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      in US Politics

      Global report: Trump wrongly claims Covid affects 'virtually' no young people

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      As the United States’ coronavirus death toll edged closer to 200,000, US president Donald Trump claimed falsely at a rally in Ohio that the country’s fatality rate was “among the lowest in the world” and that the virus has “virtually” no effect on young people.Speaking in the town of Swanton, Trump said: “It affects elderly people. Elderly people with heart problems and other problems. If they have other problems that’s what it really affects, that’s it,” he claimed. “You know in some states, thousands of people – nobody young.”“Take your hat off to the young, because they have a hell of an immune system. But it affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing. By the way, open your schools.”Trump also claimed that the United States had “among the lowest case-fatality rates of any country in the world.” The US ranks 53rd highest out of 195 countries in the world with a case-fatality rate of 2.9%, according to Johns Hopkins University. It is the 11th worst on deaths per 100,000 people, at 60.98.At least 199,815 Americans are known to have died since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins, which relies on official government data. With the worst death toll in the world, the US accounts for one in five coronavirus-related fatalities worldwide. Just under one in every 1,600 Americans has died in the pandemic.In August, the World Health Organization warned that young people were becoming the primary drivers of the spread of coronavirus in many countries.Meanwhile, in Europe, stocks posted their worst fall in three months on Monday as fears of a second wave hit travel and leisure shares, while banks tumbled on reports of about $2tn-worth of potentially suspect transfers by leading lenders. Pubs, bars and restaurants in England will have to shut by 10pm from Thursday under new nationwide restrictions to halt an “exponential” rise in coronavirus cases.Boris Johnson is expected to make an address to the nation on Tuesday setting out the new measures. With cases doubling every week across the UK and a second wave expected to last up to six months, health officials are said to have advised the government over the weekend to “move hard and fast”. There could be up to 50,000 new coronavirus cases a day in Britain by the middle of October if the pandemic continues at its current pace, the country’s chief scientific adviser warned. Scotland is also expected to announce new restrictions on Tuesday.The Czech Republic prime minister, Andrej Babis, admitted on Monday that his government had made a mistake when it eased restrictions over the summer. “Even I got carried away by the coming summer and the general mood. That was a mistake I don’t want to make again,” the billionaire populist said in a televised speech.After fending off much of the pandemic earlier in the year with timely steps, including mandatory face masks outdoors, the government lifted most measures before the summer holidays.The Czech Republic registered a record high of 3,130 coronavirus cases on Thursday last week, almost matching the total for the whole of March, although testing capacity was low at the start of the pandemic.In other developments:There are 31.2m coronavirus cases worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins, and 963,068 people have died over the course of the pandemic so far.
      New Zealand recorded no new cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday, as restrictions on much of the country were entirely removed, and measures imposed on Auckland, the largest city, were due to ease further. There was no recorded community spread of the virus in the rest of New Zealand, where the government has now lifted all physical distancing restrictions and limits on gatherings.
      Mexico surpassed 700,000 confirmed cases on Monday after the health ministry reported 2,917 new confirmed cases in the Latin American country, bringing the total to 700,580 as well as a cumulative death toll of 73,697. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Succession creator Jesse Armstrong criticises Trump and Johnson at Emmys

