political stripes began to talk about broader lockdowns being the only answer to the spread of the virus.
      FTSE 100
      The Paris CAC index lost more than 400 points, or 8%, from 13 October to the end of last week while London’s top 100 listed companies slumped 7.5% over the same period. Last week, the Stoxx 600 index of European companies slumped to its lowest level in five months, falling 3.1% in a day.
      In the US, a downturn in stock values that began in September with a panic over the virus turned into a rout after it became clear Congress would not give Donald Trump the stimulus package he craved.
      Without a second trillion-dollar tranche of cash to support closed businesses and millions of unemployed workers, the president’s boast that the recovery was “looking fantastic” lacked substance. The S&P 500 lost more than 8% in the 16 days that followed 13 October.
      It wasn’t the first time this year that fears of a Covid-19 second wave had spooked markets, but the rallies that turned the previous panics into mere blips on a chart appear to be absent this time. Investors have stopped listening to hopeful stories about a vaccine and begun looking at the ripple effect that flows from the widespread adoption of masks and physical distancing.
      As Dhaval Joshi, chief European strategist at BCA Research, says, consumers who cannot use their nose or mouth in close proximity to others are hardly consumers at all.
      He estimates that while lockdowns put a temporary block on economic activity, the face mask and distancing rules will cut as much as 10% off GDP for as long as they are imposed.Stocks in the three hardest-hit sectors – hospitality, retail, and transport – have taken a beating since March.
      Stoxx 600
      However, investors who have switched to the tech industry have shrugged off concerns about the virus. The major tech companies – Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (the owner of Google), Microsoft and Facebook – were behind the 50% increase in the S&P 500 since Trump took the presidency and have generally benefited from the switch to a more digital economy since the lockdowns in March. If US stocks are to recover their momentum, tech will have to perform.
      In the UK, where the FTSE 100 is dominated by banking, insurance and oil and gas companies, share prices have barely recovered after dipping to 5,000 points in March. Across Europe, successful industrial giants such as Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Siemens have been hit as a six-month recovery in their share prices took a negative turn.
      Donald Trump’s attack lines in the closing weeks of the US presidential campaign have also highlighted the potential downside for investors of a victory for Democratic candidate Joe Biden on 3 November. Desperate to land some punches on his rival, the president has tweeted more than once: “A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for the biggest TAX HIKE in history.”
      So far the claim, which even rightwing US thinktanks say overstates the magnitude of his tax proposals, has failed to shift the polls and they continue to suggest a Biden victory. But distrust of the polls and Trump’s veiled threats to challenge the validity of a narrow Biden victory have only added to stock-market jitters.
      S&P500
      One constant source of light for investors has been the actions of central banks. After a brief flirtation by the US Federal Reserve with increasing interest rates during the first years of the Trump administration, all central banks have cut borrowing costs to zero, and some, including the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of Japan, to below zero.
      Central banks have also pumped trillions into the financial system to maintain the flow of easy credit to businesses large and small, adding to the sense that whatever Covid-19 may throw at them, companies’ borrowing costs will be negligible.
      This week the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee is expected to add another £100bn to the £745bn of “quantitative easing” – purchasing sovereign and corporate debt from financial institutions – it has already injected into the economy. The US Fed’s board will also meet this week and the signs are that the recent slump in stock values will persuade its policymakers to increase its current $7.2tn (£5.6tn) of QE.
      Last week the president of the ECB, Christine Lagarde, signalled a further stimulus for the eurozone in December, while the Bank of Japan has said that its determination to print as much money as it takes to keep interest rates below zero is “unlimited”.
      Such support from the central banks will be essential as the virus continues to ravage the populations of Europe and the US. Whether it will be enough to turn the stock market back on to a more positive path is another matter. More

