The Walls Come Down: No Travel Betwen US and Europe for 30 Days

[mr friendly guy]

I think some American PPE supplies need to work on their quality control. And I don't mean as in products that don't work. I mean products that are as imaginary as Iraqi WMDs. Or in other words fraud.

[Jub]

I think some American PPE supplies need to work on their quality control. And I don't mean as in products that don't work. I mean products that are as imaginary as Iraqi WMDs. Or in other words fraud.

This is what happens when you have no plan in place, don't take the proper precautions (early and heavily enforced lockdown) and then scramble for whatever you can get. Frankly, under the circumstances of their own making, whoever placed these orders should eat the costs of being scammed.

[The Romulan Republic]

Black author, activist arrested for writing "Trump=Plague" in chalk on an abandoned building, 92% of all New York arrests for violating social distancing are of non-white people:

https://democracynow.org/2020/5/11/jill ... ump_plague

Black and Brown communities are being disproportionately targeted and policed in New York City’s response to the spread of COVID-19. We speak with author and activist Jill Nelson, who was herself arrested by NYPD in April for writing “Trump = Plague” in chalk on an abandoned building in her Washington Heights neighborhood. The 67-year-old scholar was handcuffed, taken to the police station and held for five hours. Now she is speaking out. The president is “telling us that as people of color, and older people, we should just die,” says Nelson. “It’s ridiculous.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to look at how Black and Brown communities are being disproportionately targeted and policed in New York City’s response to the spread of COVID-19 — and it’s not just limited to New York. Data released Friday reveals more than 80% of summonses issued by the NYPD for social distancing violations have been to Black and Latinx people, and 92% of people arrested for not social distancing are non-White. Images circulated widely on social media shone a spotlight on uneven policing. Some show police officers distributing masks to White residents in crowded New York City parks, apparently arresting no one. Meanwhile, videos have emerged of violent crackdowns on social distancing measures in Black and Latinx neighborhoods.

Earlier this month, cellphone video went viral showing police officers aggressively pinning a Black man to the ground as they arrested him, then violently attacking a Black passerby, dragging him on the street, punching him and kneeling on his neck, during what was supposed to be a social distancing enforcement action. The man who was attacked, the second man, 33-year-old Donnie Wright, was hospitalized with severe injuries to his back, ribs and chest. The officer involved, Francisco Garcia, has since been put on modified assignment.

Last week, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office said 35 of 40 people arrested for social distancing violations were Black. Mayor Bill de Blasio has rejected comparisons to New York City’s unconstitutional stop-and-frisk policies under former Mayor Bloomberg, but said in a tweet “the disparity in the numbers does NOT reflect our values.”

Well, for more on racist policing, we are joined by an author and activist who was herself arrested by the New York Police Department on April 16. She was writing “Trump = Plague” in chalk on a boarded-up building in her Washington Heights neighborhood in northern Manhattan. Jill Nelson was handcuffed and spent more than five hours in jail before being released. The 67-year-old scholar, writer and activist, now being called the “graffiti grandma,” is speaking out against the NYPD. She’s a longtime reporter, has written several books, including the autobiographical Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience, which won an American Book Award. She’s a former professor of journalism at the City College of New York.

Jill Nelson, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, but unfortunately under these circumstances.

JILL NELSON: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what happened to you —

JILL NELSON: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: — just under a month ago?

JILL NELSON: I went out to go to the drugstore and the supermarket, essential trips. I was walking from the drugstore down to Broadway to go to the supermarket, when I saw a green boarded-up, empty, for-rent building. It was covered with plywood. And I wrote — had a piece of chalk in my pocket, and I wrote “Trump = Plague.”

Before I could even step back, cops swooped in, cut me off on — made an L, two cop cars — cut me off, jumped out. “What are you doing? What are you doing? You’re under arrest.” They searched me, asked me if I had weapons, told me to take my hands out of my pockets — it was a cold day, so I said no — frisked me, shoved me into a police car and took me to the 33rd Precinct, where they put me in a cell and left me there for five-and-a-half hours. I took my shoes off. I had had a mask, a fabric mask I had made, on, but I demanded that they give me one of their more professional masks. They didn’t allow me to make any phone calls. I was never read my rights.

It was absurd, absolutely absurd, a total waste of time, energy. And this is in a community that has one of the highest rates of COVID, has many people who are poor and working poor. And there’s something the police could have been doing besides attacking me for writing the truth. I have yet to have anyone disagree with what I said.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to the beginning. Talk about the building that you were writing on. You were using chalk?

JILL NELSON: I was using chalk, washable chalk. And it was a boarded-up front of a building, when you build it out and cover it with plywood as if you’re going to renovate, but it had a “for rent” sign. So it was not occupied by anyone.

AMY GOODMAN: And why did you choose that phrase?

JILL NELSON: Because he is a plague and a pox on all our houses. And I think we need —

AMY GOODMAN: You were writing, “Trump = Plague”?

JILL NELSON: “Trump = Plague,” yes. I mean, it sums it up, to me, what’s going on, how it is, what’s happening in this country and in the world. And we have a president who is aiding and abetting and telling us that as people of color, and older people, we should just die, get out there and die for capitalism. It’s ridiculous. There are so many disparities in healthcare, in treatment, in coverage.

You know, I think the police are out of control. I think the mayor is afraid of the police. Instead of saying what he ought to say, which is, “Now I see how you feel, people of color,” he’s fronting for the police, as always. Apparently, the only person he worries about is Dante.

AMY GOODMAN: Dante being his son.

JILL NELSON: His son.

AMY GOODMAN: And why do you say that?

JILL NELSON: Well, because it’s always an excuse. I’m tired of — you know, I’m 67 years old. I was politicized by the killing of Clifford Glover when I was 18. This notion that it’s only a few bad apples and that this isn’t policy and that the police are there to serve and protect, I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it. I don’t see it. I can’t see how arresting me or rushing down those young men in Brooklyn serves any purpose. It doesn’t make us safer.

And I frankly feel that COVID-19 has been racialized, really, and it’s now being used as a way to further oppress people of color. It’s just absolutely wrong. The police aren’t doing their job. What a waste. And —

AMY GOODMAN: So, Jill Nelson —

JILL NELSON: You know, I think we have to stand up and resist. Go ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: So, describe what happened when the police moved in on you. You were wearing your mask. Were they wearing masks?

JILL NELSON: They were wearing masks. They were wearing gloves. They jumped in. I mean, you would have thought I was selling crack in the early ’80s, the way they swooped down. It was seconds. They subsequently said — told someone that someone had called in a complaint. I find that hard to accept. It was between 15 and 30 seconds max between when I started writing and when the cops got there.

“What are you doing? We’re going to arrest you. Is this your property? Do you know what you’re doing? Do you have any weapons?” I said, “Words.” They didn’t think that was funny or intelligent. They shoved me into — cuffed me roughly, shoved me into a police car, took my pocketbook, took me to the station, booked me, and then put me in a filthy cell for five-and-a-half hours. I wasn’t read my rights. I wasn’t offered the right to make a phone call. I took all of my —

AMY GOODMAN: You weren’t able to make a phone call?

JILL NELSON: No, no. I’m sorry, at 3:00 — this was after being there a couple hours — they told me I could call and get my — try to get my husband, because I didn’t have a photo ID, and he needed to — they needed that to release me. But they dialed my home number. When my husband answered, the guy, after 53, 50 seconds, says — the cop says, “I’m going to cut you off after a minute.” Boom, cut me off. So my husband had no idea what precinct I was in. And they had —

AMY GOODMAN: You hadn’t gotten a chance to say where you were yet.

JILL NELSON: No. And they had told me to tell him that they would send a cop car by my apartment, which is like 10 blocks away, to pick up my ID. My husband put my license in an envelope, went downstairs and waited for 40 minutes, and they never came to get it. Then he came back upstairs, figured out where I was, came to the precinct, dropped off my ID. I didn’t even know that until I happened to see my identification in a plastic evidence bag and was like, “Has my husband been here? Where is he?” And they were like, “Oh, yeah, yeah. He came a while ago. You couldn’t have seen him anyway.”

AMY GOODMAN: Which police station were you being held in? Which community?

JILL NELSON: The 33rd Precinct in Washington Heights.

AMY GOODMAN: So, did they threaten to bring you to Central Booking, to bring you downtown?

JILL NELSON: Yes, because I didn’t have ID, and they wouldn’t either go pick up my ID, or I had offered earlier, “Take me. Drive me to my house. You can come up to my apartment. I’ll show you my — give you my ID.” They told me they were going to take me downtown, and that if they took me downtown, I’d probably be there all night. And when they finally released me, Amy, the desk sergeant said, “And be sure to show up for your desk appearance ticket, or else we’ll come to your house and arrest you.”

AMY GOODMAN: Jill —

JILL NELSON: The whole thing was — yes, ma’am.

AMY GOODMAN: Jill Nelson, we’re going to break, and we’re going to also be joined by your lawyer, Norman Siegel, former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and talk about this issue.

JILL NELSON: Great.

