#Tyrants be running a foot! FOOD HOUING MONEY -- they want it all -- AND YOUR LIFE! Gibs me the SOUL!
No, You Don't Need To Disinfect Your Groceries. But Here's How To Shop Safely
April 12, 20207:00 AM ET
Maria Godoy at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., May 22, 2018. (photo by Allison Shelley) (Square)
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Going to the grocery store? Scientists share their advice about what to worry about and what not to.
Katrina Wittkamp/Getty Images
The vast majority of the country is under lockdown right now. But stay-at-home orders come with a few exceptions — like grocery shopping.
Many of us are still venturing out to stock up on food and toiletries. But what's the safest way to shop during this pandemic? And what should you do once you've brought your haul home?
We asked infectious disease, virology and food safety experts to share their tips about safe grocery shopping — and what you can stop worrying about.
Know the dangers — focus on the people, not the food
Many people worry about the possibility of picking up the coronavirus from things like grocery store conveyor belts or cereal boxes. But every expert NPR spoke with agrees that the biggest risk when it comes to groceries is being inside the store itself with other people who may be infected.
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"While it is possible to contract the virus [from contaminated surfaces], the majority of transmission is probably going to be from respiratory droplets, which you're exposed to when you're around other people," says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.
Avoid crowds and shop quickly
Donald Schaffner, a food microbiologist and distinguished professor at Rutgers University, advises that you look for a grocery store that limits the number of shoppers who are allowed to go in at one time. While that might lead to a long line outside, it's also likely to make it easier to practice social distancing inside the store — staying at least 6 feet away from other people. And once you are in there, he says, focus on getting in and out as fast as possible to minimize your risk.
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Food Shortages? Nope, Too Much Food In The Wrong Places
"Be as efficient as possible in the store," Schaffner says. "Have a list. Move through the store quickly and efficiently. Get out of the way. Be respectful of other people. Maintain social distance while you're in the store."
Wear a face covering
Given the growing evidence that people can shed the virus before they are showing symptoms, they might not know they're infected either. That's why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommends that people wear cloth face coverings out in public, and some stores now require shoppers to wear them — not so much to protect you as to protect other people from you in case you are infected.
Go alone
Dr. David Aronoff, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, says to go to the store alone if you can, because bringing the whole family shopping is just going to add to crowding in the aisles — and could potentially raise your household's risk of infection too.
"If you have three people living together and all three people go to the store, even if all three people have a low risk of getting infected at an individual level, as a group they've tripled their risk, essentially," says Aronoff, who recently wrote about safe food practices during this pandemic in the medical journal JAMA.
Sanitize carts and hands
Once you are in the store, make sure to sanitize the handles of your cart or basket. Many stores do this for customers now, but it doesn't hurt to bring your own hand sanitizer or disinfecting wipes if you have them. Be sure to avoid touching your face while you are there, until you can sanitize your hands again.
One other tip, from Rasmussen: Don't use your cellphone while you're in the store, because a "phone is a great way to get your hands right up next to your face."
Skip the gloves
"Gloves are not magic," Schaffner says. "Gloves don't make you invulnerable. As soon as you touch something with your gloved hand, that contamination is on the gloves."
Rasmussen agrees. "I've seen a lot of people wearing gloves out in public, and they just kind of wear them all day and do a lot of normal activities, like talk on their phone, potentially eat, potentially handle food that they're going to eat later with those gloves on," she says. "And that's not great practice."
She leaves the gloves at home and sanitizes or washes her hands instead — before entering the store, after leaving and again once she gets home.
Rachel Graham, a virologist who studies coronaviruses at the University of North Carolina's Gillings School of Global Public Health, also skips the gloves. But if you do choose to wear them, she says be sure to remove them properly: "The best way to remove gloves that might be contaminated is to basically grab them from the inside on your palm side and pull them out like you're pulling off a sock, so you end up turning them inside out."
Give the cashier some space
While grocery shopping may stress you out, it's the workers at the grocery store who are more at risk, because they interact with many customers daily. Protect them by making sure you stand 6 feet away, or as far as you can, while checking out.
As for whether to use self-checkout or a cashier, look for the option that allows you the most room to maintain social distance. It all depends on how the store is set up. Some checkout counters now have plexiglass between the cashier and the paying customer. In that situation, says Aronoff, going to a cashier is fine, especially if one or both of you is wearing a mask or face covering.
Choose no-touch payment when you can
If you've got a no-touch option like Apple Pay or Google Pay, use it. If that's not an option, a credit card machine with a chip reader can be no-touch, notes Graham. She's personally avoiding cash at the moment, because earlier research has found that cash currency can harbor lots of microorganisms.
However, Rasmussen notes that we don't know how long this coronavirus survives on cash. And she says that if your credit card transaction requires you to touch a keypad, that's a "high-touch surface" that could potentially harbor other pathogens, if not the coronavirus. That said, "I don't want to encourage people to be extreme germophobes," Rasmussen says.
Cash or credit, she says, just make sure to sanitize your hands (and your credit card) after the transaction.
Don't drive yourself crazy disinfecting your groceries
Many shoppers are now following elaborate routines to disinfect their groceries, thanks to a viral video put out by a Michigan family doctor. But all of the experts we spoke with say that disinfecting and hand-washing every last item in your grocery haul is really not necessary. You might find it comforting to know that none of these experts are doing this themselves.