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      The Succession creator, Jesse Armstrong, used his Emmy acceptance speech to attack Boris Johnson and Donald Trump for their “crummy” response to coronavirus, and also the media moguls who do so much to keep them in power.Armstrong’s HBO show, telling the story of a billionaire media tycoon and his dysfunctional, warring family, was one of the big winners at the ceremony on Sunday. It won seven awards, including outstanding drama, which Armstrong accepted from a hotel room in London.He said it was sad not to be able to share the success with colleagues in the US. “Being robbed of the opportunity to spend time with our peers, maybe I’d like to do a couple of un-thankyous,” he said.“Un-thankyou to the virus, for keeping us all apart this year. Un-thankyou to President Trump for his crummy and uncoordinated response. Un-thankyou to Boris Johnson and his government for doing the same in my country.“Un-thankyou to all the nationalist and quasi-nationalist governments in the world who are exactly the opposite of what we need right now. And un-thankyou to the media moguls who do so much to keep them in power. So un-thankyou!”Armstrong is one of Britain’s most celebrated comedy writers, having co-created Peep Show and Fresh Meat in the UK as well as having been on the writing team for The Thick of It.Succession’s seven wins came from 18 nominations and included the best actor award for Jeremy Strong, who plays the eldest son, Kendall Roy. His success meant that Brian Cox, who plays the patriarch and was nominated in the same category, missed out on a prize that bookmakers had made him odds-on to win.Cox was one of many British and Irish actors to miss out. Olivia Colman (The Crown) and Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) were thwarted in their category when Zendaya made history by becoming the youngest person to win in the best actress drama lead category for Euphoria.Also missing out were Helena Bonham Carter (The Crown), Fiona Shaw (Killing Eve), Matthew Macfadyen (Succession), Harriet Walter (Succession), Jeremy Irons (Watchmen), Paul Mescal (Normal People), Andrew Scott (Black Mirror), Dev Patel (Modern Love) and Phoebe Waller-Bridge for her guest appearance on Saturday Night Live.Aside from Succession the big winners were HBO’s Watchmen, shown in the UK on Sky Atlantic, and the Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek, which, since it went on Netflix, has steadily and quietly become a huge feelgood hit. The sixth and final season of the show swept the board in the comedy categories, a feat not even achieved by shows such as Frasier and Modern Family.It won seven Emmys with acting wins for the show’s stars Eugene Levy, Dan Levy, Catherine O’Hara and Annie Murphy. Appearing in the ceremony’s virtual backstage area Dan Levy, its co-creator and showrunner, discussed the possibility of Schitt’s Creek returning as a movie.“Here’s the thing – some people have been asking that,” he said. “If there is an idea that pops into my head and worthy of these wonderful people, it has to be really freaking good at this point.”Other winners included Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the Birmingham-born writer and comedian who started out on the UK standup circuit before achieving success in the US.RuPaul’s Drag Race, which has spawned a Bafta-nominated British version on the BBC, won the reality competition award.The virtual awards ceremony, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel – “welcome to the Pandemmys” – will go down as one of the oddest in the Emmys’ 72-year history with prizes delivered to winners, often in their homes, by people in hazmat tuxedos.The dress code was “come as you are”, with the suggested option of designer pyjamas. Hardly any of the stars went down that route, although Jane Lynch, in a very smart top, revealed she was also wearing sweatpants.A number of actors used the event to express support for the Black Lives Matter movement, including Regina King, who won the limited series lead actress award for Watchmen. She wore a T-shirt that honoured the police shooting victim Breonna Taylor and used her speech to remind people of the importance of voting.Later she explained why wearing the T-shirt was important. “The cops still haven’t been held accountable,” she said.“She represents just decades, hundreds of years of violence against Black bodies. Wearing Breonna’s likeness and representing her and her family and the stories that we were exploring, presenting and holding a mirror up to on Watchmen, it felt appropriate to represent with Breonna Taylor.” More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Oleandrin: Trump allies pitch extract from poisonous plant to fight Covid