    • 188 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Digested week: no sympathy for the second most awful man in America | Emma Brockes

      by

      MondayI’ve always felt sorry for the victims of Sacha Baron Cohen, no matter how much they seem to deserve it. He plays on their vanity and eggs them on to say terrible things, but he also hoodwinks them using something less laudable: the desire, present in most people, to avoid causing someone else – in this case, Baron Cohen’s buffoonish alter egos – social pain or embarrassment.There is, it turns out, an exception to this weakness of mine, a person I’m only too happy to see Baron Cohen torment. Step forward Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and the second most awful man in America, who over the weekend continued to push back against his starring role in the new Borat sequel. In a secretly filmed scene from the movie, Giuliani is shown accompanying Borat’s “15-year-old daughter” to a hotel room, before lying down on the bed and sticking his hands down the front of his pants. He said later he had been “tucking in my shirt”.Even Fox News confessed to being “grossed out” by this episode, but four days after news of the scene broke, Giuliani did what he does best and upstaged himself by engaging in another dispute. On Sunday the 76-year-old sat in a car on Fifth Avenue in New York stuck in traffic caused by a group identifying itself as “Jews for Trump”. Counter-protesters arrived and spotted through the car’s open passenger-seat window the tiny, scowling face of Giuliani. Video footage of the event shows him peering beadily out like a creature in a story by Beatrix Potter introduced for the sole purpose of receiving a comeuppance. Shouting ensued.“Who would you prefer for the next four years?” said Giuliani in an interview afterwards. “This group of foul-mouthed people who don’t seem to have a vocabulary beyond three words, or these very nice Jewish people who are … not saying anything back and not doing anything other than exercising their right to say they’re for Donald Trump.” To which the answer is, obviously, whichever one grabs the wheel and keeps driving until Giuliani is safely over the horizon.TuesdayTo escape the world, I am on a television binge, although my choice of shows sometimes makes everything worse. On Tuesday I finished Utopia, Gillian Flynn’s horrifically timed adaptation of the 2013 cult British show of the same name, in which a flu-like pandemic threatens the world. A laborious disclaimer runs at the start of the show (Utopia is a work of fiction “not based on actual, related or current events”), which makes one wonder how close makers came to delaying its transmission. One of its themes is how you can’t trust government health authorities, while the world falls victim to an unreliable vaccine.If it was masochistic to watch, I enjoyed it for its comic-book thrills and the way it unfolded like Scooby-Doo but with torture. A better escape is The Undoing, the new HBO thriller starring Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman, set in the airless world of hyper-wealthy Manhattan. Grant, who once described his own acting range as “sinisterly narrow”, has prospered where other former romantic heroes have fallen, and as someone who has since Four Weddings and Funeral been, so to speak, totally straight for Grant, it is gratifying indeed. Orlando Bloom, marooned on the terrible Carnival Row; Jude Law, hurling himself ineffectually about in The Third Day; Paul Bettany, with any luck never to be seen in any context again; and here is Grant, urbane, winsome and still a bit mumbly, banking one TV hit after another.WednesdayKim Kardashian West threw a surprise party on a private island to celebrate her 40th birthday, an event that left her feeling, she wrote on Instagram afterwards, “humbled and blessed”, not least “during these times when we are reminded of the things that truly matter”. It has never been clear how nakedly the Kardashians are trolling us but, given that of all their shortcomings a lack of self-awareness has never been one, it’s fair to assume they know what they’re doing. The Instagram post wasn’t tone deaf, it was precisely on brand.It was the same story with Kendall Jenner’s commercial for Pepsi, in which the model was depicted solving aggressive policing in the US by giving a cop a can of cola. She too was accused of tone deafness, when the ad, which was crass, dumb and self-regarding, was entirely in keeping with the family’s output. Above all, it guaranteed to generate in the form of outrage more grist for the Kardashian mill. If we want them to go away, we have to give up the pleasure of hating them and replace it with stony indifference.ThursdayThere is no trick-or-treating in our building this year, but a socially distanced Halloween parade around the block, during which all the kids will be required to wear masks (not the fun kind). In school, Halloween is banned because of problems with allergens. One good thing to have come out of the reduced school schedule, therefore, is Halloween at the Learning Center, the city-provided facility where kids go for remote learning on the days they are not in school. Today, to their delight, they got to dress up (the only proviso, “no swords”).Our particular Learning Center is in a public leisure complex, and it’s a lot groovier than school. The staff work for the parks department rather than the education department, which means more tattoos and body piercings and fewer fawn-coloured cardies. It also means that although it’s entirely indoors, it has a forest school vibe of no competition.After a day of Halloween fun, my kids came home over the moon at the new way of doing things. “We played a game and if you won you got candy and if you lost you also got candy.” I have opinions about this prizes-for-all approach but, given the state of the world, I decided to let this one slide.FridayAs with everywhere else in New York, the one unbreakable rule of the Learning Center is that everyone entering wears a mask. The number of ways people find to wear their masks wrong continues to be weird. There’s the sizing issue, when the wearer drapes a narrow strip of fabric successfully over his nose and mouth while leaving vast expanses of chin exposed. There’s the nose flasher, who covers his mouth but thinks nose-breathing doesn’t shed viral load. And there is the person who wears it hooked over their ears but pushed way down as a kind of chin hammock. (This person drags out the eating of crisps so their mask can stay down.)Like the small hacks and variations kids make to school uniforms, everyone has their own style, with the added frisson of potentially infecting those around them with a deadly disease. Happy Halloween. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Donald Trump Jr and father play down Covid deaths as daily toll nears 1,000