AMY GOODMAN: These are the kinds of issues you write about, not only in New York City, but all over the country. We’re talking to the author, activist, former professor, Jill Nelson, 67 years old, lives in the Washington Heights area of New York City and was handcuffed by police after they moved in on her for graffitiing on a boarded-up building “Trump = Plague.” Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: “Freedom Blues” by Little Richard. The man called the “architect of rock 'n' roll” died of cancer Saturday at the age of 87.

South Dakota Sioux refuse state government orders to dismantle coronavirus check points on their territories:

https://democracynow.org/2020/5/12/chey ... ints_south

There’s a standoff brewing in South Dakota, where two Native American Indian tribes are upholding their sovereignty by defying orders by Governor Kristi Noem to remove COVID-19 checkpoints from their territories. The Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux tribes say the checkpoints are the best way to protect against the coronavirus entering their communities, which are not equipped to handle an outbreak. The governor says the checkpoints — which are set up on highways on tribal land — are illegal. We speak with the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe’s Chairman Harold Frazier, who says he is defending his people’s “right to live.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show with the standoff in South Dakota, where two Native American Indian tribes are defying orders by South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to remove COVID-19 checkpoints from their territories. The Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux tribes say the checkpoints are the best way to protect against the coronavirus entering their communities, which are not equipped to handle an outbreak. The governor says the checkpoints — which are set up on highways on tribal land — are illegal. On Friday, she gave the tribes 48 hours to remove them and threatened legal action. Both the Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux have refused, and the checkpoints are still running. In a Facebook Live video Saturday, Oglala Sioux Tribe President Julian Bear Runner said that Governor Noem was threatening the sovereignty of the Oglala people.

PRESIDENT JULIAN BEAR RUNNER: South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, threatened the sovereign interests of the Oglala people when she issued an ultimatum to us on May 8, 2020. … Governor Noem miscalculates our level of dedication to protect our most vulnerable people from crony capitalism, threats to force us to open our economy as they chose to do so. There is no way to place a value on what we have to lose if we let them insult us this way. My relatives, we have been here for millions of years. Whatever they brought to our lands has proven to be poison.

AMY GOODMAN: Seventeen South Dakota lawmakers signed a letter over the weekend urging the South Dakota governor to seek a resolution with the tribes. As of Monday, the state had not yet filed any lawsuit. South Dakota has a COVID-19 death toll of at least 34 and has had more than 3,600 confirmed cases.

For more, we go to Eagle Butte, South Dakota, to the reservation, where we’re joined by Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier.

Chairman, welcome to Democracy Now! Thank you so much for joining us. Can you explain what’s happening now? How many checkpoints, COVID checkpoints, have you set up? And what are they for? What are you doing when the cars are stopped?

HAROLD FRAZIER: Yeah, good morning. Right now we have nine checkpoints on our reservation. And, you know, one of the biggest concerns we have is safety. And we are looking, and as soon as we get more equipment, we intend to put up another checkpoint.

You know, the main purpose of these checkpoints is to try to, number one, keep the virus out. And number two is track if it comes in, because we’ve always been saying that the virus does not travel, it’s the people with virus that travel. So, we know that that’s the only way that that virus will get into our homes, is if it’s brought in from the outside. And that’s the main purpose of these checkpoints, is to keep our people safe and also to ensure that [inaudible] have the right to live.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Chairman Frazier, what about the governor’s perspective or viewpoint that these checkpoints are illegal? What’s your response to that? Could you talk about your treaties, the existing treaties between your nation and the federal government, that might have some bearing on this or do have bearing on this?

HAROLD FRAZIER: Well, you know, we kind of look, you know, and, number one, my — the people who elected me to this position, they’re the ones that are, I guess, so-called my boss. The governor is not my boss, or the federal government. It’s the people that live here. That’s who I work for, and that’s who I take directives from and such.

But they haven’t — you know, we stepped up to do this. We feel that we have every right to do this. We have a treaty, the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, Article 16. In that article, it says that, you know, before any White man can travel or reside on our lands, they must get consent from the Indians first. In addition to our treaties, there’s case law. There’s even our Constitution, that we swore to uphold against all enemies foreign and domestic, that they give us all the legal right to do what we’re doing.

You know, a lot of times — and we’ve been studying the laws of this country for quite a while. How can somebody own something without paying for it? And that’s the way we look at it, that these lands, these roads, they are ours, because we were never paid for it. So we have every legal right to do that. And it doesn’t matter, you know, what comes today, tomorrow. We’re still going to be here. We’re still going to have and maintain our checkpoints.

AMY GOODMAN: Chairman Frazier, can you describe what happens at a checkpoint? And have you been at one? Talk about the people who are stopping the cars and what they’re doing when they stop them.

HAROLD FRAZIER: Well, yeah, I’ve been there to all of our checkpoints numerous times. You know, if a driver rolls up — and it all depends. You know, if a driver rolls up, they’re asked some health questions. There’s a questionnaire that they have to be filled out, and they’re filled out by our deputies. So, there’s really no — you know, I’ve seen some motorists where they just roll down their window partway and answer the questions.

If they’re coming in for essential travel, if they’re a resident of the reservation or a member of the tribe or family to a resident or a member, they’re asked the questions, and they come in. If you’re a motorist coming from a hot spot, your license plates show that, every day we monitor that, where are people — where’s the areas that we’ve got to be concerned with. And if their vehicle is coming from that, then they will be asked to reroute their travel and not come through our lands.

But we allow any commercial vehicles coming, because we need to have supplies just like everyone else. Medical people, they definitely are rolled in. But also, too, essential, and that’s the Postal Service, the agriculture. That’s a big thing on our reservation. So, things like that, they’re allowed to come and go, but they’re all stopped and asked to fill out these questionnaires.

And to expedite a lot of locals, particularly the agriculture, numerous times they come and go to — sometimes they have land in other areas. So, they — what we put together was a process to obtain a permit, an agriculture permit or essential travel permit. And them motorists usually just roll up, just show their permit number, and they’re allowed just to keep going. Usually, it just probably takes a minute to a minute and a half. And if you’re not coming from a hot spot, you’re generally just allowed to just roll on.

So, it’s not really any, in my opinion, hindrance of any motorist. And again, the main purpose is to try to save lives. And I know there was [inaudible] that we should work together. And that’s something that I agree with. But with our population, with our lack of medical facilities, things like that, we know, and we just look to our relatives to the south, the Navajo Nation, and see what’s going on there. And that could easily be us. And we’ve been watching that, so that’s why we stepped up to do these type of actions, to try to keep our people safe and definitely save their lives.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Chairman Frazier, you mentioned the lack of medical facilities. Could you talk about that? Because you issued a stay-at-home — strict stay-at-home measures, while the governor of the state did not, of South Dakota did not. What is the situation? You only have eight hospital beds and one ICU, as I understand it, on your lands?

HAROLD FRAZIER: Well, we have eight hospital beds. We don’t have no ICU. There are six ventilators. We have one respiratory therapist. And I’m being told by our medical people that generally they monitor two to three ventilators, and they could do four, but that’s pushing it. The nearest facility for critical care is in Rapid City, and it’s about a three-hour drive just to get to Rapid. And that has always been the practice of the Indian Health Service, is to get the care that some of our people need, they generally get referred out.

But when we started this, we started looking at numbers and the number of residents. And when we broke it down, that maybe 50% would possibly get the virus. And when we — they were saying that 80% can be handled at home, and that left 20%. And we looked at the numbers, and we realized that there is a potential that we may need 1,200 beds. And when we only have eight, I mean, that really woke up a lot of people here at home.

AMY GOODMAN: Chairman Frazier, can you talk about the one confirmed COVID case you have had on the reservation and how the checkpoint led you to be able to identify that person?

HAROLD FRAZIER: Yeah. That patient come in, I believe, like on a Thursday. And they knew where they come from. Our command center, which works directly with the checkpoints, they knew the patient come from an area that what we called a hot spot. Our medical people immediately started monitoring every day, you know, being in contact and so forth.

And then, that following Tuesday is when the patient wasn’t feeling well. They took her into the hospital. They ran a test and was tested positive, in a matter of less than probably eight hours, I would say, because the very next morning they already knew the contact, of who they were, and then people were put into quarantine. And right now the patient is doing well, and we’re pretty happy about that.

But that’s the whole purpose of that, because if we didn’t know any of that, and the individual come and they didn’t realize that they were infected by the virus, they could have easily went, and, you know, immediately that could have went into a community spread, which is something that we know we’re definitely not capable of handling.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Chairman, the governor has threatened to take your tribe to court over the checkpoints, while other lawmakers have urged her to try to negotiate and reach a common agreement. Could you talk about the state’s relationship to your tribe over the years?

HAROLD FRAZIER: Well, you know, it’s just — as a matter of fact, I was just reading something last night. Rapid City, a lot of our members live out there, from us, Oglala, Rosebud. A lot of our Sioux relatives live out there. And there’s a IHS service unit out there. And they ran some tests, and there were 16 positive cases. And I was just reading that, and I was going to get some verification later today. But it sounded like one of the individuals that tested positive, the state Department of Health didn’t even contact that individual 'til three days later. So, you know, we've been — we know the treatment we get from the state and the federal government. And that’s why we’re really doing these things, because we know when times get tough, all we have is each other.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is a very significant situation.