Rasmussen explains that the probability of getting infected from a contaminated surface is not zero, but it is fairly low. That's because respiratory droplets would have to have landed on the exact spot on, say, a box of cereal that you are touching. And even then, you'd have to get enough residual virus on your hand to start an infection — and you'd have to transfer that virus to your face. Bottom line: If you follow good hand-hygiene practices — washing your hands after unpacking your groceries, before cooking and before eating — then, she says, your risk is probably "very, very low."
As Aronoff notes, "Time is really on your side here." That's because as soon as the virus lands on a surface, it starts to lose infectiousness. "After 24 hours, the vast majority of virus is no longer infectious," he says. And after 72 hours, he notes that research has found the virus is trace or undetectable on most surfaces. So if you know that you're not going to use a can of soup for two or three days, he says, just put it away, wash your hands and go about your day. And one more thing: Make sure to wipe down your countertops after you unpack, using a household disinfectant registered with the Environmental Protection Agency.
If you're still worried and it's a food that doesn't need to be refrigerated, Graham says just leave it out for 24 hours.
If you really want to wash your groceries, don't use disinfecting spray or wipes
If it somehow lessens your anxiety to wipe down every last jar of jelly, there's no harm in that, experts agree. But Graham warns that if you feel compelled to wipe, it might be wise to stick to soap and water. "A lot of the packaging that groceries come in is really not meant to be sprayed with disinfectant, and you [could] actually end up contaminating your food," she says.
Schaffner adds that disinfecting sprays and wipes are meant to be used on hard surfaces, which would not include many of the kinds of plastics or cardboard used for food packaging.
Rinse fresh produce in plain water — and eat your veggies!
Some people are advocating washing produce in soap and water. But Schaffner says that's a bad idea because it's possible that if you ingest soap residue, it could lead to diarrhea or vomiting. He says the best thing is just to rinse your produce in cold water. If it's an item with a tough skin, you can use a vegetable brush.
And Schaffner says, please don't reduce your consumption of fresh fruit or vegetables. "There's just no evidence that these foods can transmit the virus or can cause COVID-19," he says. Plus, he says, produce offers valuable nutrients that are especially important in these stressful times.
Should you shower or change clothes after shopping? It depends
"I personally don't like to do a full de-con [de-contamination] when I get home from the store," Rasmussen says. "I wash my hands. I'm not routinely putting my face and mouth all over my clothing."
But, she adds, "people with small children might consider otherwise, since kids — especially little kids — are maybe not so concerned about where they put their mouths or their hands." She says it comes back to personal comfort. "If you feel more comfortable changing clothes and taking a shower after you come back from an essential errand, then by all means do so," she says.
Graham adds that if you live with someone who is at high risk for severe disease with COVID-19, showering and changing might be a reasonable precaution to take.
Still anxious? Order online
One simple way to stop worrying about grocery shopping and to practice social distancing is online delivery. You can pay ahead of time online and have the groceries delivered outside your door with no face-to-face contact. Just remember, while you're staying home safe, workers are putting themselves at risk to collect and deliver your food. So be sure to tip generously. As for what to do with unpacking those groceries, experts say the advice is the same as if you'd gone to the store yourself.
A word about frozen food
Some of you have asked if freezing food kills the virus. The answer is no. Refrigerating or freezing would actually help the virus survive longer — that's why research labs freeze virus samples to preserve them, as Graham notes. But if you're worried about handling a frozen dinner, just throw away the packaging and remember to wash your hands after you've removed the food, Rasmussen says.
Source: Should I Disinfect My Groceries? Advice About Grocery Shopping Safely : Shots - Health News : NPR
Address : <https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/12/832269202/no-you-dont-need-to-disinfect-your-groceries-but-here-s-to-shop-safely>
Michigan Stay-At-Home Order Prompts Honking, Traffic-Jam Protest
April 15, 20206:47 PM ET
Abigail Censky
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WKAR Public Media
Flag-waving, honking protesters drove past the Michigan Capitol on Wednesday to show their displeasure with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's orders to keep people at home and businesses locked during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Paul Sancya/AP
Several thousand cars flooded the streets around the state Capitol in Lansing, Mich., on Wednesday to protest the governor's extended stay-at-home order. Cars jammed the streets around the Capitol building, filling the air with a cacophony of honking. People draped in American and "Don't Tread on Me" flags blared "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "God Bless The USA" out of car stereos.
The protest — called "Operation Gridlock" — was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and drew out militias, conservatives, small-business owners and ardent supporters of President Trump, who characterize the governor's stay-at-home order as an unjust power grab.
At least 200 people broke from the instructions of organizers, getting out of their vehicles to congregate around the steps of the Capitol building, flouting social-distancing guidelines to remain 6 feet apart, and not wearing masks.
The state of Michigan has the third-highest number of COVID-19 cases and one of the most stringent stay-at-home orders. Among other things, it bars landscapers from working and shutters many greenhouses and nurseries.
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has faced a steady drumbeat of criticism from senior Republican leaders in the state Legislature and Republican members of Michigan's congressional delegation after extending her original order last week.
The new version of the order banned travel between homes and didn't grant exemptions for workers such as landscapers, who politicians argue can work while remaining socially distant. Protesters were also upset that normal life has been shut down all over the state.
As of Monday, more than a quarter of the state's workforce had filed for unemployment benefits.