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      Allies of Donald Trump have promoted a plant extract called oleandrin to people seeking to ward off Covid-19. The plant the extract is derived from, oleander, is poisonous and there is no proof the compound is either safe or effective to treat or prevent Covid-19, experts say.But unlike other unproven and potentially dangerous Covid-19 “cures” pitched by Donald Trump and his supporters, including the prescription antimalarial hydroxychloroquine, experts fear this compound could easily reach the public as a dietary supplement.“Supplements are like snake oil, in the sense they are not regulated by the FDA,” said Martin Ronis, a professor in Louisiana State University’s department of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics, referring to the US Food and Drug Administration.While pharmaceutical companies must show the FDA drugs are safe before they go to market, dietary supplements are considered “food” in the US and thus must be proven unsafe before they are removed from the market. Because of this regulatory structure, Ronis said it would be possible for the company behind the plant compound – Texas-based Phoenix Biotechnology – to bring the extract to market.“You can essentially make all kinds of apocryphal claims about supplements,” said Ronis. One of Phoenix’s board members is Mike Lindell, a prominent Trump backer, pitchman, and CEO of MyPillow. Lindell chairs Trump’s re-election effort in Minnesota.While Lindell has pitched Phoenix’s plant extract as a coronavirus cure on TV and to the president’s coronavirus taskforce, the company also quietly received $5m in funding from an undisclosed investor, patented its extract for use in Covid-19, and promoted an early study in monkey cells as proof of efficacy – an assertion one of the study’s own authors denies.Lindell told the TV host Greg Kelly, an anchor on the conservative Newsmax network: “I started using it myself and giving it to friends and family who tested positive.”The interview was one of several television appearances about oleandrin and is prominently displayed on the company’s website. “Is he allowed to do that?” Kelly laughed as he asked his other guest, Andrew Whitney, the vice-chairman and fellow director of Phoenix Biotechnology.“Well, I’m doing it as well,” Whitney replied, “and so is everyone else at the company, because we believe in the product, Greg. We know it works.” Phoenix Biotechnology did not respond to an emailed request for an interview.The Washington Post has reported that Whitney has visited Trump in the White House and pitched oleandrin to him.Oleandrin has not been approved to treat any medical disorder. The supplements industry has also opposed introducing oleandrin to the market.“The unanimous opinion is that this is a stupid idea and no one should allow an oleander supplement to get close to their mouth,” ​said Loren Israelsen, president of the United Natural Products Alliance, in a statement to a trade publication.Phoenix Biotechnology has released only one study on oleandrin’s use against Covid-19. The study was published in what is called a “pre-print”, which means it is not peer-reviewed. Two of the authors had a financial stake in Phoenix Biotechnology. The study, called an “in vitro” study, examined oleandrin’s effect on monkey cells in the laboratory.Pharmaceutical companies looking for FDA approval typically take drugs through a long pipeline of testing including in pre-clinical trials, in non-human primates, and then in a series of clinical trials testing for safety and dosing, leading up to a double-blind, placebo-controlled randomized trial for efficacy.If Phoenix sought approval for its product, the pre-print it published would represent a concept for potential study at the very beginning of this pipeline. The median cost of bringing a drug to market is $985m, according to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Most new drugs fail.Phoenix has conducted two clinical trials for safety of oleandrin in cancer treatment, but both were small. Phoenix proposed providing oleandrin in what appears to be a liquid, according to its website.Although Whitney said in his interview with Kelly that Phoenix has researched oleandrin for “25 years”, the earliest research related to the company appears to be from 2002. Phoenix was incorporated in 2003, according to a press release.Phoenix received a patent for its extraction process in 2005, and in that time it has sponsored research at several institutions, including University of Texas San Antonio, the MD Anderson Cancer Center and Duke University.The company appears to be moving ahead in its efforts to monetize oleandrin. The “pre-print” was published on 15 July. The company filed for patents in the US on 18 July and earlier in Australia. The American patent was reportedly granted on 29 July, and Phoenix told the US Securities and Exchange Commission it received $5m from a single, unnamed investor on 7 August. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Donald Trump flounders in interview over US Covid-19 death toll

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      Donald Trump

      President again says he is doing ‘incredible job’ fighting pandemic and casts doubt on Jeffrey Epstein’s cause of death
      Coronavirus – latest updates
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      ‘You can’t do that’: Trump argues with reporter over Covid-19 death figures – video