HAROLD FRAZIER: And it’s important that we step up and — yes.

AMY GOODMAN: You have Governor Noem, the South Dakota governor. I mean, when you look at the meatpackers in Sioux Falls, for example, the mayor was begging the governor to shut down the plant. This is before Trump’s executive order that said the state couldn’t. You had hundreds and hundreds of workers, mainly immigrant, overwhelmingly immigrants, who were testing positive. And yet the governor refused to do this. This is the same governor now that is saying she will challenge you, demanding you take down these checkpoints. So what are you willing to take this to, Chairman? Could this lead to a showdown, a standoff, not just legally, but between the state and your tribe?

HAROLD FRAZIER: Well, you know, we have no other alternative. We won’t back down, no matter what they do. Whether it’s through the court or they come by force, we will be still there, because we live here. And, you know, we looked at everything. When we started planning and getting ready back in early March, that’s some of the scenarios we threw out at our plans, was for legal, as well as medical. So, I’m confident that, you know, if you want to — if she wants to take us to court, go ahead and do it. And I believe in my heart that we’re going to be successful.

And the main reason why is we’re doing these things for the right reasons. It’s not to benefit economically, or we’re not doing this to destroy somebody’s business, their lives. I mean, we’re doing it for the good, you know, the good of God. And what we’ve been saying is, you know, the number one right is the right to live. I know that I’ve seen words being thrown out there about liberties and civil rights and First Amendment rights, Second Amendment rights and so forth. But the right to live, I believe, is above all of them. And that’s what we want to do: ensure that our residents here have that right to live.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Chairman Frazier, you mentioned courts. Could you talk about the recent victory of the Cheyenne River Sioux over the Trump administration, where the Trump administration attempted to use some federal COVID-19 moneys that were intended for the tribes to go instead to the Alaska Native corporations?

HAROLD FRAZIER: Yeah. You know, it was nothing against the Native villages, but we felt that business corporations, that’s chartered under the state, that is not federally recognized — we felt that they shouldn’t get that, because we believe that that money was set aside for Native Americans.

And, you know, the interesting thing, as of today, we still have not been notified how much we’re going to receive here on Cheyenne River. I know a lot of our relatives in North Dakota and the other South Dakota tribes have received or been at least notified how much they’re going to receive. But as of this morning, we have not been notified what we’re going to receive. So, we’ve been kind of thinking, well, I guess they’re pretty upset for us taking them to court; maybe they ain’t gonna give it to us. But, I guess, hopefully by today, we would know if we’re going to receive any of that funding.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s from the CARES Act. The tribes were demanding something like $20 billion, ultimately was settled on $8 billion, but that’s been very slow to make its way out to the various nations. Finally, Harold Frazier, very quickly, if you can talk quickly about the significance of a legal battle here and what it could mean, for example, for the future of ongoing struggles, like your fight against the Keystone XL pipeline?

HAROLD FRAZIER: Oh, yeah, I mean, most definitely. And, you know, there’s already been case law. The recent one in reference to roads and highways was in 1990. And I just can’t think where they’re coming from, you know, reading what the lawmakers at the state Legislature put out there. I mean, and then, even that, the governor has been on briefings saying that they have no jurisdiction. So, I mean, I’m just kind of totally shocked, and almost unbelievable what’s going on, because there’s no way that they can win. There’s just no way. And, yeah, and then, too, we’re trying to focus and stay prepared for this pandemic, and just to have another issue is kind of unbelievable.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much, Harold Frazier, for joining us, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe chairman, speaking to us from Eagle Butte in South Dakota from the reservation.

When we come back, we go to Chicago, where COVID-19 took Black lives first. It didn’t have to. And then we talk about Los New Yorkers, those New Yorkers who are undocumented at the center of the pandemic, who are essential yet underprotected. We’ll speak with a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with ProPublica. Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: Valerie Adrian, an Oglala Lakota in Sweetwater, Idaho, participating in the Quarantine Dance Specials.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

[The Romulan Republic]

While Canada in general has been doing better per capita than the US, and BC has done particularly well, Quebec is being devastated. In particular, Montreal Island alone has suffered nearly 20,000 cases and over 2,000 deaths as of yesterday. To put that in perspective, that's more than a quarter of all Canadian cases, and about 40% of the entire Canadian death toll:

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local- ... ach-20000/

With the death toll on Montreal Island passing the 2,000 mark Tuesday and hundreds of new COVID-19 cases still being confirmed daily, Montreal’s public health director hinted that she will recommend against schools and daycares in the city opening on May 25 as planned.

“We are following it closely and it is strongly probable … that we will ask that the reopening of certain sectors be postponed,” Dr. Mylène Drouin said at a news conference in Montreal Tuesday. “That is a conversation we are having with (Quebec’s) public health director very openly.”

Drouin said her department is questioning whether businesses, elementary schools and daycares in Montreal should reopen all at once “as a monolithic block” on May 25. Instead, she suggested certain sectors “for which the contribution to community transmission could be more significant” — and she specified those involving schools and children — may be postponed, while others that are less risky may go ahead.

The Montreal health region had 19,878 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, an increase of 386 in the past 24 hours. Eighty-four more people died of COVID-19 overnight, bringing the total number of deaths in this region to 2,003, 85 per cent of those in seniors’ residences. Quebec as a whole has recorded 39,225 cases and 3,131 deaths.

Drouin added that 3,743 of those who have contracted the virus in Montreal, fully 20 per cent of the total for the region, are healthcare workers. She promised a more complete portrait of the Montreal situation will be posted on the Santé Montréalwebsite on Wednesday.

Drouin also noted some encouraging signs: new hospitalizations for COVID-19 in the Montreal region have plateaued since last week and there has been a small reduction in new admissions of COVID patients to intensive care and emergency units. Her department is aiming to administer more than 3,000 tests per day in the community (outside of hospital and healthcare settings). In the past week, 1,900 tests were administered at community testing clinics per day, up from just over 1,000 the week before.

So far, three STM buses have been retrofitted into mobile testing clinics, complete with laboratories that produce results within 24 hours, and two more are expected to be operating by the end of this week. The mobile clinics are parked in “hot spot” neighbourhoods on a schedule, and each bus can handle up to 250 patients a day. Drouin said so far the mobile clinics have been operating at less than half their capacity. She urged anyone with symptoms of COVID-19 (fever, cough, difficulty breathing) or who has been in contact with someone who has tested positive to check the Santé Montréal website for the mobile testing clinic itinerary. No appointment is necessary, but those who live in the neighbourhood are prioritized.

Drouin spoke about the many seniors who do not live in seniors’ residences and may be suffering from the effects of isolation. About 90 per cent of the 265,000 people over age 70 in the Montreal region live at home and one-third of them live alone. Because they are at a much higher risk of serious complications from the coronavirus than younger people, most are staying home to be safe. But Drouin said isolation can have negative health consequences, including psychological distress, malnutrition and loss of muscle mass due to reduced exercise. The public health department is promoting use of an online home exercise program, tailored to seniors of varying fitness levels, including those who use canes or wheelchairs.

Earlier Tuesday afternoon, Premier François Legault and Quebec Director of Public Health Horacio Arruda arrived at their COVID-19 news conference wearing face masks. They explained they are trying to set an example and strongly recommend that all Quebecers wear face masks when they are in situations where it is difficult to maintain a two-metre distance from others in public, such as on public transit or in stores.

Note to readers:We know the speed and volume of coronavirus-related news is overwhelming and a little frightening. To help with that, we will dedicate a Montreal Gazette reporter each day to devote their time to synthesizing the most important coronavirus-related news, especially as it relates to life in Montreal and Quebec.Follow the updates for May 12 right here. All our coronavirus-related news can be found atmontrealgazette.com/tag/coronavirus.

[Zwinmar]

From what I saw by living in upstate NY not far from the Seneca Reservation that has blocked off the highway through their before, the state should loose in their little power play. It is Sovereign territory and not subject to the Governors demands though the casual and overt racism from white living around the reservation is astounding.

Unfortunately, I think that the trend will continue of screwing them over is going to continue as the United States track record of honoring those treaties is extremely dismal.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/team-trum ... ath-counts

Team Trump Pushes CDC to Revise Down Its COVID Death Counts
UNSKEW
The president and members of his task force are skeptical of the numbers and want the methodology changed.

Erin Banco
National Security Reporter
Asawin Suebsaeng
White House Reporter
Updated May. 13, 2020 9:52AM ET / Published May. 13, 2020 3:53AM ET

President Donald Trump and members of his coronavirus task force are pushing officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change how the agency works with states to count coronavirus-related deaths. And they’re pushing for revisions that could lead to far fewer deaths being counted than originally reported, according to five administration officials working on the government’s response to the pandemic.