But not all parts of the state have been equally affected by the outbreak. Southeast Michigan and Detroit remain a hot spot — claiming the lion's share of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
Opponents such as Shelly Vanderwerff argue that there should be regional and industry-based exemptions. She caravanned to Lansing from west Michigan, where she was recently laid off from her work at a local greenhouse.
"Well, I don't think she's listening to petitions and people who are trying to communicate in a less extreme way that ... there are small businesses that are suffering," said Vanderwerff. She's worried that many small businesses in the state will go under.
Vanderwerff noted that she understands that action needs to be taken to slow the spread of COVID-19, but counties like hers — with 74 cases and two deaths — should be allowed to operate more freely than places like Wayne County and Detroit.
Matt Seely, a spokesman for the conservative group that organized the protest, warned: "If something isn't put in place soon, you'll see, in the form of a protest — businesses just opening. Because, truthfully, for the $1,000 fine, most businesses could sustain that fine because they'll at least be able to make a living."
Presently, the governor's stay-at-home order extends through April 30. Since the governor issued the order, there have been more than 28,000 cases of COVID-19 in Michigan. The disease has killed more than 1,900 Michiganders.
Source: Michigan Residents Protest Gov. Whitmer's Stay-At-Home Order : Coronavirus Live Updates : NPR
Address : <https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/15/835250693/michigan-stay-at-home-order-prompts-honking-traffic-jam-protest>
In Vietnam, There Have Been Fewer Than 300 COVID-19 Cases And No Deaths. Here's Why
April 16, 202010:35 AM ET
Michael Sullivan
People wearing face masks wait for free food being given away at a Happy Mart store in Hanoi on Thursday.
Nhac Nguyen/AFP via Getty Images
Vietnam shares a border with China, yet it has reported no deaths from COVID-19 and just 268 confirmed cases, when other Southeast Asian nations are reporting thousands.
Experts say experience dealing with prior pandemics, early implementation of aggressive social distancing policies, strong action from political leaders and the muscle of a one-party authoritarian state have helped Vietnam.
"They had political commitment early on at the highest level," says John MacArthur, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's country representative in neighboring Thailand. "And that political commitment went from central level all the way down to the hamlet level."
With experience gained from dealing with the 2003 SARS and 2009 H1N1 bird flu pandemics, Vietnam's government started organizing its response in January — as soon as reports began trickling in from Wuhan, China, where the virus is believed to have originated. The country quickly came up with a variety of tactics, including widespread quarantining and aggressive contact tracing. It has also won praise from the World Health Organization and the CDC for its transparency in dealing with the crisis.
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Military Victory But Political Defeat: The Tet Offensive 50 Years Later
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc recently characterized Vietnam's efforts as the "spring general offensive of 2020," a reference to the 1968 Tet Offensive, which many claim helped turn the tide of the Vietnam War.
Tens of thousands have been put in quarantine camps. By the end of March, Vietnam had banned all international and domestic flights. The government locked down the country on April 1. State-run media say the current social distancing and stay-at-home orders are to be extended for at least another week.
Those who break the rules in this one-party communist state are treated harshly. One man was jailed on a nine-month sentence for failing to wear a mask.
Streets normally buzzing with motorcycles and cars are almost empty in most large cities. As the economic toll of the lockdown becomes apparent, some entrepreneurs are stepping up to help. One has provided "rice ATMs" to dispense free rice to those who are out of work.
Some may still be skeptical of Vietnam's relatively low COVID-19 case numbers. The CDC's MacArthur is not.
"Our team up in Hanoi is working very, very closely with their Ministry of Health counterparts," he says. "The communications I've had with my Vietnam team is that at this point in time, [they] don't have any indication that those numbers are false."
Source: In Vietnam, There Have Been Fewer Than 300 COVID-19 Cases And No Deaths. Here's Why : Coronavirus Live Updates : NPR
Address : <https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/16/835748673/in-vietnam-there-have-been-fewer-than-300-covid-19-cases-and-no-deaths-heres-why>
‘Crime against humanity’: Trump condemned for WHO funding freeze
Timing of move during Covid-19 crisis is deplored by UN chief and experts who say it will cost lives
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Helen Davidson
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Wed 15 Apr 2020 00.22 EDT
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Leading health experts have labelled Donald Trump’s decision to cut funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) as a “crime against humanity” and a “damnable” act that will cost lives.
The move also drew a rebuke from the head of the United Nations, who said the WHO was “absolutely critical to the world’s efforts to win the war against Covid-19”.
Late on Tuesday Trump declared US funding would be put on hold for 60-90 days pending a review “to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus”. The US is the single largest contributor to the WHO.
Trump turns against WHO to mask his own stark failings on Covid-19 crisis
Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet medical journal, wrote that Trump’s decision was “a crime against humanity … Every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity.”
Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary general, said it was “not the time” to cut funding or to question errors. “Once we have finally turned the page on this epidemic, there must be a time to look back fully to understand how such a disease emerged and spread its devastation so quickly across the globe, and how all those involved reacted to the crisis,” said Guterres.
“The lessons learned will be essential to effectively address similar challenges, as they may arise in the future. But now is not that time … It is also not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus.”
Echoing Guterres’s plea, Dr Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, said the WHO did make mistakes and may need reform but that work needed to take place after the crisis had passed. “It’s not the middle of a pandemic that you do this type of thing,” he said.
Dr Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious disease doctor and associate professor at Boston University’s school of medicine, said the cut was “an absolute disaster. WHO is a global technical partner, the platform through which sovereign countries share data/technology, our eyes on the global scope of this pandemic.”