      Donald Trump visibly floundered in an interview when pressed on a range of issues, including the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the US, his claims that mail-in voting is fraudulent, and his inaction over the “Russian bounty” scandal.
      The US president also repeatedly cast doubt on the cause of death of Jeffrey Epstein, and said of Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who has pleaded not guilty to participating in the sex-trafficking of girls by Epstein, that he wished her well.
      In the interview, broadcast on HBO on Monday and conducted by Axios’s national political correspondent, Jonathan Swan, Trump again asserted that his administration was doing an “incredible job” responding to the coronavirus.
      Claiming that the pandemic was unique, Trump said: “This has never happened before. Nineteen seventeen, but it was totally different, it was a flu in that case. If you watch the fake news on television, they don’t even talk about it, but there are 188 other countries right now that are suffering. Some, proportionately, far greater than we are.”
      Trump has repeatedly referred to the 1917 flu pandemic, whereas the outbreak happened in 1918 and into 1919.
      And when asked about the death toll from coronavirus so far in the US, of almost 155,000 killed, Trump appeared irritated and said: “It is what it is”
      His opponent in the upcoming presidential election, Democrat Joe Biden, tweeted on Tuesday morning: “Mr President, step up and do your job before even more American families feel the pain of losing a loved one.”
      Biden also wrote: “On July 1st, Donald Trump predicted the coronavirus was going to ‘just disappear.’ He was wrong – and more than 25,000 Americans died due to the virus last month.”
      [embedded content]
      [embedded content]
      Swan pressed the president on which countries were doing worse. Trump brandished several pieces of paper with graphs and charts on them that he referred to as he attempted to suggest the US figures compared well internationally.
      “Right here, United States is lowest in numerous categories. We’re lower than the world. Lower than Europe.”
      “In what?” asks Swan. As it becomes apparent that Trump is talking about the number of deaths as a proportion of cases, Swan says said: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the US is really bad. Much worse than Germany, South Korea.”
      Trump then says: “You can’t do that.”
      According to figures from Johns Hopkins University, the US has had over 4.7m confirmed Covid-19 cases, with 155,471 deaths. The US accounts for more than a quarter of all global confirmed infections.
      In another section of the interview, Trump repeats his false assertion that the reason the US has a significantly higher number of cases is because it tests more than anyone else, saying: “You know, there are those that say you can test too much. You do know that.”
      Asked who says that, Trump replies: “Oh, just read the manuals. Read the books.”
      Trump also appears, without evidence, to assert that children are receiving positive Covid-19 test results for having a runny nose – which is not generally listed among the symptoms of coronavirus, which include a high temperature and a new continuous cough.
      “You test, some kid has even just a little runny nose, it’s a case. And then you report many cases,” Trump says.
      The president attempts to shift blame for the outbreaks of coronavirus on to state governors, saying: “We have done a great job. We’ve got the governors everything they needed. They didn’t do their job – many of them didn’t, some of them did.”
      The actor and activist Mia Farrow tweeted that: “Every American should watch this, the full, flabbergasting interview.”
      Trump was also asked about his previous baseless assertion that due to mail-in voting, the forthcoming US election would be “the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history”.
      In the interview, Trump says: “So we have a new phenomena [sic], it’s called mail-in voting.” Swan then clarifies that mail-in voting has existed since the US civil war.
      Further attempting to cast doubt on the process, Trump says: “So they’re going to send tens of millions of ballots to California, all over the place. Who’s going to get them? Somebody got a ballot for a dog. Somebody got a ballot for something else. You got millions of ballots going. Nobody even knows where they’re going.”
      The interview took place last Tuesday, before the president’s tweet that falsely floated the idea that November’s election could be delayed.
      On Maxwell and Epstein, the president appeared to cast doubt on the official account of the cause of Epstein’s death, which has been a repeated source of conspiracy theories.
      Of Maxwell, Trump says “Her friend or boyfriend Epstein was either killed or committed suicide in jail. She’s now in jail. Yeah, I wish her well.” Trump goes on twice more to say of Epstein: “Was it suicide or was he killed?”

      Parker Molloy
      (@ParkerMolloy)
      Trump again wishes Ghislaine Maxwell well pic.twitter.com/whWhZoO4mC

      August 4, 2020

      In another part of the interview, he dismissed again as “fake news” intelligence reports that Russia had been offering bounties to the Taliban for attacks on US forces in Afghanistan. Asked specifically by Swan whether he had ever discussed the issue with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Trump confirms he has never mentioned it to him.
      When Swan asks Trump about Russia supplying weapons to the Taliban, the president asserts: “I have heard that, but it has never reached my desk.”
      Lily Adams, a spokeswoman and adviser for the so-called war room of the Democratic party’s national committee slammed the president as incoherent and rambling through misinformation.
      “Trump’s disastrous interview would be laughable if the stakes weren’t so high. More than 155,000 Americans have died, over 4.7 million have been infected, and we are in the sharpest economic downturn on record … coronavirus cases are skyrocketing and the economy is spiraling because of his failed response,” Adams said.

      Topics

      Donald Trump

      US politics

      Coronavirus outbreak

      Infectious diseases

      Ghislaine Maxwell

      Russia

      US elections 2020

      news

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