      by

      As coronavirus deaths in the US approach 1,000 a day in the current record surge of infections, Donald Trump and his son, Don Jr, appear intent on publicly disputing the lethality of the outbreak at repeated opportunities.
      Don Jr sat for an interview with Fox News on Thursday night during which he called critics of the Trump administration’s approach to the pandemic “truly morons” and said that deaths from Covid-19 in America right now are “almost nothing”.

      Bill Maxwell 😷 #NeverTrump
      (@Bill_Maxwell_)
      Don Jr. falsely claimed on Thursday that the number of Americans dying from the coronavirus amounts to “almost nothing.”An average of 1,000 Americans a day are dying from Covid-19 right now.pic.twitter.com/oHNzQtfDOS

      October 30, 2020

      Meanwhile, having said at a rally last weekend that “you don’t see death” at this stage of the pandemic in the US, Donald Trump reiterated in a tweet on Friday morning that deaths are “WAY DOWN” in the US, mass testing is exaggerating the numbers of infections and hospitals are coping.

      Donald J. Trump
      (@realDonaldTrump)
      More Testing equals more Cases. We have best testing. Deaths WAY DOWN. Hospitals have great additional capacity! Doing much better than Europe. Therapeutics working!

      October 30, 2020

      In fact, many hospitals across the US, especially the midwest and upper midwest heartland and Texas are on the brink of being overwhelmed and are setting up field hospitals and calling in the military and assistance from state governors.
      On Fox News, Don Jr said: “If you look at, I put it on my Instagram, I went through the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] data because I kept hearing about the new infections, [but] why aren’t they talking about deaths? Oh, oh, because the number is almost nothing, because we have gotten control of this thing.”
      Public health experts, such as the top public health official on the White House’s own coronavirus taskforce, Anthony Fauci, just this week warned that the US was in for “a whole lot of pain” this winter because it is not controlling the pandemic, and that life probably will not return return to normal until late 2021 or 2022, even with a successful vaccine likely to emerge in the coming months.
      Nearly 90,000 new coronavirus infections were reported in the US on Thursday, the highest single-day total in the country since the pandemic began, or about one new case every second.
      In the recent surge deaths can lag cases by several weeks. But already deaths are increasing in about half of states, the New York Times reported.
      And in the past month, about a third of US counties hit a daily record of deaths in the pandemic. More