Laurie Garrett, a former senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the decision was a “damnable” act by a “spiteful” Trump and would cost lives. “Meanwhile, WHO is the only lifeline most African, Latin American and Asia Pacific nations have.”
Lawrence Gostin, the director of the WHO centre on public health and human rights, predicted the US would ultimately lose out because other countries would step into the vacuum with increased funding. “In global health and amidst a pandemic, America will lose its voice,” said Gostin.
The WHO has come under fire over some aspects of its handling of the pandemic, and has been accused of being too deferential to China, considering the Communist party’s early suppression of information and punishment of whistleblowers. Much of the focus of the criticism has been on a 14 January tweet from the WHO that said “preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission”. But WHO officials also told their counterparts in technical briefings on 10 and 11 January, and briefed the press on 14 January, that human-to-human transmission was a strong possibility given the experience of past coronavirus epidemics and urged suitable precautions.
The WHO has also been attacked over its continuing exclusion of Taiwan from membership because Beijing considers it to be Chinese territory. Trump’s decision to cut funding was welcomed in some quarters, including by the Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong, who called the WHO an “arm of Chinese diplomacy”.
Trump’s pronouncement came amid sustained criticism of his failure to prepare for the epidemic, which has infected more than 600,000 people and killed more than 24,000 inside his country. The US is the worst affected country in the world in terms of infection numbers. On Wednesday it was reported that $1,200 relief cheques for as many as 70 million people could be delayed for several days because Trump wanted his name printed on them.
In other developments:
South African police fired rubber bullets and teargas at Cape Town township residents protesting over access to food aid during lockdown.
Mainland China reported a decline in new confirmed cases on Wednesday (46 down from 89), although an increasing number of local transmissions in its far north-east bordering Russia remained a concern.
In Italy, one of the worst-affected countries, dozens of doctors and nurses have died from Covid-19 and thousands of healthcare workers have become infected.
Australia jailed its first person for breaching isolation laws. The 35-year-old man will spend one month in jail after he repeatedly snuck out of a quarantine hotel to visit his girlfriend.
New Zealand’s prime minister said she and other ministers would take a 20% pay cut to show “leadership and solidarity” with those affected by the coronavirus outbreak.
The International Monetary Fund slashed its forecasts for global growth and warned of a slump in output not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Global cases moved towards two million.
'A Perfect Storm': Extremists Look For Ways To Exploit Coronavirus Pandemic
April 16, 202011:51 AM ET
Hannah Allam
Hannah Allam
White nationalists and other far-right extremists see opportunity in the chaos of the U.S. response to the crisis.
/Richard Theis/Getty Images/EyeEm
For months, authorities say, 36-year-old white supremacist Timothy Wilson amassed bomb-making supplies and talked about attacking a synagogue, a mosque or a majority-black elementary school.
Then the coronavirus hit the United States, giving Wilson a new target — and a deadline. The FBI says Wilson planned to bomb a Missouri hospital with COVID-19 patients inside, and he wanted to do it before Kansas City's stay-at-home order took effect at midnight on March 24.
"Wilson considered various targets and ultimately settled on an area hospital in an attempt to harm many people, targeting a facility that is providing critical medical care in today's environment," the FBI said in a statement.
The attack never happened. Wilson died in a shootout March 24 when federal agents moved to arrest him after a six-month investigation. It was an extraordinary domestic terrorism case, yet it got lost in the nonstop flood of news about the coronavirus pandemic. Extremism researchers warn against overlooking such episodes; they worry the Missouri example is a harbinger as far-right militants look for ways to exploit the crisis.
Already, monitoring groups have recorded a swell of hatred — including cases of physical violence — toward Asian Americans. Dehumanizing memes blame Jews for the virus. Conspiracy theories abound about causes and cures, while encrypted chats talk about spreading infection to people of color. And there is the rise of "Zoombombing" — racists crashing private videoconferences to send hateful images and comments.
"We know from our work in the trenches against white nationalism, antisemitism, and racism that where there is fear, there is someone organizing hate," Eric Ward, executive director of the Western States Center, said in a statement. The Oregon-based monitoring group recorded about 100 bias-motivated incidents in the two weeks after the alleged Missouri plot was foiled.
Here are some areas extremism trackers are watching as the pandemic unfolds:
Hate crimes
A March FBI assessment predicted "hate crime incidents against Asian Americans likely will surge across the United States, due to the spread of coronavirus disease," according to an intelligence report obtained by ABC News.
The report, prepared by the FBI's Houston office and issued to law enforcement agencies nationwide, warned that "a portion of the U.S. public will associate COVID-19 with China and Asian American populations." That idea has been reinforced by political leaders including President Trump, who has referred to the "Chinese virus" and variations that reference China or Wuhan rather than the clinical terms used by health officials.
Asian Americans say they have experienced hostility, with a dramatic increase in reports of racist incidents. A handful of them were violent attacks that are under investigation as hate crimes. For example, federal authorities say hatred motivated a 19-year-old Texas man who was arrested in a stabbing attack that targeted an Asian-American family at a Sam's Club. The suspect told authorities that he thought the family was spreading the coronavirus.
Some Asian Americans have expressed fears that violence could increase once stay-at-home orders are lifted. A coalition of advocacy groups has appealed to Congress to denounce racism and xenophobia linked to the pandemic.