Though he has previously publicly attested to the accuracy of the COVID-19 death count, the president in recent weeks has privately raised suspicion about the number of fatalities in the United States, which recently eclipsed 80,000 recorded deaths. In talks with top officials, Trump has suggested that those numbers could have been incorrectly tallied or even inflated by current methodology, two individuals with knowledge of those private comments said.

The White House has pressed the CDC, in particular, to work with states to change how they count coronavirus deaths and report them back to the federal government, according to two officials with knowledge of those conversations. And Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the administration’s coronavirus task force, has urged CDC officials to exclude from coronavirus death-count reporting some of those individuals who either do not have confirmed lab results and are presumed positive or who have the virus and may not have died as a direct result of it, according to three senior administration officials.

Officials inside the CDC, five of whom spoke to The Daily Beast, said they are pushing back against that request, claiming it could falsely skew the mortality rate at a time when state and local governments are already struggling to ensure that every person who dies as a result of the coronavirus is counted. Scientists and doctors working with the task force, including Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have said the U.S. death-toll count is likely higher than is being reflected in government data sets. And several local officials in hot spot areas said they’ve seen hundreds if not thousands more deaths over the last two months than in the same time period over the last several years. They presume many of those individuals contracted the coronavirus.

“I don’t worry about this overreporting issue,” Bob Anderson, the chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch in CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, told The Daily Beast. Anderson’s team is in charge of aggregating, calculating, and reporting coronavirus deaths for the agency. “We’re almost certainly underestimating the number of deaths [in the country].”

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The pressure being placed on the CDC is yet another tension point between the agency and the White House that has erupted over its handling of the coronavirus. Those tensions have reached a boiling point over the last several weeks as the CDC has worked to publish its guidelines for states working to reopen their local economies. The guidelines, which provide detailed information about how local officials can begin to allow some residents to attend religious gatherings and summer camps, were contested by White House officials who sought to shelve many of the agency’s recommendations.

The emerging fight over death counts represents a new front line in these battles—one that’s attracted the direct interest of the president himself. Though Trump has quietly suggested that the U.S. is inflating the COVID-19 death tolls, one task-force official told The Daily Beast that any discussion about mortality rate is merely a small part of a broader dialogue about how to improve the quality of data at the local, state, and federal level.

That official called the mortality rate a “far-lagging indicator” of the spread of the virus and argued that it was “not a real-time indicator of how the virus is affecting the population.” The official said it was the task force’s view that the mortality rate doesn’t “inform the response efforts as other data could, like hospitalizations” and that the virus moves through populations “like nursing homes and prisons,” as well as populations with comorbidities.

But according to other knowledgeable sources, there is broader skepticism within the White House over how the CDC is compiling its data. In a task-force meeting last week, officials relayed that Birx said she couldn’t trust the CDC’s numbers—on both case and death counts—because the reporting system it relied upon was flawed. She argued that the agency was likely overcounting. The Washington Post was the first to report on the meeting. Officials in the CDC said they were confused by the argument.

“The system can always get better. But if we’ve learned anything it’s that we’re seeing some of these individuals who have died of the virus slip through the cracks,” one official told The Daily Beast. “It’s not that we’re overcounting.”

But according to one of the sources with knowledge of Trump’s private remarks, the president recently said that he’d like a “review” of how the coronavirus deaths are counted and studied by the government, citing hypothetical cases in which a person has the virus but is killed by other unnatural means, such as falling down a flight of stairs. The other source said that Trump pointed out that death estimates for other incidents—such as natural disasters and wars—are revised down or up “all the time,” and that the coronavirus pandemic could have similar fluctuations in the numbers published by public and private entities. (This month, Axios was first to report on Trump voicing doubts behind closed doors about current body counts.)

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It’s an argument that has gained traction in various pro-Trump circles, as well, and is mirrored by the complaints of some of the president’s closest advisers.

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“My view is the president is totally correct that we need to have medical transparency,” said Art Laffer, a longtime conservative economist who has counseled Trump and other key administration officials on coronavirus response and how to “open” the economy amid the pandemic. “When you attribute a death to the coronavirus today, what that means is that the guy had the coronavirus and died. It doesn’t matter if he got hit by a car and died, and he would still be categorized as a coronavirus death... You need the whole transcribed medical records on a disk so people can sit there, maybe without names, and look for causes and correlations.”

Anderson said Laffer’s assessment was incorrect and that the form used by physicians to report coronavirus deaths specifically asks them to answer: “Did the patient die as a result of this illness?”

“It doesn’t say ‘Did this patient die?’” Anderson said.

Anderson’s division at the CDC keeps tabs on novel coronavirus deaths through two parallel tracking systems. It relies on the data it receives from local departments of health and through information it gathers from states through a death-certificate digital coding system.

Anderson said the death count is normally higher from states’ health systems than the death certificate system data. “But those numbers aren’t necessarily inconsistent,” he said, adding that the death-certificate death count usually lags anywhere from two to eight weeks. Meanwhile, local officials and doctors say any disruption in the way they count coronavirus deaths could lead to a significant undercounting.

One study by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene published Monday said that there were thousands of “excess deaths” in the city from March 11 to May 2. About 18,879 of those deaths were explicitly tied to the coronavirus. But the study said there were also an additional 5,200 that were not identified as either laboratory-confirmed or probable COVID-19-associated deaths, but could have been tied to the virus in some other way.

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Irwin Redlener,
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Gretchen Van Wye, the assistant commissioner of the Bureau of Vital Statistics at New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said her team matches individuals coded as having died from the coronavirus with the lab results to get a “confirmed” category of people daily. Then, with individuals that aren’t coded, the team uses an algorithm to search for words such as “Covid” or “Covid-19” on their death certificate to create a “probable” category. Unlike other cities across the country, New York City includes this probable count in its reporting. The rest of the results are considered as “other” deaths.

In New Jersey, officials told The Daily Beast that they have seen an uptick in the number of patients arriving at the hospital already deceased who were never tested for the virus. Two doctors—one in New York City and one in Jersey City—said that they have not tagged certain individuals as having died as a result of the coronavirus because families requested it be kept off the death certificate so they could more easily collect the remains.

Even with the death-certificate coding system, doctors and local officials say they are running into problems where some of their patients are not being counted in the total coronavirus death tally.

State officials are required to enter a specific code—a seven-digit number—on a death certificate to identify whether an individual has died as a result of COVID-19, Anderson said.

The CDC requires doctors to input “COVID-19” in order for an individual to be counted in the national system as having died as a result of the coronavirus. Several doctors in New York City who spoke with The Daily Beast said in high intensity situations human error could result in a physician not coding a patient correctly. Doctors were coding patients as simply “coronavirus” or some variation of that without indicating that the virus was specific to the 2020 pandemic. In some instances they were forgetting to input “-19” after “COVID”.

“Now we’re having to go back and recode those deaths,” Anderson said, adding that there were more than 1,500 individuals who were mistakenly overlooked in the first few weeks the CDC was calculating the coronavirus death count.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.salon.com/2020/05/12/leaked ... ked-trump/

Leaked White House data shows infections spiking more than 1,000% in rural areas that backed Trump
Trump claims cases are falling everywhere. An unreleased task force report shows massive spikes in the heartland


5.5K
55.4K
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IGOR DERYSH
MAY 12, 2020 9:49PM (UTC)
Aleaked unreleased White House coronavirus task force report showing cases spiking in areas across the country has undercut President Donald Trump's claim that cases are declining across the nation.

"You know, the numbers are coming down very rapidly all throughout the country, by the way," Trump declared at a Monday news conference. "There may be one exception, but all throughout the country, the numbers are coming down rapidly."


This is, of course, not true. Though cases are decreasing in 14 states, they are rising in nine states, according to The New York Times. A lack of widespread testing in 27 other states, plus Washington and Puerto Rico, suggests that cases in those areas are being undercounted.

But a leaked coronavirus task force report obtained by NBC News shows that some parts of the country — rural counties in Tennessee and Kansas — have seen cases balloon by more than 1,000% in a matter of one week. Other counties in Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin saw increases of more than 400%.

Dr. John Ross, a professor at Harvard Medical School, pointed out that all but one of the top 10 counties that saw the largest increases voted for President Donald Trump in 2016.


Cyrus Farivar
✔
@cfarivar
Unreleased White House report shows coronavirus rates spiking in heartland communities (by @jonallendc, @PhilMcCausland, and @cfarivar)https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white- ... s-n1204751 …

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The top 10 cities in the report, which was produced on May 7, saw cases increase by more than 72% over seven days. Some areas, like St. Louis and Central City, Ky., saw cases skyrocket by 650% over that span. St. Cloud, Minn., saw cases increase by more than 400%. Other cities like Gainesville, Ga., Racine, Wisc., and Nashville saw increases of more than 100% over a single week.

A separate graph listing "locations to watch" include Kansas City, Mo., and Charlotte, which saw increases of more than 200% over the previous week.

The report found that statewide cases in Minnesota increased by nearly 100% over a single week while New Mexico, Tennessee, Wisconsin and the nation's capital saw increases of more than 40%.


Despite the alarming increases, Trump has continued to publicly and falsely claim that cases are falling nearly everywhere.

"Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere," he tweeted Tuesday.

Medical professionals criticized Trump's attempts to spin rising death counts.


"Anybody that claims we're on a downward trajectory nationally is out of touch with reality," Dr. Irwin Redlener, the director of the Columbia University National Center for Disaster Preparedness, told NBC News, adding that even the rising numbers do not tell the full story. "There isn't a single state in the union that has sufficient testing."

Though states like New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, which were hit hard early, have seen numbers decline, the nation has a rising curve when New York's massive totals are excluded.

"It's not appropriate to say the U.S. is consistently on a downward trend at all," Redlener said. "In some places, it might be the direct opposite of that."


Trump has also complained to advisers about the way that deaths are counted, arguing that the "real numbers are actually lower," Axios reported last week.

But medical experts, including those on Trump's own task force, say the opposite is true.

"Most of us feel that the number of deaths are likely higher than" the 80,000 that is currently reported, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified to a Senate committee on Tuesday. "The number is likely higher. I don't know exactly what percent higher, but almost certainly, it's higher."


Fauci also pushed back on Trump's optimism and pressure on states to reopen businesses during the hearing.

"If some areas, cities, states or what-have-you jump over those various checkpoints and prematurely open up without having the capability of being able to respond effectively and efficiently, my concern is that we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks," Fauci said. "I have been very clear in my message — to try to the best extent possible to go by the guidelines, which have been very well thought out and very well delineated."


IGOR DERYSH
Igor Derysh is a staff writer at Salon. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald and Baltimore Sun.

Email: iderysh@salon.com Twitter: @IgorDerysh

MORE FROM IGOR DERYSH

I think Trump is still going to push the lets get the economy reopen soon angle despite the data.

[The Romulan Republic]

Of course he is.

In related news, the Trump Death Clock has been set up in New York (and may soon be coming to other cities). Basically, its a big-ass counter on the side of a building which estimates how many people have died due to Trump's covid policies:

https://theguardian.com/world/2020/may/ ... navirus-us

Donald Trump has been accused of personally causing the deaths of 40,000 Americans through his “reckless” handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, in a new website launched on Wednesday under the provocative title Trump Death Clock.

The website, created by independent film-maker Eugene Jarecki, is a conscious echo of the National Debt Clock which since 1989 has given a running score near Times Square in Manhattan of total US borrowing. The Trump Death Clock extends the idea dramatically by providing a tracker measured not in dollars but in lives allegedly lost by the president’s own inept actions.


Trump poised to wind down Covid-19 taskforce as US death toll tops 70,000
Read more
“I am seeking accountability for reckless leadership,” Jarecki told the Guardian. “We have meticulously isolated just that portion of the US death toll where one can see a specific line between the president’s decisions and actions and the loss of life.”

The Trump Death Clock provides a bald tally of lives that it claims were needlessly lost to Covid-19 that ticks upwards in real time. At the time of reporting this article, it stood at 39,435 – laying responsibility for almost 40,000 American lives at the White House door.

The figure is in turn based upon the authoritative running tally of total deaths from Covid-19 compiled by the Covid Tracking Project. From its daily read-out of coronavirus fatalities, Jarecki’s team has created the Trump Death Clock through a simple mathematical calculation of 60% of total deaths from the disease in the US.

The 60% ratio used in the death clock was drawn from a study by two prominent epidemiologists, Britta Jewell of Imperial College, London, and Nicholas Jewell, a professor of biostatistics at UC Berkeley. Writing in the New York Times in April, they posited the theory that if Trump had introduced the White House social distancing guidelines not on 16 March but a week earlier on 9 March, a 60% reduction in the expected final death count could have resulted given the exponential spread of the virus.

That formula runs the risk of coming across as reductionist and motivated by political animus. But Jarecki, whose previous work in movies has focused on abuses in public life, insists that his clock is founded upon the credible scientific thinking of top public health experts and epidemiologists, and that it is conservative in its estimations.

“I believe we need a national measure of the cost of the recklessness of the president’s pandemic response,” Jarecki said. “He was advised multiple times by the intelligence services and his own public health experts of the significance of this pandemic and the need to take mitigating action, and yet those warnings were not acted upon.”

Even Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert in the US who has been central to the federal Covid-19 response, has publicly noted the cost in American lives of failing to lock down early on. “If you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives,” he told CNN.

Jarecki is already thinking about giving physical form to his Trump Death Clock following the example of the National Debt Clock. He told the Guardian that as he was developing his idea, associates encouraged him to create an actual physical tracker that might be placed in full public view in New York and other large cities across the country.

Trump has responded to criticism of his handling of the pandemic with volatility in the past. He has accused several reporters of being “nasty” and of peddling “fake news” after they questioned him during his daily White House coronavirus briefings.

Asked whether he was anxious about how Trump might respond to being directly accused of causing tens of thousands of deaths, Jarecki replied: “I can’t think about that. I feel I owe it to people who lost their lives to demand accountability and more responsible leadership going forward so that they did not die in vain.”

[The Romulan Republic]

Wisconsin's Republican-controlled Supreme Court has struck down the state's stay at home order, forcing the peons to die for the glory of Capitalism and Dear Leader:

https://theguardian.com/world/live/2020 ... ws-updates

[The Romulan Republic]

FBI executes warrant to seize Senator Richard Burr's phone as part of an investigation into whether he engaged in insider trading related to coronavirus:

https://businessinsider.com/fbi-seizes- ... rus-2020-5

The FBI has seized a cell phone belonging to North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Burr was served with a search warrant at his home near Washington, DC, the LA Times reported, citing an anonymous law enforcement official.

A spokesperson for Burr's office declined to respond to a request for comment, and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to inquiries.

Citining another unnamed law enforcement official, the Times reported that federal agents obtained access to Burr's Apple iCloud account, using information they disocvered there to obtain the warrant for the senator's phone.

Burr is the chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, which has access to the federal government's most classified and sensitive information.

According to Reuters, Burr's committee was getting daily briefings on the threat of the coronavirus around the time he dumped his stock.

The Senator unloaded up to $1.72 million in stocks on February 13, days after reassuring the public that the Trump administration was well prepared to handle the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

A source familiar with the matter told CNN his committee did not get a briefing the week he sold his stocks.

In a February 7, op-ed for Fox News, Burr — along with Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee — acknowledged that "Americans are rightfully concerned about the coronavirus" at a time when the number of cases in China was still skyrocketing.

The senators added, however, that "Thankfully, the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus, in large part due to the work of the Senate Health Committee, Congress, and the Trump Administration."

According to Burr's financial disclosure form, he started dumping stock on February 13, six days after writing that op-ed.

He made a total of 33 separate transactions, unloading anywhere from $1,001 to $100,000 worth of stocks in different companies.

Burr defended his actions the day after ProPublica first reported on the stock sales, saying in a statement, "I relied solely on public news reports to guide my decision regarding the sale of stocks on February 13. Specifically, I closely followed CNBC's daily health and science reporting out of its Asia bureaus at the time."

He added: "Understanding the assumption many could make in hindsight, however, I spoke this morning with the chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee and asked him to open a complete review of the matter with full transparency."

ProPublica's report came hours after NPR reported it had obtained a recording that features Burr raising dire concerns about the coronavirus to members of a private Washington club.

"There's one thing I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything we have seen in recent history. It's probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic," Burr said in the recording, according to NPR.

"Every company should be cognizant of the fact that you may have to alter your travel," Burr added. "You may have to look at your employees and judge whether the trip they're making to Europe is essential or whether it could be done on video conference. Why risk it?"

After ProPublica published its report, it surfaced that several other US senators had also dumped millions in stocks right before the markets plummeted amid fears of the coronavirus.

Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia sold off shares after a closed-door briefing on the outbreak on January 24. Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California also unloaded stocks in the weeks after the briefing. All of the senators have denied any wrongdoing.

CNN reported in March that the Justice Department was investigating the actions of US lawmakers who sold stocks before the market plunged amid coronavirus fears. The FBI has reportedly reached out to Burr as part of the probe.

In a statement to CNN, Alice Fisher, a lawyer for Burr, said he "welcomes a thorough review of the facts in this matter, which will establish that his actions were appropriate."

Loeffler, Inhofe, and Feinstein's offices said the lawmakers have not been contacted by the FBI. Inhofe and Loeffler said their stock transactions are held by third parties, while Feinstein said that her husband had sold the stocks and that she holds "all assets in a blind trust of which I have no control."

In 2012, a Republican-led House of Representatives passed a measure, signed into law by former President Barack Obama, clarifying that members of Congress can be prosecuted for insider trading.

Burr has denied wrongdoing, saying he based the sale of stocks on news reports.

[Ace Pace]

The FBI seizes the phone of the Senate intel chairman and not anyone else accused because he's not licking Trumps balls.

[The Romulan Republic]

The FBI seizes the phone of the Senate intel chairman and not anyone else accused because he's not licking Trumps balls.

There is that possibility, but they haven't gone after Feinstein either, as far as I know. In any case, Burr does look pretty guilty here.

