If this turns out to be legitimate, the neocons and neoliberals will be crying and the alt-right and commie Russophiles will be jerking off with excitement.
By Jake Rudnitsky and Ilya Arkhipov
Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) — President Vladimir Putin said Russia cleared the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine for use and hopes to begin mass inoculation soon, even before clinical testing has finished.
Is another shutdown coming?
By Christina Maxouris
CNN
As more Covid-19 records get broken, debates on whether to send kids back to school or to shut down the economy again are coming to a head.
More than 1,000 people died every day for four straight days last week due to Covid-19. That brings the total US death toll from the virus to more than 146,000 as of Sunday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
And researchers project up to 175,000 deaths linked to the virus by August 15, according to an ensemble forecast published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
With overwhelmed hospitals and lengthy delays in testing, some local leaders — including Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti — said a second stay-at-home order might be possible.
That kind of drastic measure is supported by more than 150 prominent medical experts, scientists, teachers, nurses and other experts who signed a letter urging leaders to shut the country down and start over to contain the rampant spread of the virus.
The second wave is upon us.
By Philip Wen, Joyu Wang
Wall Street Journal
Australia reported only a handful of new coronavirus cases in early June, while Hong Kong went three weeks without a single locally transmitted infection that month. Japan had already lifted a state of emergency in May after the number of new cases dropped to a few dozen nationwide.
All three reported new high-water marks in daily infection numbers in the past week, showing how difficult it can be to keep the virus at bay, even in places lauded for taking early and decisive action.
The number of infections in all three places are still small in comparison to the world’s hardest hit countries, but the fresh waves demonstrate the tricky balancing act authorities face as they attempt to reopen their economies.
ABC News
Over 15.5 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding or downplaying the scope of their nations’ outbreaks.
The United States has become the worst-affected country, with more than 4 million diagnosed cases and at least 144,305 deaths. While the U.S. remains the nation with the most coronavirus cases and fatalities, some countries “have been able to control the virus,” said Dr. Maria VanKerkhove, the World Health Organization’s lead expert on COVID-19.
By Christina Farr
CNBC
By Griff Witte, Ben Guarino
Washington Post
For weeks this summer, it was a seeming paradox of the coronavirus pandemic: cases in the United States were rising but deaths were falling.
To the Trump administration, this was evidence that its strategy for combating covid-19 was working. To medical experts, it was only a matter of time before the trajectory changed.
And now it has. Nationwide, deaths have begun to rise again. In some of the worst-hit states, especially across the South and the West, new death records are being set daily. As a virus-scarred summer wears on, public health specialists say the numbers are almost certain to continue to climb.
Whatever happened to the good old days of deaths from drug overdoses and alcohol poisoning at parties? How far we have fallen.
By Eddy Rodriquez
Newsweek
Jane Appleby, chief medical officer for Methodist Healthcare in San Antonio, said in a recorded statement to News 4 San Antonio that she heard a “heartbreaking” story about a 30-year-old patient who attended a COVID party.
“This is a party held by somebody diagnosed with the COVID virus and the thought is that people get together to see if the virus is real and if anyone gets infected,” Appleby said. “Just before the patient died, they looked at their nurse and said ‘I think I made a mistake, I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not.'”
Will Trump’s legacy be that of the president who was such a dumbass he couldn’t win reelection against a dementia patient?
Thrills.
By Jebediah Reed
New York Intelligencer
Even before he became the point person in a global effort to find a coronavirus vaccine, Dr. Francis Collins occupied an interesting perch in government. One of the few Obama appointees still serving in a major role in the Trump administration, Collins, who rose to prominence in 1990s as leader of the Human Genome Project, is the head of the National Institutes of Health, the federal government’s gargantuan hub for medical research.
(CNN) The United States has long prided itself as the world’s shining beacon. But its current status is a much darker one: the globe’s leader in coronavirus cases. More than 125,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the US, and more than 2.5 million Americans have been infected.
From May 2014. I’ve been thinking this thing was probably going to drag on for years to come. That’s how it was with the Spanish Flu, which lasted for two years, and COVID-19 may last longer because there are more people now and the population is more mobile.
By Sam Meredith
CNBC
By TR
By Tamara Thiessen
Forbes
After four months of travel bans, Europe will soon officially be open to visitors from at least 14 countries. Not the U.S. Nor Brazil and Russia. But Australia, Canada, Japan and South Korea yes.
After much debate, particularly over criteria for inclusion, the final list of approved countries should be revealed early this week. EU officials wrangled again on Friday over which countries will make it on to the list, and those who will not.
By German Lopez
Vox
The past week gave America an ugly reminder that the threat of the coronavirus pandemic is far from over. Cases are rapidly rising again. The nation on Wednesday hit a new record for daily new infections, and then hit another record the next day.
There’s some debate about whether this is the “second wave” of infections, or whether it’s a continuation of the first wave that began in early 2020 and never really ended. But what’s clear is the US is now suffering from a rapid rise in coronavirus cases. So far, that’s yet to translate to a rising death toll, likely because rises and falls in deaths tend to lag behind rises and falls in overall cases.
But between Monday and Thursday, the US went from nearly 31,000 reported cases in one day to more than 41,000. Arizona, Florida, Texas, and several other states in the South and West are among the hardest hit.
Axios
The coronavirus pandemic is getting dramatically worse in almost every corner of the U.S.
The big picture: The U.S. today is getting closer to the worst-case scenario envisioned in the spring — a nationwide crisis, made worse by a vacuum of political leadership, threatening to overwhelm hospitals and spread out of control.
By the numbers: Over half the country — 26 states — have seen their coronavirus caseloads increase over the past week.
Increased testing does not explain away these numbers. Other data points make clear that we’re seeing a worsening outbreak, not simply getting better data.
Between the lines: Axios uses a rolling seven-day average to minimize the effects of any abnormalities in how and when new cases are reported.
What’s next: Younger people are making up a greater share of all cases, and tend to be less susceptible to serious injury or death, so hopefully this spike in new cases won’t be followed by an equivalent spike in deaths.
By Nick Statt
The Verge
The European Union plans to ban travel from the US when it reopens its borders on July 1st because of the Trump administration’s poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report from The New York Times. Under current plans, the US would join Brazil and Russia on the list of forbidden countries, as all three countries have had comparably poor responses to the virus since the worldwide outbreak at the beginning of the year. Travel from China, as well as some developing countries, will be allowed, the report states.