"This is a global emergency that should be met with both urgency and also cultural awareness that Covid-19 is not isolated to a single ethnic population," Jeffrey Caballero, executive director of the Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations, said in a statement. "Xenophobic attacks and discrimination towards Asian American communities are unacceptable."
Recruiting out-of-school kids
Millions of young Americans are home from school, bored, and scrolling through social media sites for hours every day. To white supremacist recruiters, they're prey.
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, an American University professor who writes extensively about far-right extremism, said the increase in unsupervised screen time at a time of crisis creates "a perfect storm for recruitment and radicalization." PERIL, the extremism research lab Miller-Idriss runs on campus, is scrambling for "rapid response" grants to develop an awareness campaign and toolkit for parents and caregivers about the risks of online radicalization in the coronavirus era.
"For extremists, this is an ideal time to exploit youth grievances about their lack of agency, their families' economic distress, and their intense sense of disorientation, confusion, fear and anxiety," Miller-Idriss said. Without the usual social support from trusted adults such as coaches and teachers, she said, "youth become easy targets for the far right."
Anti-government flashpoints
Militias and self-described "constitutionalist" factions, categorized by federal authorities as anti-government extremists, are making noise about stay-at-home orders. Some armed groups reject the measures outright, calling them unconstitutional or overreaching. Another subset is openly defiant, as if daring authorities to use force and turn the issue into a high-stakes standoff.
Over Easter weekend, Ammon Bundy, who led an armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon in 2016, held a service that drew some 200 people to a warehouse in Idaho. Photos showed worshippers, including children, unmasked and sitting in close quarters.
If the perceived constitutional infringements worsen, Bundy has told his supporters, then "physically stand in defense in whatever way we need to." That kind of provocation could turn ugly quickly, warn monitors of the anti-government movement.
Calls for violence
Extremism monitors are keeping tabs on so-called accelerationists, a subset of the racist right that believes in using violence to sow chaos in order to collapse society and replace it with a white nationalist model.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, an extremism watchdog group, has said, "Accelerationists consider themselves the revolutionary vanguard of the white supremacist movement." In chat forums, they've discussed using the virus to infect people of color, staging attacks on medical centers and other forms of violence they hope will trigger a domino effect leading to the breakdown of society.
"These far-right extremists are arguing that the pandemic, which has thrown into question the federal government's ability to steer the nation through a crisis, supports their argument that modern society is headed toward collapse," wrote Cassie Miller of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Miller wrote that, for now, the fallout is already so chaotic that the accelerationists are content to watch, reckoning, "the situation seems to be escalating on its own, requiring no additional involvement on their part."
Miller cited a white supremacist podcaster who told his followers: "It seems to be going plenty fast, thanks."
Source: Far-Right Extremists Look For Ways To Exploit Coronavirus Pandemic : NPR
Address : <https://www.npr.org/2020/04/16/835343965/-a-perfect-storm-extremists-look-for-ways-to-exploit-coronavirus-pandemic?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news>
10 Years Of Spectacular U.S. Job Growth Nearly Wiped Out In 4 Weeks
April 16, 20208:34 AM ET
Jim Zarroli 2010
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Avie Schneider
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People who lost their jobs wait in line to file for unemployment benefits at an Arkansas Workforce Center in Fayetteville, Ark., on April 6.
Nick Oxford/Reuters
Updated at 8:43 a.m. ET
The number of people filing for unemployment climbed by another 5.2 million last week as the toll of the nation's economic dive amid the pandemic continues to mount. That number is down from the revised 6.6 million in the week that ended April 4, the Labor Department said.
But in the past four weeks, a total of 22 million have filed jobless claims — nearly wiping out all the job gains since the Great Recession.
The dramatic reversal followed a decade of spectacular growth in jobs that brought the unemployment rate to near 50-year lows along with record low jobless rates for blacks and Hispanics. Now the job market is on its knees.
Don't see the graphic above? Click here.
The unemployment rate is expected to surge in coming months, with many full-time workers pushed into part-time jobs or not working at all. The economy lost about 700,000 jobs in March — ending 113 straight months of increases. And overall job losses are likely to be 10 to 20 times that big in April, says Dante DeAntonio, an economist at Moody's Analytics.
"The speed and scale of job losses will be more similar to a natural disaster than a typical recession," DeAntonio says.
In its first four weeks, the crisis has erased job openings "at a rate that took the Great Recession nine months to match," says Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor.
While the first wave of layoffs tended to hit hospitality, energy and retail workers, the current round is affecting a broader swath of the economy.
Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, says the April unemployment report is likely to show a loss of 3.4 million jobs in business services, which include architects, lawyers, consultants and advertising professionals.
"The virus shock does not discriminate across sectors as we initially thought," Daco told The Wall Street Journal.
Zhao says that "it's hard to find an industry or city not impacted by the coronavirus currently."
Source: 10 Years Of Spectacular U.S. Job Growth Nearly Wiped Out In 4 Weeks : Coronavirus Live Updates : NPR
Address : <https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/16/835135924/10-years-of-spectacular-u-s-job-growth-nearly-wiped-out-in-4-weeks>
Ford Says It's On Track To Begin Making Ventilators Next Week
April 16, 20203:11 PM ET
Maureen Pao, photographed for NPR, 17 January 2019, in Washington DC.
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A Model A-E ventilator, left, and a simple test lung. Ford plans to begin manufacturing the simple ventilator that operates on air pressure, without the need for electricity, next week.
Ford Motor Co.