[The Romulan Republic]

US and Canada working on extending the border closure until June 21st:

https://globalnews.ca/news/6941869/coro ... extension/

Canada and the United States appear likely to extend a ban on non-essential travel until June 21 amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, a Canadian government source and a top U.S. official said on Wednesday.

The two neighbors had agreed on April 18 to extend border restrictions until May 21 as cases of the disease continued to rise in both nations. Canada is now pressing for the measures to remain for another month.

“It’s too early to lift the restrictions, so we’re working toward an extension,” said one Canadian government source, describing the talks with Washington as positive.

Chad Wolf, acting U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary, said later on Wednesday that restrictions across the borders with Canada and Mexico would likely be extended.

Speaking to reporters in San Diego, Wolf said officials from Canada and Mexico were willing to continue the measures “at least in the short term.”

Separately, a Mexican government source said an extension for a limited period seemed likely.

On Tuesday, the chief Canadian public health officer said the United States – where cases are increasing steadily – presented a risk.

News of the request for a 30-day extension was first reported by Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper.

The agreement allows the flow of goods across a border that stretches 5,525 miles (8,891 km) and is a crossing point for one of the world’s largest bilateral trading relationships.

The United States takes 75 per cent of all Canadian goods exports.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said talks about the border “are going well and we’re confident about being able to continue to keep Canadians safe.”

The total Canadian death toll edged up by just over 3 per cent to 5,209 from 5,049 on Tuesday, official data showed on Wednesday. The data are another sign the outbreak in Canada is slowing whereas the situation in parts of the United States is more challenging.

The Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec neighbor the state of New York, a U.S. epicenter of the disease. Canadian officials have been repeatedly pressed about the potential risk posed by arriving truck drivers.

Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, said on Tuesday the coronavirus “could take off rapidly” unless extreme caution was exercised about relaxing the ban.

“The United States being one country that still has cases and is still trying to manage outbreaks … presents a risk to Canada from that perspective.”

(Reporting by David Ljunggren and Ted Hesson; Additional reporting by Bhargav Acharya in Bengaluru, Susan Heavey in Washington, Dave Graham in Mexico City, Steve Scherer and Kelsey Johnson in Ottawa; and Kristina Cooke in Los Angeles; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Peter Cooney)

Good. While in just about any other circumstance I'd be for open borders, I don't fancy thousands of the Fuhrer's covidiots coming up here for summer vacation.

[ray245]

Good. While in just about any other circumstance I'd be for open borders, I don't fancy thousands of the Fuhrer's covidiots coming up here for summer vacation.

It is going to be funny to see the people who wants to close their borders all the time will start to shift to demand an open border so they can go on their nice holidays.

[Ace Pace]

The FBI seizes the phone of the Senate intel chairman and not anyone else accused because he's not licking Trumps balls.

There is that possibility, but they haven't gone after Feinstein either, as far as I know. In any case, Burr does look pretty guilty here.

Yes, because Barr is a Republican and Trump expects his people to bend the knee.

[loomer]

An Alberta mancamp is responsible for an outbreak that has caused 106 cases and killed two Dené elders.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-15/ ... p/12252114

Coronavirus confirmed in Bangladesh refugee camp housing nearly 1 million Rohingya

The first cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed among Rohingya refugees in the world's largest refugee camp, Bangladesh and UN officials have said.

Two refugees tested positive at Cox's Bazar camp in Bangladesh, where 1,900 other refugees — who may have been in contact with them — are being isolated for tests.

About 1 million Rohingya refugees are living in the crowded Cox's Bazar after fleeing persecution in neighbouring Myanmar.

The camps have been under lockdown since March 14, and humanitarian groups warned the infection could devastate the crowded settlement.

"Today they have been taken to an isolation centre after they tested positive," Mahbub Alam Talukder, the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, said by phone.

One of the patients was from the "host population", a term usually referring to local residents outside the camps, a UN spokeswoman said.

'Thousands of people may die'
Coronavirus infections have been gathering pace in recent days in Bangladesh, which has reported 18,863 cases of coronavirus and 283 deaths.

Dr Shamim Jahan, Save the Children's health director in Bangladesh, said in a statement that the virus had already overwhelmed the country.

"There are only an estimated 2,000 ventilators in all of Bangladesh, serving a population of 160 million people," he said.

"In the Rohingya refugee camps — home to nearly a million people — there are no intensive care beds at this moment.

"Now that the virus has entered the world's largest refugee settlement in Cox's Bazar, we are looking at the very real prospect that thousands of people may die from COVID-19. This pandemic could set Bangladesh back by decades."

US ambassador at large for international religious freedom, Sam Brownback, told US reporters by phone: "I've been to the refugee camp. It is [so] incredibly crowded that the COVID virus will spread through there very rapidly, unfortunately. They have to have access to adequate healthcare."

Health facilities lack staff and space, while people in the camps do not have enough soap and water or space to protect themselves, said Manish Agrawal, Bangladesh Country Director at the International Rescue Committee.

"Here, people are living 40,000 to 70,000 people per square kilometre," he said.

"That's at least 1.6 times the population density on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where the disease spread four times as fast than in Wuhan at the peak of the outbreak."

"Without efforts to increase healthcare access, improve sanitation, isolate suspected cases and decongest the camp, the disease will devastate the refugee and local population here, where there is a much lower standard of living and a higher rate of existing illness that make refugees more susceptible to the virus," he said.

More than 730,000 Rohingya arrived from Myanmar in late 2017 after fleeing a military crackdown.

Myanmar is facing charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice in the Hague over the violence.

The army denies genocide, saying it was fighting a legitimate battle against Rohingya militants who attacked first.

I wonder how badly COVID 19 will affect other refugee areas.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviru ... virus-test

FDA Cautions About Accuracy Of Widely Used Abbott Coronavirus Test
May 14, 20209:07 PM ET

Updated at 11:16 p.m. ET

The Food and Drug Administration is cautioning the public about the reliability of a widely used rapid test for the coronavirus. The test, made by Abbott Laboratories, has been linked with inaccurate results which could falsely reassure patients that they are not infected with the virus.

The Trump Administration has promoted the test as a key factor in controlling the epidemic in the U.S. and is used for the daily testing that is going on at the White House.

As first reported on NPR, as many as 15 to 20 out of every 100 tests may produce falsely negative results. A subsequent study released this week indicated that the test could be missing as many as 48% of infections.

The FDA issued the alert on the Abbott test "in the spirit of transparency," and said in a press release, it's investigating whether the false-negative results could be connected to the type of swab used during the rapid test, or the material the samples are being stored in when they're transported.

It also cautions that "any negative test results that are not consistent with a patient's clinical signs and symptoms or necessary for patient management should be confirmed with another test."

"We are still evaluating the information about inaccurate results and are in direct communications with Abbott about this important issue," said Tim Stenzel, director of the FDA's Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health. "We will continue to study the data available and are working with the company to create additional mechanisms for studying the test."

The Abbott rapid test can still be used to identify positive COVID-19 cases, according to Stenzel, though negative results may need to go through a secondary process to be confirmed.

The FDA has received 15 "adverse event reports" about the test indicating patients are receiving inaccurate results, according to the press release.

The FDA will continue to monitor data on the test and work with Abbott, which has agreed to conduct post-market studies on their rapid test. The studies will include at minimum 150 people who have previously tested positive for coronavirus, and take place in clinical settings, the FDA release said.

Abbot's share price dropped more than 3% during after-hours trading on Thursday.

The company told NPR in late April that any problems with the test could stem from samples being stored in a special solution known as viral transport media before being tested, instead of being inserted directly into the company's testing machine. As a result, the company recently instructed users to avoid using the solution and to only test samples put directly into the machine.

In addition, Abbot has continued to defend the accuracy of the test, and pointed to other studies that have found it is as accurate as any other tests being used.

Precise, timely testing has been a major challenge in the coronavirus pandemic. Beyond issues with accuracy of rapid tests, there have also been issues certifying antibody tests – those that can detect if someone has been infected with COVID-19 in the past.

This appears to be a PCR test. Not sure why the last paragraph they just mention problems with antibody tests, which I have posted about before, but generally PCR tests are supposed to be accurate taking into account things like operator skill etc.

[The Romulan Republic]

Senator Richard Burr, coronavirus insider trader extraordinare, has stepped down as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Of course, these means the Republicans can now put in a chair who is a more reliable toady of Trump.

[The Romulan Republic]

Courtesy of one Bernard Sanders:

[mr friendly guy]

So lets talk India and COVID 19

India was a success story when the pandemic started. Australian Broadcasting corporation news did a segment where Indians talked about how they were on the ball early, cutting off borders with China etc. Unfortunately as we now know, covid 19 had spread somewhat earlier and as the US, Canada found out, stopping travel from China didn't work because it just came from somewhere else. Then India instituted the lockdown in march. Why were they doing it if it wasn't so bad. It was a precaution as someone said to me.