Ventilators have been in short supply as the coronavirus pandemic spreads, and corporations are shifting production capacity to help fill the gaps.
Last month, Ford Motor Co. announced plans to build simple medical ventilators, with a goal of producing 50,000 of the devices over the next three months.
NPR's Rachel Martin checked in with Adrian Price, Ford's director of global core engineering for vehicle manufacturing, for an update on those plans. He said Ford should be able to make its target by July 4.
We've known for a while that mid-April would be the peak of the virus, and the specific Ford plant that you're going to reopen to make ventilators in Michigan isn't open yet, right?
No, actually, our team has been working round the clock to retool that facility [in Ypsilanti, Mich.]. First of all, to make it safe for our employees in this environment. And then secondly, to get all the station facilities in place, the medical oxygen supplies that we need. In fact, our team of facilities engineers, who are used to retooling facilities to make all new cars and trucks, are out there right now building that facility — and as an example, putting together an oxygen supply tank farm. They started from the ground up and had the thing finished and complete in 10 hours.
Coronavirus Live Updates
Ford To Build 50,000 Ventilators At Michigan Auto Parts Plant
Is this on track to open Monday (April 20)?
Yes, absolutely. We'll have all of our UAW employees coming into the plant.
Do you know where the ventilators will go?
We're working with our partners at GE [Healthcare] to get those directly into the hands of the right medical personnel on the front line.
You mentioned the safety of your own workers. Obviously, that is paramount. You talked about oxygen tanks. What else is being done to protect the people who are going to be making these ventilators?
So every employee that comes into the facility, first of all, starts their day with self-screening. And then as they arrive at our facility, they're individually checked into the plants. They go through a temperature screening process. And we're also deploying some new technology to help with the physical separation of employees. And every workstation is separately screened and shielded and is more than 2 meters [6.5 feet] apart. And even in their break areas, they're totally separated and they'll all be wearing face masks and face shields to make sure that they protect both themselves, the equipment they're working with and their fellow employees.
Source: Ford Says It's On Track To Begin Making Ventilators Next Week : Coronavirus Live Updates : NPR
Address : <https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/16/836148398/ford-says-its-on-track-to-begin-making-ventilators-next-week>
WHO Sets 6 Conditions For Ending A Coronavirus Lockdown
April 15, 20209:24 AM ET
Bill Chappell
Twitter
Countries under coronavirus lockdowns should only ease those restrictions if they can control new infections and trace contacts, the World Health Organization says. Here, Hashim, a health care worker, recently greeted his daughter through a glass door as they maintained social distance due to the COVID-19 outbreak in New Rochelle, N.Y.
Joy Malone/Reuters
For the billions of people now living under some form of stay-at-home or lockdown orders, experts from the World Health Organization have new guidance: We should be ready to "change our behaviors for the foreseeable future," they say, as the agency updates its advice on when to lift COVID-19 lockdown orders.
The question of when to ease shutdowns is a hot topic, as economic output is stalled in many countries — including the U.S., now the epicenter of the global pandemic.
"One of the main things we've learned in the past months about COVID-19 is that the faster all cases are found, tested, isolated & care for, the harder we make it for the virus to spread," said WHO Direct0r-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus via Twitter as the guideline was released. "This principle will save lives & mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic."
The coronavirus has killed tens of thousands of people. It has also reshaped society and disrupted daily life for people around the world – including 1.4 billion children whose educations are now derailed by shutdowns, WHO says. The pandemic has triggered massive losses for big companies and small businesses, and forced millions of people out of work.
While full national lockdowns remain uncommon, at least 82 countries have some form of lockdown in place, according to UNICEF.
The global economy is now predicted to shrink by 3% this year, the International Monetary Fund says in its most recent analysis. That includes a contraction of nearly 6% for the U.S. economy.
Despite all the personal and economic pain the coronavirus has caused, WHO officials say that in many places, it's too soon to get back to normal. And because any premature attempts to restart economies could trigger secondary peaks in COVID-19 cases, they warn that the process must be deliberate and widely coordinated.
"You can't replace lockdown with nothing," Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's emergencies program, said at a recent briefing. Stressing the importance of a well-informed and committed population, he added, "We are going to have to change our behaviors for the foreseeable future."
Any government that wants to start lifting restrictions, said Tedros of WHO, must first meet six conditions:
1. Disease transmission is under control
2. Health systems are able to "detect, test, isolate and treat every case and trace every contact"
3. Hot spot risks are minimized in vulnerable places, such as nursing homes
4. Schools, workplaces and other essential places have established preventive measures
5. The risk of importing new cases "can be managed"
6. Communities are fully educated, engaged and empowered to live under a new normal
The worldwide number of COVID-19 cases is quickly approaching the 2 million mark, including more than 120,000 people who have died, according to a COVID-19 dashboard created by Johns Hopkins University's Whiting School of Engineering.
The number of new cases continues to rise sharply in the U.S., where disagreements over the potential restarting of economies recently prompted at least 10 states to band together in regional coalitions. The governors of those states say they — not President Trump or the federal government — will determine when to resume normal activities, based on health statistics and science.
Even in instances where governments can lift some lockdown conditions, Ryan said, "Health workers are going to have to continue to have protective equipment and we're going to have to continue to have intensive care beds on standby, because as we come out of these lockdown situations, we may see a jump back up in cases."
The goal is to taper restrictions so governments – in communities, cities and nations — can avoid a cycle of new COVID-19 outbreaks.
"We don't want to lurch from lockdown to nothing to lockdown to nothing," Ryan said. "We need to have a much more stable exit strategy that allows us to move carefully and persistently away from lockdown."
Source: New Guidance From WHO On When To End A Coronavirus Lockdown : Goats and Soda : NPR
Address : <https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/15/834021103/who-sets-6-conditions-for-ending-a-coronavirus-lockdown>
What We Know About The Silent Spreaders Of COVID-19
April 13, 20204:43 PM ET
Pien Huang
Pien Huang
Twitter
Asymptomatic GIF
Credit: Cristina Spano for NPR
Is it possible to be infected with the coronavirus and show no symptoms? Or go through a period of several days before symptoms kick in?
And even in this stage with no cough, no fever, no sign of illness, could you be transmitting the virus to others?
"There is evidence that SARS-CoV-2 has this ability to spread silently," says Shweta Bansal, an infectious disease modeler at Georgetown University.
Indeed, cases of COVID-19 among nursing home residents, choir groups and families fuel a growing concern about people who are infected, yet feel generally OK and go about their daily lives, giving the virus to friends, family members and strangers without knowing that they themselves have it.
But there are wide gaps in our understanding of how many people fit this category of "silent spreaders" — as they're called by some public health researchers — and how much they contribute to transmission of the disease.
Silent spreaders can be divided into three categories: asymptomatic, presymptomatic and very mildly symptomatic. Here's what we know about these variations.
Asymptomatic: people who carry the active virus in their body but never develop any symptoms
"Nothing at all," says Tara C. Smith, an epidemiologist at Kent State University's College of Public Health. "No fever, no gastrointestinal issues, no breathing issues, no coughing, none of that."
As you might imagine, it's hard to figure out when someone has a disease but shows no signs of it.
Some cases of asymptomatic carriers have been confirmed by finding and testing people who were in close contact with COVID-19 patients. For those who tested positive without symptoms, follow-up exams confirmed that about 25% continued to show no signs, World Health Organization officials said on April 1, citing data from China.
No one can truly determine the impact of asymptomatic cases on spread until there's more testing. But so far, they have made up a sliver of the total number of people who've tested positive. And the affected individuals seem to skew young. A small clinical study from Nanjing, China, followed 24 people who tested positive but didn't show overt symptoms at the time. In the one to three weeks after diagnosis, seven continued showing no symptoms. Their median age was 14.
"Can those people who are completely asymptomatic, who never develop any symptoms, transmit the infection? That's still kind of an open question," says Smith.
Presymptomatic: people who have been infected and are incubating the virus but don't yet show symptoms
After infection, symptoms might not develop for five to six days — or even two weeks, according to the Annals of Internal Medicine. The time between catching the virus and showing symptoms is called the presymptomatic phase.
How do these individuals figure into transmission?
People appear to be most infectious right around the time when symptoms start, said Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead for the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, at an April 1 news conference. However, "we do have evidence, from testing and modeling studies, that suggest people who are presymptomatic can definitely transmit this virus," says Smith, the epidemiologist, most likely in the one to three days before they start showing symptoms, according to the WHO.
So far, presymptomatic is a much more common category than asymptomatic. About 75% of people who test positive without showing symptoms turn out to be presymptomatic, displaying coughing, fatigue, fever and other signs of COVID-19 in a later follow-up exam, said Van Kerkhove.
At a nursing home in King County, Washington, about a third of its 82 residents tested positive for the coronavirus in mid-March. Half of those were free of fever, malaise and coughing when they were swabbed for the virus, though most went on to develop symptoms. The coronavirus spread rapidly through the facility just two weeks after it was introduced by a health care provider, despite the nursing home's policy of isolating residents with signs of COVID-19. This suggests that "transmission from asymptomatic and presymptomatic residents, who were not recognized as having SARS-CoV-2 infection and therefore not isolated, might have contributed to further spread," according to research published in the CDC's April 3 "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report."
A study in Singapore found similar evidence of presymptomatic spread among people who went to church, took singing classes or puttered at home with their spouses.
Very mildly symptomatic: people who feel a little unwell from a COVID-19 infection but continue to come in close contact with others
"We're very lucky that this isn't a severe infection for everyone, but because of that, some people feel a little sick and power through," says Seema Lakdawala, a flu researcher at the University of Pittsburgh.
Spreading COVID-19 while having a cough or very mild fever doesn't fully count as silent transmission, says Bansal, the infectious disease modeler: "There's some signal there at least."
But people who continue to frequent communal and public places with a light cough or mild fever may unwittingly spread the disease in the early days of symptom onset — the time they're thought to be most infectious.
Even when a person's own symptoms remain mild, others they infect can become very sick. In mid-January, a man returned to his home in Nanjing from a trip to Hubei province, the epicenter of China's epidemic. Ten days later, his wife started running a fever and vomiting; soon, she developed severe pneumonia and required care in the intensive care unit. The man was tested for the coronavirus, and the test came back positive; he's presumed to have spread the virus to his wife. X-ray scans showed signs of the virus in his lungs — but he consistently reported feeling fine, according to epidemiological research published in Science China Life Sciences.
What we don't yet know
How many people are mingling in the population without knowing they've been infected with the coronavirus?
It's simply too soon to say. In one of the places where there has been extensive testing, the nursing home in Washington state, 56% of those who tested positive had no symptoms when they got tested. Aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Japan, February data showed that up to 50% of the people who tested positive showed no symptoms at the time and that an estimated 18% remained asymptomatic.