Then we had Indian experts telling us the numbers could go in the millions if they didn't institute a lockdown. Well India has a few problems. Namely it (along with Peru) has just surpass China in the number of confirmed cases.

https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation ... 44073.html

Its still in a lockdown, and people think the 33 million Americans who lost their jobs were bad, India has it worse. According the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, India has an unemployment rate in April of around 23.5 per cent with an estimation 114 million people losing jobs in April.

https://www.cmie.com/kommon/bin/sr.php? ... 1&msec=776

Millions face the spectre of starvation in India. As previously noted, COVID 19 exacerbates food insecurity.

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south ... -granaries

But don't worry, Indian media and Modi has got this all covered. Like Trump, they know who to blame. Hint, it's not China.

[The Romulan Republic]

Canada to begin first clinical trials of a coronavirus vaccine in Halifax:

https://cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/ ... -1.5573283

A Halifax research team will be working with a Chinese manufacturer to run the first Canadian clinical trials for a possible COVID-19 vaccine.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the announcement during his daily remarks on Saturday.

The trials have been approved by Health Canada and will take place at the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology (CCfV) at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

"Research and development take time, and must be done right. But this is encouraging news," Trudeau said.

He added the National Research Council will be working with the manufacturers so that if these vaccine trials are successful, the vaccine can be produced and distributed "here at home."

The CCfV team of about 45 people is working with a potential vaccine from Chinese company CanSino Biologics.

Health Canada said in an email Saturday that their decision followed a careful review of the trial application, which "met the necessary requirements for safety and quality."

Researchers say about 600 participants will be needed
Scott Halperin, director of the CCfV and a professor of pediatrics, microbiology and immunology at Dalhousie University, said they are building on trials that have already begun in China.

The vaccine strain, called Ad5-nCoV, uses another virus that's been modified so it can't cause infection in humans, he said. It expresses one of the COVID-19 antigens on its surface called the "spike protein."

If participants develop antibodies to fight this antigen,"one hopes that one would be protected against COVID-19," Halperin said.

Once their team gets approval from an ethics board, Halperin hopes the trials can begin within the next two weeks.


Dr. Scott Halperin, director of the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology and a professor of paediatrics and microbiology and immunology at Dalhousie University, hopes the trials will begin in the next two weeks. (CBC)
In Phase 1, Halperin said there will be just under 100 participants of different ages involved. In the early stages, they will begin with "very healthy individuals" about 18 to 55 years old. Once their team sees some "early safety data" from those trials, he said they will bring in those 65 years of age and older.

Then in Phase 2, Halperin said they will add 500 additional participants, who might be anywhere from 18 to 85 years old.

Their team follows participants for six months after they're immunized, Halperin said, so the whole study runs about six to eight months. However, after even a few weeks of each phase they will likely be able to learn enough to move onto the next stage.

The Phase 1 trials are "quite intensive" in terms of monitoring, Halperin said, including screening to ensure participants are healthy.

Once someone is given the vaccine, the CCfV team tests their blood, holds physical examinations, and looks at other signs and symptoms including immune response. People must also keep a diary of any symptoms.

Participants will come in a couple times in the first week, then less frequently as the weeks go on, for a total of nine to 13 times over the six months.

Director hopeful Phase 3 could come this fall
Halperin said they may be able to move to Phase 3 studies as soon as they have good data from Phase 2, which could be as early as "late summer, early fall."

The third phase is designed to see "if the vaccine works," Halperin said. It looks at whether participants who have received the vaccine are protected from getting COVID-19, if exposed to the virus.

Halperin said the only part of the study their Halifax team is conducting alone would be Phase 1.

When they move into Phase 2, likely in a couple months, they will be joined by multiple centres across the country through the Canadian Immunization Research Network (CIRN).

The network was originally set up around the 2009 H1N1 pandemic by the federal government, to have a national capability to "rapidly" start Phase 1 studies in extreme cases like this, Halperin said.

"It's satisfying that the infrastructure was there in order for us to be able to respond," he said.

An 'emergency release' could come before study ends
He also noted that this vaccine is not the only one which will be going into clinical trials in Canada. Halperin said there will likely be others announced within the next few weeks.

Any potential vaccine won't be publicly available until after Phase 3 is complete, Halperin said, which "could take quite a long time."

However, Health Canada could allow the vaccine to be used before that in an "emergency release," and there are some talks ongoing now about how that could be done.

That was the case when the Ebola vaccine was used in west Africa before Phase 3 trials were complete, Halperin said.

The CCfV team consists of nurses, data managers, research assistants, laboratory personnel, and three or four other physician investigators.

[loomer]

Travelling at 'frightening speed', coronavirus has hit 38 Indigenous groups in Brazil
The coronavirus is reaching Indigenous territories across Brazil 'with frightening speed', according to the Brazilian Indigenous Peoples' Association.
The coronavirus pandemic has hit 38 Indigenous groups in Brazil, raising fears for populations that have a history of being decimated by outside diseases, the Brazilian Indigenous Peoples' Association (APIB) said Friday.

"The virus is reaching Indigenous territories across Brazil with frightening speed," the association said in a statement.

An APIB survey found 446 cases of the new coronavirus and 92 deaths among the affected groups, mainly in the Brazilian Amazon.

The grim news came a day after the Indigenous community of Parque das Tribos, outside the northern city of Manaus, held a funeral for its chief, Messias Kokama, who died of COVID-19.

Kokama, who was 53, was buried in a closed casket wrapped in plastic to avoid spreading the virus.

Brazil, the Latin American country hit hardest in the pandemic, has seen its death toll spiral.

It has registered nearly 15,000 deaths and 220,000 cases so far, though experts say under-testing means the real figures could be 15 times higher or more.

The pandemic is also creating an opening for illegal miners and loggers to encroach on Indigenous lands, said rights group Survival International.

"Countless tribal lands are being invaded, with the backing of a government which wants to completely destroy the country's first peoples and makes no attempt to hide it," said the group.

It criticised far-right President Jair Bolsonaro for his push to open protected Indigenous lands to farming and mining.

Source

These are some of the most vulnerable communities in existence, both due to imposed and organic factors. It spreading in them is devastating in every sense.

[The Romulan Republic]

Over 20% death rate (of course who knows the actual numbers, due to inadequate testing).

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-17/ ... y/12241654

India's coronavirus lockdown: The good, the bad and the ugly of Narendra Modi's COVID-19 measures
By South Asia correspondent James Oaten and Som Patidar
Posted 12hhours ago, updated 9hhours ago
James Oaten standing on a street corner in New Delhi
James Oaten was living and working in New Delhi when the country was suddenly locked down to contain the spread of coronavirus.(ABC News: James Oaten)
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India is in no man's land.

Thousands of confirmed COVID-19 cases are being added every day to the national tally, but it's not enough to guarantee disaster is on the horizon.

Around a third of all coronavirus cases have recovered and the death rate is relatively low, but victory is not yet in sight.

Health experts have continued to say just a few more days of lockdown would give a clearer picture of where the country is headed, but after more than six weeks there's still no answer.

India has now surged past 90,000 confirmed cases and is recording more than 4,000 new cases a day. It has also passed China's tally.

And yet the country, groaning under huge internal economic and social pressure, is easing restrictions to get the economy moving again.

Interstate trains are resuming operations to get poor migrant workers back home, posing a real risk of spreading the coronavirus to rural areas where medical services are poorest.

So how did it get here? And why, after six weeks of one of the world's strictest lockdowns, is the country still in such an uncertain position? Here's what we know.

Coronavirus update: Follow all the latest news in our daily wrap.
The Good: Early lockdown measures
Two cows sitting on a pile of leaves
India's swift lockdown saw animals reclaim the empty streets of New Delhi.(ABC News)
Six weeks ago, I wrote that India was doing relatively OK, especially compared to Australia.

I made the assessment not only because the number of confirmed cases was low, but because India was acting in an assertive and confident manner that appeared to be lacking in the west.

Australia was in the midst of a panic buying frenzy as numbers jumped, and policy-makers were flipflopping about mass gatherings — such as Formula One or rugby league — while India was shutting down borders, schools, cricket matches, and even Bollywood, in what seemed to be a methodical fashion.

Then India imposed one of the world's strictest lockdowns, when confirmed cases of the coronavirus had just passed 500.

Almost everything, except essential services and businesses that related to food or medicine, was shut, causing a sudden shift in community sentiment — as if confirmed cases had shot up.

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But along with some unease, there was also a sense of national pride. India, it seemed, was tackling the issue head on.

"India started off reasonably well," said the Public Health Foundation of India's Professor K Shrinath Reddy.

"India did take several measures that were fairly effective and ahead of many of the western countries."

A man dressed in police uniform walks on an Indian street wearing a helmet with red spikes coming out of it.
Some police officers wore helmet and held shields depicting the coronavirus as they warned people to maintain safe distance during the lockdown.(Reuters: P. Ravikumar)
According to researchers at Oxford University, who have rated the strength of lockdowns across the world from zero to 100 using a "stringency index", India's lockdown scored the highest rating of 100.

In comparison Australia — which at the time had four times the confirmed cases — scored 63. And even when Australia had the same number of cases as India, its lockdown measures scored 34.