Are asymptomatic and presymptomatic cases responsible for a lot of transmission?
Uncertainties abound.
Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told NPR in an interview on April 9 that while he thinks "asymptomatic spread was and is more significant than was appreciated back in January, the relative contribution of asymptomatic spread to symptomatic spread has not been clearly defined."
A modeling paper in Science suggests that in China before the lockdown, undiscovered cases — mainly people with "mild, limited or no symptoms" — were less infectious than known cases but were still possibly responsible for 79% of transmission, because so many of them continued to congregate or travel while contagious. Other papers from Singapore and China suggest that presymptomatic cases account for 6% to 13% of transmission.
To start answering these questions about spread, "we really need more testing and more follow-up," says Smith.
The National Institutes of Health announced Friday that it's recruiting up to 10,000 volunteers for blood testing to look for antibodies to COVID-19 — a sign that a person was infected in the past. "This study will ... [tell] us how many people in different communities have been infected without knowing it, because they had a very mild, undocumented illness or did not access testing while they were sick," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in a news release.
Even though there is still much to learn about silent spreading, the concerns about this mode of transmission give more weight to the advice we've been hearing all along: Keep a 6-foot distance from others, wash hands often and wipe down surfaces. "Don't wait for symptoms to protect those around you," Bansal of Georgetown University says, because there's mounting evidence that a person with the coronavirus could look and feel as healthy as ever but still be spreading it to others.
Source: The Silent Spreaders Of COVID-19: Asymptomatic, Presymptomatic, Mildly Symptomatic Cases : Goats and Soda : NPR
Address : <https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/13/831883560/can-a-coronavirus-patient-who-isnt-showing-symptoms-infect-others>
New Coronavirus Disease Officially Named COVID-19 By The World Health Organization
February 11, 202010:50 AM ET
Brett Dahlberg
Elena Renken
An illustration created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the structure of the coronavirus now named COVID-19.
Science Source
The new coronavirus disease that was first identified in Wuhan has received an official name from the World Health Organization: "COVID-19."
"COVI" comes from coronavirus. The "D" stands for disease. The 19 represents 2019, the year the virus was first identified, in December.
The name will apply for the "entire spectrum" of cases, from mild to severe, according to a WHO spokesperson.
The disease had been given the temporary name "2019-nCoV" by WHO in January, identifying the pathogen as a novel (previously unidentified, that is) coronavirus that first emerged in humans in 2019.
As weeks went by, people began calling it "Wuhan virus." But that's a problematic label. World Health Organization guidelines for naming infectious diseases, issued in 2015, discourage names that refer to specific places, people and professions, aiming to avoid negative repercussions from stigmatizing a geographic area or a population group.
In addition, no food or animal names should be used, the guidelines say — "swine flu" is listed as an example to be avoided after fear of that pathogen led the Egyptian government to order the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of pigs.
Coronavirus 101: What We Do — And Don't — Know About The Outbreak Of COVID-19
Goats and Soda
Wuhan Coronavirus 101: What We Do — And Don't — Know About A Newly Identified Disease
There are other considerations besides stigma. "The attempt is to describe a disease using terms that people can understand as well as possible," says Keiji Fukuda, a professor at the University of Hong Kong who helped draft the WHO guidelines. "So not to be too jargon-y."
And speed is of the essence. Fukuda says in the absence of an easy-to-use, descriptive virus name, it's easy for other monikers to take hold. "You really are racing pretty quickly to get a name out there."
"If someone coins a phrase which is catchy and which other people quickly begin repeating, it can be very hard or impossible to pull back," Fukuda says.
When SARS — a member of the coronavirus family, like COVID-19 — began spreading internationally in 2003, there was no formal process for naming it. Dr. David Heymann, who was leading the WHO's infectious diseases unit in Geneva at the time, had just left for a camping trip with his son's Boy Scout troop when he got a call about the disease's growing reach. He left his son with the other Scouts and headed back to the office.
It was a quick meeting — half an hour, maybe less. "There were no rules at that time about how to name it, so we just went ahead and did it," says Heymann, who is now an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "The first thing we decided was it would be good to have a name that had the same type of a ring as AIDS — easy to say and short."
Fukuda says despite the ad hoc nature of Heymann's meeting, the group came up with a solid name.
In other recent outbreaks, naming the virus didn't go so well. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, named in 2013, now appears in the "examples to be avoided" column of the WHO's guidance.
"That's currently held up as an example of sort of what not to do," says Neuman. "It name-checks a particular region of the Earth, when really a virus is happy infecting anybody that it can get to. It just happens to originate in a particular area."
In addition, an 11-member committee from the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses has proposed a name for the virus that causes the disease now known as COVID-19. The name they are proposing is SARS-CoV-2, which, according to the naming committee "formally recognizes this virus as a sister to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronaviruses."
Source: Coronavirus Disease Identified In China Gets An Official Name: COVID-19 : Goats and Soda : NPR
Address : <https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/11/802352351/new-coronavirus-gets-an-official-name-from-the-world-health-organization>
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Should I Disinfect My Groceries? Advice About Grocery Shopping Safely : Shots - Health News : NPR
Coronavirus got you nervous about grocery shopping? We talked to scientists for their advice about how to stay safe at the store — and when handling food back home.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/12/832269202/no-you-dont-need-to-disinfect-your-groceries-but-here-s-to-shop-safely>