"There was a great sense of vulnerability, because of the large population and the overcrowded slums and cities," Professor Reddy said.

"As well as the relatively weak health system, and the frightening images of overwhelmed health systems and hospitals coming in from Europe and North America.

"That led to the decision that we must have a lockdown, and there was not much resistance to the lockdown from the general public."

The Good: Extraordinary humane social response
Women walk through an Indian food market while a man hold limes
While hand sanitiser was hard to come by, there wasn't any panic buying six weeks ago.(ABC News: James Oaten)
India's measures suppressed the curve and hospitals have not been inundated as many had feared, although experts have suggested the country's young demographic is likely to have helped the latter.

"If you look at deaths per million, we are way, way low down," Professor Reddy said.

"1.27 deaths per million population compared to 700 plus in Belgium and more than 200 in Europe, and close to 200 in the US."

Coronavirus questions answered
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Breaking down the latest news and research to understand how the world is living through an epidemic, this is the ABC's Coronacast podcast.

Read more
Many of India's cases are concentrated in a few metropolitan areas and hotspot clusters, which have been quarantined, while more than 40 per cent of India's regional and municipal districts — accounting for a quarter of the population — have been labelled "green zones".

This means they have not had a confirmed case of the coronavirus for at least 21 days.

The southern state of Kerala, a region renowned for quality health care and high literacy rates, was the first state to register cases of COVID-19 and of the more than 500 confirmed cases its had since, only about 30 are still active.

A man disinfects a door of a train in India.
While cities worked hard to keep public spaces safe, the country's initial response was lacking in another crucial area.(Reuters: Rupak De Chowdhuri)
It has become the envy of India after it responded to initial cases with rapid testing, contact-tracing, clear communication to combat false rumours, and even home delivered meals for school children stuck at home.

But according to Professor Reddy, the situation across India can't be characterised in a "unitary fashion".

"The southern states, especially Kerala, had an extraordinarily efficient public health response, as well as a humane social response," he said.

The Bad: Not enough testing and 'PPE not being available to everyone'
A man sprays disinfectant from a hose onto people's hands as they line up.
In India workers have had their hands disinfected but have also been rounded up and hosed down.(Reuters: Pawan Kumar)
While India's aggressive lockdown and social distancing measures were praised by the World Health Organization, the country's initial response was lacking in another crucial area: testing.

Its testing regime focused on those with symptoms who had been contact with a confirmed case, or who had travelled to a hotspot country, but it's now evident asymptomatic cases were slipping through the country's defences.

"No lockdown can be 100 per cent foolproof," renowned public health expert Anant Bhan said.

"People were allowed to go out and get milk, to get groceries, to buy vegetables and there were cases, for example, where that was the source of infection [or] sometimes it was through delivery of food, like pizza delivery."

Home to more than 1.3 billion people, India's testing regime per capita was always likely to rate low — although it has increased the number of daily tests from around 5,000 in late March to just under 100,000.

People wait to give their samples to medical staff at a slum area during India's lockdown.
Some workers who lost their jobs ended up having to beg for food.(AP: Rajanish Kakade)
The country appears to now be paying the price for its slow start.

"We never really knew how much it had spread in the community prior to the lockdown and during the lockdown," Dr Bhan said.

"A lot of police and health care workers got infected because the infected ended up being asymptomatic as well."

The state of Maharastra and particularly its capital Mumbai, the country's financial and entertainment capital, has been the hardest hit, accounting for a third of all coronavirus cases.

Hundreds of neighbourhoods in Mumbai have been turned into containment zones, where residents cannot leave.

Read more about coronavirus:
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The good, the bad and the ugly of India’s COVID-19 measures
More than a 1,000 cases have been recorded in Asia’s largest slum, Dharavi, where social distancing is near impossible to maintain.

Hospitals last week ran out of beds for critically ill patients , and at least 15 hospitals have been partially or fully placed into quarantine, after doctors and nurses became infected.

According to Dr Bahn, there were a few reasons behind this, including "poor quality personal protective equipment or PPE not being available to everyone".

"Bhilwara is a city in southern Rajasthan where the infection spread was traced to a hospital, a very busy hospital," Dr Bhan said.

"Probably, a patient came in and infected the [health care] providers, and they ended up spreading it to patients."

The Ugly: Millions of migrant workers left without an income
Indian migrant exodus
The lockdown led to an exodus of migrant workers as they desperately tried to reach their home villages during the coronavirus pandemic.(AP)
When India's lockdown was announced, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave just four hours' notice, leaving millions of migrant workers who live hand-to-mouth without an income or a bed as factories and construction sites closed down.

Lines of young men desperately trying to walk hundreds of kilometres to their home town or village, without food or water, became a common sight in Delhi and other cities during the early days of the lockdown, while those left behind were turned into beggars.

"It's worse than I ever imagined," journalist Saba Naqvi said.

"They were proud people. Many of these people work with their hands — they have been reduced to a condition where they have to beg for food."

A girl wearing a long dress and a bag on her he walks along a railway track
Many recently unemployed migrant workers and some of their children have been forced to walk hundreds of kilometres home after India's lockdown was announced.(Reuters: Adnan Abidi)
It prompted Mr Modi to apologise to the poor for causing "immense suffering" and the Government to announce huge relief packages and set up quarantined accommodation for migrant workers.

But it remained on the backfoot. At least 47 people have died due to starvation, 26 to exhaustion, and 83 to suicide due to lockdown hardship, according to a study by a group of academics and activists.

Last week, 16 migrant workers were crushed to death after falling asleep on train tracks as they tried to get home.

Many have defended the Government's snap decision to impose a lockdown, saying migrant workers would have exited cities en masse anyway, elevating the risk of the virus spreading. But Professor Reddy is doubtful.

"The migrants, because of the nature of their occupations and the places of their stay, would have had very little exposure to the virus," he said.

"They could have been assisted in returning home."

The Ugly: A mass event and Islamophobic fake news
A police officer raises a baton at a man who, according to police, had broken the social distancing rule.
Some police strictly enforced the social distancing rule.(Reuters: Adnan Abidi)
The ferocity of the coronavirus's ability to spread became clear after an outbreak at a congregation of supporters of the Sunni Islamic movement, Tablighi Jamaat, in defiance of the city's restrictions on mass gatherings.

It prompted anger to again start mounting towards Muslims, just weeks after deadly violence erupted between Muslims and Hindu nationalists in the nation's capital.

Islamophobic rumours started taking off on social media, and Muslim workers and street vendors were being chastised.

"When the event broke out, we immediately knew what was to follow," said journalist Archis Chowdhury, who authored a study on fake news for factcheck website Boom Live.

"We were doing one fact check every day about a rumour that was targeting Muslims with false allegations of spreading coronavirus purposefully."

Chowdhury said a video showing a couple of Muslim youths licking plates "went viral [falsely claiming] Muslims are spreading their spit and the coronavirus with it".

"It's a very old video from 2018 and it's of the Dawoodi Bohra community, who have this practice of licking their plates clean to avoid wastage of food," he said.

So what's next for India?
India may be at a crucial turning point, but it will have to make many more manoeuvrers in coming weeks and months.

"It is absolutely improper to start marking [how India is going] at this stage," Professor Reddy said.

"We've seen how South Korea has had a setback; we've seen how Singapore has had a setback.

"We have to mark stage by stage and start learning. How fast a learner you are, and how fast you apply those learnings, is going to be important.

"Now comes the big challenge."

------------------------------

So the article mentioned that Oxford had created a stringency index to see how severe each country implemented lockdown measures. So bit of researching nets this.

https://ourworldindata.org/policy-respo ... ency-index

The OxCGRT project calculate a Government Stringency Index, a composite measure of nine of the response metrics.

The nine metrics used to calculate the Government Stringency Index are: school closures; workplace closures; cancellation of public events; restrictions on public gatherings; closures of public transport; stay-at-home requirements; public information campaigns; restrictions on internal movements; and international travel controls.

The index on any given day is calculated as the mean score of the nine metrics, each taking a value between 0 and 100. See the authors’ full description of how this index is calculated.

A higher score indicates a stricter government response (i.e. 100 = strictest response).

It’s important to note that this index simply records the strictness of government policies. It does not measure or imply the appropriateness or effectiveness of a country’s response. A higher score does not necessarily mean that a country’s response is ‘better’ than others lower on the index.

There is a downloadable PDF file from the link which goes into how they calculate the index for those who are inclined.

And here is the graph of the stringency index by a couple of countries

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covi ... ?tab=chart

You can unselect or add countries to compare. Here is something interesting, even at the height of the Chinese lockdown, they scored around 71. The US at its best scored a bit more than 68. European countries scored higher than China ever did at their height, with Italy into the 90s and Spain and UK in the 80s. Clearly the EU is full of authoritarian places, because only an authoritarian country can do such a thing.

This just counters the claim that the western world would never be able to do what these Asian countries did because of freedom and not authoritarian as some of them are. Or maybe the University of Oxford is now the Chinese puppet too, along with the WHO.